I took this message back to Belemus who pulled his little beard. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. It all goes much against the grain.”
“Imagine Sebastian Kendall being dead. I wonder if it was I who killed him.”
“Nonsense, he died of a tumour, that happens whether or not. I wonder if they buried him with his gold rings.”
“Well, they could hardly get them off short of filing them; his knuckles were too great.”
“Filing through gold is a long business,” said Belemus, “and disrespectful to the dead. The Kendalls had a great veneration for the old ruffian.”
“Which we have not,” I said.
“Walk so far as the point with me,” Belemus said. “I think we should talk.”
CHAPTER FOUR
By the sea night is seldom so black as inland; it is as if some reflection of the long sunk sun glimmers in the sky. But this night was perversely an exception, and the churchyard of St Gluvias was an unwelcoming place when we reached it. Our horses had been nervous all the way and had had to be urged forward into the dark. I had calculated that a third-quarter moon would rise about three, and that if we arrived at two much of the spade work would already be done by the time the moon got up. In fact it must have taken us fifteen minutes longer than calculated to cover the short journey, and then, stumbling over headstones and groping among tall grasses, it was another ten before we certainly located the grave.
We worked for a while in silence although the thud of our digging, the rattle of the stony earth as we shovelled it out seemed to fill the night around. Once or twice Belemus’s mattock struck sparks off stones, and to us they looked bright enough to raise an alarm.
There was no house or cottage within a quarter mile, and our most likely discoverer was some tin streamer returning from Carnon or a rogue marauding for himself and unlikely to make his presence known.
Imperceptibly as we worked the graveyard grew lighter.
Delicately by fine balances the weights grew less heavy on our eyes. I found it possible to see Belemus, up to his knees in the hole we had dug, to notice the gnarled elm leaning askew like a tired witch across a view of the town. An owl which had been out all night with shrill melancholy cries was no longer in” visible. Then as my spade struck on something which gave off no sound, the clouds broke over the east and a gibbous moon peered across the river.
It could hardly have been better timed, but now we had to go slow, for though I was not squeamish I had no wish to impale old Kendall on the mattock or the spade.
Eventually we cleared enough round the cloth-wrapped figure to try to lever it up, but stones and earth kept showering down, and the corpse was as limp as a dead rabbit. So we had to dig more, and then distastefully brush the clay and earth off the wrappings with our fingers.
I had remembered Sebastian Kendall as a gnarled, powerfully-built old man with straggling grey hair. This stinking mummy seemed half the size; the face as the dirt fell away looked withered and grey, the eyes peeped out of slit lids.
“Faugh!” said Belemus. “Have you a knife?”
I fumbled in my belt. The owl fluttered round again, his wings black against the upturned moon.
I passed the knife to Belemus who was now standing in the grave. He got to work, and the foul stench of decay rose into the night. He at last sawed through the cloth and reached the corpse’s arms, which were folded across the chest. We were able to see both hands together, and Belemus lifted one of them. “Look.”
Before being buried Sebastian Kendall had been deprived of his fingers and left only with the stumps. It seemed that whatever veneration the Kendalls might have for their grandfather it did not extend so far as we had supposed.
The next morning early my uncle Simon Killigrew arrived, having slept with the Arundells at Trerice. His coming was unexpected and not welcome to my father, who knew that he seldom saw his brother when Simon was in funds, and who, as he said to me, had enough hungry mouths to feed without another and one of extravagant tastes added to his board.
Simon was interesting for the news he brought. Ralegh had at last obtained a patent for further adventure and only last Thursday had left Plymouth in command of five ships, bound no one knew whither. Accompanying him were seven score gentlemen adventurers, among them many from the west country including John Grenville, Sir Richard’s younger son, a cousin of Ralegh’s called Butshead Gorges, and Ralegh’s nephew John Gilbert. There was a rumour they had gone in search of El Dorado.
Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins were also known to be fitting out an expedition which was to seek plunder in the West Indies. All this filled me with an intense restlessness. I would have done anything to sail with Drake. The Spanish would be in terror if they knew he was out.
Much was feared at Court, Simon, said, of the situation in France. Although Henry of Navarre, now undisputed King, had declared war on Spain, as he had undertaken to do, he was not prosecuting the struggle with any vigour. Indeed in the last weeks he had signed local truces with the Spanish in Brittany, in Normandy and elsewhere. At any time such truces might culminate in a treaty of peace which would take France out of the war altogether. The Pope, it was said, was only too willing to mediate.
Moreover the Archduke Albert, now the first soldier of Spain, had been sent to take over the government of the Netherlands. And the remaining English troops in Brittany were being withdrawn, leaving the way clear for the Spanish sea-raiders to prowl the narrow seas. All this pointed to increased danger for the exposed counties of the SouthWest.
Fresh money was being voted, Simon said, for the further fortification of the Scillies. The fort, half completed on St Mary’s, was to be hastened forward and two sconces added. Another œ400 was to be granted out of the customs of Plymouth and Cornwall to help towards the cost. (My father sneered on hearing this and said, why was it Godolphin got all the concessions? Whose ear did he have access to that he should always be treated with such priority over the legitimate and more pressing needs of others, such as the Killigrews of Pendennis? )
In the middle of this interchange Parson Merther came in with terrible news of happenings in Penryn. An old man buried yesterday had been dug out of his grave and his fingers cut off for the rings he wore. What was worse the corpse had been carried out of its grave and left in a sitting position in one of the front pews of the church where a woman this morning had found it, almost to the loss of her reason. This act, said Parson Merther, would of course be a hanging matter if the culprits were ever found. My father, on being told that the old man’s name was Kendall, raised a fish-like eye in my direction, but such was the offence that he did not dare ask if I had had any part in it.
The news Uncle Simon had brought of the withdrawal of the English troops from Brittany was a great blow to the west. That evening after supper Hannibal Vyvyan came hastily from over the water, and we talked long into the night. My father said it would have served better if Ralegh and Drake and Hawkins were at home at this time instead of jaunting off in search of the plunder of the Indies. Hannibal Vyvyan, a gaunt high-nosed man, had not seen me since my return, and I was subject of a cross-fire of questions from him and from Simon on what I had seen and heard in Spain. It was agreed about midnight that a joint letter signed by my father and Hannibal Vyvyan should be sent to the Privy Council urging that money, new levies and better armaments should be alloted for the defence of Falmouth Haven.
The next day Dick Stable was taken ill of the blow he had received, which was more grievous than we had supposed. Each time he got up his senses swam and he shivered and shook and had to lie down. I tried my hand with him, though where the brain is damaged there is little that medicaments can do. About this time died the falconer, Corbett, who had been injured in the head at the time of the fight in the hall in 1592. It made us all anxious about Dick for fear he might go the same way.