The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  “No, I mean it all, but I’ll not go into marriage with you, Maugan, unless you can offer me some security, some hope of advancement. I’ve told you often before that my life at home has left me with some moral scar. The penury, the anxiety, the drudgery, the hand-to-mouth living, the illnesses … All these have made me resolve … My life with Philip, instead of making me bolder, has made me more afraid. Sometimes I think I’m not the right wife for you. You need someone with greater strength of purpose, who’ll not shrink from hardship or—”

  “I need you. No one else.”

  “You need me because you love me. It does not follow that my temperament is right for yours. Or my character—”

  “Sue, I can’t understand this. I’m sorry. I thought you hated Thomas!”

  “I never hated him. He has become a more mature person of late. I dont love him—”

  “But you’d marry him?”

  “How many marriages are based on love? Do they all fail? I am under some pressure …”

  “Pressure! What in God’s name do you mean by that?”

  “Perhaps it’s the wrong word. Mark Reskymer has tried to persuade me to it—because the Reskymers and the Arundells have been linked once before, and the property would stay within the family. And of course, though I don’t love Thomas, I’m bound by ties of affection to Elizabeth and Gertrude, and also to Lady Arundell. This for long has been my second home. I know it and love it.”

  “And you would trade that for a marriage with someone …” I shook my head to try to clear it. “ Does Lady Arundell know of this?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You said years ago that she’d never allow Thomas to marry you because you were penniless. I suppose that no longer follows.”

  “Of course I’d be a less good match for him than Bridget Mohun. But we’re both older now. She could not stop Thomas if he wanted to marry me. I don’t think she would wish to.”

  “So what is your price? What are your terms?”

  I stared at her with a sheer hostility that it was impossible to hide. For the first time she flushed.

  “Well,” she said, “now you see me as I am. Last time you were here you called me a schemer and I did not deny it. I scheme for everything—for my comfort, my happiness—and yours.”

  “Mine!”

  “Yes, for it’s better to break with me now than to leave this discovery until too late. I’m not a monster as you clearly think; but I am—logical … and determined. In all things I weigh one thing against another and then decide. Even in marriage. Even in love. If that revolts you—as it clearly does—then it is better to leave me and go.”

  My fist kept clenching and unclenching until it hurt.

  “What is your—price?”

  “Do you mean on what conditions will I agree to marry you? But do you still want me to?” Tears were glmting in her eyes.

  “At least permit me to know the terms.”

  “You make it sound at its worst … I’ll marry you, Maugan, if you undertake to accept employment with Lord Henry Howard for at least one year and at the end of that time allow me to decide if it shall be for a second.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Are you not better advised to play safe with an Arundell?”

  “Yes. But I’ll take that chance.”

  “The eldest son of the house now. He’s not rich. I know, but his father was knighted. He may well be. And you have a better home than I could ever provide.”

  “Who knows what you can yet provide?”

  “Some day possibly you’ll be Lady Arundell. Better than a marriage to a base son of the Killigrews, who as a family are in any event bankrupt and destitute. You must be logical enough to realise you’d be ill-advised even to consider me.”

  She blinked away the tears on her lashes. “ But there is logic in considering you, Maugan. First, I want to marry you, not Thomas. There is logic in considering one’s own wishes … Second, I believe that if you have the opportunity you will travel farther than he will.”

  In the silence I licked my lips. “Oh, Sue, I came to this meeting in such joy and hope. Now there’s a taste to it all that makes me want to retch.”

  She turned away. “If that’s how you feel, I can say nothing more.”

  “What more can you say?”

  “Perhaps I can say, don’t decide now. Especially if it’s—against me. Think it over. Go away, spend Christmas at Arwenack, come and tell me before I leave for London. It will not be until after Twelfth Night.”

  The man outside had loaded a wheelbarrow with the split wood and was wheeling it towards the shed. A sleek grey boar-hound came to lick at his heels and he impatiently kicked it away; but in so doing he upset his barrow so that half the wood rolled on the cobbles. Was there some wry metaphor in this for me?

  Sue had picked up an old doll with a grey dusty face and was turning it over, smoothing out the crumpled musty skirt. I stared at her unbelieving. I felt like one of the men I had stabbed at Cadiz—surprised, incredulous. Was this his warm blood?

  Whatever I did or said now, my relationship with Sue would never be the same again.

  She looked up through her lashes. “ You have no further use for me?”

  “No. Not that.”

  “Will you think it over, Maugan? Think if it is so much that I ask.”

  “Not that.” What we had disputed over seemed small and unimportant now. What she threatened, the fact that she was prepared to threaten, cast an immense shadow over all else.

  “You will think it over?”

  “I’ll think it over,” I said.

  Before I left next morning I had agreed to her terms. But I had made one condition of my own. If I agreed, we were to be married by early February, no later.

  I no longer trusted her to keep the bargain.

  Chapter Nine

  I told Dorothy Killigrew about Katherine Footmarker, and she shed a tear at the thought of not ever seeing her again. She had never looked on Footmarker as a witch but only as a friend gifted in healing. She had never feared her as stronger characters had feared her. She felt for her only the attraction I felt, untainted by the superstitious dread that in my case went with it.

