“Thank you, sir.”
So as the Spanish closed in on Penzance from two sides, Godolphin and his small group retreated reluctantly by another. I left by the fourth, striking due north and then turning west as soon as I was out of sight of the town.
CHAPTER 6
The larks were singing. High up in the attenuated sky they fluttered, beating out excited messages that paid no heed to me or to my sweating horse. The first time I stopped to give my horse a breather after the long rough climb Penzance was still in sight, and it was possible to see curls of black smoke beginning to rise from some of the outlying cottages. The second time it was all hid by the brow of the hill.
Penwith is a strange secretive land, full of unexpected rocks bearded grey with lichen. I saw only one man in the first hour and he was in rags, crouched on his haunches setting a trap for a hare. I asked my way of him and was told it with an accent which showed his native language was Cornish and that he spoke English only with resentment. I did not tell him that we were being invaded by the Spanish; perhaps it was wrong but I felt that at best he would only dimly comprehend. His way of life was nearer to the hare he was trying to trap.
From this height it was hard to tell one’s distances, but as I dropped down into the first wild valley full of nut trees and scrub oak, I dismounted and led my horse, feeling that that way one was less likely to blunder upon the invaders unawares. I had eaten and drunk nothing since yesterday, so stopped at the first stream that we might both drink; but there was no food except for the abounding wild life which there was no means of snaring.
This yalley led down to the coast and to a deserted bay. The sea here was emerald and turquoise, the rocks a terra cotta brown and square fashioned as if worked by a sculptor. We had come too far west and I led my horse up the hill which would divide this from the next cove. Almost as soon as we reached the top the strong smell of burning wafted through the trees.
I tethered the horse and went on foot. It wasn’t far to go. A rutted cart track led through a field in which the scent of the growing barley was overhung by the smell of smoke. Black specks floated in the sunlight, and here and there scraps of burnt paper and rags hung in the trees.
At the other side of the field was a broken iron gate ajar, and beyond a wider track with a cottage on either side of it. Both cottages were burnt out, the cob walls standing but roofs and windows gone. There was no sign of life and now little burning, only a wisp of smoke came from them.
But there was something bigger afire. Passing two chickens picking unconcernedly in the tufted grass, I turned the corner and came at once upon what, until recently, had been Paul Church. The tower had collapsed, breaking down the chancel wall; windows had fallen in, a black column of smoke and flame still came from the interior.
I made a cautious circuit of the building. No one was about; only the dead in their graves were here for witness.
The pall of smoke obscuring the sun moved away on a chance breeze, and then I saw that a substantial square-built house across from the churchyard was also blazing. I ran over the graves and came to a Iych gate, panting, though not from running. A charred door lay across the front steps; the heat from inside made entry impossible; I ran round the back. The kitchens and still room, stone built and cool, had survived the flames. Even the timbers of the roof were only charred. Thrust open the door.
“Sue! … Sue! …”
The sound echoed in the silence. A smock hung over a chair, and beside it lay a scythe. On the table was a bowl full of cold pottage and a spoon. I tried to push open the next door. It resisted and then broke off its upper hinge and leaned inwards.
Beyond was a hall, blocked by a fallen beam. The movement of the door disturbed two or three charred pieces of panelling, and they fell to the floor so that the flames leapt again and an eddy of smoke blew across my face.
“Sue! Sue ~ “
Somewhere outside a dog was howling.
Back through the kitchen and out into the yard. The stables were empty, the dog was farther on yet. A coppice of trees came near the yard, the two closest had been scorched by the heat. I thrust through the tangle of brambles to another cottage which had not been fired. A cross-bred hound sat on its haunches beside a body which lay sprawled in front of the door.
It was a man, I saw with relief, a labourer. He lay on his back, eyes staring wildly at the sky, a gaping pike-wound in his throat. One hand still grasped a pitchfork.
I patted the hound and tried to comfort him, then returned to the front of the rectory and stared about in the smoke. From here you could see where the Spaniards had dragged things out of the house in their search for valuables. But these piles, like the house, had been fired, and only a wisp of curtain, the handle of a warming pan, the charred pages of a book remained.
The village of Paul was a few smoking cottages, a tavern with ale trickling from an upturned barrel, feathers scattered in the road, a broken stool beside a tin-washing keeve, a dead horse.
The hill down into the village of Mousehole is very steep, and I climbed a hedge to get a view through the smoke and the sea mist.
The harbour was empty except for four fishing boats which swung at anchor on the full tide. All the houses round the harbour had been gutted. Three or four of the houses climbing the hill were still alight. No sign of life. Sword out I went down the hill.
It looked as if the Spaniards had moved on, directing their main drive along the coast to Penzance. There were no warships within visibility, which now stretched to maybe a mile.
I had reached the first cottages before I saw another dead man in the street, sprawling much as the other had sprawled. Voices.
Between the cottages was a narrow passage choked with charred embers. I slid into it, feeling the heat on my boots, crouched in the buttress of a chimney.
Three Spanish officers.
The sight of these Spaniards walking in full armour down the street of a conquered English town, brought home to me as nothing else had not the flight of the inhabitants, not the burning villages, not the galleys, not even the two corpses the reality of this invasion of our land. In the year of the First Armada not one Spaniard had set foot on English soil except as a prisoner or as a shipwrecked mariner begging for succour.
But now it was here. The second Armada had landed its soldiers almost without opposition. There would be bitter fighting no doubt, and perhaps another sea battle as fateful as the one off Gravelines. Drake would accept this challenge with all his old fire and brilliance. And, although Ralegh was away, Essex or another would lead an army against this invading force. But from now on the long bitter war would reach a new pitch.
As they reached the harbour wall a strange thing happened. A man in a shabby laced jacket with blue velvet slops and a large black-hilled back sword, came from behind the wall, and I expected them to draw on him. Instead they talked for a moment and then all four turned and walked off together. I saw his face. It was Captain Richard Burley.
I went back up the hill.
At the last cottage a loaf of bread was lying in the road, and I grabbed it and ate half. At the church the fire still burned too fiercely to get inside. I sat on a vault trying to decide what to do. One could only continue to search.
So I went on for two hours, trying to trace a pattern around the village. The Spanish had not penetrated inland more than a mile beyond Paul. I found four cottages all clearly deserted in haste but unburned.
By five I had returned to the church. The sensible thing was to abandon the search and rejoin Sir Francis, if I could make a way back through the invading army. The mongrel hound which had continued to howl intermittently beside the dead body of his master suddenly changed his note to an angry bark. I went round to the scorched coppice and through the brambles.