The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  The wind was still backing. A tiny rag of sail on the foremast was holding our head up and giving the four helmsmen a chance of control. But we could see the squalls coming up one after another, and each one left us in poorer case to meet the next. Men still worked in relays of ten at each of the pumps, but every wave that came aboard undid the little they could do.

  As the day progressed we lost both our last escorts, Santiago drew ahead, and the flyboat sank, disabled by one crested wave and swamped by the next.

  It was not long before we followed. By now the galleon was so low in the water that her waist was never clear of it: we existed as two separate ships, the forecastle and the poop, both crowded with men. I was isolated from all the men I knew: Quesada, Bonifaz, Enrico Caldes; by coming to the forecastle I was with sailors and some Irish and half a hundred soldiers.

  About noon the sun leered out at us from behind a ragged mass of clouds that darkened half the sky; then the light was gone and the last squall broke.

  It fell on us. Wind tore at everything: the last trysail went; the foremast collapsed, a double lashed anchor broke loose. As the sea came aboard it was as if the forecastle were an island about to be submerged in a smother of white foam. The Irishman and his mates beside me were clinging to the yard and were slowly tipped into the sea; I clutched my broken spar, determined not to go, and saw the poop raised high, water and men pouring off it as San Bartolomeo plunged. Hatches and wooden blocks and chains slithered past, and then the water swirled round and I held tight to the spar as ship and men went down.

  The water was no colder than the air had been; perhaps that saved me, for I could hold breath that a sharp chill would have taken. I went deep and only came to the surface after long seconds, among wreckage and cries and the grey wind-angered sea. I saw two sailors trying to hold up Quesada who had been struck by something as the ship sank. The Irishman and his friends clung to their yard near by. Twenty men straggling to get on a hatch that would support five. Two others tried to grasp my spar but I kicked them away. On the crest of a new wave I saw Enrico Caldes swimming away from a mat of twisted rigging. I shouted and tried to make towards him, but the waves hid him and when next I rose to the top of one of them he was nowhere to be seen.

  The sea was black with bobbing heads; fully half the complement had survived the plunge, but some were injured, some could not swim, some were already half-drowned. It began to rain, a heavy continuous downpour so that cloud and sea became one. Small waves splashed in my mouth, but the rain had the effect of slowly flattening the sea, and in time when it eased the violence of the gale had eased too.

  When the rain cleared many of the survivors had sunk. Near by were still the four Irishmen and about eight Spaniards clinging precariously to a raft. Within sight were another forty or fifty, but well scattered.

  Nothing else was to be seen but the heaving sea.

  Late in the afternoon I was picked up—together with two of the Irishmen and one Spaniard—by a fishing boat, the Angel of Fowey, and landed that same evening. Sixteen men were saved out of the 356 aboard San Bartolomeo.

  BOOK FIVE

  Chapter One

  A man at the centre of great events can often at the time see only the small ones which surround him and oppress him with their personal demands. Even an awareness that events have moved past him and left him behind—perhaps to his danger or detriment—can become sunk in a cushion of fatigue which prevents urgency and anxiety from coming to the front of the mind.

  Looking back I cannot believe that the whole week I spent with my cousins the Treffrys at Fowey was passed in a state of mental abeyance. There must have been times when I made some effort to learn from them what was happening, and even to get up and go. But all memory is of a sense of being home again after sixteen months away, of dry blankets after the exposure and the sea, of gulping hot drink to combat the cold, of fresh food and good food, of sudden overwhelming collapse after months of tension and alarm. I was alive. I existed. I ate and drank and slept and breathed deep.

  So it was days before I knew what had happened in England, and some of it I learned only weeks later—of the panic in Westminster when the news was brought by an exhausted messenger from Plymouth that the whole Spanish Armada was off the Lizard, of the immediate proroguing of Parliament, of the hasty appointment of a new commander for the Channel squadron, of the orders which flew for the commissioning of the remaining ships at Chatham, of orders recalling all English troops abroad, wherever they might be, of the mustering of all land forces for the defence of the exposed counties.

