The Grove of Eagles

  After supper the woman Florence stayed on, but at length Sue dismissed her. It was now seven, and if I was to reach Godolphin before they all were abed I must leave soon.

  I said: “ Sue, when can we marry?”

  “Maugan, not yet … Sometime next year, I don’t know when.”

  “Next year. Early next year.”

  “Yes. But there has to be a little time.”

  “And until then?”

  “Now it’s so near, my dear, let’s not snatch at it. Secret, stolen meetings would spoil what we feel for each other.”

  “Sue, you still feel the same?”

  “Can you doubt it?”

  “I need you so much that I’m afraid. You seem to look on the prospect of delay with a greater composure than I can.”

  “Perhaps it’s my nature to. The way I have lived has made me so. But what we have waited four years for will not sour with waiting four months. In the first place it will be more seemly. In the second I must settle up Philip’s affairs. In the third you’ll have the opportunity to see Lord Henry Howard and know if he can propose anything.”

  “Ah, that I couldn’t understand. Last time we met we went into that, and I said I was promised to Ralegh and wished to remain so.”

  “But that was when you were about to sail. That was a loyalty I could understand. But now you’re back, after all this time, you’re bound to no one. You’ve gained nothing from the voyage except much suffering. It’s the usual experience for those who follow Ralegh.”

  “Yet I feel about him as I ever did. If he wants me, I’m his man.”

  She made a little gesture of distaste. “What has he ever offered you, Maugan? A post as a junior secretary. An opportunity to die in battle or rot in a Spanish prison.”

  “What will Henry Howard offer me?”

  “I don’t know. But at least you might go and see.”

  My last question was a mistake because her answer put me in a position where I must seem unreasonable.

  She went on: “ When we marry we must have some position. How else can we live? If you wanted to remain unmarried, then you could stay on as Ralegh’s under-secretary or sail to Guiana or do whatever he asked you to do. But we may have a family. There has to be a home.”

  I got up and stared across at the books of devotion on the desk; I felt I was still on enemy territory.

  She said: “When I married Philip I did not look for money, except the security from want that he offered. But he was a man of some property. In case you wonder—”

  “I won’t touch his money—”

  “In case you wonder, most of his property was entailed by his father, and as he died without issue it now passes to his younger brother. I shall have some money, enough to live on quietly, but no estate.”

  “That’s not important—”

  “Oh, it is, for I would have liked—”

  “Sue, I don’t know what to say to make you see how I feel. I may have said it last time; I don’t know. I have spent nine months or more in Ralegh’s service, and it leaves a mark. Over and above that there is a question of loyalty. Sir Walter and the Howards, although they tolerate each other, are fundamentally opposed. If I now took service with one of the Howards I should feel I was—was moving into an enemy camp.”

  She was hearing but not accepting. “ But you want to marry me?”

  “… It’s the one thing above all other.”

  “Then don’t you feel any loyalty to me?”

  “Loyalty! You have all my—”

  “Yes, then. Well, if we marry next April, perhaps. I have a small competence. It will be helpful. But as a scrivener to Ralegh—”

  “He may offer me something more.”

  “He may. But he’s not rich. And what will happen to him when the Queen dies? He owes everything to her. The Howards are perhaps the most powerful family in the country, and with both Protestants and Catholics in their numbers they can hardly fail to prosper, whoever succeeds.”

  I was watching her. “This is a very—practical point of view.”

  “I am practical. I’ve had to be.”

  “Yes, but I think you’ve been a pupil of others.”

  “I have talked of it with Henry Arundell. He’s very wise on worldly matters, and I seek help where it is most freely offered.”

  I sat down again near her. “Sue, take care for him, won’t you? I think he always envied Philip Reskymer his wife.”

  She thoughtfully moved the ornate wedding ring round on her finger. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Then you should see less of him.”

