The Grove of Eagles

  “I came … have you …”

  She shut the door. “ It’s a fine full moon but a small matter withdrawn. Sit down … Let’s see, what is your name? Maugan?”

  I sat on the edge of the stool where the rabbit had been last time. She said: “Are you not afraid of comin’ here?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, courage is no bad thing and deserves a reward. I’ll try to help you.”

  I held out the other shilling but she shook her head. “Wait a little. In time we’ll see.” She took a spoon and stirred the pot. The glow lit up her long cautious sun-browned face. I realised it could once have been pretty.

  “Do you know, I have lost my rabbit,” she said. “He was killed by a stoat.”

  “Oh … I’m sorry.”

  “Have you ever seen a stoat dance before he kills?”

  “No.”

  “Animal nature is not kind, but kills only for food. Human kind kill for the pleasure or from a strange evil notion called principle. Was your mother’s name Maugan?”

  I stared at her. “ Why?”

  “There’s an M in this pot. It would not be unnatural that you were given her name.”

  “Oh …”

  She looked up at me. “ Have you ever seen a glow-worm in the day time?”

  “No.”

  “One day if you will come again I’ll show you what they’re like. Like a little beetle. The female have more light than the male. When she be bearin’ her eggs, she is lit up by them from within, like little embers from the fire. Do you know you can read by the light of three or four glow-worms?”

  “No.”

  She stared into the pot again. “You must learn of nature, Maugan. It will help you to find content such as no mixing in the company of men can … I think you were born by a river, lad.”

  “This river?” I said.

  “Bigger than this. Wider and deeper.”

  “Where?”

  “I have not seen all the rivers of England. Bristol, maybe. Plymouth. London. I see love there—and hate—and greed— and disease. But neither poverty nor riches. It’s likely your mother was of good stock. You’ve no call to be ashamed of it, if that were ever in your mind.”

  I said nothing in reply.

  “They were not of a kind, your father and mother. I can see that. But it’s not always just money or greed …”

  “How—how did she die?”

  “Of the plague, I’d lay a guess. There’s sickness and death all around. It is a wonder you survive. I see no relatives left. I see only your father—riding with you—up a narrow lane …”

  There was a long silence. She seemed to have come to the end.

  “Greed, did you say?” I ventured at last.

  “Yes, greed. But ask me not what part it played … It could be that your father was greedy, graspin’ and pluckin’ at the flowers that were not his.”

  She stood up and folded her hands on her elbows. The light flung her shadow across the room like the shadow of a great cat. “D’you know, lad, what this bowl contains in which I have been reading your past?”

  “N-no.”

  “My food for tomorrow …”

  I did not answer.

  “Rabbit bones for stew. If you don’t believe me, here, take this spoon and taste it.”

  “No!”

  “Afraid it’s some ungodly brew? It matters not what you look in if you have the gift of sight. I could have told as much by gazing in a cabbage heart, no more by using the skull of Paracelsus.”

  She went over to the bottles ranged on the millstones. “ D’you know who Paracelsus was, Maugan?”

  “No.”

  “They stuff your head with Greek and Latin and Logic and never tell you how to cure a sore place or heal a cut finger. Here, come here, beside me.”

  I got up slowly from ray chair and while she was not looking I glanced into the bubbling pot. I thought I saw a face in it and moved back.

  “Betony,” she said. “ Saffron for measles, saxifrage for the stone, neat’s foot for chilblains, comfrey and liquorice for bronchitis, marjoram and aniseed for megrim … they make a pretty list. Few here come to me for ailments of their own; they are too affrighted. They only come—four at a time for protection—when their cattle or sheep be sick. See what courage you have, Maugan, treading where fools dare not tread.”

  “You spoke of hate too,” I whispered.

  “Love and hate, I spoke of. There is always love and hate between every man and woman. You will learn that it is so. And when the love is hot and stolen it’s the more passionate for that. And when betrayal follows, hate flourishes like tares in a cornfield. In a manner you are fortunate, Maugan Killigrew.”

