The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  I could not get over a sense of unreality that my home and everything around it should have changed so little. During those desperate sixteen months, while I had seen and done and suffered so much, life had gone on here almost unaltered. Always downhill, yet day by day the same routine. Cows had been milked, sheep sheared, fields tilled, apples pressed, in the unchanging pattern of existence. I and my family had lived in different worlds. It seemed, almost as if for them time had not passed. All my nerves had been strung up to a tautness which now would not relax. Egoism in me demanded some greater change in them.

  While I was away Meg Stable had had a baby boy, and this or some change had softened her towards me; she seemed no longer to bear resentment for our affair. This was the happiest circumstance of my homecoming; it rejoiced me to be able to talk to her again.

  Mr Killigrew did not appear the following day and let it be known that he was unwell. In the afternoon he sent for me to his bed chamber. I found him up, sitting before a hissing log fire in a bed-gown which had once been emerald green but was now so faded that it looked as if it had been dipped in sea water. He had a bad cold in the head. All the servants were coughing with an autumn chill that had gone around.

  “You haven’t yet been to see your grandmother, Maugan. She has complained of it to me.”

  “I’m sorry. I was busy this morning and expected to see her at dinner.”

  He was in one of his persecution moods, when he was friendless and alone, and even inanimate things combined to do him ill. The wood on the fire, by being green, would not burn to warm him. His favourite slippers had split only yesterday.

  The jug at his elbow contained, he said, an old remedy, fever-few boiled with wine, but I thought the wine predominated. The room was close and horrid.

  “Well, boy, it’s good to have you back; but you had my letter, so you know all that has gone amiss with us here since you left. A deeper abyss than ever, the Fermors playing their dastardly trick over the dowry, now even my office usurped by these military. It’s no pretty picture to come home to!”

  “Did Sir Walter order these men to take command of the castle?”

  “No one commands the castle except myself; but they control the forces to defend it! There’s the rub. For years I have petitioned for money and men; they have not come. Now in an emergency men are flung in, powder and shot lavishly provided, but control of the levies passes to an army commander. It’s grossly unfair.”

  “You will, of course, complain to the Privy Council.”

  He coughed and snuffled and wiped his moustache on a baby’s sock. “So I will, so I certainly will. But I’m not a fit man. The anxiety, the tension of this time; you have no idea what I have been through—for a week or more before these soldiers came, struggling to gather the musters together, preparing to defend, the castle with my own few servants and two trained gunners, constantly back and forth between castle and house, writing despatches, expecting my wife.and children any day to be dragged out and raped and murdered. It has been a period of great strain, and no thanks for any of it, no thanks; no one cares what I have been through. I’m not at all well; I have been on and off the night-nobby constantly since yesterday. It’s very lowering.”

  “I saw Captain Elliot,” I said.

  My father glanced at me for only the second time since I came into the room.

  “When he delivered my letter to you?”

  “Since then.”

  “Ah, I shall have less to do with him in the future. He’s very much of a turn-coat, and as such must be kept at a distance.”

  “He seemed to me something of a go-between,” I said.

  Silence fell in the room.

  Mr Killigrew picked at the frayed sleeve of his bed-gown.

  I said: “I saw Elliot at Cadiz and at El Ferrol. Then later still I saw him off the Scillies—little more than two weeks ago.”

  “When you were with the Spanish fleet?”

  “When I was with the Spanish fleet.”

  “You must tell me all about that sometime … You were ill-treated?”

  “No. Had favours. They expected me to be of use to them when they reached England.”

  “Ah … They did, eh? Never got over the idea that they might be able to buy us. These Spaniards don’t understand the Killigrews.”

  “I could not appear unwilling to help—or I should not have survived. It was a matter of life and death.”

  “Ah, a matter of life and death. People outside do not realise the stresses—they have no idea. It is necessary to—to trim one’s sails to the storm. I quite agree, son, with what you did. Now, praise Christ, you are restored to us and no one the worse for your little deception.”

  “I trust no one will be the worse at all—for any deception.”

  My father stared with despondent bloodshot eyes out of the window.

  I said: “ It was thought—in some parts of the Spanish fleet it was thought that when they landed this castle might be favourably disposed towards them. What they thought, or think, is not important if, as seems possible now, they do not attempt to land at all … But it would be a serious matter if the rumour spread further and was believed in any English quarters.”

  “Why should it be? Why should it be? No one would dare—”

  “I was only thinking, father,” I interrupted—something I would not have dared to do a year ago—“that I trust there has been no loose talk in this house, no action which could be falsely construed, no letters written or received, which would give any substance to such a rumour …”

  I stopped and waited. I think at last my father understood what I was trying to do—to help if it became necessary without demanding dangerous confidences in return.

  “For instance,” I said, “I hope there’s no one here—Carminow or Foster, for example—who could testify in any way if called on to do so that—”

  “There is nothing to testify.”

  “Nor letters received which have not been burned.”

