That old room at the end of the north wing where we had dressed up for the junketings of three Christmasses ago. In the old days servants had slept there, under the eaves where a man could not stand. But now because we were the fewer to house the room was empty. I wandered up and looked it over. I remembered it vividly with Sue standing in front of the looking-glass tucking in a strand of hair. She had just taken the burnt cork off her face and one smear had remained under her ear. I had wiped it away. Now the room was empty except for some old sacks and a sea chest. Green timber had been used up here when the house was built, and the door was warped. The window, having been shut with difficulty in 1590, had never been open since. One of the beams had got beetle. It all smelt of sacking and cobwebs and dust. But it was an empty room.
There was special danger in all this if my grandmother ever learned of it we should both be turned out of the house without hesitation and at first Meg would have nothing of the idea. Indeed she was so hostile that if it had not been for that betraying look I would have thought it hopeless to press her. Then suddenly she gave way. Embarrassment, shyness, hostility, desire, they were all there in her eyes as she nodded and said maybe, in the hour after supper, in the long hour of twilight, in the hour of dusk. I was to go first. She would perhaps be able to slip away. But, mind, I wasn’t to wait at least, not long.
I went up. I said I was going out and instead turned up the stairs. The maids were washing dishes, scouring pans; I tried to walk quietly but tension made me clumsy; I seemed to have four feet and hobnailed boots. I reached the room out of breath and lay there on the floor gazing out at a fleece of cloud moving over the grey slit of the sky. I lay there, my heart thumping, my body alive, my mind full of concupiscence. So she came, and instead of young bracken and the wind and the high sun, I laid her on the sacking, and her small body was the warmer and the softer and the more vivid for the contrast with the dust and the dirt.
I do not know even to this day how much I was truly loving Meg and how much the memory of Sue. At least, although there was still much bitterness in my heart towards Sue and in a sense towards all women, none of it escaped upon Meg. Perhaps I too, like Meg, was a romantic, and this emotion transmuted what might have been a shabby coupling with a maidservant. Surely inner experience is all. The gold and the dross exist together in the same ground; it depends which you find.
In those days I knew myself to be changed, and wondered that others did not remark it. I looked at all women with new eyes. Confidence and imagination had grown overnight. I was stabilised, more content. I was not happy but so much less unhappy than before that it passed muster. And some of the wildness had gone.
All this time Dick Stable had been making a slow mend and when one day he asked for his harp we knew him to be truly in recovery.
Then Belemus came home and at once perceived what others had not. “Well, what’s to do with you? You look wide-awake. Have you been conquesting over some woman?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’d lay a curse you know well. Is it Meg Levant you’ve spurred? I’ve thought for some time “
“You’ve thought! With what? There’s nothing in your head but dried blood and crow droppings. Just because “
“But soft. He who denies most roundly accuses himself. What if you have been tampering with some wench? Is it a matter for anger between friends? If you will tell me nothing well and good; I shall know in quick time. You admit you can keep nothing from me. Come, I tell you all my adventures. To share ‘em makes ‘em live again.”
“I’m sorry, Belemus, you’re mistaken this time.”
He looked at me cynically, pulling at his beard. “I thought you’d changed, I thought you’d left your other soul in Madrid. But now and then it pokes out as if begrudging your better self free play. How does it profit man to take things serious? You were like death after Sue Farnaby had married elsewhere. I tell you, there is only one philosophy in love: to kiss and fly. Take your pick this morning and tomorrow start over again. It’s the one solution, boy. Love is fun. Don’t tie it up in all manner of tedious ribbons labelled faithfulness and truth and honour. You’ll weigh it down and sink it. And what’s true of love is just as true of life. Spit in its eye before it spits in yours. It’s spring for us, witless, and we must make the most of it. It lasts no time. We’ll be gouty and palsied soon enough! “
“You’re preaching to the converted,” I said. “I’ve no time to waste, no more than you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
That day a Spanish shallop appeared in daylight cruising along the shore of Falmouth Bay. She carried lug sails on both masts and in spite of her ungainly build had a turn of speed. From what we could see her full complement must have been more than forty, perhaps half of them soldiers. She came close in but when our demiculverin fired twice at about 600 yards, which was near the limit for accuracy, she turned sharp about and made away. Carminow cursed his own precipitancy then, for if one of the 9 lb. shot had struck her it might have disabled her.
Instead we had to stand and watch the Spaniard chase and overhaul a fishing vessel which had come inshore unsuspecting. Foster said he thought the smack was from St Keverne. She was boarded and her crew of six taken off. Then the shallop shook out her-sails again and moved away with the empty smack in tow.
My father, who had come hastily from the house, said that with the Spaniards so close Sir Francis Godolphin should be warned, so Belemus and I left for Godolphin. It was a twelve mile ride, and to reach it we passed over high and desolate moorland from which it was possible to see the distant prospect of Mount’s Bay glittering like a dish in the slanting sun. Over there, I thought, across the other side, just beyond Penzance, is the church of Paul on the hill and there lives a girl called Susanna Reskymer.
Godolphin was a mansion built around a square courtyard with gardens surrounding it on three sides. On the fourth side and shadowing it from the late sun was the hill on which some 300 tin miners were employed and from which the family derived its wealth and stability; and I wished that the Killigrews could have had some similar source so that, irrespective of personal extravagance and royal favour, there would be a steady replenishment of resources to pay off old debts and to guarantee new ones.
Sir Francis greeted us graciously enough and we spent the night there. He had the news, which we had not heard, that the new master of Tolverne, Jonathan Arundell, was sick and was more often confined to his bed than managing his estate. When Belemus was not there Sir Francis said he thought Jonathan was still suffering from the effects of the crisis at the time of his father’s death; Jonathan was a sensitive man, and humiliation and melancholy of that time had bit deep. I thought of Thomas’s prophecies, and asked about him.
“Grows fat and ever more vocal. When a younger son is so strident it is good for all that he should leave home early.”