The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham
From St Thomas’s until Christmas Eve the children and a half-dozen servants had been decorating the great hall and the principal chambers. Holly and ivy had been brought in from the woods near the river and the apple trees stripped of their mistletoe. The window sills were bowered with bay leaves, and rosettes made of dyed rags were strung across the hall. Belemus, given his way for once, painted some of the window panes crimson and ochre and vivid green, so that in the day coloured light fell in, and in the night coloured light shone out. Oranges and lemons were tied together in bunches and some crimson cloth found to hang upon the walls hiding the duller arras.
To make room for our visitors we children were turned out of our bedrooms and slept five in a room on straw at the back of the house. At table we were crowded closer together than ever before, for none of the parties came with less than two servants to accompany them.
Christmas Eve there was a fine supper, and the Yule log was dragged in and laid across the hearth. It was expected that it would burn for four days. After supper we sang madrigals and carols; then at midnight the Lord of Misrule came in in a gaudy yellow robe followed by twelve attendants in all the colours they could find. Dick Stable, because he was a lively comic lad, and because he had a sense of how far he might go without setting my father on him, had been chosen for the part, and he was crowned by my stepmother amid much cheering and laughter. Henceforward he was to command the merry-making and to keep his throne for twelve days.
On Christmas Day nearly the whole household went across the fields in procession to communicate at Budock, and after a great dinner at which there was pigeon-pie and a boar’s head and mince-meat and plum-porridge and saddles of mutton, the afternoon was spent in a torpor. In the evening presents were given all round, and we danced until ten o’clock. Apart from little things for my own family, I had only two presents to give, for I had scant money—or for that matter scant opportunity of spending it. But I had had Rose buy me in Truro a pair of stockings of fine wool dyed scarlet, and from one of the sailors I had bought a little cap made of delicate bone lace from Antwerp.
Having bought them, I spent an agony of time deciding which to give to Meg and which to Sue. Because the stockings had cost more I esteemed them more, but I was not sure whether Sue would regard stockings as a proper present from me. I could not make her out at all: she looked so shy and pale and hostile.
So I gave the stockings to Meg. I did this before supper when she was trimming the candles, and she took the stockings from me and let them slowly unroll out of her hands.
“For me? … Dear life, boy … Where did ee get ’em? Bought ’em? For me? Proper ladies’ they are. Well, my blessed parliament! Thank you, Master Maugan. I’ll never bear to wear ’em. But I’ll put ’em on. Truly. Not that you can ever see ’em.” She giggled. “Well maybe once, so long as Dick don’t catch us.” She took two dancing steps up to me and put her arms, stockings and all, round me and kissed me on the lips. It was the first time she’d kissed me on the lips. There was much more taste and it was more exciting.
Suddenly she drew away. “ Do anyone know about this?”
“No.”
“Then nary a one tell, will ee, Maugan? Tis better that way, boy.”
“I wont tell,” I said.
“My dear life, ladies’ stockings. You’re a real gentleman, Maugan. When you d’ grow up there’ll be no holding of you. And thank you.”
I went away feeling as if I had done something I should not have done. Yet I was not ashamed for it.
I carried the little cap for Sue in my pocket all through supper and through the dance after, but was shy of giving it to her in front of others. Meg’s attitude had added to my shyness and reserve. But when the dancing broke up there was a lot of talk and movement and no one attended to what others were doing, so I edged over.
“Sue, I bought you this, I thought it would perhaps pleasure you, it was the only thing I could think of, and …”
She was flushing from dancing, and the many conflicting and coloured lights in the room gave new expression to her face. I remember how white her eyelids were as she took the lace cap and looked down at it.
“It’s very … kind of you, Maugan. This lace is … fine.” She turned it over and her fingers suddenly trembled. “ But should you not buy me a gown too? A pomander ball, a muff, a mirror? It’s the least a Killigrew should give a Farnaby, now that my father’s bankrupted and may go to prison.”
