The Grove of Eagles Read online

  “You at least,” I said, “should hardly fear Ink-horn, for although you’ll not work you are his favourite.”

  “Ah, and do you know why I am his favourite? It’s because I don’t fear him, see?”

  He turned to go in, but I stared a few minutes longer at the two low dark ships, their masts swaying slowly with the swell. Behind them, on the other side of the river’s mouth, there was a light in St Mawes Castle, built at the same time and for the same purpose as Pendennis but indifferently sited. I had often wondered why Parson Merther treated Belemus with greater respect than the rest of us. Was I being incited to rebellion so that my cousin could sit back and be entertained by the result?

  The evening was cold, and I remember the sense of warmth I felt as I came into the quadrangle under the tower and through the central gate and saw the lights of the house beginning to glimmer. In the south corner the lights were brightest where my grandmother’s room was and where she would now be dressing. As I moved to go in a girl came hurrying across the grass, taking a short cut from one wing to the other; it was something the maids did not dare to do in the daylight. I drew back intending to jump out and frighten her but she had already seen me, and instead of darting away she came towards me.

  “Walter is mortal sick, Master Maugan. He has just been taken with another tedious fit. Go quietly if you enter his room.”

  I said: “Meg, Meg, thin as a peg,” but only from habit, and really thinking of what she had told me. Last night there had been comings and goings all the dark hours through our bedroom. I had never been ill in my life and the idea of illness interested me. We had been taken in to see Grace last year, and I had kissed her chubby dead little face and had found it soft and cold and smelling.

  When I got in I rubbed my hands and face hurriedly and dressed before Parson Merther could come in and provoke that trial of strength that Belemus was inciting me to; but in fact Ink-horn was busy next door and saw me not at all that evening.

  The banqueting hall held not above its normal fifty persons that night, for some ten of our servants who usually supped at the same time were needed extra in the kitchen and to wait at table. The hall took up most of the middle part of the house and was served by kitchens behind and separate from the rest of the house. A handsome room in the summer, it grew very damp in winter; the plaster walls would run with moisture and a chill spread over it that no arras could keep out. Tonight a big fire had been lighted early, and since there was little wind it was cosy enough.

  The top table was full, and six of the lesser guests had been put on the end of our smaller table which was at the side of the hall. The trestle table and benches for the servants ran crosswise at the bottom. The beech-wood fire made dancing reflections on the oriel window opposite, and the latten candlesticks held twenty-four candles of fine wax, not the stinking tallow of ordinary evenings.

  New rushes had been strewn on the floor and most of the dogs had been banished. My father had a weakness for dogs and would seldom bring himself to order one destroyed, so they bred and multiplied into all sizes and shapes of mongrel. There was seldom a time without puppies and seldom a time—except when guests were expected—when there were not pools on the floor and sometimes even on the chairs. Most rooms in the house had a smell of dog about them, but in the hall it was always strongest.

  A child accepts its environment unthinking, unseeing for many years. Then comes a day when the mind unlinks itself and stands apart for the first time, looking around with a new eye. For the first time that night I wondered at the strange variety and quality of the guests who sat at my father’s table.

  One day it would be our cousins the Arundells or the Godolphins, or the Bassets, distinguished and wealthier than ourselves; another it would be the captain of a naval pinnace sent to watch the coasts for pirates, together with Hannibal Vyvyan across from St Mawes Castle to complain about his ordnance. Then there were banquets given to people in small authority about the county, and all this did not take into account the occasional visits of the really great. Seldom a week passed without entertaining of some sort. But the strangest of all were these noisy feasts given to the captains and crews of the ships which quietly from time to time dropped anchor in our bay.

  Captain Elliot of Dolphin was a man of sickly complexion, dark-bearded, raw-boned and thin. He had a nose which whistled when he breathed through it, and he spoke scarcely ever above a voice used for confidences. All his orders afloat, one felt, must go through his mate, William Love, who came from Weymouth, a red-faced jolly man with strange greedy eyes. They were both dressed for the banquet, but the others with them were all sixes and sevens, most in ill-fitting clothes which might have been made for someone else, rough spoken, long-haired and unshaven, coarse of manner. Captain Burley from Neptune was a big pale-haired shabby man who looked a rogue.

