The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

“At one time there was much traffic between the houses. Your grandfather was my guardian. Did you know that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “My own father died when I was 2½—much as Jack of Trerice’s—leaving me with two brothers younger than myself. I was named ward of John Killigrew. Then my mother remarried almost at once to Dick Trevanion of Caerhays. She continued to live here with her new husband and spawned an eightsome of little Trevanions who’ve all swum away with the passage of years. All swum away. A grasping lot, the Trevanions, a wild and grasping lot, without reverence for the things that are God’s. And the Mohuns, their cousins too.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “Yes, indeed. My lady would betroth Thomas with one of the Mohuns, but I say no good will come to them in the end. There is but one Church and but one Vicar of Christ. The heresy and blasphemy rampant in England today can never prosper, Maugan. It can never prosper.”

  I did not speak.

  He put his hand, on my shoulder. “ I pray you will be given grace to see your duty as Christ’s will.”

  “I pray so,. sir.”

  “In this critical time Cornwall, unpopulous and poorly endowed though it is, must play a leading part, for we are thrust out like a lance into the western seas. All that is done here is of greater moment than in any other part of this island. So we must search our souls: you, Maugan, a young boy; I, an ageing man; John Killigrew, your father, who keeps guard over the greatest harbour in the west.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think one day soon I will break my habit and call on him. We used to play together as boys. I have sinned greatly in the past, Maugan, but it was from mistaken convictions, never from greed.”

  Lady Arundell came to the door. “ Come, my dear, you will take cold standing there. The servants are waiting for you at the steps, Maugan.”

  Chapter Ten

  I said nothing to Mr Killigrew for the first few days. My grandmother seemed always to be about; and also he was in a temper, which boded ill for any requests I had to make. It might not have been the same house from last Christmas. The servants were preparing some mild junketings, but we had no guests, few decorations, no plans for dancing or plays. Meg told me eight servants had been discharged last June, and although at first they had hung on grateful for the charities of the more fortunate ones and feeding when possible from the leavings after each meal, they had gradually drifted away: three to the granite quarries of Penryn, two to service with the Boscawens, one to work at the Godolphin tin mines, two she thought to join the bands who roamed the moors. Everyone, Meg said, was in fear of the least misadventure, for it was common knowledge that Lady Killigrew wanted to be rid of more.

  I noticed that the armed retainers were no fewer in number.

  Belemus Roscarrock was away with his mother, but I saw how my half-brothers and sisters had grown. John, though still the same sober, earnest, un-Killigrew-like lad, had shot up three inches, and Odelia was turning very pretty. She put her soft arms round my neck and smothered my face with kisses. Meg Levant also kissed me, though in private, and I noticed guiltily that my passion for Sue did not prevent me from enjoying it.

  I had only ten days all told, and three of them passed in a flash. I gradually realised that if I had any ally in this house at all, anyone with any influence on my father, who might be prepared to listen with sympathy to my troubles and aims, it was my stepmother.

  St John’s day was clammy and foggy—but not with the harsh damp I was later to know in other parts of England—it blotted out the harbour at dawn, dusk fell an hour early, and a low dread wind sighed over the house. In the afternoon, glad to be near the sea again, I walked along the cliffs to Helford River and back through Rosemerryn, sometimes losing my way but never far off direction because I had known all the land since childhood. If I was to ask Mrs Killigrew’s help, I must carefully rehearse what had to be said. I must put my problem to her in the most appealing way, asking her first only for advice. Instinctively I was reaching towards that axiom of human affairs that if you seek out another for advice you often get help as well.

  On my way back to our main gate I met Harold Tregwin of Gluvias. Tregwin owned a small boat, but it was too ill-found to venture far to sea, and sometimes he seemed to do as much trade in gossip as in fish.

  Today he had a tale that while out trawling, last night for mackerel off Shag Rock, which was near St Anthony’s Point, he had nearly collided with an unknown vessel close in upon the rocks and under oar. He had exchanged shouts with her and an English voice had answered, but he was certain he had seen men in armour aboard.

