The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  Suddenly we came out upon the Plaza, a square with churches and public buildings, shaded by planes and palm trees, some deserted stalls down the centre. Here for lack of opposition there was a pause. It looked as if the main city was almost won, though the Citadel and the Fort would no doubt hold out for some time.

  Bagnal’s face was a mask of blood, but he seemed in no way weakened. Essex, seeing him so, took out his sword. “ One knee, Captain.”

  The tall soldier looked surprised.

  “You shall be the first knight created on this triumphant day on Spanish soil. Few have deserved better of our nation. Sir John Wingfield is dead, with many others, but it is a great victory.”

  Victor put his arm round me. “Hold up, boy, is your hurt serious?”

  “I think not.”

  “I trust not, for it would spoil my day if you were to fall out now.”

  “I’ll do my best not to. I want plunder, Victor.”

  The square was filling with English. Among them were a group about the body of Wingfield, who had fallen at the edge of the Plaza. Then I saw that Captain Ashley and Captain Monson were back, talking to Essex, and I struggled up from the stone wall. Too late to hear the message, I plucked Monson’s arm; he looked scowling at me and then remembered.

  He said shortly: “ The Lord Admiral considers the capture of the flota must be delayed until tomorrow and orders all forces to concentrate on the taking of Cadiz.”

  “You delivered that message to the Rear Admiral?”

  “Yes, and it was ill received. For once I agree with your master, and that must indeed be a rarity.”

  “Where is the Lord Admiral, sir?”

  “Landing with the second division. I have no doubt Sir Walter will be ashore too before the night is out!”

  Firing was beginning again in the square. Some of the buildings around the Plaza were well armed and intended to contest our presence.

  At the end of the Plaza beside a church was the town hall. A group of soldiers moved to attack this, and among them were Bagnal and Carey. I saw them meet with resistance at the door and then force it and go in. Victor said:

  “Let me see this wound.”

  “No, I’ll do.” Remembering my last meeting with Sue, “I want plunder, Victor.”

  When we got to the town hall the ground floor had already been cleared. Pictures and furniture lay wrecked everywhere, books and parchments scattered, one or two wounded lying about. But when we came to the broad central stairs we saw that the whole of the first flight was littered with dead men, and most of them were English. Blood made the steps slippery, broken banisters stood out like raw stumps; at the top an enormous Franciscan friar lay clutching a pike that protruded from his stomach; like the rest he was dead. The only live one was an English soldier tying up a deep gash on his leg.

  “ ’E stood athwart the stairs,” he said, thumbing towards the friar. “Wi’ a great axe in ’is ’ands. Nine of us ’ e killed afore we cotched ’im. Nine good men gone for one shaven monk. Two o’ my friends, devil take ’im. Reckon ’e ’ad the strength of the devil too!”

  We climbed across the piled bodies. On this floor you could hear the fighting still in progress. I stayed Victor, who was for pushing forward.

  “We’ll find nothing here that’s not broken up or already bespoke. There’s a church next door.”

  “Essex ordered no desecration.”

  “What he does not see he’ll not complain of. Look out of this window. It’s no sort of drop compared to the city wall, and I’d guess that door leads into the church.”

  Victor still hesitated, so I said: “Let me go ahead and I’ll tell you what I find.”

  “No … if you go, I’ll come.”

  The church was as dark as the churches I remembered in Madrid. The sun was setting, and only a few coloured shafts came from it high up in the nave; if it had not been for the candles at the High Altar and before the Virgin in the side chapel we should have been unable to see our way.

  The place was empty, heavy only with the smell of incense and flowers. I knew the orders: no desecration of churches, no women to be molested, discipline even to be preserved in the sacking of the town. The penalty for a breach, at least for the common soldier, was death. But death from either side had in a few short hours become a commonplace.

  I went up to the High Altar and seized the cross. The whole was too heavy to carry away and was gilt on some common metal, but there were jewels in it, and having lifted it to the floor I began to prise these out with the point of my dagger. Victor after some more hesitation disappeared into the darkness behind the altar, and I heard him hacking at something, but his heart was not in it.

