The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  She had no castanets, no high heels. She danced on a tiny piece of tiled floor, twisting round, holding her hands on high and clicking her fingers. Even in sandals she was able to make a rhythmic rattling with her heels. She shook and swayed as she danced. She writhed like a serpent, weaving her hips as if round an invisible rope. She used her hair like a Gorgon’s till it came alive and turned me to stone.

  The music stopped and she stopped and hung over the balcony looking down at her sister. You could not see her face for the cloud of hair. And in the corner her Ducnna sat quietly sewing.

  “That is what I show you, Maugan. That assuredly is what is meant by love.”

  “It’s a different thing.”

  “It is the real thing.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ya se lo he dicho.”

  “Yes …”

  She took up the scarf in which her hair had been bound and wiped her forehead and face with it. Then she began to wind up her hair in its ribbon.

  Isabella began idly to pluck at the strings again. One of the black slaves came along the balcony on some errand but he did not glance at us; servants in Spain are well trained. Mariana gathered up her books, her gold embroidery—on which she seldom worked—and brushed past me. Her sandals slip-slapped away and I heard them going up to the next floor. In a few moments the old woman in the corner also got up and followed quietly after.

  I tried to read but could not. Three images were in my mind: Sue; and Captain Burley; and Mariana. Were they all different sides of the same cube? I did not know. To me they were as different as pure air, foul water and fire. Every time I looked at the book, I saw Mariana. At last I decided to go to bed.

  On the next floor I had to pass several doors to reach the wooden stairs to the attic. One door was open and Mariana was sitting in front of a mirror braiding her hair.

  I went in. She laughed gently.

  I whispered: “Where is …?”

  “Tartara? Dismissed, as she should be. I thought you would come.”

  “I …”

  “Wait.” Mariana rose and shut the door behind me. Then she stood against it, her hands behind her waist, still quietly, cynically smiling. I went nearer to her. She took a step from the door and put her arms round my neck and kissed me, her breasts against my rough shirt. She was the same height as I was. Her mouth sought out mine.

  I ran my hands up and down her back feeling the warmth and liveness of her through the satin, then slipped them round and grasped her breasts. But while we clung to each other in a voluptuous hunger that drowned my free will, a strange thing happened. I found I wished to escape from what I had seemed most to desire.

  I remembered Sue Farnaby; I was hers not any other woman’s and I wanted no other. And I only wished to go at my own speed in love, not be dragged along down an ever steeper slope.

  I jerked my head up and tried to unloose her arms.

  “What is it? There is no one.”

  “Mariana, it was someone, I’m sure.” She had given me the only possible excuse.

  “No one will come in here.”

  “No. Mariana. It is not just that. It—it would bring disgrace on you—”

  I at last got free of her and went to the door. I did not dare look back, for I knew if I looked at her again I was lost.

  “Maugan!” she said.

  I went out.

  For days after that I was a swimmer in cross currents too strong for me. Much of the time I was glad of what I had done, glad of a fidelity to Sue Farnaby and to an ideal of love more important than a hot groping passion in a shadowy bedroom. But ever and again I would be I swept with a feeling of shame, as if by denying Mariana I had denied my new manhood.

  I knew too that by turning away from her I had done my hopes of escape a mortal disservice. If any one could have helped me it would have been she if she were my lover, she had just the generous reckless nature not to count the risk to herself.

  As the days passed dissatisfaction and self-criticism grew. Could I have been slightly less fastidious, slightly more calculating, I would have had the best of all worlds.

  Thomas Arundell was staying in the square in front of the palace, and I went to see him with Rodez to keep me company. I found him admiring several pictures he had bought, and for a time he seemed reluctant to drag himself away from them.

  “So, Maugan. You are going to the auto de fé next week?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Yes, he is,” said Rodez.

  “As a spectacle,” said Mr Arundell dryly, “it may be interesting. But in Rome they gave up such displays about a thousand years ago.”