  I repeated this story to my father when I got in, but he took little notice; he said if he paid attention to every story that reached him of Tunisian pirates and Spanish galleons he would have been at arms every day.

  I had hoped to see Mrs Killigrew before supper but she was busy with her second youngest who was ill. In after years I often thought it strange that Peter, who was delicate as a child and constantly demanding of attention, should prove so strong and resilient in later life that he stood the hazards of his manhood and of the torn and combative world in which he grew up better than any of his brothers and sisters. His deceptive stamina, his ability to bend without breaking, to trim his sails and ride out every contrary hurricane, drew something perhaps from a childhood in which he learned early to husband his strength and to give ground like a fencer.

  We sat down about thirty-five that night. Because I was no longer a child I did not sit with the others at the side table, but had been given a place at the top table not far from my father.

  They began to speak of Ralegh. His first child had just been born, a boy, to be called Walter after him. There were rejoicings and there was to be a great christening at Sherborne. Sir Walter they said, had not been well, had been taking the waters at Bath. He’d been active throughout the year, in Parliament, making speeches, sitting on committees, putting fresh projects before the Privy Council for setting up another colony in Virginia; but he was still not permitted to appear at Court, to see the Queen or to take up his old position as Captain of the Guard.

  There was a story too that Sir John Borrough had been active again, landing on the island of Margarita, and that the Spanish governor had been killed in battle—

  The boom of the explosion was muffled by the rocks and the situation of the house, but there could be no doubt of its nature. In a minute my father was on his feet shouting orders, and the great hall was in confusion, men rushing off to gain their weapons, women calling to each other, children crying, dogs barking.

  For the first time then I missed Belemus as a companion. I knew what he would have done—slipped out quietly to see what was toward, no doubt with me as his companion. I proceeded to do just that, but perhaps because of being on my own I ran into disaster.

  After the first haste and confusion things quieted down quickly. Carminow was already at the castle, but Foster was in the hall, and he went off at once with four of the senior retainers bearing calivers and pistols. Since the explosion could mean several things, an attack on the almost unfortified house being as likely as an attack on the fortified castle, my father wisely did not order more of his men out of Arwenack but instead posted watchers in the two towers. The women and children he said should stay in the hall, and those not already there should assemble there, with Jael Job and his four remaining best men in charge. My father then picked out Penruddock and Carpenter and two other servants who normally never bore arms, and furnished them with pikes. A similar number of men he gave to Henry Knyvett, and told the two parties to move off in the direction from which the explosion had come.

  This was as far as organisation had gone before I slipped from the hall. I raced up to my bedroom to get a sheath knife and was down again and out well ahead of the search parties.

  There was a moon somewhere making opalescence of the fog. The first thing when clear of the house was the smell of gunpowder. As soon as the explosion occurred I had th
ought of Harold Tregwin’s story, but now it occurred to me that it might be that someone had accidentally discharged one of the great culverin in the castle—or still more likely have dropped a spark into a keg of powder.

  I ran quickly through the trees and bushes towards the head; the fog seemed more like smoke drifting from a fire, but at the edge of the rocks below the castle it was as if I had come past the smoke-laden area, for the fog blew chill and clean.

  I looked up towards the castle. The two lights were what one would expect on any night. The sea was blanketed and impenetrable. This was much where I had come with Sue that day twelve months ago—only we had climbed farther down.

  There was another explosion directly under the castle wall where it ran back towards Arwenack. I was too late to see the flash, but as the sky flickered I turned and the noise struck me. Figures moved between me and the darkness, where the light had been.

  Someone fired a musket, but this quickly died and there was silence. A man began to shout. The sound of oars.

  I was still some 20 feet above the water but turned to climb up again because the sound was so close; they must have been coming in right beneath me. I took a sharp step up, and two figures on the rock above converged in the mist. I grabbed at my knife, but a man caught my arm and twisted it round. Something glinted like a shield or a breastplate, and then my head seemed to split open with a blow that-reached down to my chin.