  I got eight jewels; five were big stones of a semi-precious nature, but the other three were rubies. There were four silver candlesticks beside the altar, and behind these two angels holding jewelled wreaths. These I also stripped, but after lifting the candlesticks down I left them on the altar steps, knowing them too heavy to carry.

  Because of having snuffed four of the candles, the church was even darker. Shots and commotion echoed outside. We were as if in a dark pool while the strife of the world eddied to the brim.

  I went over to the lady chapel because sometimes these are as richly ornamented as the main altars. Here about twenty candles burned, some tall like a young man’s life, others old and guttering. A few simple posies lay at the Virgin’s feet and a ring had been hung on an outstretched finger. She looked out, glazed and dumb, at the corners of her waxen lips a fixed half smile of compassion, but no understanding.

  At that moment I thought my loss of blood had overcome me and I was losing my senses, for I seemed to see suddenly not one Virgin but upwards of a dozen, all peering out of the darkness behind her, all with fixed stares and not a half-smile among them. But whereas the first Virgin gazed across the church in contemplation of the polished marble pillars of the lady chapel, all the other stares were fixed on me.

  Then I saw what it was. They had come here for sanctuary, hoping they might be overlooked. They were mainly high-born, richly dressed in fine cloaks and lace mantillas, some wearing jewels; but a few were working women in drab black who had fled here to join their sisters. At any other time such women would not have stood together in a group, huddled close as if for protection; now the prospect of violation and murder overrode the long distinctions of birth.

  I took the ring off the Virgin’s finger but could not bring myself to touch the jewel on the Child. There were two small crosses finely wrought in gold, and I pocketed these. No one had moved or spoken.

  In halting Spanish I said: “Ladies, we come as conquerors but we shall do you no ill. The Earl of Essex has commanded this, and he will be obeyed. There are always dangers when a city is taken, so you do well to stay here. But unlike your own menfolk, we do not make war on women and children.”

  I turned away and went back to the main altar. Still no one had stirred, but walking across the empty nave I had an unpleasant sensation that I might be shot in the back.

  At the side of the altar behind the row of saints was a fine painted screen with some jewels glistening in it, and I went up to see if they were real. They were only painted glass. Then I heard a cry for help from the darkness behind the altar. “ Maugan!”

  I ran, stumbling over some chairs, groped along the back of the altar. “ Where are you?”

  No answer but the sound of a struggle. As I got further in there was a glimmer of light from a half open door: inside was a round library, candle-lit, two monks struggling with Victor. As I ran forward one of them stabbed him deep in the shoulder where his armour ended.

  I sliced at the man’s neck, his head wobbled like a stone plinth dislodged; he was dead before he fell. Victor was falling too. The other monk stabbed him as he sank, then raised his dagger to take my sword sweep. Blood spurted from his hand. He brought forward his other hand and with a second knife stabbed me under the arm. I swung again and he was down.

  Room
was unsteady. The candles flickered as if in a draught but the draught was in my head. Must not fall now. Must not faint. Second monk was dying; only his hand opened and shut. Victor lying on floor groaning. Get him out of here, back to ship. Beautiful books, illuminated manuscripts: that’s what he’d been after; the monks had surprised him. And more of them? If another came he could finish us off at leisure.

  With the deliberation of a drunken man I looked round. Only one other door and that shut. No one else in the room. I sank to my knees.

  “Victor …”

  His eyes were glazing. “ Go on, Maugan. Take your … I’m very … comfortable here.”

  “No; let me see.”

  I tried to get his breastplate off, fingers fumbling; he was breathing hard; I prayed the dagger had not gone into his lungs. Off it came, pull at the cloth of his shirt, soaked first in sweat; blood welling under. I tore his sleeve up. Knife had gone in through the shoulder-blade downwards. Might be mortal. No blood on his lips. Roll the sleeve into a pad, press it hard on the wound, bind it with a piece of the other sleeve. “ Kathy,” he kept saving. “Kathy.” Then once he looked at me and said: “ Go to war in a ship. No marching,” and smiled. His head fell forward.

