But however narrow the slit in the curtains, daylight crept through and was suddenly in possession of our dark fortress, and the curtains were high walls against the world no longer.
She sat up: “I think I hear something.”
“No, it’s the wind.”
She listened intently. Eventually she gave way to the pull on her arm and lay down. She tried to push her hair back from her brow.
A bird was cheeping under the eaves; it was an alarmed sound as if a cat were stalking him. There was a scraping on the roof above us made by a crow or a chough as he edged along the thatch. Far away a cow was lowing.
I said: “We must make plans.”
“How can you make plans to defeat fate?”
“Not defeat it perhaps but circumvent it. Sue, you can’t go on living this unnatural life for ever. If we survive this invasion, then some way must be found to free you of an impossible tie. It will poison and distort Reskymer’s life as well as yours and mine.”
“In whatever we do we must go slow.”
“I have a feeling that if he loves you as you say he does he’ll not be able to keep to his principles much longer. Look at you? Would any man?”
“He doesn’t see me like this.”
“No, but one day he may. Have you separate rooms?”
“Of course.”
“With a connecting door?”
“Maugan, don’t torture yourself I Accept my assurance that nothing …” She stopped.
“What is it?”
“Listen.”
I listened.
Outside a horse neighed, and there was the jingle of harness. I leapt out of the bed and began to claw into my shirt and doublet and slops and shoes. Half clad I hobbled to the window. It was broad day. Some men on horses were disappearing round to the front of the house. I grabbed the musket from where I had propped it and fumblingly primed it with powder.
“Who is it?” Sue whispered.
“Men. I don’t know them. Dress but wait here.”
This room led on to a landing looking down into the hall. It was still gloomy here, but light fell in from the open front door. Three men were already in the hall.
“Halt!” I shouted.
They stayed there motionless, but two men coming in the door raised guns.
“Hold! ” said the man in front. “Who the devil calls? I don’t recognise the voice.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Since this is my home I’ve a better right to ask you that.” I lowered my gun. “Your home?”
“It was when I went away.”
Arthur Lavelis had been on his way back from Exeter when the news reached him of the Spanish landings. He had ridden through the night, collecting as he went a dozen other riders so that the number now in the courtyard of Trewoofe was twenty. As they rode rumours had flown to meet them that a second Armada twice as great as the first was on our shores and landing soldiery by the thousand, that all Penwith had already been burned and put to the sword.
Coming closer he had had official word with Godolphin, who last night had encamped on the hills above Market Jew.
Four or five hundred men, Lavelis said, had by now flocked to Godolphin’s standard, and numbers were increasing hourly and breeding greater courage. All the same they were an undisciplined company to meet any concerted attack. Skirting the embers of Penzance, Lavelis had come home without falling foul of invaders. It remained to be seen he said, what sights the day would bring.
By now Sue, utterly calm and possessed, was out on the landing, and Tamblyn rubbing his eyes had come into the hall. Old Mrs Lavelis was sleeping peacefully so she was not disturbed.
We breakfasted at once. Lavelis said if he ever found his three servants again he would hang them. A blustering moustached bachelor of forty with a roving eye that lighted with appreciation on Sue, he held a council of war over his cold mutton and galantine sauce. With him was a regular soldier called Captain Poor who had ridden from Liskeard overnight. Poor said Drake and Hawkins had been on the point of leaving for their expedition to the West Indies, with seasoned troops standing by to go aboard at the last minute. These troops under Sir Thomas Baskerville, Colonel General of Drake’s soldiers, would probably now be thrown into Cornwall to meet the attack while Drake and Hawkins sailed to take the Spaniards at sea. Until the full weight of the invasion was known no one could do more.
Poor said that as soon as he had broken his fast he would ride back to try to rejoin Godolphin. That way he would be performing a valuable reconnaissance and at the same time reinforcing the main army of resistance. He suggested that the force at present at Trewoofe should split, ten remaining to guard the house and the women, but the younger and the more active to go with him.
I knew then I must part from Sue. I had no claim to a special concern for her; her husband was near, and if I made an excuse I should look a coward.
Before we left I tried to get private word with her, but she was much with Mrs Lavelis and avoided conversation with me. I think she was still unawake from the heady drugs of the night and trying to find some balance within herself. That also was true of me I wanted talk with her, yet if I had got it it would have seemed superfluous. What had happened had happened and nothing would ever be the same again; but nothing was solved by it, rather greater problems made. One’s mind needed time to absorb them.
Just as we were leaving I went to her in front of the old lady and said: “I must go, Sue. If this is over soon, I shall be back. In case if I am alive I’ll come back. Remember that this time.”
She looked sidelong at me. “I’ll remember.”
We rode away, Lavelis with us. The weather had changed, and it was a grey lowering day with a stiff south-easterly wind blowing off the sea. Landing from small boats would be less easy than yesterday.
We came round a sharp shoulder of rock, and the whole of the Mount’s Bay was visible. The town of Penzance was in ruins; you could see the roofless walls, but there was no sign of life about it, either English or foreign. The top of the great rock of St Michael’s Mount was shrouded in misty rain; in front of it, in the green plain of Marazion, was a large body of men perhaps five hundred strong, scattered irregularly in groups with here and there a tent and a wagon. Close in to the Mount rode four Spanish galleys. The rest of the sea to the low horizon was empty.
Captain Poor said: “It’s hard to tell if the battle is over or not yet joined. At least let us go down and bury either them or ourselves.”
But I had seen too much of Spanish discipline to suppose that a landed army would be in the casual array of the groups of Marazion Green. This was Godolphin’s mixed assembly.
We found Sir Francis in better spirits. The forces of the Spanish had been exaggerated, and at worst this was not yet a large scale invasion. Indeed, although other vessels had been reported off the coast, it was from these four galleys only that the landings had been made. Yesterday the Spanish troops had burned Penzance and then had attended a mass celebrated by three priests on the hill above the town. As darkness was falling, and perhaps fearing a counter-attack during the night, the bulk of the force had retired to the safety of their galleys, and there they still were. No one knew if garrisons had been left ashore, but Godolphin would not spare any part of his force to discover this. He saw it as the best strategy to keep his men together to watch the galleys and if need be to follow them and try to prevent any repetition of yesterday.