  In this new century of which I have now seen too much, with its rabid laws against witchcraft since the Stuarts came, and thousands—at the very least a thousand persons every year—burned, drowned or hanged on the flimsiest of suspicions, Dorothy Killigrew’s tolerance towards Katherine Footmarker stands out like a harbour light in a storm.

  While I had been away the transfer of authority over the castle had been completed and the three men had moved from the house. Captain Alexander remained the serving officer under Sir Nicholas Parker, but a hundred more of the troops were sent back to Plymouth. Ratcliffe and Challenor had returned together with two sheriffs officers, determined to force an entry, but Jane had seen them and had paid them something to arrange for a forbearance of the bills. Where she had found the money no one knew—least of all her husband—but it had saved the day. Her threat of rearranging the household still hung over us.

  Christmas Day passed misty and damp. Most of each day and night, under the ordinary business of living and sleeping, I thought of Sue. Sometimes I persuaded myself that her threat had been an idle one, that she had used it out of a mistaken determination to help me, yet with no intention of ever carrying it through. At others, I weighed the alternatives as she might weigh them and saw that if it were not that she preferred me—if it could be put no higher than that—Thomas Arundell was likely to be an easy winner. Then, suddenly coming out in a sweat; I would want to ride to Tolverne right away to be sure she would still have me.

  I pondered much on her character, which had opened new petals—or was it thorns?—to me since our last meeting. One thing was quite clear, however much she might deny it: Philip Reskymer had left her a wealthy woman. Though Thomas might prefer to marry Susanna Reskymer, he would never have considered
throwing away an alliance with the powerful Mohuns for a penniless widow. Sue had been confident too that Lady Arundell would raise no great objection.

  Why then had she repeatedly lied to me? Because she wanted still to have the excuses of poverty for marrying Thomas? Because she could not allow me to feel independent of money lest I put up an even greater resistance to accepting the offer of Lord Henry Howard?

  What was behind her insistence on my taking this employment? A chance connection with the family endorsed by childhood memories? The singleness of mind of a person far distant from London and knowing only one important name, having only one recommendation? An obsession with security, a determination to build from a known foundation?

  Perhaps I was reading too much calculation into what she thought and did. Perhaps instinct and feminine illogicality warred with her cool objective brain so that, seeking her reasons from the outside, one over-simplified them, seeing them as single lines where they should be as complex as a Hariot equation.

  Yet, whatever motives were sought or excuses found, she emerged as a formidable character, intent with the sweet reasonableness of an unyielding determination on moulding her own life as she chose and—if I consented—moulding mine with it. She loved me—after some fashion—she had confidence in my abilities, she believed in me, and was willing to link her life with mine at a price. She was willing to trade her body, which I had possessed once and therefore could desire the more, for my compliance in occupation and direction. Sometimes I wondered if the fierce little animal my stepbrother had married was in fact less formidable for being so much more obvious.

  On St Stephen’s Day Sir Ferdinando Gorges came down and over supper began to talk about Ralegh and the one brilliant action of the otherwise futile Azores voyage. Landing at Fayal with two hundred and fifty men under a murderous fire from twice that number of Spaniards, he had led an attack personally through the surf and captured the beach, then when his men held back from attempting the heavily defended fortress town, he had led the way staff in hand and wearing no armour but his gorget. Accompanied by one officer and followed by only ten men, he had limped without haste a mile up the rocky slope, while bullets tore his clothing, the other officer was wounded and two men lost their heads. When he reached the fort the rest of his troops, seeing him still alive, took heart and followed, and in an hour the town was taken.

  I had been quite unable to understand Sue’s animosity towards Sir Walter; but in the light of her ultimatum certain suspicions began to take root while Gorges talked. Sir Walter was the only person who competed with her in my deepest admiration—and in influence. It did not matter that the competition should be of a different kind. She wanted a clear field.

  The next morning I received a letter from her brought down the river by a fisherman. It said:

  “My love,

  You have promised to marry me, on my terms, but I know think harshly of me for it.

  I have never claimed to be a good person or an admirable one, and if you have thought me so it has grown out of the goodness of your own thoughts. So I will still release you if you wish.

  But remember this, Maugan: I want only your welfare; I love only you, and if we marry I will be faithful to you and a true wife until death us do part.

  Susanna.”

  That day, in a revulsion of feeling, I wrote to Lord Henry Howard telling him I would be happy to accept the employment he had so graciously offered, and I would be in London by mid-January, when I hoped I might have the honour of waiting upon him.

  I remained his humble and obedient servant, Maugan Killigrew.

  Thanks to Gorges I was able to send the letter in the military bag. I also wrote to Sue telling her what I had done.

  Dorothy Killigrew, given the information that I would be leaving in early January to marry Sue in London, said would I escort my sister, Odelia as far as Totnes when I left?

  “She is the last of the older children, Maugan, and it is hardly right that she should be left here at this time; the rest are all so young that they will grow up together and not notice the change. At Totnes your father’s sister, Lady Billingsley, has offered to take her. It will be good for her to get away.”

