The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  The next morning was a Saturday, and the tensions between the two men showed that this was a highly important day for them.

  We set off at eight, the three of us only, passed through two smaller squares, in both of which the houses were still being built, reached a third which had at its opposite side a building like a Turkish palace. The great doors were guarded by soldiers in armour, and the flanking sides of the square were given over to armouries and stables. Captain Alazar pushed his way through a crowd of sightseers and suppliants and went up to a man dressed in black velvet, who glanced at the parchment we carried and then passed it over to a guard.

  Inside the palace was gloomy after the brilliant sunshine. Here and there torches burned to give light in the corridors. Passing along I got glimpses through open doors of chapels with candies burning, of soldiers eating, of monks sitting writing at a table; now and then we came out into a courtyard or passed along a gallery which had one arcaded side looking out over a fountain or a garden with statues. The guard led us into an ante-chamber hung with paintings of battle scenes, and here were a dozen other people already waiting.

  We too settled to wait. We waited from a quarter before nine until a quarter after twelve. Nobody else in that time was attended to, only the number in attendance grew. Then a liveried servant came through the farther door and passed through the stirring expectant throng until he reached us. He spoke to Alazar and we followed him.

  Beyond was another ante-chamber in which a man sat writing at a desk. He was tall and middle aged and his face was square and bony and discreet like a carefully closed fist. Two young pages with long black hair stood at his elbows.

  Alazar said in English: “Excellency, this is the boy.”

  Eyes like olives dipped in water made a very careful scrutiny of all that I was and wore. “He speaks Spanish?”

  “No, your Excellency.”

  “What is your name?” he asked in a harsh, accented English.

  “Maugan Killigrew.”

  “Whence come you?”

  “Arwenack House, beside Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall.”

  “You are the natural son of John Killigrew, governor of the castle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me the names of his other children.”

  “His—my …” I stared a moment. “ The—the eldest is John, who is now fourteen. Then comes Thomas, who is thirteen, then Odelia, who is—who will soon be—twelve. Henry is ten, will be eleven in June. Maria is four, Peter nearly three, Elizabeth is a few months old … That is all.”

  “What is your mother’s Christian name?”

  “I do not know, sir. I never knew who she was.”

  An impatient gesture. “ Your—second mother. How do you put it? Stepmother.”

  “Oh. Dorothy. Her maiden name was Dorothy Monck.”

  The Spaniard rubbed the sleeve of his crimson velvet jacket. As he got up the pages jumped to draw back his chair. He left the room by a tiny door let into the tapestry. The pages came across to me, and their hands searched impersonally for hidden weapons.

  “Who was that?”

  “Señor Andres Prada.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Quiet, boy.”

  Señor Prada came back; I was to go with him. Alazar wanted to accompany us but the Spaniard brushed this contemptuously aside.

  We went into a small room with a long window looking across the city towards the snow peaks thirty miles distant. Another man, whom I took to be a junior secretary, sat writing at a desk piled high with papers. When we had stopped moving there was no sound in the room but the scratching of his quill. He was in black; an elderly man with pale red-rimmed eyes, a drawn ascetic face with a heavy under-jaw which a grey beard did not disguise. Altogether he looked less Spanish than any other I had recently seen.

  I had expected he might have jumped to his feet but it was Señor Prada who made the obeisance. I think he said: This is the boy. One grew used to the sound of a sentence.

  The elderly man said in a very good English: “ You think he is bona fide?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Come here, boy.”

  I took two cautious steps nearer the table.

  “Know you who I am?”

  “No, sir.”

  The elderly man put his pen down and rubbed his knuckles together as if he was cold. The papers on his desk were elaborate lists and statistical tables, many of them annotated.

  “He is certainly English. It is a type I well knew once … Are you a Luterano, boy?”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you an apostate? … What they call a Protestant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A glint came into the tired eyes. “If you are to stay here that must be changed. It must be changed, Prada.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “You come from a western county which, alas, I never visited but one which I always held in esteem. You are Celts and have affinities with the Irish. A sturdy, faithful stock among whom fidelity to the religion of Christ dies hard.”

  “We too—” I began and stopped.

  “We too?”

  “No, sir,” I said, seeing danger in argument.

  “Throughout England,” he said, “good and saintly people groan under the yoke. It may be that, God guiding and strengthening our hands, they shall need to wait but a short time now.”

  A brilliant band of sunlight lit up the Hapsburg coat of arms on the carpet by my feet. Was this the man Ralegh had spoken about at Arwenack last Christmas twelve-month, this quiet, clerkly, dedicated, elderly person?

  “There is much unrest in England,” he went on. “ Oh, I know that, boy, everyone is agreed on it. She is shaken by religious feuds to the point that many parts are on the verge of revolt. There is pestilence and other internal troubles, too. It is a judgment …”

  “Your Majesty—” Prada began.