  More blood inside the breastplate; I tore open the front of his shirt. The second monk’s dagger had glanced off the armour but had entered over the hip bone.

  On the only table not overturned was some wine on a silver tray, and a chalice. I crawled to it gulped some down, brought it to Victor, but he could not swallow; another red stain on his shirt.

  I did not like to take off my own breastplate while there was a possibility of further fighting. So now the supreme effort. The wine was warming, brought life and a little stamina; gulped more of it down. Now … But it was as much as I could do to stand upright. Never get Victor on my shoulder. I began to drag him towards the door.

  The great stone-dark church: cold after the vestry and silent. Sun had set and twilight was over. Only the candles in the lady chapel and the few left oh the High Altar. Round the dark corridor behind the altar, into the nave. Rest there. He was still breathing but very faintly. Leave him to die, I thought; save yourself.

  I dragged him down the great nave. If the women saw us they made no move to help or hinder. There was still shooting outside but it had moved away. ‘Animal nature is not kind,’ said Katherine Footmarker, ‘but it d’kill only for food. Human kind kill for pleasure or from an evil motive called principle.’ ‘I can’t bear the thought of being old,’ said Sue. ‘Soon we shall all be old.’

  The great door at last; I propped Victor against it and groped for the small door which must somewhere be let in to the larger. ‘You are Celts, are you not,’ said King Philip, ‘ and have affinities with the Irish. A sturdy stock among whom fidelity to the religion of Christ dies hard.’

  Bolts. I shot them back; pulled at the door. Dark outside but light from glaring torches. Wide steps down to the square. A house at the end in flames. A mass of soldiery of all sorts. At the foot of the steps two platoons of English troops were encamped. Other troops rounding up mules and carrying kegs from a captured house.

  I clutched Victor and pulled him out on the steps. His face was ashen in the flickering torchlight. In one corner of the square were some two dozen wounded; a surgeon and his man looking to their hurts. I staggered down the steps and went towards them, but soldiers carrying a battering ram for a door swept me away, and I ended up sitting on a stone well-edge. People were milling everywhere. The officers were doing their utmost to maintain order, but here and there pillaging was breaking out, and I heard a soldier shout that the Dutch troops were running amok.

  Men were drinking from a wine barrel that a sailor was holding for them. I plucked a man’s sleeve and asked him where Essex was and he thumbed his hand up the hill towards the citadel. I began to move in that direction and then gave up realising that, once out of this crowded square, one would be in the narrow alleys where the crush and the fighting and the confusion would be far worse. Better get back to Victor.

  I staggered along, pushed this way and that by the press of people; then I saw a man on a horse attended by two servants. He had just come down one of the alleys and was urging his horse through the square.

  “Sir Walter!”

  Bell heard me and drew his master’s attention. Ralegh’s face was white with pain.

  “Killigrew, you still live? Where is Victor?”

  “On the steps of that church, serious wounded.”

  “Well go that way. You’re hurt yourself?”

  “Nothing bad. But Victor is … If we could make some sort of litter and get him back to the ship.”

  “You’d not get a litter down these damned alleys if the town were empty. Tonight you could easier fly.”

  With the help of Bell and Myers we came to the church steps. Victor’s dark shape showed unstirring. They carried him down.

  “He breathes, sir,” Myers said. “But he d’ look near his end.”

  “Put him astride this nag. We’ll walk him down—”

  “Your own leg …”

  “Is stiffening on me like a crutch. Perhaps use will free it.”

  We began a laborious way out of the city. I was in a dream state, half bordering on sleep-walking; Sir Walter was in great pain and had to pause at every sixth or seventh step; Victor lay across the saddle like a sack. Men rushed up and down the alleys, pushed and jostled us, some with booty already, struggling to carry down bolts of velvet and satin to the ships, others fought and argued among themselves in the shops and houses; wounded lay in our path.

