The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  “Ah,” she said. “But I’ve a fondness for this poor snake who I doubt did no wrong in all his life. Let me see … bronchitis and tissick. That would not be so easy.”

  She stretched her long back and went into the cottage. Presently she came out again carrying two bottles but at first she would not give them to me.

  “This one, a simple remedy of horehound and comfrey, is to be taken durin’ the day. This second at night. But I warn you this second is like to make her sleepy—and I can promise no cure.”

  “She can be hardly harmed by it—or be worse and live. What is it?”

  “A diacodium. I give them you both on a condition—that she never knows where you got them. It’s a fancy I have.”

  I agreed, but when I offered to pay she laughed harshly. “You and I have a running account, Maugan. First one pays something and then th’ other. The time to strike a balance is not now.”

  There had been a small frosty sun just after midday, and now on the way home shafts of it broke through the clouds and fell like dipped lances over the moors. By the time the woods above Penryn were reached the day had closed in and the light was moist and grey. The church bell was tolling; the breeze bore the sound up the hill; someone was dead.

  Just past the ruined monastery buildings I came up with two men on foot, one helping the other who seemed ill. One was Timothy Carpenter and the other Dick Stable. Dick had a great cut across his head and was spitting blood. Timothy, though in better shape, limped at each step.

  I put Dick on my horse and walked beside Timothy. They had been to Penryn on business for my father and had stopped for a drink at Piper’s Tavern. There they had heard that old Sebastian Kendall was dead. Three or four Penryn quarry men had been in the tavern and one had shouted it was that virgin-thief Maugan Killigrew who had really killed the old man.

  So the result. When we got in Dick was found to be bleeding at the mouth only for lost teeth, but the cut on his head went deep as a crater, and they had both been hard used. I took the story to my father and suggested I went with ten men to Penryn that night to teach them a lesson.

  He shook his head.

  When I looked put out he shouted: “I’ve told you before! I do not fall over only for two reasons: the forbearance of the Queen which Uncle Henry sees to; and a similar forbearance on the part of the Privy Council, Cecil chief among them. But I have had my warnings. They’ll not abide mischief. The war’s too tense. So Penryn must go unpunished. Let them be.”

  “Give me leave to do something in private.”

  “You could not, for nothing ever stays private where the Killigrews are concerned. When this wedding’s through things will be different. Once you start to defeasance your bonds, your creditors become no longer pressing for payment! It’s a sorry paradox. Have patience. May will soon be here.”

  I took this message back to Belemus who pulled his little beard. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. It all goes much against the grain.”

  “Imagine Sebastian Kendall being dead. I wonder if it was I who killed him.”

  “Nonsense, he died of a tumour, that happens whether or not. I wonder if they buried him with his gold rings.”

  “Well, they could hardly get them off short of filing them; his knuckles were too great.”

  “Filing through gold is a long business,” said Belemus, “ and disrespectful to the dead. The Kendalls had a great veneration for the old ruffian.”

  “Which we have not,” I said.

  “Walk so far as the point with me,” Belemus said. “ I think we should talk.”

  Chapter Four

  By the sea night is seldom so black as inland; it is as if some reflection of the long sunk sun glimmers in the sky. But this night was perversely an exception, and the churchyard of St Gluvias was an unwelcoming place when we reached it. Our horses had been nervous all the way and had had to be urged forward into the dark. I had calculated that a third-quarter moon would rise about three, and that if we arrived at two much of the spade work would already be done by the time the moon got up. In fact it must have taken us fifteen minutes longer than calculated to cover the short journey, and then, stumbling over headstones and groping among tall grasses, it was another ten before we certainly located the grave.

  We worked for a while in silence—although the thud of our digging, the rattle of the stony earth as we shovelled it out seemed to fill the night around. Once or twice Belemus’s mattock struck sparks off stones, and to us they looked bright enough to raise an alarm.

