The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  He looked at me out of swimmy, prominent eyes and said: “ Well, what do you think, boy?”

  “I think you’d have told me. But if they bothered to release me with the message they surely must sooner or later send for your reply.”

  “Well, when they do their messenger will receive an answer as plain as the nose on his face.”

  “D’you not think, then, that that shows the Spanish mean no invasion this summer?”

  “Oh, I’d reason nothing from it. Maybe they thought they’d try you out with this message to see if you’d deign to carry it. Maybe they had no thought except to mock us.”

  I knew this had been an offer made in deadly earnest, and I thought from an expression on my father’s face, as he bent to pick up a puppy, that he too was not deceived either. Sooner or later someone would come.

  Sometimes in the night, especially during those long fair nights of late June, I would lie awake and think of the elderly, scholarly, grey faced fanatic in the Escorial, with his tiny junta of powerful, clever, dedicated men around him; and I would think of the milling crowds in Madrid, and especially of the crowd gathered for the auto de fé; and I would think of the warships lying at anchor in Lisbon waiting for the word to sail.

  All through June and early July I was making love to Meg. Meetings were difficult, sometimes hurried, and the more difficult as the nights grew lighter and as Dick recovered his health and spirits. One night, the last of June, we were able to meet out of doors at nearly midnight in the woods behind the house. It was not dark, it was never dark those nights, with a pale blue reflected light over the northern horizon blending into an ultramarine sky in which the stars were never bright. We lay and made love in the long dew-damp grass, and afterwards walked across to the headland looking over towards France. I had never tried to fathom her feelings for Dick, but I knew that, whatever it had been at the beginning, now she was in love with me. We talked little. When we met there was the need for each other which grew no less with indulgence. I do not think we either of us thought much of the future. She was the stableman’s wife; that could not be altered. I was in love with her because she was pretty and kind, because she was my first woman, because I needed love, because at that age there is no other way to be. Perhaps she wanted it like this always; but if I wanted it as a permanence it was time that I wanted to stand still; a perpetual summer when I was 17; when everything is new and crisp and soft and brilliant; when the boy’s eye and the poet’s eye have the same vision. If time moved on, then that created other vistas. Soon or late, I was prepared to move with it.

  On the way home that night, climbing the palisade, she fell and turned her ankle; so I picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.

  “How strong y’are, Maugan,” she whispered, and I enjoyed my own strength and the feel of her firm thighs, and her warm arms round my neck. We got in somehow limping and conspiratorial and giggling in the dark. When I tip-toed to my room John woke but he did not ask where I’d been; and I lay for a long time beside him in a delicious, healthy, uplifted lassitude of muscle and mind until as dawn crept in sleep came with it.

  In early July my father, burying his differences in the emergency, went over to Godolphin and there conferred with Sir Francis, together with Bernard Grenville, Sir Richard’s eldest son, and Jack Arundell of Trerice, Sir Anthony Rowse, Hannibal Vyvyan and others. As a result Sir Francis addressed a letter to Lord Essex asking for more men to be sent into the West Country. “I still rest of the same mind,” he wrote, “that a stronger garrison be needed for all these parts, for the gathering of the Spaniards seems as a cloud that is like to fall shortly in some part of her Majesty’s dominions.”

  In the middle of the following week, before any reply could be got, galleys appeared off the north coast of the country, near St Eval. They came in close on that forbidding coast in the calm clear weather, making their soundings as they edged nearer the black and emerald rocks, but they had been seen and watched from early morning, and by the time they were within reach of shore Bernard Grenville and Jack Arundell had mustered a group of ill-assorted and ill-armed men to oppose the landing, if landing had been in the Spaniards’ minds. So the galleys sheered off.

