The Grove of Eagles

by Winston Graham

  Buarcos yawned. “Killigrew, you affect my appetite. The mere stink of you is an insult. Do you know that in the fight to capture your miserable ship over forty of my countrymen died? Near on thirty of those were killed by an explosion set off treacherously at the moment of surrender. Another twenty are maimed or grievously injured. Why should I care what happens to you? I am in the confident hope that very soon Madrid will forget. Then such of you as are left can be put to death for sport. It is a dull place, Lagos, and there is too little sport.”

  Horses stirred in the stables underneath. Tonight the table was set for supper; silver on good white linen; one brown manicured hand toyed with the salt-cellar.

  I said: “ There speaks a Spanish gentleman. After this a return to the cell will be sweet.”

  I turned to go, but Captain Buarcos shouted a word to the guards and they seized me. They thrust me round to face him, and he stared at me while thoughtfully picking his nose.

  “Killigrew, Madrid knows there are captives here, but one more or less will not concern them. It is St Matthew’s day next I week, and we will have you out of your cell then and will grill you over a slow fire. It will give you something to think of until then besides the tribulations of a poor diet. Remember, in eight days you will be free! You may rely on that—on the word of a Spanish gentleman!”

  Now I was thrust out, along with George, but as we left Buarcos bawled after us: “And until then you will all be on a half supply of food and water. You’ve been living too well in captivity!”

  On the way back we tramped in silence. George said at last: “I think we should kill that man.”

  “I cannot keep my tongue quiet! God, I should not imagine he could deprive us of such water as we’ve had! It’s little enough for bare existence in this weather! … So we are back where we were—but worse off!” I was so angry I could scarcely swallow. There was no room yet to consider his threat against me. The anger drummed in my ears like lust.

  Major George said again: “I think we should kill that man.”

  It was a hot night, as hot as any I remember, and the smell in the cell was sickening. The narrow windows should have allowed in some air, but the air was too still to circulate. All that entered were the mosquitoes which swarmed everywhere. We had no light, so I could not see Victor’s face while I told him. Perhaps he had expected nothing, for he took the disappointment very calmly. All he said was: “I wish Crocker would learn to play in tune.”

  Crocker was trying to play:

  “If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor?

  For love is warm, and courage listeth cold …”

  In a corner Mabe, my pupil, was near his end. Unlike Victor, he did not bear his pains quietly. I sat up all that night with Victor, wafting a cloth before his face to give him the air he so much needed and trying to keep away the mosquitoes which were constantly settling on his face. My own fever had returned, and I shivered and fretted in company with him. In the morning he looked very grey and drawn, much as he had on the first day after his wounds at Cadiz.

  “Maugan, if you see Sherborne again, go, please, to the house of Mistress Katherine Churcher, and tell her that in my last hours I thought only of her. Will you do that?”

  “Now, now, I don’t like this way of talking. May I ask you, if you reach England first—”

  “No, Maugan, let us be practical. For eight weeks I’ve walked on a thread, and the thread is wearing thin. If the worst befalls I ask you to go to Mistress Katherine Churcher of Cerne Abbas, some ten miles south of the castle. You’ll find her married to a man for whom she has neither love nor respect—take her aside and in private tell her that I have always loved her, and, if at death there be any flame in me that does not puff out, that I shall do so for all eternity …”

  “Quiet, now, drink this. It will ease the pain …”

  On the Sunday Mabe died. That left six of us. On the same night Major George dislodged the stone which had been holding up his efforts to move the bar. Now he could make progress again. But I was too sick and sad to aid him. I sat with Victor all day, he now being barely conscious. His face was changing under the strain; the daylight seemed to make his lank fair hair grey and he might have been sixty. Once I got blood on my hand, and it was in just the place Katherine Footmarker had traced it with a long finger that day in the clearing by the mill above Penryn. I thought, if it had not been for me none of this need have happened. Victor would not have gone into the church and we should not have been wounded; so we should not have been sent home thus and captured. Already, I had killed a half-score men in my life, but it was not the blood of my enemies Katherine Footmarker had seen, it was the blood of my friends …

  On the Monday and Tuesday, with that tenacity which marked his seemingly frail constitution, Victor rallied and was able to take a little of the precious milk I had bought from Cabeças with another jewel. The coming Friday was St Matthew’s day, but so far I had not believed in it: anger and remorse were so great that it cut my mind away from the future. I tended Victor constantly, and visions of the auto de fé seen in Madrid only crept in each day with the brazen light of dawn.