  In the midst of this emergency rumours of a sea battle off Rame Head vied with others of a Spanish landing on the north Devon coast. Fishermen from the Scillies came in with a report of another fleet assembled there and about to strike. No one had any word of the English fleet from the Azores. No one knew if it had even started for home.

  Then, within a few days of the first alarm, four galleons appeared off Plymouth. Soldiers rushed to the fortifications, guns were run out, the people prepared to barricade their houses and fight as the Spanish had done at Cadiz; and not even the English flags at the mastheads could reassure them until the ships were recognised by name. They were the first four of the Azores fleet under Lord Mountjoy, who had commanded the land forces of the fleet. He reported a great storm which had damaged and dispersed the English fleet, but thought that the rest of the ships if they had survived should not be far away. By some chance in the wild waters of the Channel he had seen nothing of the Spanish; but he immediately assumed command of the port and ordered his four ships to prepare for battle.

  Soon after this Sir Walter Ralegh with remnants of his own squadron was blown into St Ives, and, hearing the alarm, landed and hurried overland to command the defences of Cornwall. Another English ship or two drifted in at the south coast ports of Devon; then Lord Thomas Howard at Plymouth, and finally Essex himself with the rest of the fleet.

  None had seen the whole Armada, but some at the height of the gale had seen groups of enemy ships near the Scillies and off the Lizard.

  All the English were exhausted with the storm, and Essex and his squadron sailed straight up the Catwater where they were pinned down by the wind and unable to go out again, even had they been in a fit condition to do so.

  In the meantime feverish preparations went on while the country waited. The Queen wrote a letter to Lord Essex which years later I was privileged to see. It ended: “Seeing already by your late leaving the coast upon an uncertain probability that no army would come forth from Ferrol until March, you have given the enemy leisure and courage to attempt us. Now take heed according to your duty and allegiance that you do not in any case upon any probability or light advertisements again adventure to leave our own coast whereby our own kingdom may lie open to serious dangers; but that you proceed in this great affair according to the rules of advised deliberation as well as affection of zeal and diligence. For treasure, for victual, and what may be fit for us to send, you shall find that you serve a prince neither void of care nor judgment what to do that is fit in cases of this consequence.”

  Now reports began to come in of wrecks on the north Devon coast, and three Spanish urcas in great distress put into the Bristol ports for shelter and their crews were imprisoned. A large Spanish flyboat, leaking and part dismasted by the storm, appeared off Dodman Point with a crew of eighty, of which half were veteran troops. Here it was attacked and captured by a Plymouth vessel and brought back in triumph.

  On the last day of October I borrowed a horse and servant and rode to Arwenack. By starting early I arrived before dark. I did not know what to expect; I had no idea. Presumably the Spanish had not yet landed; but Mr William Treffry and his family had no detailed news, and I could not press for it except in the vaguest terms. Until I saw my father under arrest and led out, I must affect to know nothing of treason or betrayal.

  There were a few soldiers about in Truro, but as I rode through Penryn it seemed as if nothing here
had changed. No sense of emergency seemed to exist. The place looked exactly the same as when Belemus had been courting Sibylla Kendall and we had been pursued out of the town.

  It was a sunny day, but bright only with that autumnal brightness which seems to have no warmth or happiness in it. After the storm the month was going out peaceably, like some old man who has wrought havoc in his manhood and now in age assumes an amiability quite out of character. Only the oaks retained their leaves, the rest of the trees had been stripped by the wild and vicious winds.

