Furious, hurt, miserable, I wanted to turn on my heel and leave the girl to her beloved husband and her invited fate, but I could not make the first move. I just stared back at her, knowing myself lost and defeated.
“Your home is in ashes,” I said. “I’ve seen me?’ burnt too. But of course it’s as you please.” The words scarcely meant anything; I had to say something to release the pressure in my throat.
Just then a young woman with a child appeared and almost fainted with relief when she saw Sue at the door. This woman too was taken into the kitchen and fed. She had been crouching in a disused tunnel for thirteen hours. She had seen two Spanish soldiers about an hour ago on the quay.
Philip Reskymer walked across to the ruins of his church and we tried to get inside, but the heat was still too great and some of the roof timbers had not fallen but were smouldering and liable to collapse. Even the great stone pillars had broken apart.
“This is the first church in England ever to be lit by a Spanish torch,” he said. “I fear it will not be the last. Do I understand, Mr Killigrew, that you saw an auto de ye’?”
“Yes. Human beings burn too.”
“Tolerance is a rare commodity.”
“We do not burn our captives.”
“Not of late. We stretch them on the rack.”
“I think,” said Sue, “I think I will see if old Mrs Lavelis is safe. It’s thirty minutes mounted, and since she’s half blind
“Then take Tamblyn with you. He has a strong arm and a stout heart.”
“If your wife wishes to visit this Mrs Lavelis,” I said, “I shall be pleased to go instead of your servant.”
“Thank you, Maugan, no,” Sue said.
“But why do you not all go?” Philip Reskymer suggested. “If the Spanish come in force, none of us will survive. But if they stray singly, then Tamblyn and young Mr Killigrew are as good a protection as you are likely to get. You have a horse, Mr Killigrew?”
“In the next field.”
It was half an hour before we left.
We rode three abreast to begin, and then as the track narrowed Tamblyn fell behind. But he was still too close for private conversation between us. The sun had gone down into a blood red haze which looked like a record of the day and a portent for tomorrow. We came upon a stone-built square house mercifully unburnt, with narrow mullioned windows and an iron-studded front door. We rang for a time and had no response, then knocked, then tried the latch and walked in.
We were in a hall with a handsome hammerbeam roof. It was dark and cluttered with heavy furniture, and I bumped into a table.
“Who’s there?” quavered a voice.
“Mrs Lavelis?” called Sue. “Where are you?”
“Who’s that? Tell me at once.”
“Susanne Reskymer with two friends. We came to see if you lacked anything.”
“Company, yes. You’ll find tinder on the big table. Light a candle.”
Eventually light began to grow, flickering and dying and then creeping up. A plump old lady was sitting on one of a flight of broad stairs, holding a musket across her knees.
“So you are real,” she said. “I was beginning to doubt.”
At the first scare the servants had fled, leaving the old woman of eighty-four to face the enemy alone. So she had stayed all day, though her sight was bad, sitting on the stairs gun in hand.
We helped her to a comfortable chair, prepared some food for her. In the reaction she was suddenly frail; we could not leave her tonight. But Sue was concerned about her husband. She asked me to go and tell him. I said my first duty was to her; Tamblyn must go.
She did not like this, argued that if I would not go alone she would stay here herself; I said where she was there I would stay.
Sue helped the old lady up the stairs to bed. Mrs Lavelis said the bedroom next to hers was prepared and usable; if Sue would take it she would sleep more soundly; the two men could sleep in the room next the hall. Before we closed the door Mrs Lavelis was breathing quietly.
At dusk Sue told Tamblyn to go and explain to Mr Reskymer that she would not be back tonight. Then she told Tamblyn to return here with all speed.
When he had gone she stood with her back to the great front door looking at me with liquid resentful eyes.
I leaned across and lit two more candles. “I am real. Even though at first you may have doubted it.”
“Oh I’m glacl, Maugan. I only wished it hadn’t happened this way!”
“The choice was yours.”
She came slowly to the table, on which were still the remains of supper. “Was I to know?”
“You thought I was dead1”
“Yes! “
“If you had been my widow your haste would have seemed indecent.”
She flushed. “It’s a long story.”
“It will be a long night.”
She began to pick up the trencher plates, the knives, the spoons.
“Leave that,” I said.
She stopped. “What do you want me to say? What is there to say? However long I tried I could never persuade you that what I did seemed at the time to be right.”
“Oh, Sue …”
She put her hands to her face. I got up but she said: “No, don’t touch me!“
“Sue, why did you ever do this?”
She went to one of the long narrow windows and peered out at the darkening drive.
“Is it safe to have light? Might it not attract the Spanish?”
“They’ll not be concerned with us tonight. Also it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.”
“Yes, it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.” She suddenly went on in a choked voice: “Why did I marry Philip Reskymer? I’ll tell you. Because I’m a weakling and a coward! … They told me you were dead. Can you understand? They told me you were dead. I could not even grieve openly. You were supposed to be nothing to me! Only Elizabeth Arundell guessed …” She turned. “I couldn’t stay on at Tolverne not an everlasting companion to Elizabeth in a gloom-filled house, for ever and ever. There was just an eternity before me of life without purpose. Philip Reskymer came twice to see Lady Arundell, to whom he’s related, and I saw he liked my company, but that was all. When I left I thought I should never see him again. I never wanted to see any of them. I wanted to get right away...”
“But you changed your opinion.”
“He found me at my aunt’s farm and asked me to marry him. He put it to me in such terms that I couldn’t refuse outright. He said he would come back in a week for an answer. It was in those days of waiting that I knew my true weakness.”
The tears were brimming on her lashes. “Philip is such a kind man: that was my undoing. Above all I needed kindness and some sort of comfort. Can you understand? Philip asked me to help him in his work, he asked me to be his companion and helpmate and friend. That appealed, for I felt if I could have some object in life … He told me of his work, and it seemed saintly there are so few like him.”
“Also he was rich.”
She stopped and then nodded her head, so that a shower of tears fell. “Yes. That counted. I’ll not pretend otherwise. He had a house, servants, who would tend on me. That may be nothing fresh for you, Maugan, but it has been fresh for me. Ever since I can remember we’ve been in dire straits. My father was always particular to keep up a standard of manners and behaviour I was brought up to act like a lady but at what cost behind the stage! The meals we had with only parsnips and carrots! The endless grubbing in the fields! That had already begun again while living with my aunt. How was I to know that if I refused his offer it might not continue for the rest of my life?”
“Have you never looked at yourself in the glass?”
“Oh, no doubt I should do as well as the rest if I had a home and money for a dowry. But who wants a penniless girl? Nearly all marriages are a question of money … And don’t you see? Philip was not taking your place; he was taking some other place, which perhaps my father had once held or which perhaps had never been filled beforel Do you understand that?”