  “Sir,” said Rodez, “ this is a solemn act of faith not a vulgar wild beast show.”

  Arundell went across to the easel in the corner of the room. “There are blues and greens here which defy analysis, which seem to come of a supernatural commingling of colour. I have seen such colours again and again this week on the canvases of the painter, Dominico Teotocopoli. They are a revelation. D’you know anything of painting, young man?”

  “No, sir.”

  “A pity. Some of the Killigrews have a turn for art. And piracy, of course. A strange family. Nearly as strange as the Arundells, and we, God knows, are devious enough. Passionate in all things, even in wrong-headedness. You think my brother is serious in his reconversion?”

  “He risks his freedom for it.”

  “Well … well. You seem widely informed in some matters. Do you know my sister Alice?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She lives now, I’m told, in seclusion in Tregony, having like me never wavered in her faith. The family split, young man, she and I true, Anthony and Henry turncoats. I am glad Anthony is trying to save his soul even if so late in the day; not so Henry, I’ll warrant, a damned stubborn dyed-in-the-wool heretic if ever I saw one. Alice was my favourite—she’s still unmarried I’ll wager, like the rest of us. I’d like you to take this letter to her if you return.”

  “If I—”

  Mr Arundell glanced at Rodez. “ No, well, it’s no more than a rumour but there’s a rumour abroad that you may be sent home.”

  “Sent home?”

  “Oh, I know nothing of it. There was talk of an exchange of a prisoner or something of the sort. Of course that may well come to nothing. But if it should, then I want you to take this letter, for I have had no word from Alice for five years.”

  “Gladly.” My mind was in some sort of leap-frog.

  Mr Arundell went on talking; he was a great talker and I stayed for nearly an hour. For a time I was in a half world of my own, yet ever and again I would make a desperate effort to attend to what he said, lest some further hint might be dropped. For the most part he talked about painting, which seemed to be the subject nearest to his heart. I wondered if he would ever come back to England, as he clearly hoped, and if he came whether it would seem too grey and cold to him after so many years in the southern sun.

  I ventured at last to interrupt him again with a question, and he said:

  “Come back to your true religion, boy, that’s the important thing, and if you’re a good Catholic the Spaniards will be far more likely to release you, since they’ll be sending home a Christian and not a heretic. Tis only a matter of time, boy, before this secession of the northern countries comes to an end: there is no wisdom or reverence in it: they fight for the devil. Have you had instruction since you came to Madrid?”

  “Someone—I don’t know his name—from the Holy Office has seen me several—”

  “Oh, they are far from being the best teachers. They’re auxiliaries of the King of Spain—saving your presence, Mister Rodez. Get you a good Jesuit, who draws his spiritual message straight from the Vicar of Christ in Rome. You will find such a man infinitely persuasive and infinitely comforting. Ask Señor Prada, he’ll know such a one.”

  “We have a Benedictine in our household,” said Rodez sullenly.

  Mr Arundell had picked up a small painting
. “ See this, Maugan Killigrew. Done by the same artist in Toledo. Observe the slender elongated figure of Christ. Do you not get from it an impression of a supernatural being, an earthly form transcended by the Holy Spirit? It is supreme painting, such as I have never seen before. Some day I will hang it in my own house in my own country, when religion is preached there once again! May it be soon, for I grow no younger. My father died at twenty-nine, and we come not of a long-lived stock.”

  On the way home I pestered Rodez to explain what Thomas Arundell meant, but Rodez said he had heard nothing of my going home. Rodez was in a sulky mood for he had not liked Mr Arundell’s outspoken words on things Spanish. I asked Rodez about the auto de fé, and Rodez said, yes, it was to be in honour of the 16th birthday of Prince Philip the heir to the throne and the King’s only surviving son.