  On the Wednesday there was a big change in Victor. He seemed no longer to be in pain, and only his breathing was difficult, as if there were phlegm at the back of his throat. His face lost its tensions and the aged look disappeared as if a sponge more cooling than mine had wiped it away. Even his hair and month-old beard became smooth and silky instead of bedraggled and unkempt.

  So about two in the afternoon he died.

  They took his body away that evening, and left the door of the cell open for a few minutes to create a draught of air through.

  There were only five of us now: Crocker, George, Stevens, Fletcher and myself. I had stared for the last time at features clear-cut and thin but already beginning to lose their familiar outlines in the great heat and with the first touch of corruption. George was working away at his window; Crocker was supporting him; Fletcher and Stevens were too ill to help; I sat and fingered the lute.

  This was the only symbol of him left, and its strings were silent. It was like the corroding body which had just been carried out, an empty thing without the animating spirit to give it sentience and purpose.

  And where was that animating spirit? Not here. Not ever again here.

  I seemed to hear Victor’s voice in my ear, echoing from three months back: ‘She’s superstitious. She considers him unlucky. She says on each voyage he loses some splendid youth. John Grenville last time. Who this?’

  Somewhere a lamb was bleating, and it set a mule off whinnying and snorting. Today had been the day of the market in the square, and some peasants were still clearing up. You could hear the sound of earthenware pots knocking together, and sometimes the rattle of a cart. Presently there was another sound much nearer at hand, metal falling, but I gave it no attention until Major George spoke.

  “Killigrew! We’re through! Killigrew! By the bowels of Christ, we’re through!”

  ‘I would not want it to be me,’ Victor had said. ‘I would not call you a splendid youth,’ I said. ‘Agreed!’ he said. ‘The dangers which threaten don’t threaten me. Tell her so.’

  “Killigrew,” said George. “Do you hear me? We’re through!”

  I got up. “ I hear you.”

  Did a young woman in Cerne Abbas turn and twist that night beside her sleeping husband? ‘Kathy! Kathy!’ That was what he had muttered when I had dragged him half conscious out of the Cadiz church. So life and love are lost, and the lute is silent …

  “Killigrew!”

  “It’s too late.”

  George slipped off Crocker’s shoulders and came up. One side of his face was like a riven tree, the eye puckered and sightless.

  “It’s never too late to get out of here, boy. Remember what you’re threatened with on Friday.”

  “It’s too late!” I shouted angrily. “Victor is gone … And these …” I gestured at Fletcher and Stevens. “ They can
scarcely stand.”

  Crocker came over to us. “ Well? Are we making a dash tonight? Are you with us, Killigrew? Say Yes or No. The moon’ll be gone in an hour. I say, go now. Who knows what may happen tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” said George, “there’s nothing to delay for.” He patted my arm. “ Come, Killigrew, you can help your friend no more. He would not want to hinder you.”

  Tears blinded my eyes. “D’you remember, George,” I said, “what you said on your way back from our talk with Buarcos?”

  “Yes … I said I thought we must kill that man.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I said.

  We left about eleven. George, as the originator of the escape went first, then I, then Crocker, who was the fittest of the three. We could do nothing for Fletcher and Stevens; to have taken them would have been to set the attempt at nothing from the start. They wished us God speed and a safe journey through a hostile and barren land. Fletcher was able to stand only long enough to support Crocker on his shoulders; then we were gone.

  The guard house was beside the jail, separated by a dusty quadrangle perhaps designed for drilling and the exercise of prisoners. Beyond the guard house at the corner of the square stood the house where we had had our interviews.