  Thereafter no more alarms. The weather broke and the emergency passed. Haymaking began, and all set to get the meadows cut before the gusty dust-raising wind turned to rain. When the hay had all been cut and been left to dry and turned with pitchforks from day to day and then gathered and finally built into ricks, there was a night of carousing and celebration. Most of the men and boys, including all the Killigrew boys old enough to work, had been out all day and every day, having had food brought to them to save returning to the house; so now all was noise and laughter, with jokes and lewd banter and traditional songs. The girls were put into two carts and dragged by the half-drunken men round and round the yards, while Dick Stable preceded them on an ass, plucking unsteadily on his harp and singing:

  “With Hal-an-tow! Rumbelow!

  For we are up as soon as any day, O!

  And for to fetch the summer home

  The summer and the May, O!”

  My father was pleased with the hay, but his oats and wheat were thin because of the dry weather and because the land had not rested enough. We needed rain, he said, not this damnation wind.

  I remember on the 21st the weather set fine again, because it was the day I rode into Truro for more medicines for my grandmother. Every time I went to see Mistress Footmarker I stayed an hour or two learning fresh things about herbs and their mixtures and administrations; but she never let me see her mix the diacodium. She was so generous of her secrets that I sought for some other reason, and thought that she found satisfaction in doling out bottle by bottle the physic which did so much good for the woman she disliked. That way Lady Killigrew remained beholden to her, even though she might not know it. That way at any time, perhaps, the remedy could be withdrawn.

  At dawn on the 22nd three shallops, easily identifiable as Spanish, were in Falmouth Bay. They never came close enough to be fired on and after a morning of tension turned away and disappeared towards the south-west. Towards evening, in accordance with the agreement of two weeks ago, my father sent Belemus to Jack Arundell and me to tell Sir Francis.

  At Godolphin all was quiet. Lady Godolphin was unwell with an attack of the stone. For that she had been prescribed in London to take saxifrage root steeped in the blood of a hare, and she esteemed this as a remedy. My great aunt Margaret had been dead some years and I did not know Sir Francis’s second wife well enough to query her cure; nor did I know Katherine Footmarker’s though I remembered it had something to do with a prolonged diet of goat’s milk. Sir Francis had as yet received no answer from Essex.

  At Godolphin the family supped in one room and the servants afterwards in another. Sir Francis himself when busy with his papers ate frugally and alone. My father said he was mean, to eat so sparsely when so rich. That night we had a lonely meal, for Lady Godolphin was upstairs, his daughter was long since married, while his sons were all away, one still soldiering in Ireland, one commanding in the Scillies, a third at Westminster.

  Sir Francis said before I returned home tomorrow he would show me the tin works on Godolphin Hill, and so we went early to bed. I slept dreamlessly and was wakened by a thunderous knocking shortly after six. I thought I had overslept and pulled back the bed curtains as a servant came in.

  “Begging your pardon, sir. Sir Francis’s compliments and the Spanish have landed!”

  “What? Is it true? Where? How many?”

  “Tis thought about a thousand in the first landings. They come in by first light and captured the village of Mousehole. Word come five minutes gone!”

  I turned to claw into my clothes. Every button, every tie took twice the length of an ordinary day. Mousehole. I had never been there but I knew it as a fishing village horseshoed around a tiny harbour. And just above it, on the hill above it, was the twin village of Paul.

  We wer
e not above ten miles distant here. An hour’s gallop on a good horse … I bolted downstairs, found Sir Francis fastening his doublet while a servant buckled on his sword.

  “Ah, Maugan, you slept well? You have heard the news? So it has come at last. I have a commission for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ride and tell your father what is happening. Tell him to raise the alarm throughout his district and to gather his musters for instant use. Then I shall be obliged to him—”

  “Sir,” I said, “ I ask to be excused from carrying such a message.” He looked at me straightly from under his level brows. “ Let one of your servants carry it. It will not matter who bears the tidings. I wish to ride in the other direction.”

  Sir Francis looked down at his sword and lifted the hilt an inch to be sure it was free in its sheath. His face was grey with a tension that he did not allow to show in his words or speech. “That is the way I am riding.”

  “Yes, sir, so I thought.”

  “It is more important that the country should be raised than that the invasion should be at once resisted.”

  “How many soldiers have you at call, sir?”

