Lady Killigrew was sleeping better and, imperceptible as the rising of a tide, vitality began to creep back. She wrote letters again and talked of visiting her daughter Lady Billingsley in Devon. She plagued her elder and unmarried daughter Mary with proposals that they should go to Westminster together. She took a new interest in terrorising the servants with threats of dismissal.
She continued to pick at me. When the bottle she had been taking was done I fetched her another and another from Mistress Footmarker, saying to my grandmother there was a new herbalist in Truro. Mrs Dorothy Killigrew guessed different; and a conspiracy grew up between her and me that when someone was ill in the house I should ride and describe the symptoms to Katherine Footmarker and bring back her salves or balsams or simples. It helped me to understand more about sickness and its cures.
When Uncle Simon left, my father rode with him, taking Stephen Wilkey and Thomas Rosewarne. While he was away Belemus and l were up to one wild prank after another. Nothing was too rash for us to attempt, and no questions of morality troubled our sleep. I persuaded myself I was enjoying this new and unfettered life; but instead of allowing experience to happen to me I pursued it with the feverish joyless energy of someone seeing his days foreshortening and anxious to savour them,while there is still time. I persuaded myself I had forgotten Sue Farnaby, with as much success as comes to a man who tries to ignore a knife in his guts.
It was the first day of May, and the last day of a spell of weather which had brought summer too soon. If you could get out of the south-east wind, in a valley or behind a rock, it was warmer than many a July. In the haven white waveless danced a coranto all the way from St Anthony Point to Arwenack steps.
In the morning I had been with three men scattering wood ash on the meadows, the wind doing much of the work for us; and then in the middle of the day instead of returning to the house I ate a rabbit pasty and walked out to see how the sheep were faring which had been set to summer early on the moor between Pennance and St Budock. On the way home near Mongleath I heard quarrelling voices and came on Meg Levant, very fiery but very terrified while two beggars menaced her for money she had not got. They were sturdy men and armed with sticks, but I had the advantage of being more ready to fight, so after a short set to they turned and fled.
“Well,” I said, breathless, “so this is how you behave so soon as my back’s turned!”
Her hair had come loose, and the wind blew it in tails across her face.
“Oh, Maugan! That grab-thief wi’ the beard … I been over to Menehay to get a moonstone they say’s good for the dizziness. Old Sarah Pound has loaned it me for a week to try on Dick.”
“You have it now?”
“Aye, I was afraid they might steal it, though they’d he’ had to take mortal liberties to find it.”
“Show it me.”
“Turn your back then.”
I looked across at the sea and listened to rustling clothes behind me.
“There.”
I turned it over, a glistening bauble, worth a rose noble perhaps but unlikely to have curative value. “Why, it’s warml”
“Well, I wanted to carry it safe!”
“You’re not afraid of my stealing it, then?”
“Nay, I’m not afraid o’ that.”
We began to walk home. I realised that the event which had just taken place could hardly have occurred more favourable for me. All her romantic instincts would be gratified.
I looked sidelong at her as we walked. Her breasts were high and her stomach slender; her blunt freckled face was distinguished by the fine long eyes. We sat on a bank that looked towards the sea, while the warm wind streamed past us. I wondered if honesty might pay the best result.
“Meg, would you believe something to be true if I told you it was true?”
“Ah … that depends.”
“Would you believe at least that I’m not joking?”
She frowned and pushed hair away from her eyes. “What is it?”
“I have never made love to a woman.”
She stared at me for several seconds. Then she burst out laughing. “Who-ee! What d’ye take me for one of the lambs up there? Baaaal”
“It is truer”
“And Sibylla Kendall? No doubt you played Primero on the bed wi’ she! “
“Sibylla was Belemus’s girl. The night I was surprised with her, Belemus had been wounded and I’d gone to tell her of it.”
Meg continued to laugh, though I could see a flicker of interest somewhere at the back of her eyes. I took calculated offense..
“Very well, then. You can find me of use when set on by thieves but in the next breath you call me a liar, which is cousin to a thief and hardly better. Take your stone and find your own way home! “
I threw the stone in her lap and went off. She called “Maugan! ” but I took no notice. However, I strode not so fast as I might have done and could hear her after me. On the right was a thicket of white hawthorn which I knew well, and I plunged into it, made for the glade in the centre of it and flung myself down. She caught me up.
“I’m sorry, Maugan, twas not meant as an offense.. Truly I thought you was joking. Truly I thought that. Is it strange that I thought it? You was in Spain a six month, and then everyone believes you was Sibylla’s lover, that’s believed by all! If you say twas not so I believe you, but I always thought it, and so I thought you was joking.”
I did not answer.
After a silence she breathed out. “I fancy I ha’n’t been here before. Look at all they bluebells! And the may blossom! Tis like a wedding.”
Within fifty yards the open moorland began again, but here you might have been in a forest. Sheaves of bluebells fisted up among the trees, and the hawthorns were white with blossom which was falling as constant as snow. The wind whistled through the trees like wind in the rigging of ships. Even here in the centre of the glade Meg’s hair was blowing over her face; but it was a filtered wind, sifted of its violence and warm. The sun beat down.
“Maugan, I believe you.”
I said: “When I was on my way home with Captain Elliot, Justinian Kilter was aboard. He said he had made free with you on his last visit.”
“Who? That fair man that was ‘ere afore the fever outbreak? I never seen him since! If he was aboard when the Neptune last called he never showed his face at Arwenack I What wickedness to say such a thing! “
“He said you have a mole on your left breast.”
“Oh, what lewdness! Well, I have not, and you can tell ‘im so next time you see him! “
“I have to believe you now?”
“Yes ~ “
“Seeing’s believing.”
A shower of petals floated down between us. “That’s lewd talk from you again, Maugan Killigrew.”
“I don’t think it so.”
“Well, it is so.”
“Is love ugly, then?”
“I didn’t say twas.”
“Then is it lewd?”
She plucked a bluebell and put it against her nose and smelt it. I moved to her and took her hand. She pulled it away, so I took the other which was holding the bluebell. She looked at me, less certain of herself than was usual in Meg.
“Tell me,” I said, “what is it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Making love with a woman.”
“Maugan, it’s not nice to speak of it so, in broad daylight, in the sunshine, in the open air.”