The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  At the foot of the stairs, two men were carrying down a chest.

  One was a tall shabby man in black, the other a fox-faced fellow with a big wart on the side of his nose.

  They headed towards me and could get no farther; the tall man grunted at me to move. I did not.

  “By what right, gentlemen, d’you shift my father’s furniture?”

  They lowered the chest. “By what right? This no longer belongs to you nor to none of yours. Out of the way!”

  “What’s your name, man?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Maugan Killigrew. A son of John Killigrew.”

  The tall man wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Oh, I’ve heard tell of you. Well, there’s naught for you to do here. The law of England’s took over, and that’s ten years later ’n it should have. Your father’s a bankrupt and that’s all there’s to it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ratcliffe. He’s Challenor. Money’s been owing—”

  “Where’s your proof?”

  Ratcliffe stared at me. “ We shown it when we was admitted.”

  “I’ll see it again.”

  “Here.” Challenor came round the end of the chest and thrust a piece of paper at me. “See this. Here be your father’s bond. £300. Due August ’95! Not defeasanced! Not renewed! Nor no interest neither! Two years it been owing since due and not a penny paid!”

  “In time,” I said, “ you’ll be paid in full. But not when you come like vultures—like carrion. What d’you hope to make out of it? A few score—”

  “We’ll make what we can, by God!” shouted Challenor.

  “Get out,” I said.

  “By God, those days are over, young man, and don’t you forget it! I mind the time when your rascally father—and his father!—would ride abroad—”

  “Get out,” I said.

  “Oh, no you don’t. We’ve the law on our side—”

  I took out my short dagger and pointed it at Challenor’s throat. He bumped back against the chest, slid round it.

  “Here, none of that! If you—”

  “Two minutes to be out of this house—both of you. If you’re not, law or no law I’ll let some of the wind out of you.”

  “You can’t do this, Killigrew!” Ratcliffe shouted. “There’s sheriff’s officers and bailiffs, aye and justices too, will stay your nonsense—”

  “Out of this house and out of these grounds before dark. That gives you ten minutes.”

  Ratcliffe opened his mouth to protest again, but I went at him with the dagger. He drew sharply back, the two men bumping together; then they turned and went out, leaving the chest at the foot of the stairs. I followed them. Meg was in the hall.

  “Bring lights!” This bawled angrily at a couple of shadowy servants lurking in a doorway. Then to Meg: “Where’s Job? And Bewse? And Dick?”

  “Maugan, you can’t rightly blame them. They’re not schooled or—”

  “Who talks of blame? Where are they?”

  “In the stables.”

  I went out, across, kicked open a door. Dick was wiping Trudy, a half dozen others stood round in dejection, shoulders hunched, clirty and unkempt. With various expressions they said my name. I cut them short.

  “Listen. You’d stand by while these jackals rob us? Where’s your pride—”

  “Tis the law,” said Jael Job. “ We don’t like to go ’gainst that. If a man be broken for debt—”

  “But if I say different, you’d follow me, law or not?”

  “Well, maybe. There’s many a time we’ve set the rules aside—”

  “Let’s have these men out, then.”

  I turned and waited for them to follow me. Challenor and Ratcliffe were standing arguing by one of the carts.

  “Unload that stuff.”

  In five minutes the furnishings were inside the house again.

  “Bewse, and you Dick, see these men off our land. And shut the gate behind them.”

  The rest of us tramped through to the bottom of the stairs and then up. At the top a man was struggling with some bedding and a roll of sailcloth. Long Peter, encouraged now and ready for anything, snatched the cloth away from him and thrust him down the stairs so that he fell half the length. There were two more men at the end of the passage, just coming out of one of the bedrooms.

  “Get them out!”

  But these, instead of being debtors personally trying to collect their dues, were sheriff’s officers and not to be intimidated. There was a short fight in the half dark, a bunch of candles wobbling and dripping from a sconce, grey half-illumined dusk falling through a casement, the rest shadow. In a while we had them pinioned, bruised and a little blood from knuckle and tooth.