  There was no house or cottage within a quarter mile, and our most likely discoverer was some tin streamer returning from Carnon or a rogue marauding for himself and unlikely to make his presence known.

  Imperceptibly as we worked the graveyard grew lighter. Delicately by fine balances the weights grew less heavy on our eyes. I found it possible to see Belemus, up to his knees in the hole we had dug, to notice the gnarled elm leaning askew like a tired witch across a view of the town. An owl which had been out all night with shrill melancholy cries was no longer invisible. Then as my spade struck on something which gave off no sound, the clouds broke over the east and a gibbous moon peered across the river.

  It could hardly have been better timed, but now we had to go slow, for though I was not squeamish I had no wish to impale old Kendall on the mattock or the spade.

  Eventually we cleared enough round the cloth-wrapped figure to try to lever it up, but stones and earth kept showering down, and the corpse was as limp as a dead rabbit. So we had to dig more, and then distastefully brush the clay and earth off the wrappings with our fingers.

  I had remembered Sebastian Kendall as a gnarled, power-fully-built old man with straggling grey hair. This stinking mummy seemed half the size; the face as the dirt fell away looked withered and grey, the eyes peeped out of slit lids.

  “Faugh!” said Belemus. “Have you a knife?”

  I fumbled in my belt. The owl fluttered round again, his wings black against the upturned moon.

  I passed the knife to Belemus who was now standing in the grave. He got to work, and the foul stench of decay rose into the night. He at last sawed through the cloth and reached the corpse’s arms, which were folded across the chest. We were able to see both hands together, and Belemus lifted one of them. “Look.”

  Before being buried Sebastian Kendall had been deprived of his fingers and left only with the stumps. It seemed that whatever veneration the Kendalls might have for their grandfather it did not extend so far as we had supposed.

  The next morning early my uncle Simon Killigrew arrived, having slept with the Arundells at Trerice. His coming was unexpected and not welcome to my father, who knew that he seldom saw his brother when Simon was in funds, and who, as he said to me, had enough hungry mouths to feed without another and one of extravagant tastes added to his board.

  Simon was interesting for the news he brought. Ralegh had at last obtained a patent for further adventure and only last Thursday had left Plymouth in command of five ships, bound no one knew whither. Accompanying him were seven score gentlemen adventurers, among them many from the west country including John Grenville, Sir Richard’s younger son, a cousin of Ralegh’s called Butshead Gorges, and Ralegh’s nephew John Gilbert. There was a rumour they had gone in search of El Dorado.

  Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins were also known to be fitting out an expedition which was to seek plunder in the West Indies. All this filled me with an intense restlessness. I would have done anything to sail with Drake. The Spanish would be in terror if they knew he was out.

  Much was feared at Court, Simon, said, of the situation in France. Although Henry of Navarre, now undisputed King, had declared war on Spain, as he had undertaken to do, he was not prosecuting the struggle with any vigour. Indeed in the last weeks he had signed local truces with the Spanish in Brittany, in Normandy and elsewhere. At any time such truces might culminate in a treaty of peace which would take France out of the war altogether. The Pope, it was said,
was only too willing to mediate.

  Moreover the Archduke Albert, now the first soldier of Spain, had been sent to take over the government of the Netherlands. And the remaining English troops in Brittany were being withdrawn, leaving the way clear for the Spanish sea-raiders to prowl the narrow seas. All this pointed to increased danger for the exposed counties of the South-West.

  Fresh money was being voted, Simon said, for the further fortification of the Scillies. The fort, half completed on St Mary’s, was to be hastened forward and two sconces added. Another £400 was to be granted out of the customs of Plymouth and Cornwall to help towards the cost. (My father sneered on hearing this and said, why was it Godolphin got all the concessions? Whose ear did he have access to that he should always be treated with such priority over the legitimate and more pressing needs of others, such as the Killigrews of Pendennis?)