  All the stalls had been moved and the last of the peasants were gone. A wind was blowing through the town, a dry off-land wind full of dust and heat. It was gusty; whirlwinds rose like ghosts conjured from the arid earth, dipping and swirling in baleful rhythms, then collapsing among the shadows or exploding into the upper air as the wind tired of them.

  He dined at ten in the upstairs room—this much I knew because last week his servant had been waiting with the tray to go up as we came out. It was now eleven by the town clock. He should be down to the dregs of his wine.

  In a town in an occupied but quiescent country far from any real enemy or risk of surprise, it was unlikely that a guard would be posted at his door; but one could not take the risk. A window into a passage; we climbed in and came to a wide hall. It was empty and in darkness, but there was a candle burning on the stairs, and light came from the kitchens and the ante-room where we had once waited. Major George grabbed up a pike leaning beside the door.

  I peered through the hinge slit into the kitchens. A pot was bubbling on the fire, unwashed pans lay on the table and mosquitoes and flies swarmed round them. The place was empty. I heard voices outside and saw through the farther door three men, the cook and two servants, squatting in the yard playing dice where they had gone for coolness.

  On the table, still greasy with the young lamb it had carved, was a long serving knife which through the years had been honed down for sharpness until it was like a stiletto. George was in the doorway, but I motioned him back as I picked up the knife. Captain Buarcos’s room was not over the kitchens but over the stables and separated from the kitchens by the width of the hall. We could not tackle three servants in an open yard.

  Over the door were two bells. The knife cut the cords working these. I latched the door behind me.

  We went up the stairs. A light shone out from his ill-fitting door. In that moment before action I remember the smell of bay leaves, of vinegar and of quinces, the creak of George’s military boot on the stairs, the heavy, hesitant breathing of Crocker. A great death’s head moth was beating against one of the slits of the door. We let him in.

  Perhaps when the body is sick it narrows the mind’s preparedness for surprise; one pursues an object with only one’s own choices in view. Since we made this plan an hour ago we had concluded without reason that Buarcos always dined alone. Tonight sitting with him was a thin small-featured young officer we had sometimes seen about, a young man who wore his hair long and walked with an affected step.

  We brought in a draught, and the candles dipped and guttered; shadows curtsied on the yellow plaster walls. Surprise should have been on our side only, instead it was on two; but we recovered first. Buarcos’s goblet was overturned as he moved to get up—his sword-belt was on a chair four paces away.

  “Stay!” said George, lowering his pike. “ One word—”

  Fine muscatel dripped on the floor. The young officer could reach his sword: he did so as George charged him. At the same moment Buarcos kicked over the table and leaped for the bell push. I went after him. He pulled the bell and shouted and got to his sword, but before he could draw it I was on him. It would have been good to talk but there was no time to talk. We rolled over, clawing. His nails reached my eyes as my knife went deep into his belly. Then I ripped him up. Blood spurted two feet; he got to his knees and his entrails were pushing through his tunic as he fell.

  I got up trembling. George had killed the young man by running him through with the pike. It was all over in two minutes. I stood there trembling. One of the overturned candles had set fire to the table-cloth; it flickered and sizzled as Crocker beat it out. A decent darkness fell on the scene; one candle only burned on the mantelshelf. Crocker was at the door listening. I trembled like a man in a late state of St Virus’s dance.

  George put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, lad, you opened him like a ripe musk-melon. There’s nothing more to do here.”

  It was as if I could not move my feet, as if they adhered to the floor.

  I still held the knife; I dropped it.

  “We’d best go,” said Crocker. “ There’s no alarm.”

  George was on his knees groping for the skin of wine. Being of narrow neck it had not all spilled. He slopped some in one of the cups and gave it to me to drink.

  “We’d best go,” said Crocker. “I shouldn’t fancy if they found us now.”

  I tried desperately to recover myself. It was not at all horror at killing Buarcos: it was the release of a great anger which now, acting on weak nerves and a sick body, left me as if I had myself been stabbed.