  “Nor no letters have been received.” He sneezed. “I caught this cold, I believe, through washing my legs and feet last Friday. It is a bad thing to do in the winter, but it was the first time since August, and the weather was unusual mild … Look, Maugan …”

  “Yes?”

  “You are more inward in this matter than anyone else. You were a party to it to begin and, it seems, have been so to the end. Well, if this is the end then let it be so and no more said. No more will be said by me, I assure you. We’ve all to gain and nothing to lose by silence. Sometimes there’s a virtue in it, as you’ll appreciate when you grow older.”

  “I appreciate it now, father. I was concerned only to know whether silence could be preserved.”

  I got up to go, but he waved me back to my seat. “ Now that we have agreed, there’s no haste to be gone, is there? Bring the table over, and we can dice for a while.”

  I stayed close by the house all that week and the next. If the Spanish still came I wanted to be here. With such forces camped about the castle they would surely be thrown back, and in any event there was no risk of my father attempting to fulfil his promises; but I felt he might yet come to some sort of quarrel with the military over his rights, and I wanted to be on hand to restrain him. Accepting their authority when they arrived was one of the few sensible things he had done.

  But as November advanced all England began to breathe again. Mobilisation at Chatham was stopped, the recall of overseas troops suspended, Essex and Ralegh and Howard were summoned to Court to give an account of their mistakes, Parliament met again, the emergency was seen to be over. Two hundred of the musters at Pendennis were allowed to go home, but the trained soldiers stayed and Captain Alexander showed no signs of relinquishing his authority.

  I did not know then or for some years after any true or certain facts from the Spanish side. But seven years later, in 1604, peace having been signed and Killigrew fortunes being still at a low ebb, arrangements were made that my half-brother Peter—ever the
favoured one—should complete his education in Spain under the care of the Earl of Bristol, and I was sent to escort him and so saw some whom I knew, and heard what had happened to the rest of the fleet in that October storm.

  The advance force had suffered the most, and of the twenty ships that sailed under Captain Quesada only nine returned to Spain. The second part of this squadron under Admiral Brochero had been struck scarcely less severely, and the galleon San Pedro with Don Diego Brochero himself on board had been dismasted and blown back into a Biscayan port where it needed five weeks’ repair to render it seaworthy again. Admiral Brochero had at once transferred to a flyboat and put to sea again, but at the vital moment the most aggressive spirit in the fleet was absent and his exclusively Spanish squadron scattered far and wide. In the meantime the Adelantado, a half day behind with the bulk of the fleet, had been met by the storm a little east of the Scillies. There he had fought it out for three days while first one and then another of his great ships was broken and had to run before the storm. When at length it abated his fleet as such no longer existed. He had beside him four other ships only, two of them damaged and his own leaking. He put back to Spain.

  In the meantime the remnants of Brochero’s squadron, a dozen assorted vessels, had rendezvoused off Falmouth, but being without further orders and themselves exhausted by the storm, they waited only twelve hours and then put back to Brittany. Except for individual vessels which turned up here and there and gave fight or caused alarm over the next several weeks, that was the end. By the middle of November all the Armada which survived was back in El Ferrol.

  I was through Penzance by one o’clock and took the coast track, skirting the edge of the cliff. Much was already rebuilding. Up the hill to the church. Copley was tired and I got off and led him, almost pulled him.

  The church was still far from complete but the house had been rebuilt. Two horses were standing in the garden in charge of a liveried groom.

  The servant who came to the door knew me. As I was shown in I heard a self-important male voice issuing from the principal chamber, and I knew it at once for that of Mr Henry Arundell of Truthall. By chance we had coincided again. I could tell from the way of speaking that his words were addressed to Sue. Then I heard her exclaim at the news the servant brought. I was not shown in: Sue came out.

  She was in widow’s weeds.

  Chapter Two

  She came two steps, held out her hands, ran and then stopped, moved up to me more slowly.

  “Maugan! Oh, this is a blessed day! Thank God! I hardly dared to hope that for a second time …”

  “I should come back? There have been doubts from time to time. This meeting …”

  She kissed me, but withdrew slightly because of a footstep in the room behind.

  “Oh, Maugan, your letter reached me … I have prayed … You are changed, older—you’ve been through so much?”

  “It’s already a dream. This is the reality … Tell me, I didn’t know—your husband?”

  “In September.” She took a deep breath. “Died as he lived, nobly …” She turned. “ You remember Mr Henry Arundell? I think once before …”

  The stout man had come out of the room and nodded to me. “Of course. This is a pleasant chance. We had almost given you up, Killigrew.”

  They led me into the room they had come from and plied me with questions. Black suited Sue, as in truth almost everything did. She looked well, a little less thin and pale, warm towards me but constrained in Arundell’s presence. I thought he, though superficially affable, welcomed me less than he seemed. I was myself distrait, stunned by the news that Sue was a widow; I had thought it a matter of years. I asked about him, and was told. Afterwards I remembered nothing of it; it was perhaps something in my mind trying to fence off and separate pleasure at Sue’s freedom from pleasure at a man’s death.