  In the middle of this interchange Parson Merther came in with terrible news of happenings in Penryn. An old man buried yesterday had been dug out of his grave and his fingers cut off for the rings he wore. What was worse the corpse had been carried out of its grave and left in a sitting position in one of the front pews of the church where a woman this morning had found it, almost to the loss of her reason. This act, said Parson Merther, would of course be a hanging matter if the culprits were ever found. My father, on being told that the old man’s name was Kendall, raised a fish-like eye in my direction, but such was the offence that he did not dare ask if I had had any part in it.

  The news Uncle Simon had brought of the withdrawal of the English troops from Brittany was a great blow to the west. That evening after supper Hannibal Vyvyan came hastily from over the water, and we talked long into the night. My father said it would have served better if Ralegh and Drake and Hawkins were at home at this time instead of jaunting off in search of the plunder of the Indies. Hannibal Vyvyan, a gaunt high-nosed man, had not seen me since my return, and I was subject of a cross-fire of questions from him and from Simon on what I had seen and heard in Spain. It was agreed about midnight that a joint letter signed by my father and Hannibal Vyvyan should be sent to the Privy Council urging that money, new levies and better armaments should be alloted for the defence of Falmouth Haven.

  The next day Dick Stable was taken ill of the blow he had received, which was more grievous than we had supposed. Each time he got up his senses swam and he shivered and shook and had to lie down. I tried my hand with him, though where the brain is damaged there is little that medicaments can do. About this time died the falconer, Corbett, who had been injured in the head at the time of the fight in the hall in 1592. It made us all anxious about Dick for fear he might go the same way.

  Lady Killigrew was sleeping better and, imperceptible as the rising of a tide, vitality began to creep back. She wrote letters again and talked of visiting her daughter Lady Billingsley in Devon. She plagued her elder and unmarried daughter Mary with proposals that they should go to Westminster together. She took a new interest in terrorising the servants with threats of dismissal.

  She continued to pick at me. When the bottle she had been taking was done I fetched her another and another from Mistress Footmarker, saying to my grandmother there was a new herbalist in Truro. Mrs Dorothy Killigrew guessed different; and a conspiracy grew up between her and me that when someone was ill in the house I should ride and describe the symptoms to Katherine Footmarker and bring back her salves or balsams or simples. It helped me to understand more about sickness and its cures.

  When Uncle Simon left, my father rode with him, taking Stephen Wilkey and Thomas Rosewarne. While he was away Belemus and I were up to one wild prank after another. Nothing was too rash for us to attempt, and no questions of morality troubled our sleep. I persuaded myself I was enjoying this new and unfettered life; but instead of allowing experience to happen to me I pursued it with the feverish joyless energy of someone seeing his days foreshortening and anxious to savour them while there is still time. I persuaded myself I had forgotten Sue Farnaby, with as much success as comes to a man who tries to ignore a knife in his guts.

  It was the first day of May, and the last day of a spell of weather which had brought summer too soon. If you could get out of the south-east wind, in a valley or behind a rock, it was warmer than many a July. In the haven white wavelets danced a coranto all the way from St Anthony Point to Arwenack steps.

  In the morning I had been with three men scattering wood ash on the meadows, the wind doing much of the work for us; and then in the middle of the day instead of returning to the house I ate a rabbit pasty and walked out to see how the sheep were faring which had been set to summer early on the moor between Pennance and St Budock. On the way home near Mongleath I heard quarrelling voices and came on Meg Levant, very fiery but very terrified while two beggars menaced her for money she had not got. They were sturdy men and armed with sticks, but I had the advantage of being more ready to fight, so after a short set to they turned and fled.

  “Well,” I said, breathless, “so this is how you behave so soon as my back’s turned!”

  Her hair had come loose, and the wind blew it in tails across her face.

  “Oh, Maugan! That grab-thief wi’ the beard … I been over to Menehay to get a moonstone they say’s good for the dizziness. Old Sarah Pound has loaned it me for a week to try on Dick.”

  “You have it now?”