  Sir Walter said: “ I came ashore to urge once more on the Lord Admiral that the flota—be taken at once. He is unheeding … It is there to be had at will, he says. They will have to—treat with him in the morning …”

  Great efforts were being made by the English officers to get their men under control, and for the most part the soldiers, although already at the wine, were good tempered and amenable.

  “I came too to see the city. So have come all the captains—all except Crosse who stays on Swiftsure. Vere has sent part of his army to the Bridge of Suazo to guard against a surprise counter-attack. It is as well—some of us preserve a sense of discipline.”

  Fighting broke out on a wrought-iron balcony above our heads. Two Spaniards had retreated on to it and were beseeching their attackers for mercy. They did not get it, but had their throats cut and in a few moments the blood was dripping off the balcony’s edge as if from the scarlet geraniums growing there.

  “Dutch … I don’t like their ferocity, but how can you blame them? You stumble, Maugan.”

  We got down into a lower square. Two English soldiers were disputing over a Spanish woman, one tugging at each arm, but an officer came rapidly towards them with drawn sword, and resentfully they freed her and she fled back into the house behind. There was fighting on a roof, and a body fell with a great thud upon the cobbles; our horse shied away and nearly trod on me; Bell tugged at the bridle and we went on.

  At the city gates a new company of English soldiers was marching in. They walked in good order, taking no heed of the fire that raged in a house built beside the gate or of sporadic shooting that was still going on from a nearby tower. Beside the gate was a heap of some twenty dead, limbs sprawling grotesquely; they seemed to have no kinship with us. In the flickering torchlight a few faces peered upwards, mummers’ masks without blood or hope; they might have been Spanish or our own comrades; death had robbed them not merely of nationality but of humanity too.

  It was a brilliant night, and lights winked here and there on the surrounding hills. We stopped and lifted Victor down; I moistened his lips and bathed his face. Bell and Myers broke and tied some wood and made a rough litter and put Victor on it. Ralegh could just mount the horse. We ploughed across the soft yielding sand.

  We rounded the wall that had hidden us from the harbour. The two great galleons were still aglow but the fire was now within them; ribs
showed; they were like brasero bowls burning in the mud. The half-dozen smaller ships which had been afire had sunk and the flames put out. Beyond, our own ships showed like a line of forts built too close together, their clustered masts fenced the skyline.

  Ralegh said: “ I’m told that Admiral Portocarrero commanded the galley squadron. I would like to feel they too were accounted for. They are a—spiteful breed of ship and—could do some harm to us if prepared to risk loss.”

  We reached the water. A few row-boats and barges were fringing the muddy edge. Guards had been posted. Victor was lifted into a boat and Sir Walter helped from his horse. I struggled in the mud, put one foot to the gunnel; Bell took my arm. Pain was throbbing now. It had always been there but a secondary sensation while other urgencies dominated.

  As we pushed off an old woman came along the edge angrily screaming at us. We steered among the dead, some floating, some stuck in the mud. Burning smoke drifted about; broken spars, charred sailcloth, casks of wine, kegs of biscuit lay under festoons of rigging like netted fish; here and there a voice still shouted and groaned. The water was black and bitty as if itself charred by the fire.

  There were lights on Warspite; someone was playing a lute and a few unsteady voices were singing, but the men at the ladder sprang to attention when they saw who was back. Somehow we got Victor into the long cabin abaft the mainmast. Surgeon Wood was sent for. Bell at last unbuckled my breastplate and it came away with a clack of half dried blood. He slit the shirt up and the tired blood began welling up again.

  Ralegh came in, his face dark. “Well?”

  “He’s far gone,” said Wood, looking up from Victor. “ I can do little.”

  “And this lad?”

  Wood came over and began to thumb my wounds. Then he looked at my arm which had a knife thrust through the muscle. “This is nothing. But the other wound’s deep. There may be laceration of the abdominal wall. Bind him tight to keep the lips of the wound closed, Bell. If he lives till morning he may well mend.”