“Down, Snuffler, down,” said a man’s voice. “Quiet, boy! Oh! Now have a care, boy … that’s very well. That’s very well. Good dog … Let me move him, that’s very well …”
A man in clerical black was kneeling over the corpse, straightening its twisted limbs. Two other men in rough clothes were near by, pikes in hands. Beside them stood Mrs Susanna Reskymer, looking just as she had always been in my memory, tallish and slight, with gray-green eyes and black hair cut short over the forehead and ears, and the clearest of pale skins made paler now by what she was staring at, and a lip caught between her teeth and a wrinkle of horror twisting her forehead.
I said: “Sue …” before I could stop, and at once the two servants lifted their pikes.
The man in black also moved, and then Sue saw me. The pallor at seeing a murdered neighbour was nothing to the pallor that came to her face now.
“Maugan I …”
I stumbled out of the bushes. “I came to look . . ~ Are you safe? I’ve been searching since this morning.”
“We hid in the quarry. There’s a cave…”
“I found the church burning.”
“Yes, it’s all gone.”
“Is that your house, just there?”
“Yes. That’s gone too.”
“I was afraid …”
“We just got out in time.”
The thin man was standing opposite me.
“This is my husband,” Sue said. “Mr Reskymer. This is Mr Maugan Killigrew from Arwenack.”
Someone put out a hand. I had to change hands with my sword.
“This is a tragic time for us,” he said. “Have you seen aught of the Spaniards?”
“I saw some at noon in Mousehole. Not since.”
“You went dowel into Mousehole?”
“Not all the way.”
“Were there many dead or wounded?”
“One man was all I saw.”
“And this one, alas, our faithful Pieton. We tried to persuade him to leave but he would not. No doubt he died as he would have wished, defending his home.”
Philip Reskymer looked all of his fifty years, having lined cheeks and grey hair and the narrow shoulders of a scholar. But his eyes were alert and candid and penetrating. This was the man she had chosen, to whom she had given all that she had promised me, in the terrible intimacy of marriage. This old man was the man who had possessed her. He owned her; she lived with him, slept with him, was breathed upon and kissed and caressed by him. Utterly unchanged to look at, she was fundamentally changed within. She was Mrs Reskymer.
I heard myself explaining how I came to be here, what I had done since morning, why I was seeking them, and, now that I had found them, how I hoped they would let me see them to some safer district.
Philip Reskymer said softly: “It is kind of you, Mr Killigrew, but where does safety lie? We don’t know that, but we know where duty lies, and mine is here by my ruined church to help any of my parishioners who may need me. As dark falls I fancy they will come drifting back.”
“And your wife?”
“Ah, there is another matter. I’d gladly see her out of this if I knew such a way.”
“I don’t think any of you safe here,” I said. “If the Spanish intend to take Penwith, the only real safety is to make our way east before they seal it off. I was near enough this afternoon to hear three officers talking, and they were debating the holding of Penzance. I don’t know the numbers that have landed, but the neck of Penwith between St Ives and Penzance is not above a few miles. If they can defend that they have a foothold in England from which they’ll take some dislodging.”
Sue had not spoken since uttering my name.
“You speak Spanish, sir?” Reskymer asked.
“I was their prisoner for six months.”
“And were badly treated?”
“Not badly. But I am not a woman.”
He winced. “I could wish some solution. What do you suggest? “
“That we all leave as quick as possible. Have you horses?”
“There are two in the cave. But my place is here.”
“Will it benefit your flock if you are murdered and your wife raped?”
“I . . But if you are a soldier do you desert your regiment
to protect your family? No more can I leave.”
“Then let your wife leave with these two servants. There’s some hours of daylight left. It will give them the chance to make a few miles, and then they can wait for nightfall before trying to slip through the net.”
Sue spoke for the first time. “I cannot desert you, Philip.” Listening to her say that was like poison.
“Oh, yes, you can, if I can be sure that you’ll be safer leaving. But is it so?” Reskymer bent to close the staring eyes of the dead man. The cross-bred hound watched him suspiciously. “Poor John Pieton must be buried. There will be others. Susanne, I’m torn both ways.”
One of the servants came forward, and together they carried the dead man into his cottage. Sue got up from her stone and went with the other servant into the back of the cottage. There a woman servant was boiling some stew on a fire. We were all faint from hunger, and in twenty minutes we sat down together round the table and ate the hot stew with bread. From the unburned kitchen of the Reskymers’ house had been salvaged an Angelot cheese and a cherry tart; these made the meal.
Philip Reskymer wore a white band round his neck in the manner of the puritans. His hands were veined and nervous and seemed to have a life of their own, like sensitive antennae. He ate little while he told of their awakening that morning with the Spaniards already rampant in the village at the foot of the hill. Jenkin Kiegwin, he said, who owned much of the property in Mousehole, and whose house was the one substantial one in the town, had been surprised before he could flee and killed at his own front door. His wife and son had fled and were thought to be safe, but the fate of a second son was unknown. Most of the villagers, he thought, had got away in time. I watched Philip Reskymer while he talked, and he seemed to me in no way well favoured, even for a man of his age. I could not conceit what Sue had seen in him, except as an escape from penury. My flesh crawled at the thought of those veined hands touching her body. Hate which has come out of love burns the brighter for what it is consuming. I could have killed her and wept over her in the same breath.
One of the servants came back with an old woman who had been hiding all day in the bushes above Mousehole. She could tell us nothing of value, being half crazed with fear. Reskymer took her into the unburned house and Sue ministered to her.
“I am concerned for old Mrs Lavelis,” muttered Reskymer. “Arthur Lavelis is away, and the three servants are new and unreliable. Then there are the Lanyons, but they are better able to fend for themselves …”
“Shall I go to Trewoofe and see?” Sue asked.
“It will not be safe.”
“It’s not safe to wait here,” I said. “I ask you to leave while there is time.”
“How can I ? ” said Reskymer. “Already we’ve old Aunt Betty Coswarth to care for. There win be others. If the Spanish find us “
“And your wife?”
His long hands took the bowl of hot milk from Sue and he carried it to the old woman. “I think he’s right, Susanna. I cannot expose you to this risk if “
“I’m already exposed to it. There’s no proof that I shall be safer elsewhere.”
“There’s every reason to suppose it,” I said.
Sue stood up with her back to her husband. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m sorry, Maugan, this is my home.”