  As we came to the door of the house the old soldier with the withered band who had spoken to Mariana was waiting there. Rodez told him brusquely that Señor Prada was not in and would not be in; if he wished to see him he must come again in the morning, and be here early. The old soldier muttered: “It is all very well, but my employment has ended. Hunger drives talents to do things which are not on the map.” He slouched away.

  I had been only three months in Spain, less than two in Madrid, but by now I was fully understanding the language; it had come suddenly in the last two weeks as a result of all the concentrated effort.

  When we got in we found the house in a great commotion. Mariana storming through the kitchen in one of her moods had upset a pan of boiling water and scalded her foot and leg. Maids and servants were still running with unguents and smelling salts, and two apothecaries were in attendance.

  I did not sleep well that night. With Mariana in pain servants were kept at the stretch, and I heard footsteps on and off until dawn. But what really kept me awake was another dawn—that of hope. Even now one hardly dared to speculate lest it was some trap set to weaken resistance. Supposing I was now confronted by the grey-faced priest: would I be right in dissembling one more time? Whatever happened, he must be avoided now.

  For some days I was not allowed to see Mariana, for she kept her room and apothecaries visited her almost hourly. On the fourth morning after her accident, Rodez going in, I followed him and was startled by her pallor and evident pain. No one had told me if the scald was severe or slight, and I had felt that Mariana, being Mariana, would have made a commotion in either case; but I saw that she was feverish and ill. Rodez going to one side of the bed, I approached the other where her duenna sat stitching, but when Mariana saw me she turned on her side and began to talk brightly to Rodez of the week’s entertainments that she was missing. When at last there was a pause I said:

  “I am sorry you have had such an accident, Mariana.”

  She said to Rodez: “ How is it the little piojo is in my room? Did he creep under the door?”

  I said: “ Last summer I was shown how to make a salve to cure burns. I was shown it by a witch.”

  Mariana said: “And no doubt cured the Queen of England with it when she burned her fingers on a candle snuffer.”

  “No, I have not seen it in use. But she was a wise woman who taught me.”

  “Well,” said Rodez, “ it could do little worse than these apothecaries have done.”

  “I swore never to tell the ingredients. But I do not think you have them all here.”

  “Dios me perdone,” said Mariana. “You can work magic but not now!”

  “I could try. Is the scald healing?”

  “Hah! Healing!” said Rodez.

  Mariana said: “ Tell the little piojo to go away; he makes my head to ache.”

  “Let me see the scald,” I said.

  They looked at me as if I had said something indecent.

  “See it?” said Mariana. “It is on my leg.”

  Considering what I had seen of her in this candle-lit bedroom a few nights ago, I thought her modesty a small matter over-done.

  Rodez said: “ They poultice and poultice and it grows worse. Maugan has sisters of his own.”

  “Don’t let him touch me,” said Mariana. “I could not bear it!”

  “If part is on the foot,” I said, “suffer me to see the foot.”

  “A child of your age,” she said contemptuously over her shoulder. “What have you had to do with witches?”

  “Does flax grow in this country? And bog moss? And indigo? I don’t know if I could find the ingredients.”

  For the first time they seem impressed.

  “There are a dozen quacks selling their nostrums every morning in the square,” said Rodez. “ I do not know if they have anything you want or would sell it. See tomorrow. Mariana, do not be a stupid pig; if Maugan knows something you can hardly be worse off to try it.”

  “Let him mix it first,” she said. “Then I will decide for myself. Now go away; his voice makes my head to ache.”

  It was lucky that I did not see the burn then or I might have been afraid to try. Even so I wonder at the courage. But youth is reckless and confident; something of my own faith in Katherine Footmarker gave me faith in myself. The next morning I was out early with Rodez. Often I could not be sure; the names were different and I was no expert at knowing herbs on sight or smell.

  We came home with a dozen things: oil from the flax, lime water, powdered bark of the red elm. I diluted and sprinkled and mixed them with a salve which had a white soap from Flanders as its basis. When it was done it was a pungent unassimilated mess very different from what she had given me in a box for the Michell child. But I spread it on moss I had bought and that all on a white cloth and carried it upstairs.

