The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham
It was now ten o’clock and the hot sun was beating down out of a cloudless sky, though the secretive fog still limited the horizon. There was no time as yet for any but the most neighbouring of lieutenants to bring succour. We could certainly expect nothing from Pendennis, since they would have to hold their musters in readiness for an attack on the harbour.
Sir Francis stared at the clusters of houses, now mainly empty but one or two with women or elderly people peering anxiously from between part closed shutters.
“Thus are we prepared,” he said to St Aubyn bitterly. “Scarcely better so, if at all, than when the first Armada came. If they have the force they can cut off the peninsula and be in command of all Penwith by nightfall.”
“There’s nothing we can do to stop ’em,” said St Aubyn. “Nothing till help comes.”
An old woman came out of a house pushing a barrow. On it were loaded her personal possessions: some pewter, a calico quilt, a candlestick, a brass chafing dish. She scarcely looked at us as she pushed her burden steadily out of the town.
One of the Godolphin servants came up. “ If ee please, sur, the Spanish be advancin’ now. They be at the foot of th’ill, no more’n half a mile away.”
“In what numbers?”
“Oh, I should say, three, four ’undred of ’em. They be carrying a banner, and more’n half of ’em’s in mail.”
Sir Francis looked at Chiverton and at St Aubyn, then sheathed his sword.
“We must abandon the town. See that no one stays, you Parker, and you Crinnis. We’ll go by slow stages and keep to the higher ground by Gulval. That way we may have the enemy in sight—”
“Sir,” I said, “in that case I ask leave to be excused.” When he looked at me in surprise I said: “I have a friend in Paul. I don’t know in what peril she stands; I must go and see.”
“The way is barred, Maugan. That must be plain to you.”
“Not by a circuitous inland route. It must be possible to approach the village from the north or west.”
“If the Spaniards take Penwith they will take you, and this time your release may not be so well come by.”
“It’s a risk I must run.”
Sir Francis pulled his horse round. “ I don’t know what your father will say to me, but I cannot stop you if you wish to go.”
“Thank you, sir.”
So as the Spanish closed in on Penzance from two sides, Godolphin and his small group retreated reluctantly by another. I left by the fourth, striking due north and then turning west as soon as I was out of sight of the town.
Chapter Six
The larks were singing. High up in the attenuated sky they fluttered, beating out excited messages that paid no heed to me or to my sweating horse. The first time I stopped to give my horse a breather after the long rough climb Penzance was still in sight, and it was possible to see curls of black smoke beginning to rise from some of the outlying cottages. The second time it was all hid by the brow of the hill.
Penwith is a strange secretive land, full of unexpected rocks bearded grey with lichen. I saw only one man in the first hour and he was in rags, crouched on his haunches setting a trap for a hare. I asked my way of him and was told it with an accent which showed his native language was Cornish and that he spoke English only with resentment. I did not tell him that we were being invaded by the Spanish; perhaps it was wrong but I felt that at best he would only dimly comprehend. His way of life was nearer to the hare he was trying to trap.
From this height it was hard to tell one’s distances, but as I dropped down into the first wild valley full of nut trees and scrub oak, I dismounted and led my horse, feeling that that way one was less likely to blunder upon the invaders unawares. I had eaten and drunk nothing since yesterday, so stopped at the first stream that we might both drink; but there was no food except for the abounding wild life which there was no means of snaring.
This valley led down to the coast and to a deserted bay. The sea here was emerald and turquoise, the rocks a terra cotta brown and square fashioned as if worked by a sculptor. We had come too far west and I led my horse up the hill which would divide this from the next cove. Almost as soon as we reached the top the strong smell of burning wafted through the trees.
I tethered the horse and went on foot. It wasn’t far to go. A rutted cart track led through a field in which the scent of the growing barley was overhung by the smell of smoke. Black specks floated in the sunlight, and here and there scraps of burnt paper and rags hung in the trees.
At the other side of the field was a broken iron gate ajar, and beyond a wider track with a cottage on either side of it. Both cottages were burnt out, the cob walls standing but roofs and windows gone. There was no sign of life and now little burning, only a wisp of smoke came from them.
But there was something bigger afire. Passing two chickens picking unconcernedly in the tufted grass, I turned the corner and came at once upon what, until recently, had been Paul Church. The tower had collapsed, breaking down the chancel wall; windows had fallen in, a black column of smoke and flame still came from the interior.
I made a cautious circuit of the building. No one was about; only the dead in their graves were here for witness.
The pall of smoke obscuring the sun moved away on a chance breeze, and then I saw that a substantial square-built house across from the churchyard was also blazing. I ran over the graves and came to a lych gate, panting, though not from running. A charred door lay across the front steps; the heat from inside made entry impossible; I ran round the back. The kitchens and still room, stone built and cool, had survived the flames. Even the timbers of the roof were only charred. Thrust open the door.