“It was not my doing.”
“Do you know we were given but an hour? We were allowed to take nothing but the clothes we were in, and one small valise besides among the three of us. Do you know that your father had raised the rent four fold since we went there? Do you know my father wrote six letters asking for time and promising to pay? And it was all just two weeks before Christmas, a time of peace and goodwill toward men—and among neighbours. See all this: all the luxury, the table, the wines, the jewellery; we don’t begrudge it to others if we could have had an understanding of our own straits.”
She looked up, and her eyes were full of tears.
I said: “Oh, Sue. Sue. I know … I know it all, but it was done before I heard. But if I had known I couldn’t have stopped it … Why did you come?”
“Because my aunt thought it best. I was one less for her to feed.”
The next day, which was St Stephen’s Day, most of the men went hawking, and it was good to have them out of the way. The rest of us, after longer prayers than usual—which were to suffice the day—and a quick breakfast of brawn and mustard and malmsey, set about preparing the hall for the mummers’ play in the evening.
The nature of the play was such that, although we all knew who was taking part in it, each player should be so disguised that the watchers could not easily name him, and work had been in hand for two weeks making new and remaking old masks. Some looked like unicorns, some like bears; others wore deer’s hides and antlers, and a few with no other disguise must black their faces. Dick Stable was to be St George and old Penruddock the Devil.
I do not know if many guessed the identity of the boy who played the young companion to St George. He wore a white skintight mask, a black cap, a green jerkin, tight grey breeches with garters just above the knee and brilliant scarlet stockings. Meg was not only showing them to me, she was showing them to all the house. I was afraid for her because she risked a beating. I kept looking at her legs as if they were something beautiful but forbidden that I would never see again.
The play would have been a greater success if so much double beer had not been drunk before it. Twice it had to be halted because the stage was giving way from over-many persons on it. When there was a fight to the death between St George and Satan, Satan forgot that he was mumming and encouraged by the shouts of his followers laid St George over on his back with a Cornish wrestler’s throw and looked up with a drunken grin of triumph beneath his loosened mask. St George’s boy tried to drag him off, and a fight broke out. In a moment eight or ten figures were wrestling and punching; but there were some sober enough to stop them before it became more than a matter for passing laughter among the distinguished audience.
When the dancing came, mummers mingled with audience, and although at the beginning there was a pavane and a coranto, no one was in a mood for courtly airs, and soon the players struck up for a country dance. Lady Jael Killigrew was closely attended by Digby Bonython, and she seemed not at all to mind. She had shocked us by coming down to supper in a gown of tissue of gold lined with velvet, so low-cut that her breasts were scarcely covered. Her eyebrows were plucked and her eyelids fresh treated with kohl, and she wore perfumed lavender gloves. My stepmother did not dance as yet after her illness, and my father constantly led out Mrs Gertrude Arundell, Jack of Trerice’s mother.
Mr Killigrew was in his liveliest, most arrogant mood, and insisted that everyone should dance a new dance he had brought from court called a lavolta, whose chief step was a high leap in the air. What with demonstrating and then da
Sue Farnaby had avoided me all day. In the play she had been one of the signs of the Zodiac, and she still wore her parchment mask and two wooden fishes on her shoulders. There was a jig, and I went suddenly across and caught her by the hand and we were into the dance before she could stop. For a while she seemed to be making little effort, but after a few minutes she brightened her step. I saw Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne watching us.
“I have been wanting to speak to you all day,” I said.
She looked up at me quickly but did not speak.
“After last night,” I said, “it was almost more than I could do to ask you for a dance.”
She giggled slightly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was on account of me that you were asked here and I realise now it was wrong of me to ask. I hope some day—some day to be able to put things right between your family and mine. I can only do my best.”
She seemed to be thinking of this as we went round again but when the dance came to an end and we paused breathless before another began and still she did not speak, I said:
“Sue …”
She patted my arm. “ Maugan, dear, it was naughty of me to deceive you but I am Gertrude Carew.”
