When the dancing came, mummers mingled with audience, and although at the beginning there was a pavane and a coranto, no one was in a mood for courtly airs, and soon the players struck up for a country dance. Lady Jael Killigrew was closely attended by Digby Bonython, and she seemed not at all to mind. She had shocked us by coming down to supper in a gown of tissue of gold lined with velvet, so low-cut that her breasts were scarcely covered. Her eyebrows were plucked and her eyelids fresh treated with kohl, and she wore perfumed lavender gloves. My stepmother did not dance as yet after her illness, and my father constantly led out Mrs Gertrude Arundell, Jack of Trerice’s mother.
Mr Killigrew was in his liveliest, most arrogant mood, and insisted that everyone should dance a new dance he had brought from court called a lavolta, whose chief step was a high leap in the air. What with demonstrating and then dancing it, his face became flushed, his thick blond hair fell over his face, sweat glistened round his nostrils and in the cleft of his moustache. It was strange to see him so animated yet with so little animation in his prominent eyes.
Sue Farnaby had avoided me all day. In the play she had been one of the signs of the Zodiac, and she still wore her parchment mask and two wooden fishes on her shoulders. There was a jig, and I went suddenly across and caught her by the hand and we were into the dance before she could stop. For a while she seemed to be making little effort, but after a few minutes she brightened her step. I saw Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne watching us.
“I have been wanting to speak to you all day,” I said.
She looked up at me quickly but did not speak.
“After last night,” I said, “it was almost more than I could do to ask you for a dance.”
She giggled slightly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was on account of me that you were asked here and I realise now it was wrong of me to ask. I hope some day some day to be able to put things right between your family and mine. I can only do my best.”
She seemed to be thinking of this as we went round again but when the dance came to an end and we paused breathless before another began and still she did not speak, I said:
“Sue …”
She patted my arm. “Maugan, dear, it was naughty of me to deceive you but I am Gertrude Carew.”
I went very red. “All evening I thought … Which is Sue, then? “
“She says I was not to tell anyone.”
“Did you change your costume on purpose to deceive folks? “
“Sue wanted it. I don’t know why.”
Jonathan Arundell had come up. “Gertrude, is that mask not irksome on you now, dear? I shouldn’t think jigging in it so comfortable.”
She laughed. “Nor is it comfortable to Maugan, Jonathan.” She pulled off the mask and showed dishevelled hair and a shiny happy face. “I must withdraw and cool myself.”
“Do you know which is Sue Farnaby?” I asked when she had moved away.
“I think she left the room a half hour gone,” Jonathan said. “She was the black girl in the turban. I think she went to take the colour off her face.”
I walked slowly down the passage leading to the north wing. The wind outside was not strong tonight, but every now and then it would raise its voice like a lost dog and howl round the big straggling house. I thought of this building teeming with life and colour and music and little human beings, and all about us were the great empty spaces of sea and river and sky and wood and star. In the grim castle at the end of the promontory two men remained on guard through the night as a precaution against surprise; but in the dark of the night it was impossible for that watch to be sure. The safest protection and the surest watch dog was the wind and the treacherous unquiet sea, for ever ready to pounce on men and drive them on the Manacles of Dodman Point. They said there was the wreck of an Armada ship to be seen on the north coast not far from the Arundell house at Trerice. Wrecks from that Armada still littered the sea-coast below Dover, so passengers to and from France did not pass unreminded.
There was a light burning in one of the rooms upstairs, and from it Annora Job came out, her fair hair in long plaits down the front of her bodice. She glanced at me with slant eyes and went on down the passage. As I reached the other end I heard a door close again and saw that someone else, a man, had come out of the same room. It looked like Tresithney Treffry, my cousin from Fowey.
At the end of the passage were two rooms given over to the mummers where we could dress; they were no more than attics under the eaves. One had been set aside for the men and one for the women. The men’s room was empty except for piles of clothes; in the women’s room was Sue Farnaby. By the light of the single candle she was combing her hair before the square piece of mirror propped against a wooded box. She turned round when she heard me.
She was still wearing the borrowed frock but she had washed the burnt cork off her face and hands.
I said: “I was confused tonight. I thought you were Gertrude and Gertrude you.”
“She has just told me. Don’t you know I am an inch taller?” “I thought it was the shoes.”
“And she is two inches more round the waist.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That we differ or that you made the mistake?”
“That I made the mistake.”
She put the comb down but did not look at me again. “I think I was wrong to speak to you as I did last night, Maugan.”
“Oh, no, it was well deserved. I’m ashamed for my family.” “Gertrude says it was you who got me invited here.”
“Well … Yes.”
“It was kindly meant.”
“I wanted to see you again. So perhaps it was selfish.”
“I don’t think that selfish. I’ve enjoyed it here.”
“You can stay another seven or eight days yet.”
“I’ll have to go when Gertrude goes. I think it will be before January.”
“What will you do then?”
“I don’t know. Something will come. Do not spoil your Christmas with our worries.”
“Won’t you come back to the dance?”
“I wanted to take the black off my face. Already it has made this lace dirty.”
“You still have a mark on your ear.”
“Where?” She turned. “Where? I can’t see it.”
“No, not there. It’s very little.”
She picked up the cloth towel. “You take it off for me, will you, Maugan?”
I stood beside her; I was two or three inches the taller and I lifted away a piece of her black hair and rubbed the towel gingerly round the rim of her ear. I rested my hand on her shoulder and it was like touching something magic. I felt sick with pleasure. Her breath was on my cheek. I wanted life and time to stop.
I laughed loudly and stepped away. “There, all’s welll” I swallowed and dropped the towel and turned away.
“Thank you, Maugan. Let’s go down.”
She took my hand and we went slowly along the first passage and turned into the second. Here we surprised Stevens the footboy who was kissing one of Carminow’s daughters. They broke off and fled when we came round the corner.
I said: “Not all are dancing.”
“It’s a merry house. I hope the Carews will stay over into January.”
“When is Gertrude marrying Jonathan Arundell?”
“In May. She’ll be 15 then.”
“So shall I be. I’m 15 in February. And you?”
She said: “I was 15 last month. Soon we shall all be old.”
“I can’t bear the thought of your being old.”
Her hand tightened on mine. “I wish I were a man. I could go out into the world and make my fortune or at the least try to make it I could help my father and mother in some bigger way. A woman is such a useless thing!“