“Sue! … Sue! …”
The sound echoed in the silence. A smock hung over a chair, and beside it lay a scythe. On the table was a bowl full of cold pottage and a spoon. I tried to push open the next door. It resisted and then broke off its upper binge and leaned inwards. Beyond was a hall, blocked by a fallen beam. The movement of the door disturbed two or three charred pieces of panelling, and they fell to the floor so that the flames leapt again and an eddy of smoke blew across my face.
“Sue! Sue!”
Somewhere outside a dog was howling.
Back through the kitchen and out into the yard. The stables were empty, the dog was farther on yet. A coppice of trees came near the yard, the two closest had been scorched by the heat. I thrust through the tangle of brambles to another cottage which had not been fired. A cross-bred hound sat on its haunches beside a body which lay sprawled in front of the door.
It was a man, I saw with relief, a labourer. He lay on his back, eyes staring wildly at the sky, a gaping pike-wound in his throat. One hand still grasped a pitch-fork.
I patted the hound and tried to comfort him, then returned to the front of the rectory and stared about in the smoke. From here you could see where the Spaniards had dragged things out of the house in their search for valuables. But these piles, like the house, had been fired, and only a wisp of curtain, the handle of a warming pan, the charred pages of a book remained.
The village of Paul was a few smoking cottages, a tavern with ale trickling from an upturned barrel, feathers scattered in the road, a broken stool beside a tin-washing keeve, a dead horse.
The hill down into the village of Mousehole is very steep, and I climbed a hedge to get a view through the smoke and the sea mist.
The harbour was empty except for four fishing boats which swung at anchor on the full tide. All the houses round the harbour had been gutted. Three or four of the houses climbing the hill were still alight. No sign of life. Sword out I went down the hill.
It looked as if the Spaniards had moved on, directing their main drive along the coast to Penzance. There were no warships within visibility, which now stretched to maybe a mile.
I had reached the first cottages before I saw another dead man in the street, sprawling much as the other had sprawled. Voices.
Between the cottages was
Three Spanish officers.
The sight of these Spaniards walking in full armour down the street of a conquered English town, brought home to me as nothing else had—not the flight of the inhabitants, not the burning villages, not the galleys, not even the two corpses— the reality of this invasion of our land. In the year of the First Armada not one Spaniard had set foot on English soil except as a prisoner or as a shipwrecked mariner begging for succour.
But now it was here. The second Armada had landed its soldiers almost without opposition. There would be bitter fighting no doubt, and perhaps another sea battle as fateful as the one off Gravelines. Drake would accept this challenge with all his old fire and brilliance. And, although Ralegh was away, Essex or another would lead an army against this invading force. But from now on the long bitter war would reach a new pitch.
As they reached the harbour wall a strange thing happened. A man in a shabby laced jacket with blue velvet slops and a large black-hilted back sword, came from behind the wall, and I expected them to draw on him. Instead they talked for a moment and then all four turned and walked off together. I saw his face. It was Captain Richard Burley.
I went back up the hill.
At the last cottage a loaf of bread was lying in the road, and I grabbed it and ate half. At the church the fire still burned too fiercely to get inside. I sat on a vault trying to decide what to do. One could only continue to search.
So I went on for two hours, trying to trace a pattern around the village. The Spanish had not penetrated inland more than a mile beyond Paul. I found four cottages all clearly deserted in haste but unburned.
By five I had returned to the church. The sensible thing was to abandon the search and rejoin Sir Francis, if I could make a way back through the invading army. The mongrel hound which had continued to howl intermittently beside the dead body of his master suddenly changed his note to an angry bark. I went round to the scorched coppice and through the brambles.
“Down, Snuffler, down,” said a man’s voice. “ Quiet, boy! Oh! Now have a care, boy … that’s very well. That’s very well. Good dog … Let me move him, that’s very well …”
A man in clerical black was kneeling over the corpse, straightening its twisted limbs. Two other men in rough clothes were near by, pikes in hands. Beside them stood Mrs Susanna Reskymer, looking just as she had always been in my memory, tallish and slight, with grey-green eyes and black hair cut short over the forehead and ears, and the clearest of pale skins made paler now by what she was staring at, and a lip caught between her teeth and a wrinkle of horror twisting her forehead.
I said: “Sue …” before I could stop, and at once the two servants lifted their pikes.
The man in black also moved, and then Sue saw me. The pallor at seeing a murdered neighbour was nothing to the pallor that came to her face now.
“Maugan! …”
I stumbled out of the bushes. “ I came to look … Are you safe? I’ve been—searching since this morning.”
“We hid in the quarry. There’s a cave …”
“I found the church burning.”
“Yes, it’s all gone.”
“Is that your house, just there?”
“Yes. That’s gone too.”
“I was afraid …”
“We just got out in time.”
The thin man was standing opposite me.
“This is my husband,” Sue said. “Mr Reskymer. This is Mr Maugan Killigrew—from Arwenack.”