I went very red. “All evening I thought … Which is Sue, then?”
“She says I was not to tell anyone.”
“Did you change your costume on purpose to deceive folks?”
“Sue wanted it. I don’t know why.”
Jonathan Arundell had come up. “Gertrude, is that mask not irksome on you now, dear? I shouldn’t think jigging in it so comfortable.”
She laughed. “Nor is it comfortable to Maugan, Jonathan.” She pulled off the mask and showed dishevelled hair and a shiny happy face. “I must withdraw and cool myself.”
“Do you know which is Sue Farnaby?” I asked when she had moved away.
“I think she left the room a half hour gone,” Jonathan said. “She was the black girl in the turban. I think she went to take the colour off her face.”
I walked slowly down the passage leading to the north wing. The wind outside was not strong tonight, but every now and then it would raise its voice like a lost dog and howl round the big straggling house. I thought of this building teeming with life and colour and music and little human beings, and all about us were the great empty spaces of sea and river and sky and wood and star. In the grim castle at the end of the promontory two men remained on guard through the night as a precaution against surprise; but in the dark of the night it was impossible for that watch to be sure. The safest protection and the surest watch dog was the wind and the treacherous unquiet sea, for ever ready to pounce on men and drive them on the Manacles of Dodman Point. They said there was the wreck of an Armada ship to be seen on the north coast not far from the Arundell house at Trerice. Wrecks from that Armada still littered the sea-coast below Dover, so passengers to and from France did not pass unreminded.
There was a light burning in one of the rooms upstairs, and from it Annora Job came out, her fair hair in long plaits down the front of her bodice. She glanced at me with slant eyes and went on down the passage. As I reached the other end I heard a door close again and saw that someone else, a man, had come out of the same room. It looked like Tresithney Treffry, my cousin from Fowey.
At the end of the passage were two rooms given over to the mummers where we could dress; they were no more than attics under the eaves. One had been set aside for the men and one for the women. The men’s room was empty except for piles of clothes; in the women’s room was Sue Farnaby. By the light of the single candle she was combing her hair before the square piece of mirror propped against a wooded box. She turned round when she heard me.
She was still wearing the borrowed frock but she had washed the burnt cork off her face and hands.
I said: “I was confused tonight. I thought you were Gertrude and Gertrude you.”
“She has just told me. Don’t you know I am an inch taller?”
“I thought it was the shoes.”
“And she is two inches more round the waist.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That we differ or that you made the mistake?”
“That I made the mistake.”
She put the comb down but did not look at me again. “I think I was wrong to speak to you as I did last night, Maugan.”
“Oh, no, it was well deserved. I’m ashamed for my family.”
“Gertrude says it was you who got me invited here.”
“Well … Yes.”
“It was kindly meant.”
“I wanted to—see you again. So perhaps it was selfish.”
“I don’t think that selfish. I’ve enjoyed it here.”
“You can stay another seven or eight days yet.”
“I’ll have to go when Gertrude goes. I think it will be before January.”
“What will you do then?”
“I don’t know. Something will come. Do not spoil your Christmas with our worries.”
“Won’t you come back to the dance?”
“I wanted to take the black off my face. Already it has made this lace dirty.”
“You still have a mark on your ear.”
“Where?” She turned. “Where? I can’t see it.”
“No, not there. It’s very little.”
She picked up the cloth towel. “ You take it off for me, will you, Maugan?”
I stood beside her; I was two or three inches the taller and I lifted away a piece of her black hair and rubbed the towel gingerly round the rim of her ear. I rested my hand on her shoulder and it was like touching something magic. I felt sick with pleasure. Her breath was on my cheek. I wanted life and time to stop.
I laughed loudly and stepped away. “ There, all’s well!” I swallowed and dropped the towel and turned away.
“Thank you, Maugan. Let’s go down.”