  At nights I woke and thought of Sue in the same house as Thomas. Not that she was in any physical danger from him—I realised now how capable she was of caring for herself—but the material temptation was there. How long would she allow her head to be swayed by her heart?

  … Yet at a price she was still faithful to me. All through she had been, after her own fashion. If I took her down off the pedestal on which my idealism had placed her, and saw her as a human being, fallible and errant, could I not learn to be grateful for this fidelity? By how much did I deserve more?

  On Innocents’ Day two more creditors arrived and were again bought off by Jane Killigrew. Afterwards she said to me: “You will be seeing your father at Westminster?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then let me warn you, brother-in-law. I am paying some money here to buy in my own and John’s convenience. Let it not be supposed by you or your father or any of your ilk that I’m proposing to meet the generality of his debts. I am giving it out to his creditors here that he has been seized by his London creditors and will never return to these parts to the end of his days. So far it has served. But if your father lets it be known there is money to be had down here, I swear to you he will kill the goose that lays even this small egg for him.”

  “I’ll not tell him.”

  “In the meantime my man Bucklan has been going through the details of John’s estate here—”

  “Of Mr Killigrew’s estate, you mean.”

  “Yes, well, but prisons are not long-lived places … there is, it seems, in spite of your father’s extravagances about £1,000 a year left to this estate. It will be necessary for him to give John a warrant of attorney, which he should have done before he went to London. Will you see to that?”

  “I’ll see that is put to him.”

  “Be sure he looks at it in the proper light. He can never be clear of debt, but many of his debts will die with him. If his children are not to starve in the gutter, the little money coming in to him must be conserved in some way and not altogether thrown after the rest.”

  “I’ll not quarrel with that. But would you do me a favour, Jane?”

  She raised pencilled eyebrows. “ What could you want from me?”

  “I learn that your demand for Lady Killigrew’s bedroom is to be delayed a week or two. May I ask that your—reduction in the number of our dogs be also left until after I’m gone?”

  “You have a weak stomach? I should never have guessed it.”

  “Oh, I agree that the house is overrun. But most of the dogs I know by name and I’d prefer not to see old friends slaughtered.”

  “Not slaughtered; I think to put them in the harbour and see if they can swim to St Mawes.”

  She had turned the curtains of her hair to me, so that now I could see little of her face.

  “Perhaps you would like to do that with the children also.” She laughed gently. “What a monster you think me, brother-in-law

  …”

  “In jest of course.”

  She nodded. “ Naturally. In jest. But it would be pleasant to live

  with a man who has no illusions—even in jest.”

  I said: “ There’s always someone towards whom we are blind.”

  That night Lady Killigrew struggled miraculously down to supper. The occasion was the visit of Hannibal Vyvyan from St Mawes Castle. He still remained in control there, and had come over uneasily to consult with Sir Nicholas Parker on the new arming of Pendennis. Night fell before he could leave, so he supped and would sleep with us. Hannibal Vyvyan had long been a friend of Lady Killigrew and was always very gallant towards her.

  She had been so long dying that there seemed something uncanny in her appearance tonight, as if a ghost supped with us. Yet, emaciated and haggard as she was, and huddled in a great
white cloak, she could temporarily breathe—and a very mordant breath it was.

  We ate a Banbury cheese towards the end of supper; it was one that Vyvyan himself had brought; and he said he had carried a similar one up to the castle, where it had been well received.

  “So it would be,” said Lady Killigrew. “They lack up there all the refinements of life and ride roughshod over our rights and privileges,”

  Parson Merther said: “I don’t know if it has been noticed but the rough soldiers passing our gate tower this forenoon flung mud all across our coat-of-arms. It stuck and dried but has not fallen off. I would have gone out to report them but knew my mission useless.”

  “I’ll go up in the morning,” said John. “It’s intolerable that we should be so insulted!”

  Lady Killigrew said: “ It may be that the soldiers were saluting the disgrace that has come on our house. We should not quarrel with them for expressing what we all know!”

  “Oh, come, my lady,” said Vyvyan. “ It is not so bad as that. We all suffer misfortune from time to time. In the end the strong and steadfast will prevail.”

  Lady Killigrew took a trembling gulp of canary. “Strong and steadfast, Mr Vyvyan? These are commodities which do not exist in the Killigrew family. Or have not among the men in the fifty years I have known them. Strong it may be in seeking their own pleasure, steadfast perhaps in ignoring all else. Well … this is where it has led us!”

  “Your son has been unfortunate, madam …” Mr Vyvyan began to mutter polite excuses, but his voice was swept away in the flood of the old woman’s bitterness.

  “All is lost now—yet it has not been lost by too strict adherence to a set of principles. Oh, no. Oh, dear no. Some great families have risen and fallen for a cause. The only cause we have held to has been self-interest and we have fallen just the same, but the more ignobly because of it. I tell you there has never been a Killigrew who had not been willing to trim his sails to the latest breeze, to turn his coat if another were more in favour … But for all, it has done us no good. No good at all. There is a weak, self-indulgent streak in us, my friend, and not my blood, nor little Dorothy’s, nor that termagant who has just left the room, can stiffen it to fight or die for any principles at all—not religion, not family, not Queen, not country!”