  “There’s horses below,” said George. “Think you we could get ’em?”

  “No,” I said. “ They’re too precious—too precious not to be locked in.”

  George took a swig of wine himself, passed it to Crocker. Crocker took it as if it was red-hot, drained the rest in a gulp.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  We heard a frightened neighing.

  The blood from the two men must by now be dripping through the boards. George took off Buarcos’s sword and buckled it round him.

  “Far better,” I said. “ Mules. We may be able—at the edge of the town—we might get them.”

  “Come, lad,” said George. “ I’ll help you down the stairs.”

  We turned to go. When we entered, not 300 seconds since, two men had been finishing a good dinner, replete, healthy, well wined, at ease. When we left, not 300 seconds later, they were dead, blood dripping faster than the wine, processes stayed for ever; two corpses spilled among the remnants of the meal. I was sorry I had not had time to talk to Buarcos. I wondered if he had realised it was for Victor.

  We got to the top step, my feet halting. George with his arm round me; Crocker was already at the foot of the stairs; I limped down. The kitchen door was still shut. The horses now were neighing and stamping their feet. It was they who would raise the alarm.

  The window was still open. It seemed darker outside now. Somehow I got over the sill. Some people were walking across the square: a whole family out late; the father in his black hat, cloak billowing in the wind, the mother in her shawl, five children fantailed behind. They took no notice of us.

  We left the town.

  Chapter Nine

  It was Major George’s plan to strike south. He thought the Spanish would expect us to go north and so would pursue us that way. South lay the narrow Gibraltar Straits and the Sultanate of Morocco; Ahmed the Golden was on friendly terms with England. It was a long way; but little compared to any trek north.

  We found no mules to steal in Lagos; but five miles south on the road to Faro, from an old house which had a half-dozen in the stables, we were able to take three without challenge. I do not kn
ow quite how we managed to walk that first five miles, since we were all exhausted by privation before ever we began; but fear of what is following and the lure of freedom ahead are the greatest spurs even to sickly men.

  Although I was the sickliest of the three—in part because my mind was ailing with grief and anger—on that first march I kept up with them unaided. On the mules we made a few more miles before dawn and hid in a coppice of gorse and scrub that reminded me of Cornwall. We lay there all through that hot morning, and it was not until the first hour of the siesta that we moved again—into a village called Lagoa.

  There by good fortune we were able to raid a barn and steal leeks and lentils and a few grapes. A mongrel dog woke the village round us and we had to flee into the hills and look down at the peasants milling about as in a disturbed ant-hill.

  It was poor food for men long deprived, and during the afternoon while we lay in the shade of a scrub oak I began to be tormented by visions of the food we had left untasted on Buarcos’s table. We had been too precipitate: five minutes more would have enabled us to fling the stuff into a bag and carry it away; it would have lasted us two days. The thought was a pain in the stomach, genuinely felt.

  As soon as the sun set we were off again, but cut inland away from the coastal track. One could toss a coin as to whether it was the best choice and only hope we did not get hopelessly lost. This was rough barren country, with little cover but little sign of human life.

  Towards dawn we descended a long hillside to a giant riverbed, dry and strewn with boulders and the trunks of rotted trees. Half-way across we found a tiny rivulet of water slipping downhill and gratefully watered the mules and re-filled our own skins. We were able to get up into the bushes at the other side before day broke.

  There we lay and discussed for a time the question as to whether, if we moved far enough away to escape capture, we might yet remain in Portugal, slip down to the coast in a week or two and persuade some fisherman, on the promise of a reward, to carry us back to England. As George pointed out, there was some advantage in staying in a country compulsorily annexed by Spain. Many Portuguese today were the orphans of those massacred fifteen or so years ago, when it was said so many corpses were thrown in the sea that the fishermen would not go out again until the archbishop had come in solemn procession to purify the waters. For my part I had no preference as to what we did and little expectation as to the outcome, for it was while we were so talking that I knew the pain I had was not hunger after all.