  That my grandmother should choose to sit between him and Elliot I found hard to understand. For my grandmother was a great lady.

  Others at this banquet were my father’s unmarried sister, Mary Killigrew, and Henry Knyvett and Bethia Wolverstone. My grandmother was the daughter of Philip Wolverstone of Suffolk, and Mistress Wolverstone was her sister, a gaunt ailing woman well on in years. Henry Knyvett was my grandmother’s son by her first marriage. This Henry Knyvett lived with his wife and four children at one of my father’s manor houses, Rosemerryn, but he more often than not ate at Arwenack, for he did not agree with his wife, and his second son Paul lived with us all the time.

  In the corner by the stairs three men played tunes, but as supper went on their music rose and fell like a raft in rough weather, half submerged in the sea of voices.

  My father was always at his best when entertaining, and in those days he was a handsome man, still in his early forties, a trifle short of stature but fresh complexioned, with a fine full head of blond hair, expressionless, rather prominent blue eyes, and a light-brown moustache, silky and pampered above a firm but cleft chin. He drank and gambled and wenched much of his time away in a feckless care-free fashion, though his temper was unstable and his determination could be great if his own welfare was concerned.

  On this noisy, fire-flickering, greasy company came suddenly Parson Merther, blinking at the noise and light, sidling round against the walls of the room like a cockroach until he came behind my father’s chair, whence he ventured forward and whispered some words in my father’s ear. It so happened that the players had come to the end of their piece, and talk too hesitated as guests and servants stared.

  “What is it, John?” Lady Killigrew, my grandmother said. “News of Walter?”

  “Yes. Wat is dead.” He turned unemotionally to the others. “ It is my son. At the tender age of 5. My chaplain will say a prayer or two.”

  Everyone stumbled to their feet while Parson Merther muttered a long prayer. He was about to start another but my father grunted and cut him short. After we had all settled in our chairs Captain Elliot asked some whispered question but my father said:

  “No, God’s eyes. It will give him no aid to break up now. His mother is with him. He died a Christian. What more is there to it?”

  Yet there was more to it, for talk in the room would not get going again. My father sounded callous but I was not sure he was as callous as he seemed. He kept wiping his moustaches with a stained napkin, and he ate no more but blinked stonily across the room over the rim of his glass.

  In another silence I heard Captain Burley say to my grandmother: “We need the stuff bad, your ladyship. It is not to be found in every port, and we’ll pay well; you know that.”

  “With what?” said Lady Killigrew, but I never heard the reply, for a servant went by with a clatter of dishes.

  “With what?” whispered Belemus. “ With frog’s kidneys and chicken’s eyes and the soft parts of a tortured dog. That’s all he has to pay with, for his mother is a witch.”

  Ink-horn was leaving the hall again, and I realised thankfully that tonight we were to be left undisturbed instead of
hurried away to bed.

  “Six fits of a quartan ague,” my fattier said sulkily, “ Many would have recovered from it But Walter was of too fine a stock. The fine are taken up to God and the coarse are left here for the Devil’s work.”

  “I think it was more than the ague,” said Lady Killigrew. “Like as not he was liver-grown. I lost two of your sisters that way and the second I suffered to be opened. The liver was rust-coloured and swollen, no pretty sight.”

  My father thrust his platter violently away from him, but did not reply. No one wished to be the object of his attention now. In the uncomfortable silence Lady Killigrew motioned a footman and sent him with a message to the players to strike up another tune.

  “You were saying, Captain Elliot?”

  “I was saying, your ladyship? Oh, yes, I was saying that there is no ship of war in the Irish Sea, or but rarely, and there are valuable cargoes afloat every day. I wonder Mr Killigrew does not petition for one.”