  Her eyes were black fringed against the delicate skin of cheek and temple. “Ever since my father died, I’ve had to take care for myself. Accepting the company of someone who wants me honourably is not the worst risk I’ve run.”

  “The risk is that he may think you’ll take him seriously.”

  “He’s a wise and willing friend. I have few enough.”

  Jealousy began to claw at me. “Perhaps if I hadn’t returned he would have had more to hope for.”

  She shook her head. “ If you hadn’t returned—I don’t know what then.”

  “Oh, Sue,” I said, “forgive me. Whenever I see you I’m torn all ways. The only happiness will be in possessing you.”

  She smiled slightly. “Are you sure? Perhaps possession is never what we expect it to be.”

  “My dear, you’ve lived too long in the company of old men … When can I see you again?”

  “When you please. So long as it’s not unreasonably often until the new year. Come on Monday, can you?”

  “Gladly … Sue, I still can’t get over it. No one can rejoice that such a good man as Philip Reskymer has died, but the outcome is there and I’m still hardly able to sit here and talk with you soberly of it. That you are free again—this for me is like coming into sudden sunshine after so many dark years!”

  She put her hand on rnine. “And I can rejoice with you—with a whole heart. Now we can start—together—for the first time.”

  One day I walked up with Belemus to the castle, but a sentry would not allow us in. The soldiers had dug trenches and thrown up rough parapets all round the hillside on which the castle stood. Captain Alexander, while paying lip service to the Governor of the castle, continued to take much on himself. The soldiers cut down twelve fine elms; on complaint it was claimed that they obstructed the view landward; in effect they needed wood for their fires and this was the easy way. Except for occasional visits to the house for official reasons, the officers now quartered themselves entirely at the castle.

  On the Saturday we younger ones had a party of farewell for Belemus who was to leave on the following day. There were twelve of us at it, and in the absence of John, Thomas was the eldest true Killigrew present. At 17 he was a highly accomplished player on the lute, his touch not so golden as Victor Hardwicke’s but his range wider. His greatest pleasure was to wander off from the house with his lute and pick up songs and casual dances from the villages round; sometimes he was away for three days. He claimed he knew sixty different tunes in his head. He had grown little and was only an inch or so over five feet, yet good looking in a square-set way. Affected in his manner, quick tempered but generous, he had no interest in girls and had reacted violently to my father’s attempts to pair him off in the county. He was in no way interested in this house or the estate or its prosperity or continuance. He was awaiting a summons from his uncle William to go up to the Court, and lived only for that day.

  Odelia at 16 was already quite a beauty, slender and tall, with clear blue eyes like a mermaid’s, sloping shoulders, and vigorous slightly ungraceful movements. Somewhere in her growing up she had lost the warm impulsive ways of childhood and not found anything as good in its place. She no longer confided.

  Henry already looked the miser he was going to become. His thin face was like a bird’s that watched the earth and the sky for food or bright things. He had a sharp tongue and could lash some of the younger ch
ildren into screaming frenzies of rage. Yet he adored animals and was never without some wounded mongrel at his heels.

  Below him the gap. Maria was 9, her fat face reddening with an early adolescence, her fat strong legs bruising together when she ran, her voice never silent, crowing and caressing or raised in high-pitched angry protest, Peter was 6 but a fair match for Maria in everything except brute strength; and in adroitness and quickness of mind he outdid them all. Elizabeth was 5 and Simon 3, and only Dorothy grizzling in her cradle was absent from the party. The others here today were Oliver Gwyther, who was now betrothed to Annora Job, and two of the younger Knyvetts from Rosemerryn.

  After it was over I said to Belemus: “This is a bad parting—the break up of an old association; I don’t like it.”

  “No more a break up than your flying off to be Ralegh’s scrivener. It’s just the boot on the other foot, that’s all.”

  “Is it because of Jane you’re going?”