She took my hand and we went slowly along the first passage and turned into the second. Here we surprised Stevens the footboy who was kissing one of Caiminow’s daughters. They broke off and fled when we came round the corner.
I said: “ Not all are dancing.”
“It’s a merry house, I hope the Carews will stay over into January.”
“When is Gertrude marrying Jonathan Arundell?”
“In May! She’ll be 15 then.”
“So shall I be. I’m 15 in February. And you?”
She said: “I was 15 last month. Soon we shall all be old.”
“I can’t bear the thought of your being old.”
Her hand tightened on mine. “I wish I were a man. I could go out into the world and make my fortune—or at the least try to make it—I could help my father and mother in some bigger way. A woman is such a useless thing!”
“No!”
She said: “I have known for years that nearly all my friends are different circumstanced from me. It was by accident perhaps that I made such friends. My mother knew yours and she knew also the Bonythons and the Arundells. So it happened that I sometimes—often—came to be invited where my father and mother were not, because I was of a suitable age for their children, because my manners were not amiss, because I have been taught well. But all the time there was this difference which now my father’s bankruptcy or your father’s ruthless ways has pointed. I’m not of their world, Maugan, and I never shall be.”
“Do you think I am?”
“Well … I don’t suppose in your case it will make so much difference. Although—you—your mother is unknown, your father is the biggest man in all these parts. He’ll be able to establish you in some way; or you will be of value to him here. While he lives you cannot want. And if he dies you will remain a Killigrew, with relatives in the highest places in the land …”
As we got to
“Ah-ha!” he said on seeing us. “ There’s more than one skirmish going on about the house this night. My, your tongue must be black, Maugan.”
“What do you mean?”
He peered at Sue and laughed and went bounding along the passage.
I said: “ I’m sorry for my cousin. Becoming a jester has shaken his wits.”
She stopped and looked up at me with that sober elfin stare. Then she opened the door into the hall. At once all the light and heat and noise rushed out like a furnace flame. They were dancing a round dance, and my father and his guests were in figures of eight at one end of the floor, while the mummers and servants were at the other. Job and Carminow and Foster were gulping beer out of the barrel by the further door; my mother was talking to Parson Merther who had come to call the younger children to bed; in a corner beyond the fireplace Henry Knyvett and Lady Jael and Digby Bonython were at dice together. One of the candelabra had slipped askew and the candles were smelling rank and dripping grease: it was the game in that particular figure of eight so to manoeuvre that your partner was hit by the grease and you were not. Three dogs had slipped in through an unguarded door and were quarrelling over the bones of the swans which had been thrown on the floor.
Sue, who had released my hand when Belemus came out, took it again.
“D’you wish to join in?” I shouted.
“No, let’s stay here and watch.”
I was happy just then, feeling her fingers in mine. I was content that she was my friend again and not at all concerned that Belemus’s conclusions were wrong or to think how much happier I might have been if they had been right.
Mr Killigrew sat up all that night dicing with a succession of his guests. They one by one took themselves off to bed until at dawn he was left only with Lady Jael and Digby Bonython. He was in pocket on the night, and so was happy about it, but as a consequence few stirred until well into the afternoon of the following day, which was St John’s. At dusk John and Sinobia Enys arrived. He was three weeks younger than I but she was just 21. They matched with the Boscawens, except that Sinobia was pretty and featherheaded while Grace Boscawen was plain and intelligent. In the evening there was another procession, headed by the Lord of Misrule and tonight he was followed by a hobby horse, who was Rose the groom, and after him came Maid Marion, our kennel man, Long Peter, the tallest man in the house, dressed in woman’s clothes. It was the night for practical jokes. Someone sawed the back legs of Penrudduck’s stool and melted the ends of two candles on to the stumps, so that when he sat down, he collapsed backwards into the fireplace. Little Odelia Killigrew was terrified of spiders, and her brothers John and Thomas captured three hairy ones out of a loft and released them on her platter just as she was about to eat. Six of the servants were served with small beer which turned out to be cow urine.