  “Get them out!”

  “Stay. Is that you, Maugan? Yes, it is, I’d a feelin’ you were home! But, lad, that’s not sense, what you’re doin’ now.”

  The voice, the tall lean figure, the long black hair … I was a child again knocking at an old mill door. Spittles of spite came into my mouth: some gland of fear had released them.

  “I might have known you’d be here, Mistress Footmarker.”

  “Yes, well, I’m glad to see you, there’s need of a man. This house is in dire distress. I told you years ago it would happen. There’s evil like a cloud—”

  “If there’s evil you bring it nearer. Job, take those two men—”

  “No, lad.” She came along the passage and I noticed the servants break away as she passed. “You can’t fight the law. Your father tried; look where it’s landed him. This is not a—”

  “You and your damned meddling! Who brought you here!”

  Her narrow face was a mask between the long tresses, eyes darker than blue with a kindling anger; often now we seemed to act so on each other; there was no mean, either we were in sympathy or, as now, sparked like flint on tinder.

  “As much right as you, lad! Your stepmother, Mrs Killigrew—”

  “Oh, she’s so dominated by you that … Look woman—”

  “Listen.” She put a hand on my arm and I shook it off. “ Listen! What’s wrong with you! Have ears to reason! Leave these men be, else you’ll end in jail. Your grandmother wished to resist, to keep these men outside the palisades, but it can’t be. I told her so, and Mrs Killigrew the same—”

  “By God!” I said. “Now I see it. Not only do you predict the ruin of this house; you see to it personal! … Peter, take this woman. If she has a nag put her on it and see her off our land!”

  Job and another man began to hustle the two bailiffs along the passage to the stairs. Long Peter was so tall he could not stand upright in this part of the house; he was a man almost without fear, but he hesitated about touching the woman. He licked his lips and glanced at Dick Stable and Penrudduck, the others remaining.

  Footmarker said: “ Touch me and you’ll grow worms in your bowels a yard long. Your eyes’ll rot out and your tongue’ll swell till it bursts your mouth.”

  Peter blinked and spat on the palms of his hands and made no other move.

  She turned to me: “Maugan, you’re blind with anger now and full of some spleen. All right, let us not have further words until this mood has passed. There’s much to be done. Your grandmother—”

  Perhaps in my own feeling was a microcosm of all that men feel when they burn witches: anger trying to hide fear. It was as if I had a sort of love for her turned inside out so that one yearned to destroy it. One yearned to tear out one’s own beginnings as a frail human being. I grasped her by the shoulder. She shook me off; that old strange scent of hay; I grabbed her arm and turned it behind her; she clawed with her other hand at my face; scratches and blood beginning to drip; I twisted her arm and grasped the other.

  As I pushed her struggling down the passage Mrs Killigrew came out.

  “Maugan!” I rushed past her. “Maugan, leave her be, she’s here because we need her!”

  Down the stairs; she tried to kick but her feet were in soft shoes that did
not hurt; I felt sick and cold, anger like disease, a dysentery of the mind.

  “Damn you, Maugan! If you put me out this’ll be the last of me; I’ll—never come back again; never again; you’ll regret this—it’ll be on your soul all the rest of your life.”

  We were down without falling. Meg at the bottom, shrinking against the wall. There was nothing special in this struggling woman different from any other; panting breath and heaving lungs and reluctant halting feet; she was still talking, but the sentences were muttered and broken; I tried not to hear, still fearful of a curse.

  In the hall and through it to the kitchens; out into the cobbled yard at the back; a lantern burned at the stable door; I released her with a final push; she nearly fell but caught the door.

  “Get your horse or mule if you have one. If you’re on foot take a pony. That’ll be payment for what you may have done. Take it and go.”

  She leaned on the door looking at me. “ I never thought to see this day. That’s one thing I never did think to see.”

  Now that I was free of her I wanted to shiver.

  “Take a pony,” I said, “ and go.”

