The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  “Oh, the Arundells of Lanherne, I know.”

  “My grandfather happily believed otherwise, and we are as staunchly Protestant as the Killigrews. So are the Tolverne Arundells, one would say.”

  “Have you reason to suppose …”

  “Do you remember the man we met there called Petersen?”

  “Yes. I had forgot you saw him, too.”

  “Do you think he looked like a priest?”

  “No. At least: I never thought of it. What are you suggesting?’

  “These priests are still coming in from France, with their intent to overthrow the Queen, or to organise sedition until the Spanish land. What more suitable entry than Tolverne hidden in its quiet creek in the woods?”

  “It would be suitable but that the Tolverne Arundells are as loyal as we are!”

  “Perhaps I imagine things. Perhaps I am over-sensitive about someone who bears the same name as myself. But it—but the change is not so hard as you may imagine. There were some lectures at Oxford … a man named Curry … it calls many of one’s beliefs in question. I can understand a man like Sir Anthony, a thought eccentric at any time, perhaps driving himself so hard that at the last he finds he has worn out his new beliefs and is left only with the old. Like someone with a wooden board trying to rub away a stone …”

  A rat squeaked in the wainscot; after a moment it went hobbling away. We became drowsy and warm. I remember thinking before I dropped off of the difference in our positions; I without name or lands or independence, a base son of a great family much in debt; and he already master of this fine house and estate, rich and unencumbered, sure—so far as one could be sure—of a life of activity and distinction.

  Two or three days after we got home I was alone with Mrs Killigrew and said to her:

  “Did you say you knew the Farnabys, madam?”

  “I knew Mrs Farnaby in Devonshire when she was a girl. Her father was my father’s steward.”

  “Have you heard they are in distress?”

  She had not. I told her what I knew and she bent over her lace.

  “Your father does not always tell me of the day to day happenings on the estate … I wish I had money to send them, or gifts, but alas …”

  I swallowed something and said: “You might perhaps invite the daughter, Susanna Farnaby, to spend Christmas here, ma’am.”

  She looked so surprised that I went redder than before. “I might, Maugan. Do you want her to come?”

  “I don’t think she would. I mean I don’t think she would come here after the way they were turned out of their farm.”

  “It was harsh, you think.”

  “I don’t know what they were owing, what had gone before, but …”

  “Your father, too, Maugan, is beset with problems of money. There is now a temporary easement, for which God be thanked, but I see no such happy issue as a permanency. So he may seem harsh in his own straitness. I will invite the girl if you like. I can write to her mother. She could come with Gertrude Carew.”

  “Perhaps Father would not want it, even if they were willing.”

  “I don’t think he is in the mood to cavil at an extra guest or two. Indeed, among so many, he is hardly likely to know she is here.”

  I caught her gaze. In another I might have thought there was mild irony in it; but it was not in Mrs Killigrew’s nature to be disillusioned; religion and meditation were her steady comforters.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I don’t think she will come.”

  “We shall see.”

  One day in that week I was able to slip away on my own and go to the ruined mill above Penryn. It was empty. Katherine Footmarker had left and taken all her belongings with her. Only a jackdaw fluttered in the darkness as I pushed open the door. I called once or twice, every moment more glad that I should not have to see her again. The bottles and packets had gone, the wooden mug, the brazier, the iron pot. Only the burnt circle on the floor and the litter of fallen ash, a broken stool … I went out again into the open air, dragging the door to after me.

  It was only on the way home that I found my relief vaguely tinged with disappointment.

  The first of our guests to arrive were Sir Henry and Lady Killigrew on the 20th, and they brought my grandmother home with them. I do not remember that I had ever seen Sir Henry before. He was, I suppose, about sixty-five or six, but he looked younger, a dapper man, not tall—few Killigrews are—but he had been handsome before a faded greyness had stolen over cheek and beard. He had a cold careful assessing eye like a judge or an attorney, beautiful hands much be-ringed, was spare of figure and dressed like a dandy. Lady Killigrew, his second wife, was half his age, dark eyed, pale skinned and beautiful, but there was something hard about her; she had a strong accent and lapsed with relief into French when she spoke to her husband or to my grandmother.