  Lady Killigrew adjusted a pin. “It is not in Mr Killigrew’s commission to command the Irish Sea, Captain Elliot. He is hard set because of the parsimony of the Privy Council to defend one castle and a strip of coast, and to keep down pirates.”

  “Such parsimony,” said Burley, “I can hardly conceive’ll run to the lengths of depriving so important a post of common ordnance.”

  “Indeed it does, Captain Burley,” said my grandmother. “ You’d be surprised at the constant efforts Mr Killigrew makes, by letter and by personal appeal, for sufficiency of small armaments of all sorts. He does not get them. Even today, with the Spanish threat in no way abated, we are pared to the bone. Mr Killigrew receives 12d. a day as captain, which is the same sum as is paid to the master mason at Boscastle Pier. We have our deputy Captain—Foster here; a Master Gunner—Carminow there; two other gunners, and the musters of Budock to call on in need. To supply them we have not above twenty calivers, four barrels of powder and three culverin mounted. Mr Killigrew has spent a fortune out of his own pocket, as he has told you.”

  “Your ladyship has my deepest sympathy,” said Captain Elliot. “It is a bitter reflection that those who serve our country most are the most often beggared by it.”

  “There are some as find their labours not unrewarding,” said Captain Burley, swilling back another draught and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Everything this man said he said with a sneer.

  Soon afterwards the chief guests left the room, and servants began to clear away, picking their way among overturned chairs and spilt wine and a half-dozen sleeping sailors. In one corner three men were gambling and seemed likely to come to blows, among them an evil faced sailor called Aristotle Totle. Candles guttered and dripped on the tables. The beechwood had burned dead, and grey ash was scattered in the hearth. The musicians had given up the struggle, and Dick Stable, who was the harpist, was feeding scraps to my father’s spaniels.

  “See,” said Belemus, nudging my elbow, “ the captains have gone off for their private talks. You were asking me why these men came here. Now if you could listen you would know.”

  “Well, I cannot, so I never shall.”

  “Ah, that depends, doesn’t it.”

  “On what?”

  We left the great hall and walked slowly along the panelled passage to the south wing. We passed the door of the drawing-room chamber where our guests were likely to be. Light came from two cracks in the door. After we were past Belemus said in a low voice: “There you are, witless, you can see in.”

  “But someone might come.”

  “If you’re interested I’ll watch for you.”

  I hesitated, breathing in sensations of doubt and conspiracy; then I went to the door. The top crack was about a foot below eye level. The wood had shrunk and split, and one could see through. I heard my grandmother’s harsh cough.

  Captain Burley was talking. “… if to that we add five pounds of Levant silk dyed Watchet blue, and two cases of figs, that’s more’n the value of two paltry barrels of powder.”

  “I cannot strip my poor defences any barer. If the Spaniards come …”

  “Oh, if the Spaniards come, Mr Killigrew …” This was Captain Elliot, whispering, not quite audible. “ Ten barrels of powder would not suffice. If they come … Armada double the size of the last … Come with whips specially made for the naked backs of Englishwomen … but no attempt in the coming summer.”

  “What information?”

  “Private but authentic, your ladyship. Dolphin travels widely … Blavet last month, the Groyne in December … You could dispense with your last demi-cuiverin and suffer no hurt.”

  One of the dogs, Christian, stirred and growled in his sleep. I could just see my father’s head as it rested on his hand, his fair moustache drooping over it. Somewhere behind him there was the clink and bubble of wine in a goblet.

  “Make us a better proposition. One that we can entertain.”

  “Well, Lady Killigrew, you know what it would entail as well as I do—”

  “Nay,” my father cut in, “ I do not know that I am in the mood for it tonight. My child lies upstairs, but just gone from us …”

  Elliot whispered his sympathy.