  “No woman ever made me run away nor ever will. But I confess I would have been happier these twelve months with her out of the house. It goes against the grain to refuse invitations of that nature, and following the refusal an air blows around one as if one had left the window Open on a winter’s night … No, witless, I’ve been here too long and go to make my fortune—or to wield a blow or two in search of it. I hope you don’t liken me to the rat deserting the sinking ship.”

  “Rather to the brave man diving off in order to lighten the boat.”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “Well said: Watch for me coming aboard again laden with plunder from the wars!”

  On the Tuesday I went to see my father, and told him I wished to be married.

  “What? This is quick since you came home. Who is it? Someone in the house?”

  “Philip Reskymer died in September. I want to marry his widow, who was Susanna Farnaby.”

  He had been startled out of his dejection, and you could see him thinking if there would be any advantage in this for him. “ Philip Reskymer’s widow? Hm … Well, you could do much worse for yourself. She’ll be a woman of some property. Now if—”

  “Most of it was entailed.”

  “Hm. But she’ll be no pauper. Well, boy, there’s no harm in being wed. It’s a proper state for man. You can live here and pay some small sum. There’s room in plenty now, and she’d be company for my daughter-in-law. That way you can be a greater help and support.”

  “Father, I’m sorry, but I want to make my own way. It’s not unnatural.”

  “Have you suggested she should live here?”

  “I know she would not be willing.”

  “She’ll have some property. Look after that. Why go into the hurly-burly of up-country life?”

  “We both want to.”

  He sat in offended silence for a while. It was in keeping with his mood that even his base son whom he had befriended so often and so freely should now turn against him, I could see him thinking it: this is gratitude.

  “I’m sorry, father.”

  “Well … I can help you not at all. When do you intend to go?”

  “Oh, it’s not decided. We cannot marry until next year. I must see the Raleghs and tell them how their cousin died.”

  “Ah, well, he’s the man to be in with. He has the ear of the Queen now, just like in the old days. And even friendly with Essex! God knows, that’s not likely to last!”

  “I hope it will. Sir Walter and Lord Essex have a generosity under their seeming arrogance that could very well keep them friends.”

  “In my view, boy, nothing will keep them friends, for they are on two different ends of a see-saw. One or other must be up or down.”

  “And Cecil?”

  “Ah … He is at the centre and so moves little. The Killigrews are hitched to him, and should continue to prosper. It’s only I, isolated down here, neglected in times of security, blamed in times of peril, it’s only I who suffer. Never was greater injustice done to a man than by these upstart military—strutting like cockerels over my land, acting out sham heroics in my castle, now that the danger is over—when I have borne the brunt of the true peril for so many years alone—quite alone!”

  “Father,” I said, “I’m glad the Armada failed.”

  He sniffed and eased himself in his chair to let a notch out of his sword belt. “ Well, of course, who is not? For I should have been in the forefront of the battle and one of the first to fall. With the fleet away and her coasts unguarded, England would have been overrun. That great storm was a signal mercy.”

  “It is better in every way that the Armada failed, father. It truly is, for it saved a—a final decision that I should not have liked you to make.”

  For a while he did not speak, breathing heavily with relief that his stomach now had more liberty. “ Whatever decision was made was made long before, Maugan. But’s all dead and forgotten now. Whatever might have been is dead and forgotten.”

  The following day my father received a letter from the Privy Council. It summoned him to Westminster to appear before them on the 27th November to account for his stewardship of Pendennis Castle.

  Chapter Three

  Those who were less inward than I to the events of that time must have wondered at Mr Killigrew’s attitude before he left for Westminster. He made a new will. He wrote at once to his uncles Henry and William, telling them that he had been summoned to Court and that, since his affairs were in great disorder and his family in distress, he proposed, to bring up with him his two sons Thomas and Henry to place in their keeping forthwith. He wrote to John telling him to return to Arwenack in all haste and to take charge of the house and estate. He told me to prepare to go with him so that I could accompany him to the Council meeting and be on hand if needed. He wrote to Ralegh asking him what grievous and unwitting wrong he had committed in his eyes that Ralegh’s report should have been so unfavourable. He wrote to Cecil giving an account of his exertions over the last two years in the cause of military defence. He fondled his younger children in a way that frightened them and delivered homilies to Mrs Killigrew that frightened her. He summoned the ramshackle Henry Knyvett from Rosemerryn and for long periods was closeted with him in Lady Killigrew’s chamber.