  I woke in a ship’s hold, sea-sick and with a vile headache. A rope ladder was swinging like a pendulum and bilge water was slapping backwards and forwards with the rolling of the ship.

  After a while a man came down and left me a bowl of bread and milk, but I was too sick to eat it, and the rats had it instead. I must eventually have slept, for I woke to find a dark foreign man bending over me and fingering the bump on my head. He nodded at me but said nothing and climbed the rope ladder and disappeared.

  I was wondering whether to make the effort to try the ladder myself when the hatchway opened and another man came down. He was big and fair-haired with a lean fox face. He was Captain Richard Burley of Neptune, who had feasted at our house in company with Captain Elliot and Mr Love on my fourteenth birthday.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter One

  It was the 25th of February, 1594. The small and shabby cavalcade was dwarfed by the mountains that raised their shattered tips into an ultramarine sky. Leading the party on foot was a tall peasant called Bartolomep. He took long steady strides, using his crooked stick as if to divine the way. On his almost shaven head he wore a wide brimmed black hat with a broad strap under the chin, and his great black cloak was wrapped tight around him against the wind.

  I wished I had such a cloak for protection. The wind had blown for four days. Although the snow was ankle deep where we walked, and clutched crisply at every step with a fine powdery film misting up to our knees, most of the peaks far above us were bare. They had been blown bare.

  There were two carts in our procession, carts drawn by mules whose high wooden collars were painted with Sowers, and whose shabby harness, held together with hemp and cord, was decorated with tiny bells and rosettes of vivid coloured wool. But I did not ride in them. The second cart carried produce necessary for our survival from day to day. The first carried Captain Richard Burley and Captain Juan Rodrigo Alazar, a Portuguese gentleman I had met while still at sea.

  It was the 25th February, and my sixteenth birthday.

  We were near Madrid.

  I have never been able to remember the details of the time at sea. The ship was not Neptune as I had at one time thought but Santa Ana, a Portuguese vessel under the command of Captain Alazar, with Richard Burley acting as navigator. Captain Burley explained to me that Neptune had foundered with her prize at the time when Captain Elliot and his crew had reached Arwenack, and, needs must when the devil drives, Richard Burley had since found employment where it offered. Beggars, he said, could not be choosers. He was as full of saws as an old wife, but empty of explanation as to why they had chosen to seize me.

  All the rest was plain. Spain would pay well for a first-class navigator who knew the rivers and harbours of England: such were not easy to come by. Captain Alazar, a freebooter of some note and anxious to please his Spanish masters, had asked permission of them that he should be allowed to raid Pendennis. Permission was given and three engineers and twelve barrels of gunpowder were supplied to blow it up.

  The attempt had failed. From the look of things on the night of my capture I did not think that the attack had been pressed home with any enthusiasm or vigour. Burley said that as well as damaging the fort they had struck across the peninsular and fired Arwenack, but from the way he told it I knew he was lying. The details were not true: this was sop to please his new masters.

  I could not see that taking me back with him to rot in some dungeon or die in the galleys would ingratiate him further. I wondered if he had done it out of spite; he never spoke of my father without a gleam of venom in his eye, but he knew I was not a legitimate child and my death was not likely to bring my father in sorrow to his grave.

  I had been two and a half weeks in prison in Lisbon but had been given a cell to myself and supplied with passable food and English books. Captain Alazar had visited me but had refused to comment on what my fate was to be. Then one day I was released to join this cavalcade bound for Madrid, and Burley was of the party.

  We had been two weeks on the way, twice snowbound in tiny villages, huddling in a single hut and crouching about a smoky brazier for warmth. Last night we had left Talavera, and tomorrow they said we should be in Madrid.

  Presently Bartolomeo called a halt and the half dozen walking peasants and the two tartanas drew in at the side of the truck in the shelter of a great rock where the wind could only stab spitefully in back eddies from the other cliff face. Here we ate a frugal midday meal, though the sun was well on its way down. And here both Burley and Alazar sat beside me eating in silence. When I had finished I took off a shoe to look at the raw blister on my heel.