  “Aye, I was afraid they might steal it, though they’d ha’ had to take mortal liberties to find it.”

  “Show it me.”

  “Turn your back then.”

  I looked across at the sea and listened to rustling clothes behind me.

  “There.”

  I turned it over, a glistening bauble, worth a rose noble perhaps but unlikely to have curative value. “Why, it’s warm!”

  “Well, I wanted to carry it safe!”

  “You’re not afraid of my stealing it, then?”

  “Nay, I’m not afraid o’ that.”

  We began to walk home. I realised that the event which had just taken place could hardly have occurred more favourable for me. All her romantic instincts would be gratified.

  I looked sidelong at her as we walked. Her breasts were high and her stomach slender, her blunt freckled face was distinguished by the fine long eyes. We sat on a bank that looked towards the sea, while the warm wind streamed past us. I wondered if honesty might pay the best result.

  “Meg, would you believe something to be true if I told you it was true?”

  “Ah … that depends.”

  “Would you believe at least that I’m not joking?”

  She frowned and pushed hair away from her eyes. “ What is it?”

  “I have never made love to a woman.”

  She stared at me for several seconds. Then she burst out laughing. “Who-ee! What d’ye take me for—one of the lambs up there? Baa-aa!”

  “It is true!”

  “And Sibylla Kendall? No doubt you played Primero on the bed wi’ she!”

  “Sibylla was Belemus’s girl. The night I was surprised with her, Belemus had been wounded and I’d gone to tell her of it.”

  Meg continued to laugh, though I could see a flicker of interest somewhere at the back of her eyes. I took calculated offence.

  “Very well, then. You can find me of use when set on by thieves but in the next breath you call me a liar, which is cousin to a thief and hardly better. Take your stone and find your own way home!”

  I threw the stone in her lap and went off. She called “Maugan!” but I took no notice. However, I strode not so fast as I might have done and could hear her after me. On the right was a thicket of white hawthorn which I knew well, and I plunged into it, made for the glade in the centre of it and flung myself down. She caught me up.

  “I’m sorry, Maugan, twas not meant as an offence. Truly I thought you was joking. Truly I thought that. Is it strange that I thought it? You was in Spain a six month, and then everyone believes you was Sibylla’s lover, that’s believed by all!
If you say twas not so I believe you, but I always thought it, and so I thought you was joking.”

  I did not answer.

  After a silence she breathed out. “I fancy I ha’n’t been here before. Look at all they bluebells! And the may blossom! Tis like a wedding.”

  Within fifty yards the open moorland began again, but here you might have been in a forest. Sheaves of bluebells fisted up among the trees, and the hawthorns were white with blossom which was falling as constant as snow. The wind whistled through the trees like wind in the rigging of ships. Even here in the centre of the glade Meg’s hair was blowing over her face; but it was a filtered wind, sifted of its violence and warm. The sun beat down.

  “Maugan, I believe you.”

  I said: “When I was on my way home with Captain Elliot, Justinian Kilter was aboard. He said he had made free with you on his last visit.”

  “Who? That fair man that was ’ere afore the fever outbreak? I never seen him since! If he was aboard when the Neptune last called he never showed his face at Arwenack! What wickedness to say such a thing!”

  “He said you have a mole on your left breast.”

  “Oh, what lewdness! Well, I have not, and you can tell ’im so next time you see him!”

  “I have to believe you now?”

  “Yes!”

  “Seeing’s believing.”

  A shower of petals floated down between us. “That’s lewd talk from you again, Maugan Killigrew.”

  “I don’t think it so.”

  “Well, it is so.”

  “Is love ugly, then?”

  “I didn’t say twas.”

  “Then is it lewd?”

  She plucked a bluebell and put it against her nose and smelt it. I moved to her and took her hand. She pulled it away, so I took the other which was holding the bluebell. She looked at me, less certain of herself than was usual in Meg.

  “Tell me,” I said, “what is it like?”

  “What’s what like?”

  “Making love with a woman.”