  I itched for Henry Arundell to go but he was in no hurry. It seemed that when a new incumbent to this living was appointed, Sue would move out to a small house in Helston which had been the property of her husband. She would then, said Mr Arundell complacently, be much nearer Truthall, and he looked forward to the day when they would become neighbours. Anything he could do for the relict lady of his late beloved friend he would do with the utmost pleasure and satisfaction. Puffing through his red lips, he looked at Sue with a benevolence I at once suspected.

  She turned to me, hair and eyelashes glinting in the lattice light. “Maugan, my dear, after you called last time I took the liberty of speaking to Mr Arundell about you. As you know, he was seeking a steward of personality and education who could take over the day to day care of his estate. I told him about you, how gifted you were, your experience already gained as a secretary.”

  I stared at her. One low-cut slipper of black satin was tapping gently on the green oblong of carpet.

  “Unhappily, because you were so long a captive, Mr Arundell has been compelled to find someone else, so alas the opportunity is gone.”

  Henry Arundell grunted. “Good man, I’ve got. Of course he’s married with a considerable family—much older than you, Killigrew. Difficult to know if you would have been able to command the authority.”

  I moistened my lips, and looked again at Sue, who was smoothing one of the ribbons of her girdle.

  “But also,” Sue went on, “at the same time when we were talking over this I did ask Mr Arundell if, supposing he felt you were too young for the stewardship; he would intervene on your behalf with his cousins in London. His cousins the Howards. And he promised he would do this. Can I still rely on you for this kindness, Henry?”

  There was a long silence in the room.

  “That I’ll do—for you, Susanna. I have little or no influence with Lord Thomas the sailor. But Lord Henry I know well, and a letter of commendation from me would do much. He has many interests: in art, in letters, in learning, in public charities.” Mr Arundell blew through his lips. “He is often on the look-out for likely young men. I have no doubt he would find you some employment, Killigrew.”

  As I opened my mouth to speak Sue interrupted me with her thanks. Every word she said seemed to please Arundell the more. It occurred to me that I had seen Ralegh himself politic and hypocritical on more than one occasion. If I rejected this out of hand and to his face I might mortally offend Sue, who was acting with what she conceived to be my interests at heart. I could afford to be politic. Now that she was a widow my life would begin for the first time.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I’m greatly obliged.”

  Mr Arundell then made a move to go, but Sue persuaded him to stay on a while, and before he left she not only had the letter to Lord Henry Howard written for me to present but the promise that a further letter should leave Truthall tomorrow to be sent direct to his Lordship, commending his attention to Mr Maugan Killigrew when Mr Maugan Killigrew called.

  Mr Arundell invited me to spend the night with him. On my declining he was careful to ascertain that I should spend it at Godolphin. I felt that his care for her proprieties was greater than need be.

  When we had seen him off and the outer door was shut but two of the servants were present she said to me formally: “You will sup here, Maugan?”

  “Gladly, thank you.”

  She linked her arm in mine and led me into the drawing-room. The companion seemed about to follow but Sue said smiling: “ I’ll ring for you, Florence.”

  Back against the door as the door closed, my lips against her neck. Black taffeta rustled; the slight figure seemed to melt even though stiffened by the whale-bone bodice, scent of sandalwood; her fingers smoothing my hair. My lips moved to hers. In two years I had thought I had become cynical, hardened. Not so. I drowned in her, had no conscious life outside this. I muttered wild endearments, unremembered as soon as spoken, trying to give words to wordless passion.

  At length she moved to be free, lowering her head, shaking one hand as if it hurt. I looked after her as she walked to the window. She was trying hard to be comp
osed.

  “Sue … it seems a century …”

  “Is nearly. So much has happened. When you came in today I could hardly believe … I’ve so often prayed.”

  “Perhaps that saved me. Thinking of you often saved my reason. In prison I used to make up conversations, go over old ones, picture the way you looked …”

  “When I heard you were captured again, I thought, This was what I was afraid of. I felt it that time you came; you remember I didn’t want you to go! Then your letter. Nothing since your letter … Oh, Maugan.”

  I followed her, put my arm about her. We stayed like that for a long time. From this window you could see a mason working on the church tower.

  “Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”

  “No, later. When will that woman come in?”

  “Wait a little, Maugan. I’m a widow only by seven weeks.”

  “Is he—buried here?”

  “No, at the family church near Reskymer.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  She told me. I heard, but again remember nothing. I think she said he had died suddenly. All I know was that I could feel her breathing, watch movements of her hands and lips and eyelids.

  We sat down to supper. The woman Florence was there. I used the time to tell Sue of what had happened in Spain, again omitting the murder of Buarcos, the pact with de Prada, my conversion to the Catholic faith. It seemed to run well enough without these things.

  There were differences in Sue, noticed in embryo on an earlier visit. The enchanting person I remembered, without losing any of her enchantment, had come by a quiet maturity and a quiet authority. Servants were at her beck and call, she gave orders smilingly but without hesitation or shyness. Three years of modest affluence. Three years of change. Other people, though living more quietly than I, had lived too.