Someone put out a hand. I had to change hands with my sword.
“This is a tragic time for us,” he said. “ Have you seen aught of the Spaniards?”
“I saw some at noon in Mousehole. Not since.”
“You went down into Mousehole?”
“Not all the way.”
“Were there many dead or wounded?”
“One man was all I saw.”
“And this one, alas, our faithful Pieton. We tried to persuade him to leave but he would not. No doubt he died as he would have wished, defending his home.”
Philip Reskymer looked all of his fifty years, having lined cheeks and grey hair and the narrow shoulders of a scholar. But his eyes were alert and candid and penetrating. This was the man she had chosen, to whom she had given all that she had promised me, in the terrible intimacy of marriage. This old man was the man who had possessed her. He owned her; she lived with him, slept with him, was breathed upon and kissed and caressed by him, Utterly unchanged to look at, she was fundamentally changed within. She was Mrs Reskymer.
I heard myself explaining how I came to be here, what I had done since morning, why I was seeking them, and, now that I had found them, how I hoped they would let me see them to some safer district.
Philip Reskymer said softly: “ It is kind of you, Mr Killigrew, but where does safety lie? We don’t know that, but we know where duty lies, and mine is here by my ruined church to help any of my parishioners who may need me. As dark falls I fancy they will come drifting back.”
“And your wife?”
“Ah, there is another matter. I’d gladly see her out of this if I knew such a way.”
“I don’t think any of you safe here,” I said. “ If the Spanish intend to take Penwith, the only real safety is to make our way east before they seal it off. I was near enough this afternoon to hear three officers talking, and they were debating the holding of Penzance. I don’t know the numbers that have landed, but the neck of Penwith between St Ives and Penzance is not above a few miles. If they can defend that they have a foothold in England from which they’ll take some dislodging.”
Sue had not spoken since uttering my name.
“You speak Spanish, sir?” Reskymer asked.
“I was their prisoner for six months.”
“And were badly treated?”
“Not badly. But I am not a woman.”
He winced. “ I could wish some solution. What do you suggest?”
“That we all leave as quick as possible. Have you horses?”
“There are two in the cave. But my place is here.”
“Will it benefit your flock if you are murdered and your wife raped?”
“I … But if you are a soldier do you desert your regiment to protect your family? No more can I leave.”
“Then let your wife leave with these two servants. There’s some hours of daylight left. It will give them the chance to make a few miles, and then they can wait for nightfall before trying to slip through the net.”
Sue spoke for the first time. “ I cannot desert you, Philip.” Listening to her say that was like poison.
“Oh, yes, you can, if I can be sure that you’ll be safer leaving. But is it so?” Reskymer bent to close the staring eyes of the dead man. The cross-bred hound watched him suspiciously. “Poor John Pieton must be buried. There will be others. Susanna, I’m torn both ways.”
One of the servants came forward, and together they carried the dead man into his cottage. Sue got up from her stone and went with the other servant into the back of the cottage. There a woman servant was boiling some stew on a fire. We were all faint from hunger, and in twenty minutes we sat down together round the table and ate the hot stew with bread. From the unburned kitchen of the Reskymers’ house had been salvaged an Angelot cheese and a cherry tart; these made the meal.
Philip Reskymer wore a white band round his neck in the manner of the puritans. His hands were veined and nervous and seemed to have a life of their own, like sensitive antennae. He ate little while he told of their awakening that morning with the Spaniards already rampant in the village at the foot of the hill, Jenkin Kiegwin, he said, who owned much of the property in Mousehole, and whose house was the one substantial one in the town, had been surprised before he could flee and killed at his own front door. His wife and son had fled and were thought to be safe, but the fate of a second son was unknown.
One of the servants came back with an old woman who had been hiding all day in the bushes above Mousehole. She could tell us nothing of value, being half crazed with fear. Reskymer took her into the unburned house and Sue ministered to her.
“I am concerned for old Mrs Lavelis,” muttered Reskymer.
“Arthur Lavelis is away, and the three servants are new and unreliable. Then there are the Lanyons, but they are better able to fend for themselves …”
“Shall I go to Trewoofe and see?” Sue asked.
“It will not be safe.”
“It’s not safe to wait here,” I said. “ I ask you to leave while there is time.”
“How can I?” said Reskymer. “Already we’ve old Aunt Betty Coswarth to care for. There will be others. If the Spanish find us—”
“And your wife?”
His long hands took the bowl of hot milk from Sue and he carried it to the old woman. “I think he’s right, Susanna. I cannot expose you to this risk if—”
“I’m already exposed to it. There’s no proof that I shall be safer elsewhere.”
“There’s every reason to suppose it,” I said.
Sue stood up with her back to her husband. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m sorry, Maugan, this is my home.”
Furious, hurt, miserable, I wanted to turn on my heel and leave the girl to her beloved husband and her invited fate, but I could not make the first move. I just stared back at her, knowing myself lost and defeated.