  There were some days before we need leave, so I saw Sue again. I told her as much as possible but could say nothing on the larger issues. She said this was the ideal time to present Mr Arundell’s letter to Lord Henry Howard. I said my first duty was with Mr Killigrew, but if we stayed long enough I would call. She said: “You must, Maugan. It’s only fair to us both. Please.”

  While there I met the Reverend John Tremearne, who was to take over the living of Paul next week. He was a black-coated, serious man, though not of the class of Reskymer. When we were alone he asked me with interest about the Inquisition and Spain’s own attitude towards it. It seemed an opportunity to air a matter that had been much concerning me.

  “While in Ferrol, Mr Tremearne, I met two Englishmen who had accepted the Catholic faith in order to save their lives. How would you regard such people?”

  He stared at me angrily, as if surprised at the question. “As traitors to Christ, Mr Killigrew. Men who have sold their immortal souls for a brief lengthening of mortal existence. How else could they accept the teachings and doctrines of the—the latrine called Rome?”

  “Yes … Yes, I see. One of these men was much troubled, but the other took it lightly. He was of the opinion that oaths and dedications made under duress were of no importance.”

  “Denials of God must be important, Mr Killigrew—or words and deeds have no meaning left at all. Do you not suppose that almost all the glorious martyrs of old were not so tempted and did not so resist? Latimer and Ridley among them. They rejected these evil excremental fumes from the bog of Roman Catholic Europe. What shall it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world and loses his soul?”

  “The other man,” I said, “the one who was troubled, reasoned that God, who understood all things, would forgive all t
hings—and resolved when he returned to England to return to the new faith. Do you suppose he could do that?”

  “He should go to his bishop and ask advice of him. Legally, of course, there would be no problem. If he attends the services of our reformed church and communicates, that is all required of him by the Crown. Spiritually, he must surely spend hours on his knees every day asking the forgiveness of Christ for his betrayal. Peter was forgiven. Possibly he would be—if he applied himself to his prayers—perseveringly and in all humility.”

  I could hear Sue’s footsteps. My mind turned back gratefully—and perhaps not altogether irreligiously—to her. In three months we should be married. Not any of the subtle problems of conscience, not the decay and deterioration at Arwenack, could touch that exalting thought.

  We left on Thursday morning the 17th, a party of six, there being Mr Killigrew and Thomas and Henry and myself, and Thomas Rosewarne and Stephen Wilkey.

  Our parting was not attended by any ceremonial good-byes. Four of the children and a handful of servants saw us off on a blustering day that lifted tail-coats and clutched at hats and made hairy spray of the horses’ tails. We supped the second night at Penheale, but very late and none too welcome, for the last time he had been that way Mr Killigrew had borrowed money from his host. So into Devon and Dorset. Monday night at a posting inn at Yeovil, and on Tuesday morning we clattered up the long stony drive into the estate at Sherborne. My father had hopes of this meeting, that in some way Sir Walter would be able to give him some indication of what awaited him at Westminster; but here he was disappointed—and I too. Sir Walter had been unwell since he came home and imagined he was threatened with a stone, so he had been given leave from his defence duties and he and Lady Ralegh were in Bath taking the waters. Only George Chapman was there and Matthew Royden and little Wat and his nurse and the servants. It felt like coming home. I asked George Chapman if Sir Walter had any new Guiana plans. Chapman said that since the two voyages of ’96, the first under Keymis, the second under Captain Berry at the end of the year, Sir Walter had mounted nothing more; but the purpose was there, it only waited a favourable moment.