  It was like assuming command of a part-conquered fortress. The enemy had been driven out; now to re-organise the forces within.

  Most of the curtains had gone, all the best furniture, even some of the beds. The house was like a cold echoing barn. Mrs Killigrew had been in bed with a return of the jaundice and had hardly realised the extent of the loss; she had in any case lacked the courage for open defiance. But she was angry with me for driving out Katherine Footmarker. This I had expected; the woman had grown to have an ascendancy over Dorothy Killigrew which amounted almost to a possession, and it was this more than anything else which I had felt to be dangerous in her continuing here. But what did startle me was to find that Footmarker had been openly treating my grandmother too.

  So bad was Lady Killigrew’s breathing now that only immobility enabled her to live at all. To move from one side of the bed to the other was sufficient to cause her to gasp and clutch at the air with her mouth. It was a terrible thing to watch, and almost more terrible to see, trapped inescapably in this useless body, the same penetrating acidulous mind I had known all my life. It had in no way been affected by illness or disease. It watched resentfully the people who moved round her bed ministering to her wants. Kate Penruddock, Parson Merther, Ida and Sarah Keast, none of them escaped.

  When I went in she set on me with a torrent of invective. What business had I to command this house, a nameless bastard brought up here out of mistaken kindness? God, to what depths had the Killigrews and the Wolverstones come? When I said I was only too willing to give up any ordering of this house to John as soon as he arrived home, she said he could not come too soon for her. In the meantime how did I propose to keep her alive, now that I had driven out the one woman who could help?

  The servants, of whom there were only fourteen left, rallied round me well and soon the place was cleared up, such furniture as was left made the best of, the gate at the palisade guarded. There was one other risk that had to be considered, for we could not fight an army.

  The next morning I went up to the castle and asked to see Captain Alexander. He saw me in the gun room overlooking the harbour. Much had been changed since I was last here, it was like a general’s tent in time of battle, with maps and charts on the walls.

  “Captain Alexander, you may have heard that my father has stayed behind in London, having been arrested on a suit for debt. I have no doubt that his release will be arranged before long, but for the time being he cannot be here to help you in his position as Governor of the Castle. I thought I should tell you this.”

  “I obey orders here, Mr Killigrew. My orders have been to bring this castle to a state of preparedness. So the Governor has not concerned me greatly, my instructions having come from a higher authority. I don’t think your father’s private misfortunes are likely to concern us here.”

  “Debtors have attempted to ransack Arwenack. I have driven them out.”

  “That must be your own affair, Mr Killigrew.”

  “I am glad you see it in that light.”

  “Certainly. Unless I receive orders to the contrary.”

  Having got what I came for, there seemed no virtue in prolonging the interview. He was clearly waiting for me to go.

  “Do you intend to spend the winter here, Captain Alexander? You and all the men?”

  He shrugged. “ That will be decided at a meeting next week.”

  “Held here?”

  “Held here. Sir Nicholas Parker, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Paul Ivey the fortifications expert, will confer here, and decisions will then be made. It could perhaps be a convenience if you could accommodate them in your house. As you will appreciate, our quarters here are very full.”

  “I’ll make arrangements.”

  As I walked back to the house I wondered if enough beds were left and whether we could find food. But the effort was worth making. Alexander was slightly more gracious when I left. His goodwill could be of value.

  When she left her last words had not been curses. She had shouted after me as I went back into the house: “Shame on yourself! Shame on you, Maugan, for turning away your only friend! All your life you’ll regret this day!”

  When I got in I had been violently sick, as if vomiting up buried urges.

  My only friend? That evening when the early dark had been upon the house for nearly two hours I sat and discussed the future with another friend who had already forgiven me for my high-handedness of yesterday.

  Dorothy Killigrew said: “I am happy for you, Maugan. When she was here for that Christmas I thought her a sweet girl. Pretty and elegant and of a sunny temperament. How lucky for you it has turned out so. I do pray you will be happy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know I have come to love you as one of my own children, and I shall hope you write to me from time to time. This is a house to leave. I tremble to think what will become of us.”