  As we neared the palisades I felt it was not so long after all since I had been home; the flying visit before the Cadiz expedition, the visit to Sue; those for the moment seemed to have all the objective reality I could apprehend; the fierce and bloody sixteen months in between existed only in my mind as a barely accepted dream staining the memory with the colours of nightmare. I was not aware this time of any overwhelming emotional sensation such as I had felt when stumbling over the wet grass and through the bracken towards home in 1594. I was younger then. Or perhaps it was that circumstances made it no longer possible to see home as something unequivocal, clear-cut, safe, a symbol of what was to be desired. My bedroom with its narrow walls and long bright window would no longer offer me protection from the dangers and complexities of the world. Wherever I went now, until the day I died, I carried those dangers and complexities within me.

  Simon Cook was on the gate. His presence was a reassurance that neither of the worst eventualities could yet have happened. He was astonished, delighted, wished to come with me to the house, but I said no, we’d go on alone.

  It was not until we were almost at the house that I saw the tents. They were spread all around the foot of the hill leading to the castle. It was a light in one of them in the growing dusk that first caught the eye. Figures moved about them. They were soldiers.

  I came to the house as supper was about to begin.

  My father was there, my stepmother, many half brothers and sisters, Belemus, Henry Knyvett, Mistress Wolverstone, Aunt Mary Killigrew, Rosewarne, two officers I did not know. The children greeted me wildly, with great affection and relief. They were full of the danger they were in but excited by it rather than frightened; they clamoured to know how I had come home. My father got up smiling and knuckling his moustache and saying By God, I had changed, I looked 30 if a day, what I must have been through, and now by God’s providence restored to the family, this was a night to celebrate. By what chance of war and shipwreck … Captain Alexander and Lieutenant Guildford, this was his eldest son—base son but greatly esteemed by all—home from Spain, shipwrecked, did you say, Maugan?—aboard the Spanish fleet off our coasts.

  Come, we must all be happy tonight, eh, Dorothy? Eh, Henry? Wilkey, fetch a bottle of the best canary; we must break it out.

  Never had he been so pleased to see me; I should have been warmed and heartened. But if I had changed, he had changed more. He must have been the heavier by 15 lbs. and this had spread him without adding solidity or strength. His skin was blotched and flabby; there were sacks under his eyes, and the lack of feeling in them had spread to the whole of his face. He had always drunk much but seldom before had stumbled over his words.

  The two officers were studiously correct but little more. They had arrived only two days ago in charge of 500 levies thrown into Pendennis by Ralegh. The men were soldiers disembarked from the English fleet, musters from the inland towns, some regular levies and a few sailors to make the number.

  It seemed that my arrival was an embarrassment to my father, so his welcome was the warmer to deceive others. It was an embarrassment to have anybody arrive from Spain, even an escaped prisoner.

  The two officers did not personally question me through the meal but they attended carefully to what was said. So for my part I weighed each word before it was uttered, and found this not so difficult as once would have been the case. The habit of deceit grows.

  The great hall had grown shabbier in sixteen months. Two window panes were broken and were boarded waiting proper repair. The rushes on the floor could hardly have been changed in two weeks. The fire had been badly built and was smoking; a thin fog of grey smoke hung around the beams. The candles guttered and stank; the rabbit pie was half cold and the beef tough and over-salt. Servants looked slovenly and dispirited.

  At last I was able to divert attention by saying: “And … grandmother?”

  “Oh, she’s with us still,” said Mr Killigrew. “Tenacious as even though much of the time gasping like a landed fish. She keeps her room these days.”

  “And John? With his new wife?”

  “They’re on a visit to her father. They’ve been gone a month, so I’m hoping to have word of them before long.”

  Captain Alexander and Lieutenant Guildford correctly and formally excused themselves from a game of dice and went off to the castle. I thought my father would want to speak to me alone, but he tramped off to his private chamber and was not seen again. Mrs Killigrew now had another daughter, christened Dorothy after herself. A baker’s dozen of children had only cost her her figure and her teeth; but in the last twelve months something had taken a new toll.

  After supper Belemus made a gesture to me and I was able to detach myself from the children and join him on the ragged lawn before the house.