  The knuckles cracked. “Tell me, boy, where is Drake, now? We have seen nothing of him these later years.”

  “I think he lives near Plymouth, sir.”

  “You are right. He superintends its fortifications. He works on schemes for improving its supply of water. He has been out of favour with the Queen. He grows old—as we all grow old. If he came forth he would fare less well.”

  “Yes, sir.” I was startled by his sharpness and his detailed knowledge.

  “Yet I have information that he still yearns for adventure. I have information that the Queen is regarding him more kindly again. Knew you that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, let him beware if he comes forth again. He will fare less well. He will find our fleets greatly changed.”

  “Your Majesty,” Prada said, “the two men who brought this boy are in the next chamber and ask some reward for his capture.”

  The King picked up a sheet of parchment and held it in hands of the same colour. “Is it true, boy, what they say here, that they fired your castle?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said after a moment. “Yes, it was the explosions that brought me from the house. Of course I do not know what damage was caused.”

  “In due course we shall have word on that. Is your castle well prepared to resist invasion?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My information is that it is not. My information is that your father neglects his defences, selling the powder and shot where best he can … Prada, can you use this boy?”

  “I think, sire, he may be of some value.”

  The King turned the parchment over and over in his thin fingers. “Give this Portuguese a gold chain of a fair weight and quality. And grant him an annual pension of 50 ducats … The Englishman … give him 100 ducats and some employment with the fleet. He can continue to be useful in other ways.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  The King extended his hand, it seemed for me to kiss, and then withdrew it. There were little beads of saliva at the corners of his mouth.

  “You will keep this boy in your service, Prada?”
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br />   “Yes, sire. So long as we can see use for him.”

  “Then attend to his soul. At that age a course of instruction may do all that as necessary … But whatever is necessary, let it be done.…”

  Before we left the room the pen was scratching on the paper again.

  I separated from Alazar and Burley in the middle of the following week.

  Whatever the value of the reward, they were not unsatisfied with it. Alazar’s gold chain was one for which he said he could get 200 ducats anywhere. Their interest in me finished from that day. They were to hand me over on the Tuesday to Señor Prada; I had to be there and I had to be alive, that was all. Burley was drunk all Sunday.

  On the Monday while Alazar was out Burley brought back a woman and made love to her, with me in the room. It confused and frightened and troubled me as nothing else could have. This grabbing, tittering, grunting struggle between two half naked human beings almost made me sick. No one could have grown up in Arwenack ignorant of sex, but I had never seen it happen before. That this was all part of the same tender feeling that I had for Sue Farnaby, as it were the other side of a coin, seemed to darken and poison what I had thought of as true and good. The woman was stout and her flesh was white and flabby, her breasts heavy and sagging, her thighs coloured like the underside of dead fish. They made little attempt to hide themselves from me, and at last I turned to stare but of the window trembling and breathless. What made the whole hour worse than insupportable was that while with part of myself I wanted to bludgeon them both to death, obliterate them as one does a disgusting slug turned up under a stone, another part of me was curious and lustful and fascinated.

  I realised that day what the Puritans meant when they spoke of lust as an abomination and a secret blasphemy, a lechery put in men’s minds by Satan himself.

  So on the Tuesday I was glad to be rid of them. Whatever the future, I was glad to see them go.

  Señor Andres Prada had a small house at the corner of the great square with all the churches, the Puerta del Sol. I was put in the charge of a young man called Rodez who spoke English and I was given a garret room at the top of the house, but mercifully was to have it to myself. During the first weeks I used to look out of the window and think, well, this is one way, there is just room for me to squeeze through, and so long as I do not land on something that breaks my fall I shall die.

  I learned much from Rodez; we talked much, and while he improved his English I began to pick up a smattering of Spanish. Rodez was a nephew of Prada and was attached to the court as a page.

  Prada was one of the two chief secretaries to the king. It seemed possible, Rodez said, that in time I too would become a page at the court. When I asked him why, he shrugged and said that had been decided, why should I quarrel? Would I rather have my bones stretched by the Inquisitor?

  Prada spent most of his time at the Palace or escorting the King on long journeys of religious penance to the royal monastery of St Lawrence of the Escorial, a giant mausoleum to house his father’s remains which the King had just built on a spur of rock among the mountains 50 kilometres distant; so Prada maintained but a small household for himself. Señora Prada was much younger than he, a tall dark, bold woman with a wanton way of speaking and dressing. Rodez also had two sisters in the household, Isabella, and Mariana, young women of twenty-odd who aped Señora Prada in their manners. I had thought of Spanish women as strictly brought up, carefully chaperoned, discreet and demure. These were not. Mariana, the younger, in particular had a wild way of talking and looking and seemed to care nothing for convention or accepted behaviour. Even Father Rafael, the priest who lived with us, was unable or unwilling to curb her.