  Alazar said: “In Madrid you will have new boots. Those are of poor leather, they do not wear well.”

  It was not his practise to say anything to me at all. I said: “ Why are you taking me there?”

  I certainly expected nothing in return, for I had asked the question before, but this time Alazar shrugged and glanced at Burley and said:

  “Because, boy, you happen to be a proof of the success of our raid on Falmouth Haven. You or another would have done. But having got you, we now see you as a piece of merchandise to be disposed of in the most favourable market. See?”

  “No. I don’t see …”

  “For you for the galleys I could get a few reals, less than a seaman, since you are too thin and too young to last. But it has occurred to us that you may have a small value of another sort. Being who you are. It depends …”

  “On what?”

  “A little on yourself. To be of value at all you must help a little. Do you wish to die?”

  “No.”

  Captain Alazar took a long drink of red wine. “Well, to stay alive you must help a little.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He put the goblet down. “ Spain and England are at war, yes? As countries, as nations. But every person is not at war with every other person. That is for the person to decide. If you have nothing but enmity in your heart for Spain—and show it—you will rot in a prison quick enough, and I shall wish I had left you to the overseer’s lash. But if you will take life as it comes—if you will see Spain and the people in it as just people like yourself, among whom you must live and work, then it will be of more value to me, and you may not go to prison or the galleys at all. But it is for you to decide.”

  I said nothing for a long time. Bartolomeo was already on his feet again, for there were only a few hours of daylight left.

  “Well?” said Burley in an aggressive voice.

  I said: “ I have no wish to die.”

 
“Good. Good.”

  “But I don’t know what you expect. I don’t know what you are suggesting.”

  Burley’s narrow savage face quickly clouded, but Captain Alazar got up and patted me on the shoulder. “ We have a proverb: ‘ If you run too fast you may trip over nothing.’ Be content to greet each day with an open mind—judge it as it comes. That way we all make progress.”

  We reached Madrid late the next day almost as dusk was falling and lodged at a shabby crowded inn in the centre of the city. Five of us, including Bartolomeo, slept in a room under the eaves. Bartolomeo had still to be paid for the hire of his cart, and the next morning mere was a violent and ugly argument over payment. Then there was another quarrel with the keeper of the inn. After Bartolomeo and his companions left, still grumbling and unsatisfied, Captain Alazar went out. I kept to the attic all day, and Richard Burley was my companion. He seldom spoke but lay all day on one of the pallet beds picking his teeth and taking snuff and dozing. Twice he sent down for food. The first time a black-eyed barefoot girl with silk bows in her hair brought it, but Burley looked at her so lewdly that she put the food down and fled, and the second time it was the innkeeper himself.

  I could see very little from the tiny window. A slope of roof hid roost of the narrow street, and opposite a taller building was just going up so that it cut off any view there might have been over the city. All day, except in the afternoon, there was the clank and hammer of the workmen, and somewhere below the rumble of carts and the shouts and laughter of people in the inn.

  Captain Alazar came back an hour after sundown and the two men went downstairs together. I gathered that he had been trying to gain an audience with somebody and had failed.

  He tried the next day and the next, and the third long vigil was lucky, for he came back heartened by his meeting, and the following morning I was taken out into a handsome square near the inn, and cloth was bought to replace my tattered suit. There were churches all round the square, and all the bells were ringing and the open space was thronged with people. Black-clad friars moved among them, and soldiers in full armour and splendid grandees. Beggars crouched at every corner and water carriers rang their own bells as counterpoint to the churches. Bargaining and argument went on over the purchase of the cloth, for Captain Alazar had no money to pay for it but only a promise of money for the morrow. As soon as the measurements were taken I was hustled back to the inn; but by evening the suit, of blue worsted yarn with a thick blue duffel for a cloak, was at the inn and I was being fitted.