  “My position,” said my father, “ is one of vast responsibility with scant, paltry, minimal resources. Every month I embase myself writing to Cecil … England’s safety, England’s very survival may depend on the quality of her few real commanders in the south-west. Grenville agreed with me—God rest his soul. Ralegh agrees and has promised …”

  Something passed then that I could not catch, but Captain Burley must have made a remark which was instantly resented. My father broke into one of his sudden angers which were always nearer the surface than one suspected.

  “… I’m not a lackey to be gibed at! We’ve served four monarchs in our time at the castle and lost half an inheritance in the process! To be so accused in my own home …”

  “Well, your honour, it’s commonly so spoken, and that Lady Killigrew herself was involved and that two of her servants was hanged for it—-”

  A goblet of wine rolled on the floor. “ If that is the sort of calumny to which I am to be subjected—”

  “Begging your ladyship’s pardon,” came William Love’s voice. “Richard Burley meant no offence, I’ll wager. If so—”

  “Let it be discussed as you will. I’ll no longer be a party to it.”

  Conversation passed back and forth, cooling and calming and smoothing over. All the same I should have taken warning. I did not, until a shadow moved across the crack of the door. Then too late I stumbled back as someone opened it for my grandmother, and I stared into her cold grey eyes.

  There had been little to see through the crack, but now all the room was there beyond her shoulder: the brace of candlesticks, flames bobbing, the heavy, pale-haired figure of Burley sneering angrily in the leather studded arm-chair, Love standing behind it; Elliot fingering the gold ring in his ear; my father pouring wine, face flushed, his quilted yellow doublet open and awry.

  Yet all the time I was staring into my grandmother’s eyes. One of the dogs had come after her, its tail wagging unsteadily. She pushed it away with her foot and without speaking to me swept on.

  Chapter Two

  Elliot and Love and Burley and their friends stayed feasting all the following day, but they left at nine in the evening and caught the midnight tide. The day of Walter’s funeral they were gone and the waters of the river-mouth were so still and glassy that no ships might ever have been there to break the reflections of tree and hill and distant fort. To my surprise my grandmother never spoke to me about her discovery of me that night.

  Spring came, and we children worked reluctantly through the long bright mornings longing for the afternoon hours of freedom and adventure. Usually we stayed within the palisades, but sometimes we ventured abroad in the keeping of a groom called Rose who not seldom risked a thrashing for allowing us to wander farther than we should. We had a tiny boat with a single sail and a pair of oar
s; in it we sometimes sailed well up the river.

  Both river banks, except for enclaves where houses or villages stood, were covered with thick dark woods, cut through here and there with miry tracks. Squirrels, badgers, foxes and hares abounded, and sometimes underfoot the viper would lift his head. Venturing into this wild country was explicitly forbidden us by Parson Merther, but sometimes we penetrated a few hundred yards. Many strange stories were told of these woods, that they were old, old as the birth of the world, and that they had an influence on all people born or living in them. Strange sects flourished there; witches lived in the far reaches of some of the narrower creeks. These smaller creeks filled up, with glimmering oily water at high tide but twice daily sank away to silent yellow mud on which the only sound was the cry and flutter of birds. Many an unsuspecting child, we were told, had strayed up them never to return. Some of the bigger birds were like children, lost children crying, and who was to say they were not

  In the summer we proved the age and magic of the woods by diving and swimming under the water just at the edge of our enclosed land by the entrance to Penryn Creek. There you could see the trees that had grown there before ever the river was. Clusters of tree stumps still existed three fathoms under water, hazel and oak and beech and fir, and at low tide you could see the flag iris and the ferns.

  On the promontory of land dividing Penryn Creek from the Fal River proper lived the Trefusis family, of Trefusis, but we seldom visited or spoke. I did not then know any reason why and as a matter of course took my father’s part, but the two families had quarrelled over the generations, and it was well known John Trefusis did not at all approve of Killigrew highhandedness. My father used to say that with the mouth of the Fal held between the pincers of Pendennis and St Mawes Castles, Trefusis Point felt the nip every time the pincers closed.