  Sir Henry had four daughters by his first wife, all now married to knights, and one more daughter by his second. But this year at last to his great joy the second Lady Killigrew had given him a son and heir.

  He seemed then to me to be immensely old, for in his late teens he had ridden to London with his father and been introduced into the court of the late King Henry. He remembered the news coming into Cornwall of the execution of Catherine Howard and of Henry’s remarriage to “the discreet widow” as he called Katherine Parr, he had been 23 during the great uprising in Cornwall against the new Prayer Book led and encouraged by Humphrey, John and Thomas Arundell—I felt a prick of discomfort at these names. When he was 26 he had been placed by his father in the service of the Duke of Northumberland and had become M. P. for Launceston in young King Edward’s last parliament. When Edward died he had on instructions from the Duke ridden to Launceston and there had Lady Jane Grey proclaimed Queen. After the plan failed and the Duke was beheaded, my uncle had had to flee the country.

  “Walter Ralegh put a barque at my disposal,” he said. “Not this Walter but his father; it was his own barque, he was a merchant, you know, and traded with the French ports. The Joan she was called, after his first wife—she had but the evening before put in and was scarce unloaded but Wat knew I had no time to spare. There were men looking for us. Not just the Queen’s men but others who owed us personal revenges: if we were caught it was to be a Roman harvest. We put out in the dark before the moon rose; with me was Andrew Tremayne, John Courtenay, Peter Carew; we none of us saw England again until Mary died …”

  “I was sea-sick that night,” he added, “ and all through the days that came. Like brother Peter, I was never a sailor.”

  “It does not follow,” said Mrs Killigrew. “Sir Walter is often sick, they tell me.”

  “I doubt if Sir Walter is ever as comfortable at sea as he pretends to be. Oh, he has great gifts, I know, including a gift of the gab, but he’s a soldier first and foremost.”

  “Is he still confined within the Tower?”

  “No, he and his Elizabeth were released last week just before we left, but he’s still banished from Court, and no easement of that. It will irk him, I know, for he frets to be at the centre of things.”

  “He should do as Essex does and keep his wife quietly in the country where no one notices her,” said my father. “ In due time the Queen will forget.”

  “I think it is a greater offence on Walter’s part,” said Sir Henry. “Her Majesty, I know, showed a greater choler; she spoke harshly to me of his deceit and ingratitude. I believe she thought a man who stayed unwed until he was forty should stay faithful to her for life. Also I think it is her feeling that my Lord of Essex is a nobleman of the most distinguished blood and as such owes less to her favour. Walter, as a commoner, owes all.”

  Sir Henry had himself seen service in the field as a young man, and had been with the English army under Poynings which landed at Havre in 1562 to support the Huguenots. He had been wounded in the battle of Rouen and taken prisoner, and he would have been put to death on the orders of the second Duc de Guise but for the intervention of one of the Montmor
encys. Twenty-five years later he had been sent under Leicester to the relief of the Netherlands and had witnessed the brilliant crazy charge at Zutphen which had brought Sir Philip Sidney to his death.

  I noticed when he was talking to us he would speak freely of things long past, but if talk moved to the present his face would close up and he would turn the conversation. Only on the evening of the 23rd, when many of our other guests were due on the morrow, did I hear him talk much of things of the present—and then it was to my father and stepmother when he thought there was no one else within earshot.

  They had supped less fully than usual; my father said he had stomach pains, so Sir Henry said he would keep him company at a smaller meal, and they had eaten a shoulder of veal well larded and the loins of a hare dressed with a special black sauce. Afterwards they drank malmsey and ate roasted pears, while my stepmother picked at her favourite sweetmeats.

  My father had been telling him that Sir Walter Ralegh had taken a great fancy to Sir Richard Grenville’s younger son, John.