  “I dont think Father will stay in prison long. He has so many friends.”

  “Friends who have been alienated, Maugan. If the Queen has gone against him then there is little hope of an early release.”

  “John will soon be home.”

  Little Dorothy was grizzling, so her mother turned her over in her cradle.

  “I pray we could all take more easily to Jane. She is very—very female, yet strangely unfeminine—without the graces. And hostile to her new relatives. Perhaps time will change her.”

  “She needs an heir.”

  Mrs Killigrew sighed. “I am with child again, Maugan. Your father, even in despair, has not abated his demands. With nine children living and four dead, this has at last become a burden on me. Perhaps in wealth and comfort it would not seem so great. But as we are now set, scarcely knowing how to feed ourselves, I am a prey to despondency. Even the consolation of my faith wears thin …”

  I patted her hand. “My dear, take heart. Perhaps this is the darkest hour.” I could not explain to her by how much it might have been darker … “All the same, I shall be uneasy at leaving you here.”

  “You must seek your own fortune. This is John’s house now. He must redeem it as best he can.”

  I awoke in the dark of the night thinking that Katherine Footmarker was in the room. Then that it was Sue. In some inexplicable and frightening way I could not for a time disentangle the two. They were one woman springing from one well of love and hate. It seemed to me that it was Sue I had thrust down the stairs and flung out of the house and that it was she who said: “All your life you’ll regret this day.”

  Then in asking her forgiveness I was mouthing again the terrible oaths of Seville. “I do solemnly declare that the Church of England is not a church but rather the synagogue of the Devil, and in her and all her opinions and ceremonies lies the soul’s perdition; and I detest and abominate them …”

  I sat up in bed in that long narrow room, brush
ing my face to clear away the cobwebs of nightmare. Streaks of dawn were in the sky like a woman’s grey hair. I got up and dressed and was downstairs by the time Dick Stable, yawning vastly, was raking over the ashes of the fire in the great hall. Dogs fawned about me as I ate breakfast. Soon after sunrise I was on my way to Helston.

  I found her house after two inquiries; at the door a stupid servant met me. No, Mistress Reskymer was from home. Two days gone she had left in some haste, taking Florence and Jones with her. She had received a letter and had departed for Tolverne, the Arundells’ home.

  It was beginning to rain. Sometimes the weather by its persistence wears away courage and resolution. The nearest house was Truthall. I did not fancy dining with Henry Arundell. Sooner than ride home hungry and wet it seemed good sense to go a little out of the way to be warm and fed.

  At Godolphin Lady Godolphin said Sir Francis was expected back within the hour. Had I come to see him on business, or was it the tragedy at Tolverne which had brought me?

  “Oh, but I see you don’t know. It has been a great sorrow to us. Jonathan died last week.”

  Chapter Seven

  He had been taken with a sudden heart seizure. He was 31. Over dinner we talked of how the tragedy would affect poor Gertrude, a widow at 20, and Lady Arundell, bereft of her elder son, and Elizabeth, the Catholic, and Thomas, now heir to it all.

  I did not speak of Sue, thinking they did not know her, and it was by chance that Lady Godolphin mentioned Mark Reskymer, the head of the family, whose seat was a few miles south of Truthall.

  She said: “ Oh, I’m pleased for you, Maugan. She is a pretty girl, and still so young. You are lucky to get her too, for she’ll be a prosperous widow.”

  “Far from prosperous,” I said. “Nearly all Mr Reskymer’s estate was entailed.”

  Lady Godolphin said: “ I think you are more fortunate than that, Maugan. It happens that Mark Reskymer mentioned to us that little was entailed. It meant, he said, that because of Philip Reskymer’s late third marriage much of the property would go out of the family.”

  Sir Francis said: “I don’t know how Gertrude will be left. The Tolverne Arundells are not a wealthy family, and Thomas must maintain the house.”