  “How?”

  “You spring from passion, and so must be more alive than those who come of duty, routine appetites or the boredom of long livin’ together. In the fullness of time it may be you will come to love and hate, just as your father and mother did.”

  The moon had moved some way across the sky before she would let me go. In the end she took my shilling. She talked much more before I left, and each time I made a move she began some new subject. But she told me no more of my mother.

  I came away with a sensation of discomfort and distaste—and with little feeling of relief at an ordeal over. While she had talked to me I had felt both drawn to her and repelled. I felt she had tried to put a spell on me and that she had in some measure succeeded. Soon or late I should go back, drawn by this attraction-repulsion as to the edge of a cliff.

  The night had clouded as it grew old and the way home was no more friendly than the way out. I had left a short stout length of rope looped over the palisade and marked it with a broken tree, but as I got near I heard voices, low and gruff, and then the shuffle of feet.

  They were coming on the track by which I had come, a group of figures in the uncertain moonlight tramping up the hill. Six men. The first wore a grey hat with upturned brim and had a bandaged hand; another was a negro. They were all ill-dressed, two almost in rags. They might have been any band of robbers that roamed the wide commons of England, but they walked too confident, their gait was purposeful.

  When they had passed I rose and moved slowly from bush to bush in their wake. They stopped at the closed gate of Arwenack and rattled it and tried to force it open. It was only then in the brilliance of the moon that I recognised the man in the grey hat as Captain Elliot.

  They had dropped anchor, they said, in Helford Haven but two hours ago. Dolphin only was here. Neptune had been sailing with them but they had been separated by storm. Dolphin had been badly damaged and was in need of repair and refit. Also Mr Love, the mate, was ill.

  “Rouse your father, boy.”

  “He’s from home. Also my grandmother.”

  “Who’s in charge, then? Your mother?”

  “My—mother is not well. My uncle, Mr Knyvett—he’s here.”

  “Go summon him then. Can you brave the dogs?”

  “Yes. But it is long after midnight. Mr Knyvett will be abed.”

  “Tell him who’s here and that we’ve urgent business with him. In the end we shall persuade him it has been worth a disturbed night.”

  So my return was not at all as I had expected. I went over the palisade, pacified Charon, found my way in through the sleeping house and woke Uncle Knyvett. He was far too heavy in the head and confused to care how I knew of the callers. He grumpily pulled on his nightshirt and breeches and over them put his shabby black velvet dressing-gown. Then he stumbled in his ramshackle way across to the other wing, kicked Long Peter and another servant into some sort of wakefulness and instructed them to call in the hounds and open the gate.

  As soon as he saw Captain Elliot Henry Knyvett began to complain, but he was cut short.

  “It’s no time for the amenities, Mr Knyvett. We’ve had a pretty brush off the Carmarthen coast. Then we ran into heavy weather off the Land’s End and near foundered. Captain Burley was beaten back towards St Ives and m
ay be drowned by now with all that barren coast on his lee.”

  They walked away from me then, but I could still hear portions of their talk.

  “… four barques, there were, on passage from Bristol to Pembroke … We’d been beating about for some days, but that morning the wind was coming fair from the south. Burley sighted them first and gave chase. We was in the wind of them and cut them off. We summoned them to surrender but the first two gave fight …”

  The sailors had come into the great hall and had dropped their bags beside the fireplace in which a great log dully smouldered in a desert of white ash.

  “… I got this in boarding. My master gunner is a leg short, and two others hurt … Love? Nay, Love came through unscathed but fell sick after. After being at sea three months we all need a thorough rummage—and are not unentitled to it, I’d say …”

  The man with the gun was the pock-marked sailor who had been so quarrelsome in February, Aristotle Totle.

  “… then when will. he be home? But no doubt you can undertake the necessary measures … Silks and velvets mainly, with a substantial loadage of wine … we could not transfer the cargo in mid-ocean …”

  “Maugan, to bed now.”