  Sir Henry said: “ No doubt then he’ll be sending the boy off on one of those wild-cat adventures to Roanoke or some other point in North America, and staying behind himself, writing exhortations from afar. After all it was Ralegh who should have gone in the Revenge in the first place, not Grenville at all.”

  “You are imputing him with cowardice?”

  “Oh, Walter’s no coward! I should be a fool to call him anything but violently brave when the occasion prompts. But by chance or design of late the occasion has not prompted.”

  “And Essex?” said my father, stretching his legs indolently over his favourite footstool. “What of him?”

  Sir Henry sipped his wine. “We see Essex’s influence as more dangerous than ever Walter’s was. And nowadays he has better brains to guide him …”

  “There was talk in London that he might be appointed to the Privy Council.”

  “Oh, I would not be surprised at that any day. Last week at Nonesuch the Queen and he were happy and flirtatious together; then one or other says the wrong thing; a great quarrel arises and Essex stalks off in a passion. When I left the Queen was agitated, touchy, would fly into anger at the least thing. When Essex returns, as maybe he will have done ere now, she will rant and curse at him like a fish-wife, but then will come the reconciliation, and just after the reconciliation is the time when she grants him new distinction.”

  Sir Henry looked across the big room to where his beautiful wife was sitting before the fire plucking at her lute.

  “The Queen gave orders that Christmas was to be spent at Whitehall: the whole Court has been half packed and in a fret to be gone. Three times they have called the carrier in charge of the wagons to move the royal furniture and wardrobes, and three times she have changed her mind. It will depend on Essex what sort of Christmas the Court will enjoy!”

  “You spoke of the earl having good brains to guide him,” Mrs Killigrew said.

  “Well, yes, I mean advisers, and the wisest of them are my two nephews, Anthony and Francis. Indeed, if he took more heed of their counsel, I think we should have more to fear.”

  “We called at Gorhambury on the way down,” said Lady Jael Killigrew. “ That mother of theirs!”

  “There are many whispers about Francis’s morals,” said Sir Henry with a wry expression. “But Lady Bacon does not whisper, she roars. We were scarce in the house and the door shut on the servants when she burst out, ‘Fornicators and adulterers and perverts shall bring the wrath of God upon ’em! Francis has no shame! Keeping that bloody Percy as coach companion and bed companion! And those wanton Welsh boys besides. Hell fire will fall upon him, mark my words!’ ”

  “And much more, so very much more,” added his wife. She plucked a note from the lute. “All day the old woman talks me a sermon on the corruptions of the court. As if I do not know!”

  My father scratched a flea bite on his hand. “ You’d have thought the Bacons would have stuck to their own instead of going in with Essex.”

  “I have lived too long to believe that relationship or loyalty have any weight in the modern world,” Sir Henry said. “Brother is against brother, friend against friend. It is little for the son of a slain man to become the ardent supporter of the murderer, for husbands and wives to bear witness that will see the other to the block. There are only two motives which reign undisputed, advancement and survival.”

  “You’re a thought cynical tonight,” my father said. “And I’ve no doubt you’re right … The Queen looked well, but she grows no younger. Whatever comes now, she is the last of the Tudor line.”

  There was a short silence.

  “And what follows? James of Scotland? Arabella Stewart? Philip of Spain?”

  Sir Henry’s face took on its closed-up look. “ The Queen is only 59. Who knows what changes a few years may bring?”

  “I wish it would bring peace with Spain,” my father said. “You’d think that even Philip would see the war’s not paying either of us to continue.”

  “There are always feelers out,” said Sir Henry, still cautious. “The peace party in both countries is growing.”

  “Is it true that another Armada is building?” Dorothy Killigrew asked.

  “Our spies say so.”

  “Even more reason why we should come to a just agreement before it sets sail,” said my father. “ The last one missed success by a narrower margin than is trumpeted abroad.”

  A log rolled from the fire, and I moved quickly to push it back, then shrank back into the corner lest I should be noticed and sent away. The new flames cast a flickering light on Lady Jael’s white hands.