  “Soldiers? None. Nor any relatives of combat age in this house. I shall take eight of my best servants, and I have sent to St Aubyn at Clowance, who is my nearest neighbour; there will be others coming across country as they hear.”

  “What arms will you have?”

  “Arms? Oh, we shall have some shot. And there will be billhooks a-plenty.”

  “I shall be more useful accompanying you than spreading the alarm. Another sword may not be unwelcome, and if you have pistols I can shoot.”

  Lady Godolphin came in. “Do not go, Francis, wait until the alarm has been generally raised. What can you do against the best soldiers in Europe?”

  “Oppress them by weight of numbers.”

  “You have no numbers. And what if the invasion spreads along the coast—as the day goes on there may be other landings—it is perhaps planned to take the whole of West Cornwall. Who is to guard this house?”

  Sir Francis put his gloved. hand on his wife’s arm. “ I like the choice no more than you, my love … But we are five miles from the nearest coast. And the miners with their pickaxes and shovels would be a stumbling block at the last.”

  “Oh, Francis, have care for yourself. You are not so young but that you must lead all the charges.”

  “I am not so old that I can stay behind.” He kissed her. “Be rid of your fears by the time I return. I’ll bring you a Spanish helmet for a cooking pot. Come, Maugan.”

  There was Sir Francis and myself and a yeoman farmer called Rame and eight servants. At the hamlet of Relubbas we overtook John St Aubyn who was going at half speed until we caught him up; with him were four servants, and presently we met Thomas Chiverton, who had fled his property at the first alarm but now took courage in our presence. Thereafter we picked up no more reinforcements while we circled Mount’s Bay.

  It was a splendid morning with a low fur of white fog hiding some of the sea. As we rode the three gentlemen talked in urgent tones. Mr St Aubyn was a rosy-faced, white moustached man of fifty, and he looked anything but a soldier. Sir Francis before setting out had sent off five messengers: one to Sir Anthony Rowse, one to Bernard Grenville, one to my father, one to the Privy Council in Whitehall and one to Drake and Hawkins in Plymouth, asking for immediate action to save the country.

  As we skirted Market Jew we found the first people fleeing in terror; women leading small children, old men hobbling and young men too, just as intent on getting away. Sir Francis spoke sharply to some of these latter, and a few turned about. But most pressed past us without pause. The Spaniards, they said, were pillaging and burning whatever they found and putting women and children to the sword. The dreadful fate of Antwerp—where 7, 000 had been slaughtered in a night—was in everyone’s mind.

  Smoke was rising round the bend of the bay. I jumped off my horse and caught one straggler urgently by the arm. “ How are the Spaniards heading? Are they set this way?”

  “Aye, master, they’m comin’ this way and every way. There’s thousands of ’em landing! They come in a dozen great ships! There were no wind at dawn an’ they oared in under cover of the fog. They was on us afore we could gather our wits!”

  “Are they going inland towards Paul?”

  “They’m goin’ all ways, master.” The man shook himself free.

  I caught the others up where they had stopped on the slope into Penzance and were talking to a group of a dozen men headed by a constable called Veysey. Veysey was plainly a level-headed fellow. He said the Spanish had landed several hundred men to begin and had thrown forward a slow moving and slow expanding semi-circle of picked troops, with pikes and guns. Behind them, behind the screen thus formed, came a second force which appeared in truth to be burning and pillaging everything it found. Lacking officers. or gentlemen to command, the group of Cornishmen forming round Veysey had accepted him as their leader, and the numbers swelled to about fifty men while information was being exchanged.

  Sir Francis wanted to organise a defence about the market place but a dozen of Veysey’s followers shouted their dissent; these were men of Mousehole who knew that all they possessed in the world was being destroyed. They had fled to save their lives but now that they were reinforced they wanted to return and fight.

  Sir Francis by right should have taken command, but I could see that he was swayed by the general mood and by the bold manner of Veysey. For my own ends I edged my horse nearer.