  She was less vituperative this morning after another feverish night, and allowed me a sight of her leg as far as the highest burn which was on her calf. The blisters had long since been pulled off the burns and left festering sores, rank and raw and almost bleeding. They were still discoloured with the dressings of the latest apothecary, and Footmarker would have said this had first to be cleansed away; but a look at Mariana’s bottom lip told me that if once she was put in more pain she would refuse to be touched. So I cut the poultice into two parts and put one on her foot and the other on her leg. She muttered something under her breath, and the tears which came into her eyes she shook away. I waited for an explosion but none came, so was in haste to tie a light bandage around each burn to keep the salve in place.

  Later that morning there was an angry commotion in the bedroom when one of the apothecaries came and protested against his not being allowed to see the wound. Supported by the duenna, he warned Mariana and Señora Prada of the dire risks they were running in allowing a heretic—and a child heretic at that—to meddle in such matters. They were imperilling not merely Mariana’s life but her soul. It was well known that the Devil used such people as one of his most favourite instruments.

  But Mariana, once set on her way, would not be moved. They had had their throw, she said; now, by good Jesu, let another be given the chance.

  In the evening she sent word down that I was to prepare another such poultice for the morrow. I heard privately that the morning application had brought some relief, and that no doubt had fortified her in my favour.

  So for three days it went on. Each day another mixture— never, I thought, quite the same as the last, and each day I put it on a leg and foot that were growing cooler and less inflamed.

  So was she. She took now to calling me, ‘Doctor Leech,’ that irony of voice which absolved her of any risk of being thought serious. Yet others in the house knew of her improvement, and both Rodez and Isabella used me with greater consideration. Looking back now, I am in wonderment that I was not more surprised. Perhaps I have not ever been as surprised or as grateful for this gift as I should be.

  On the day before the auto de fé she hobbled downstairs and I told her she had no more need of ointment.

  She said: “But the best apothecaries never finish. Siempre seras bien recibido.”

  Ro
dez and I went to the auto de fé alone. He was by nature late for everything, so when we got to the Plaza Mayor just after dawn two or three thousand people were already there, as well as hundreds crowding the balconies of the four-storey houses. At one side of the square was the King’s balcony, and opposite on a raised dais two cages in which about sixteen prisoners were housed. I could see all this plainly, but the floor of the square was cut off from my view by the heads and shoulders of the people in front of me, and the wooden stands which had been built for the occasion were swarming with people who clung to them like flies to a meat bone.

  About seven a. m. the King and Queen and Prince Philip and a number of people of the court began to take their seats, and towards eight the procession began. Peering through heads I could see perhaps 100 charcoal men carrying muskets and pikes, and two or three hundred Dominican monks with banners, led by a man on a white horse carrying the standard of the Holy Office, red with a silver sword in a crown of laurel. Then there were halberdiers and grandees and three men bearing a crucifix wrapped in black crepe. The crucifix and the standard were fixed on the altar and prayers began, led by the Grand Inquisitor.

  I stood back on my heels and stared at the crowd, listened to the great murmur of voices, the chanting. In the centre were solid ranks of glittering soldiery, the massed squares of monks. This was the generative core of a nation far richer and more populous and more famous in arms than ours. If England were ever conquered scenes such as this would take place every week in London, and there would be no lack of fuel for the fires.

  After another parade the Grand Inquisitor began to preach. It had been cold in the square in the early morning, but as the sun rose the heat grew until the air was foetid and stifling. From here it was impossible to hear what was said and the patient crowd began to shuffle and fidget. Some took out rolls of bread and began to eat them with garlic and leeks. Stallholders had set up trestles at the foot of the stands, and they did a good trade selling cups of cordial and bowls of broth. A monk with the strange hood of a capuchin was collecting maravedis and gifts in kind for the poor.