  ‘It’s always a mystery to me,” my father was saying, “ how the Spanish soldiers have such superiority on land while we hold it at sea. Think you it was all Parma’s doing?”

  “I am not so sure either will hold good that much longer,” said Sir Henry, “since each nation is learning from the other. It is discipline, technique, leadership that tells. Often we’ve showed ourselves superior in courage but the organising has been inferior. But we’ve learned and are still learning.”

  A servant—Rose it was—came in with a pottle of canary sack, which my stepmother preferred to the heavier wine the others were drinking. Sir Henry got up and knocked out his pipe and refilled it. I watched him fascinated; no one in our family yet smoked.

  Lady Jael laughed. “ What do you do with your life here, Dor’thy? At other times than feasts and festivals. Are you not so—so quiet? So on a desert island?”

  “I have my books,” said Mrs Killigrew. “And many tasks— pleasant tasks—in this house. There is no town near by, but this is a town, this house, the people who live here, within the palisades. It is just the same but in a smaller, more closer way, for everyone is known to us and we are known to everyone.”

  “Well, I think it would not suit me for a long time, though I grant you it has more of the rest and the beauty than Lothbury, eh? Soon I should sigh for noises and laughter in the streets.”

  My father grunted. “Ralegh said last time he was here why did we not build a town in the arm of the river. There’s ample space for docks and warehousing. I’ve thought of it myself since. It would give me pleasure if it cut the throat of Penryn.”

  “On fine Sundays now,” said Lady Jael, “ it is quite the height of the fashion after service at St Paul’s to climb up upon the roof and stroll for the air and the view.”

  “Men do not build towns,” said Sir Henry, “ towns grow where there is need for them. If Penryn were not there there might be reason for one to come into being at the mouth of the river. Not otherwise, I should have thought.”

  “Yet I’m not sure,” said my father. “There is a Dartmouth, there is a Plymouth, there is an Exmouth … Why not a Falmouth? It would be profitable for us as a family, but I fancy it would need a greater outlay of money than I could ever gather. I will sound William sometime. He has the Queen’s ear.”

  “You will get no help from
William,” said Sir Henry, with that affectionate asperity with which he spoke of his brother. “William is knee deep in debt, though prospering withal. The Queen might lend an ear but she will certainly lend nothing else unless she sees hope of profit. Her funds at present are stretched to fortify her coasts, not to build new towns for the Spaniards to sack.”

  My father drained his cup. “ Our best hope is peace. And in the meantime … well Christmas is upon us! Sing us a song, Jael. It is the Eve tomorrow.”

  Chapter Seven

  Many times since 1592 I have celebrated Christ’s birthday—in happiness, in sorrow, and under the stark severity of the narrowest puritans, but this was the only one of its kind. My father shrugged off such minor problems as his ever-growing debts: money had come in and he spent it. Perhaps he remembered the days of his own youth when life had been easy for the head of the house; perhaps he only remembered his early Christmasses with a child’s memory and tried to recapture something that had never been.

  Lady Killigrew, my grandmother, had not been well while she was away, and spent much of Christmas in her room; this freed my father—and perhaps all of us—from some restraint.

  On Christmas Eve Mrs Gertrude Arundell and Jack Arundell arrived from Trerice. Then came Digby Bonython and his sister Alice from Cardew, and a few minutes after them Hugh and Grace Boscawen from Tregothnan. Hugh was two months younger than I, but Grace was 24 and unmarried.

  After dinner two of our cousins arrived from Fowey, Tresithney and Abel Treffry. Tresithney was 21 and Abel was 15. We waited then and that was all until dark. At six, when we were sitting down to supper Mr and Mrs Richard Carew came with their daughter Gertrude and her husband to be, young Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne. Sir Anthony and Lady Arundell had not come, nor Thomas, so it looked as if we were but part forgiven for my attack on him. I did not mind because in the party that arrived was Sue Farnaby …

  I think, along with the sinking sensation of pleasure at seeing her again, came the realisation that her family really was of inferior status to ours, or they could not have been brought so soon to overlook the deadly act of eviction.