  “Yes, Uncle Knyvett.”

  “This stuff you have here, this is some of it?”

  “A sample. Just a sample …”

  I moved towards the door. The negro was feeling the Pavia tapestry that hung to the left of the fire.

  “… There’s little to be done tonight, Elliot. Do you wish to lie here?”

  “You must send word to Truro. Also we have need of vegetables, fruit, fresh water. And an apothecary. Some of my men are sick too. These things are why I didn’t tarry until the morning.”

  “Maugan. It is time for you to go!”

  “Yes, Mr Knyvett.”

  I went, shutting the door after me, climbing the stairs, suddenly feeling weary and alone.

  Dolphin lay in Helford Haven five miles away. This was a small river running into a sizeable broad estuary with safe land-locked mooring for vessels up to 300 tons and densely wooded banks. Beside the Dolphin was another vessel of about the same size but not so lean a trim. I saw them both on the third day when I slipped away with Belemus and we climbed across the headlands to look for ourselves.

  But by then there could have been nothing more peaceful than the sight we saw. It was far more peaceful than Arwenack where more than a dozen seamen sat at, table each day and made free with our food and the comforts and cordialities of the house.

  Others came to the house too. John Penrose, a cousin of ours from Kethicke, John Michell from Truro and John Maderne. They came and talked in private, together and separately, they ate and drank and got drunk with the sailors and then left again. On the fourth day William Love arrived, much thinner for his illness, and sat in a chair in the great hall and watched our servant girls with strange and cloudy eyes.

  Some of the other sailors were less content to watch, and a few of the servant girls were not backward in secret meetings in the hay lofts. They blossomed in new silks and velvets, and two babies were born the next July. But the visitors roamed further than the unpromised, and thunder more than once grew up around a wife or a sweetheart. A long-haired sailor, Justinian Kilter, was in trouble all the time. Meg Levant had been seen of late with Dick Stable, the tall delicate boy who played the harp, but one day Kilter turned his attentions to her and Stable would not be put aside and he was sent sprawling across the yard and fell and cut his head on a mounting stone. Later that evening I heard a scuffling in the passage and found Meg struggling in Kilter’s arms. I took a breath and ran at him full tilt. The charge knocked them off balance, and in the confusion Meg wrenched herself free and bolted into the next room.

  “Oh, ask pardon!” I said. “ I didn’t see you,” and was about to go on when Kilter seized my arm.

  “Pup,” he said, “you collide over-easy for my liking. See this fist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have a care it don’t collide with your nose or it might spoil your chances in a more permanent way than you have just spoilt mine.” He laughed. “There’s too many meddlesome folk in this house.”

  But all did not treat it so light nor did many carry their drink as amiably. There was more drink than I had ever seen before, the visitors having brought two casks of wine into the yard where any might sup who chose. The yard smelt like a tap-room, and the house little better.

  Annora Job, the 17-year-old daughter of Jael and Jane, was pretty and tall with long golden hair and thought much of herself. Jael Job, as senior retainer, on conversational terms with his master and much in his confidence, was a step or two above most of the servants and had not looked with pleasure on any of the young men who had so far come forward, so she was still unpromised. She was not herself above a side glance here and there, but she had none for Aristotle Totle, who on the fifth evening got up late from the supper board, leaving a number of his fellows in a drunken stupor at the wine-spilled table and carefully climbed the stairs to where he knew Annora would be. When she came past he tried to persuade her and then to take her by force. Her father was the first to reach her, and finding her still shrieking and with her clothes in disarray, he gave Totle a great blow and threw him downstairs.

  Totle picked himself up with blood spurting over his face and went roaring up the stairs again, to be met by Jael Job coming down. They locked, and fell together, and burst open the door into the banqueting hall. Neither Mr Knyvett nor Captain Elliot was there, and the others in the room, seamen and servants alike, stood back while the two men reeled across the room, upsetting stools and trestle tables and fire irons and chairs. The negro, tipped off his chair, suddenly leaped cursing at Job from behind, but Carminow, the master gunner, snatched up a candlestick and, spilling lighted candles about the table, hit the negro across the head with it.