  One day he called me into his little room on the second floor, which was half a study and half a cell, and began to question me as to my religious beliefs, but his English was too bad for us to make progress. After two hours, he gave me some books written in English which he said I must read and study within the week. He did not seem interested in his task, which was a relief. At table he ate and drank as heartily as the rest, and his clothes were of the finest.

  Not so another priest who came three days later from the Holy Office. A man with a face like a vulture, his grimed hands folded behind him, sandals of hide-thong on bare grey feet, and smelling of decay, all the house—even Mariana—fell silent on his coming and remained so until he left. He too spoke little English, but I heard him questioning Rodez about me. His small rodent eyes kept looking me up and down. When he had gone I asked what he had said.

  Rodez smiled quietly. “ He says it is a dangerous heresy on our part to keep company with a Lutheran, even at the King’s command. So I would have you look to your soul’s well-being before others do it for you.”

  “And if I do not, Rodez?”

  “Our friend says you will burn everlastingly in hell.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Of course. But what I am more concerned for is that you should not burn temporarily on earth. Have you ever seen a man at the stake? It is an interesting sight. I believe there will be an auto de fé some time this spring. If you are still with us I will take you.”

  Every morning I would be wakened at five by the sound of the city stirring to life in the great square. Often the first noises would be the clop-clop of tiny hooves as the first donkeys went past below driven on by the harsh “ arré” of the drivers. Sometimes their loads—brushwood or straw or piled crops— would scrape and whisper against the sides of the house as they went by. Then the bells of the churches would begin. There was the church of Buen Suceso on the far corner between two streets; near it was the Convent of Victory. Opposite was the church of Our Lady of Solitude and the foundling hospital of La Inclusa, and, nearest to my bedroom and out of sight from it, the new church of San Felipe el Real.

  The bells would start the tethered goats bleating; carts would begin to rumble in, and soon the whole square would hum with life and noise, while the first rays of the sun struck fire from the windows opposite.

  We rose at six and washed in the icy water from the well; at seven we ate bread and syrup and drank steaming bowls of coffee, and so the day began.

  For a week Mariana never spoke to me. She was a tall girl with a lovely skin; over-plump from eating too many sweetmeats, but attractively so. The heavy spectacles she put on and off at intervals were the fashion and did not indicate that she needed them to see—though for a week she might have been blind where I was concerned. Then one day I came into the room where we dined and found her squatting cross-legged on the carpet telling her beads and muttering her prayers. Many women in Spain sat in this fashion. I was turning to go out when she said:

  “Do not run away, pincho.”

  I was startled at her English; until now I had thought only Rodez spoke it.

  “I am sorry. I thought—”

  “That I was saying my prayers?” She tossed the long string of beads back so that they rattled against each other. “So I was. Do you dislike that?”

  “No …”

  “Spanish girls—we tell them at many times. It is just as we fancy. We tell them for luck when we play at Ombre. We finger them for the ennui. We tell them even while we make love.”

  I said: “ I did not know you spoke English.”

  “You think we are barbarians in Madrid? How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  She whistled. “Dios mio. And very sick for home, eh? Why have they brought you here?”

  “That is what I want to know.”

  “My uncle will tell you in good time. All things he arranges in good time. No doubt he may find you useful.”

  “You can come with me shopping and carry my basket. That is a beginning.”

  “They will allow that?”

  “Who is to stop us? You’ll not run away?”

  “No.”

  When we went out I did indeed carry her basket, but as her negro slave went with us, together with her usual duenna, this seemed an excuse.
It was the height of the morning, and along our side of the square were rows of little booths where every trifle and foolish luxury could be bought. Gallants in rich clothes moved among cripples and beggars squatting on the uneven cobbles in poverty and squalor. Beyond was a long wall where painters were exhibiting their pictures. Small shops and coffee houses abounded.

  Mariana bought a fan, a blue cravat, a bundle of white candles, two boxes of sweetmeats. As we turned to go home a shabby man of about fifty carrying some rolls of cloth stopped and spoke to her. A sardonic handsome man with grey-brown hair, a big moustache and a withered hand. Mariana bought a piece of the cloth and moved on.

  “My uncle is much in demand with old friends,” she said curtly. “They remember their schooldays when they have favours to ask.”

  “Who was that?”

  “An old soldier who escaped three times from the Turks and was three times recaptured. He lives now by writing ballads for blind beggars to sing.”

  A man went past in a brown cassock carrying on his back a great cross that seemed too heavy for him to bear. There was a mask across his face.

  “A penitent,” said Mariana impatiently. “His confessor has imposed this on him, and since he is a person of quality, he does not wish to be recognised. Come, pincho, you’ve seen enough for one morning.”

  “Why do you call me that?”

  “Assuredly it is just a fancy,”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means a louse.”

  When we got back to the door of our house I opened it for her to go in. She looked me up and down with her brilliant eyes. It was like standing under a shower of cold spray.