  “So … the bad penny. And never more welcome than now. I had thought you were done for. But what a change—hollow cheeks, burning eyes: did they put you to the torture?”

  “No … But a Spanish prison is no place for lent-lilies.”

  He looked at me keenly. “There is much that has been going on here that I dont follow, and your coming seems a part of it. I know you too well, Maugan. All you say smacks of evasion. What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing that I was not compelled to.”

  “Ah. That tells a lot. And—”

  “And what has been going on here that you can’t follow?”

  He bent and eased the buckle of his shoe. “Ah, there again, evasion. You see the house, poverty-stricken, you see your father, bloated and hag-ridden; there has fallen on us all a conspiracy of whispers. Things are decided without reason and acted on without notice. This crisis, for instance. Ever since the beginning of September your father has been like a fox when the hounds are out. I do not know if he had some presentiment of it, but one might well think so. As you know he could always pour the wine down his throat; but this month he has not been sober … In September he was at great pains to send John and Jane off to Northampton, though they had no seeming wish to go. One would have thought, I say, of some presentiment; but if so he has made no attempt to prepare against attack. Carminow had not enough powder to ward away one determined assault. At the worst moment Foster was sent off to Launceston Castle to negotiate the purchase of a demi-cannon; as if we had the money to buy it. I think he will be in trouble for it.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Ralegh was here—a brief tempest and then gone again—but these men, these soldiers have all but taken control of the castle and the fortifications. Decisions are made without consultation of Mr Killigrew; placement of the troops, plans for defence, victualling, arming, powder; we might be in occupied territory. Your father has accepted all this, it seems, without protest. Unlike him. A few years ago he’d have fought a pitched battle sooner than be turned out of his proper office.”

  We walked to the edge of the lawn which was ankle deep in wet and tufted grass, and peered across at the black bulk of the castle.

  “His debts are no easier?”

  “Ha! Look around you.”

  “And Jane?”

  “Jane, dear Maugan, is the wonder of the age.”

  “How so?”

  “If your father had combed the highways of England he could not have found a more unsuitable mate for sober John. A she-wolf! She might be Lady Killigrew’s daughter by Captain Elliot!”

  “Where is her dowry? My father wrote me something.”

  “I doubt if
we’ll ever see it here. But she seems to have some source of funds beyond this mere £200 a year. She is having a boat built in Penryn—Penryn of all places—and plans to go into business, as she calls it, as a trader around the coasts: this at 18!”

  “Maybe she’ll have a family soon and that will tone her down.”

  “There’s no issue yet, and they’ve been married a year. For her part it cannot be for want of trying.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “She had not been in the house three months before she invited me to a couplement with her. It’s a small matter hard on a man, and no augury for the future.”

  I hesitated but had to have it out. “You refused?”

  “Against the grain. She’s no Hebe, but would, I fancy, be entertaining. However, I have my reservations, as I told her, and one is against coupling with my cousin’s bride before even the shine is off the wedding ring.”

  We paced along in silence. I said: “Susan Reskymer?”

  “I heard her husband was sick.”

  “He was sick before I left.”

  “Some old men hang on ignobly.”

  Stars were winking in a cloudless night sky. They were a purer light than the yellow stars winking on the shoulder of the castle bill.

  He said: “I leave here next month.”

  “Oh? Why? What are you doing?”

  He shrugged. “ For two years now I have worked on the farm here and acted as esquire to your father. Now through my uncle—the one who is not in prison—I have a commission under Norris. I think maybe I was cut out to be a soldier of fortune.”

  “You spoke of Elliot,” I said.

  “Oh, Dolphin’s been in and out, the last time eight or nine days ago. They had been ill-used by the storm. There were the usual secret conferences and mutterings behind closed doors. As soon as news came that the Spaniards might be landing he left. Not that I blame him. It would not be a happy position to be caught between two fires.”