  “They’re fighting for their homes, sir. If they are left three hours to cool in the market place waiting for an attack they may go too cold to resist at all.”

  “What do you think, St Aubyn?”

  “We might do one as well as the other. I don’t see neither is likely to stay an army.”

  What swayed the choice was the arrival of some thirty more men, a half of this number armed with old guns and eager to come to grips with the enemy. Like new water in a stream blocked with twigs, all suddenly gave way; and we began to move towards Mousehole.

  It was an unorderly throng, sixty or seventy afoot, with about a score of horsemen, mostly centred in the middle around Sir Francis, but a few like myself edging forward after Veysey who knew and led the way.

  And it was a strange march too, for we traversed the open green which skirted the sea, and the fog, capricious as always, had come down in a sudden cloud on the water so that we could not see fifty yards from shore. As always with fog the world seemed the quieter, and here were no stragglers nor fleeing women. Our march was deadened by the grass; seventy men scuffled across it, twenty horses clumped into the turf; there was only the sound of creaking leather and shaking bits, the occasional clank of a pike or the rattle of a caliver.

  When to save time we cut off a corner and tramped across the shingle, the sudden noise of stones, of tramping feet, of slipping and clattering hooves was like an outbreak of giant hailstones. We reached the other side and tramped into silence again.

  The carpet of fog lifted its corner off the sea and we could see some of the invading fleet.

  They were four long black galleys, their masts stark, their oars out like the feelers of sea animals. On the foremast of each vessel a red and yellow flag hung. Small boats were ferrying soldiers ashore.

  An acrid smell of burning. We were still two miles from Mousehole; between us and it the fishing hamlet of Newlyn was in flames. The nearest of the boats was putting down its load a quarter of a mile away. As the soldiers jumped out they fell quickly into line, the thin sun glinting on their breastplates.

  Veysey came spurring back to Godolphin. “Sir, our way’s barred. If we’re to go on at all we’d best take to the ’ills and make a circle.”

  Sir Francis said: “No … We’ll deploy here. We may hold them for a while.”

  As he spoke there was a puff of smoke in the prow of the leading galley, then the clap of a gun and a ball whistled
overhead. We had been seen and saluted.

  Just as the press to go forward had been a common choice, so now was the halt. These galleys would carry 20 to 30 cast pieces each, and if they began to fire them on us we should be disposed of very quick. A marching body of men is a fine target for a 5 lb. shot.

  This must have occurred to everyone at the same time, for there was now a general move to retreat. The gentlemen did their best to stop this, shouting Godolphin’s order. But just at the wrong moment a second ball whistled over, and this was a more cogent argument than any we had. In a body the men gave way.

  But as they moved, two of the galleys began to move also, fifteen oars a side propelling the long hulls through the water, more than ever like sea animals after a prey.

  And the prey was us. They used their main armament no more. Perhaps with the prospect of a sea battle against Drake and Hawkins within the next few days they felt they could not afford to waste shot, but small arm fire flew after us and there was always the greater threat in reserve.

  Being on horseback, all Godolphin and the other riders could do was keep pace with the retreating men. Just before we turned the corner of the bay I stopped and looked back and could see the Spanish soldiers slowly advancing in two lines about fifty paces apart. Over to the right a glint of armour betrayed where a party on reconnaissance were climbing the hill from which they might discover ambushes and overlook Penzance.

  At that moment Constable Veysey was shot from his horse beside me and rolled over in the grass. That finished his followers; they broke and began to run in all directions away from the enemy. Sir Francis swore and drew his sword and sat his rearing horse shouting at them, but apart from his own few all fled.

  Veysey was unconscious but not dead, and we could find no wound nor bleeding; we rolled him over and saw the back of his leather jerkin torn in three places by the impact of spent bullets; we got him slung over the saddle and followed in pursuit of the flying men.

  By the time we came into the market place the retreating force had melted away. A few stragglers, late arriving for the advance, had assembled in the square, but they were almost all armed only with pikes and pickaxes and a few carried bows and arrows.