  In the semi-dark women screamed and men shouted and trampled and swore. Dogs too took sides, snarling and fighting among the scuffing feet. The seamen, outnumbered by two to one, would in the end have been badly used by the Killigrew men whose tempers had smouldered for days; but in time Parson Merther, who had scuttled out at the first blow, brought in Mr Knyvett and Captain Elliot.

  Captain Elliot fired his pistol over the heads of the fighting men, and in a while some order was let in; men were picked up, a fire of burning tallow and rushes was stamped out in a corner, new lights were brought and dogs kicked out of doors to cool. The negro came round quickly, but a falconer called Corbett was badly hurt by a blow he had taken late in the fight, and he lay in a stupor for several days and was never quite clear in his head again until he died in ’95.

  It might have been that such an explosion would have cleared the air, but it did no such thing; the seamen thought themselves set on unjustly and quietly whetted their long knives and waited. It was clear that Elliot must get them away as quick as possible, so there were long hours of hasty bargaining behind closed doors. It was not until one of the seamen who had been ill quietly died that we woke to realise there were other perils in their visit besides drunkenness and rape.

  His body was carried down to our landing stage and taken out to sea by four of his fellows and put overboard. An hour later the last bargains were struck and Elliot and Love left. Elliot carried two heavy bags which clinked. Then the others began to go, bearing their belongings with them. One sailor looked unlikely ever to make the five mile trek to Helford.

  Last to leave were Aristotle Totle and Justinian Kilter. Mr Knyvett had gone in, but Carminow and Rosewarne were there to see them away.

  “Well, we’d best be off now,” Totle said. “ But we’ll be back—eh, Tinny?”

  “Like as not,” said Kilter.

  “Like as not in my own barque next time,” said Totle. “Or I should be if right was right. We poor Jacks never get our desarts.”

  “Who knows,” said Carminow.

  “Aye, just so, who knows. Maybe next time we’ll be al
ong of the Spanish, and come blow you out of your little ’ole.”

  “I’ll wait for the day,” said Carminow.

  Totle showed his broken teeth. “Then we’ll really get among your women, gales. Eh, Tinny?”

  “Already have,” said Kilter, shouldering his bundle with a quiet grin.

  A gale is an impotent bull, and the two insults, I could see, were all but more than even the quiet tempered Rosewarne could stand.

  In silence the two sailors were watched until they had tramped down the leaf-covered path towards the gate. Then Carminow cleared his throat noisily and spat.

  “Good rid to they. They only just left in time.”

  “Maybe they didn’t leave in time,” said Rosewarne.

  Chapter Five

  For several days life went on as usual. Letters arrived from Nonesuch, where the Court had moved, telling of my father’s life there but vaguely worded and avoiding mention of a date of return. I heard Henry Knyvett mutter that if John’s doxy was amiable we should not see him until his money ran dry.

  Then about a week after Dolphin sailed Mrs Killigrew’s personal maid, a girl called Ida, complained she had a headache and could not sleep. The next day a dairy maid and Dick Stable the harpist were taken with a high fever, and the day after two more went down. Attacks of quartan ague were common enough, and the outbreak might have been a seasonal one, but on the Sunday I heard two of the older women whisper together. One of them, Maud Vance, who was the midwife for the house, told the other that an hour ago she had gone to the room where Ida was ill and found her in a stupor, and had stripped the shift off her and found a rash of purple spots on her belly and legs. It did not take long then for word to spread that the sailors had left their disease behind.

  What name it had no one knew, or how to treat it. We put the sick people in one big room and closed the windows and nailed black sailcloth over the windows so that there was no difference in the room between night and day. We had the walls washed in vinegar, and smouldered herbs in pewter dishes held over the candle flames. My stepmother, though still frail from her last illness and great with child, insisted on directing the care of the sick.