The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham

“Your home is in ashes,” I said. “ I’ve seen men burnt too. But of course it’s as you please.” The words scarcely meant anything; I had to say something to release the pressure in my throat.

  Just then a young woman with a child appeared and almost fainted with relief when she saw Sue at the door. This woman too was taken into the kitchen and fed. She had been crouching in a disused tunnel for thirteen hours. She had seen two Spanish soldiers about an hour ago on the quay.

  Philip Reskymer walked across to the ruins of his church and we tried to get inside, but the heat was still too great and some of the roof timbers had not fallen but were smouldering and liable to collapse. Even the great stone pillars had broken apart.

  “This is the first church in England ever to be lit by a Spanish torch,” he said. “ I fear it will not be the last. Do I understand, Mr Killigrew, that you saw an auto de fé?”

  “Yes. Human beings burn too.”

  “Tolerance is a rare commodity.”

  “We do not burn our captives.”

  “Not of late. We stretch them on the rack.”

  “I think,” said Sue, “I think I will see if old Mrs Lavelis is safe. It’s thirty minutes mounted, and since she’s half blind …”

  “Then take Tamblyn with you. He has a strong arm and a stout heart.”

  “If your wife wishes to visit this Mrs Lavelis,” I said, “ I shall be pleased to go instead of your servant.”

  “Thank you, Maugan, no,” Sue said.

  “But why do you not all go?” Philip Reskymer suggested. “ If the Spanish come in force, none of us will survive. But if they stray singly, then Tamblyn and young Mr Killigrew are as good a protection as you are likely to get. You have a horse Mr Killigrew?”

  “In the next field.”

  It was half an hour before we left.

  We rode three abreast to begin, and then as the track narrowed Tamblyn fell behind. But he was still too close for private conversation between us. The sun had gone down into a blood red haze which looked like a record of the day and a portent for tomorrow. We came upon a stone-built square house mercifully unburnt, with narrow mullioned windows and an iron-studded front door. We rang for a time and had no response, then knocked, then tried the latch and walked in.

  We were in a hall with a handsome hammerbeam roof. It was dark and cluttered with heavy furniture, and I bumped into a table.

  “Who’s there?” quavered a voice.

  “Mrs Lavelis?” called Sue. “Where are you?”

  “Who’s that? Tell me at once.”

  “Susanna Reskymer with two friends. We came to see if you lacked anything.”

  “Company, yes. You’ll find tinder on the big fable. Light a candle.”

  Eventually light began to grow, flickering and dying and then creeping up. A plump old lady was sitting on one of a flight of broad stairs, holding a musket across her knees.

  “So you are real,” she said. “I was beginning to doubt.”

  At the first scare the servants had fled, leaving the old woman of eighty-four to face the enemy alone. So she had stayed all day, though her sight was bad, sitting on the stairs gun in hand.

  We helped her to a comfortable chair, prepared some food for her. In the reaction she was suddenly frail; we could not leave her tonight. But Sue was concerned about her husband. She asked me to go and tell him. I said my first duty was to her; Tamblyn must go.

  She did not like this, argued that if I would not go alone she would stay here herself; I said where she was there I would stay.

  Sue helped the old lady up the stairs to bed. Mrs Lavelis said the bedroom next to hers was prepared and usable; if Sue would take it she would sleep more soundly; the two men could sleep in the room next the hall. Before we closed the door Mrs Lavelis was breathing quietly.

  At dusk Sue told Tamblyn to go and explain to Mr Reskymer that she would not be back tonight. Then she told Tamblyn to return here with all speed.

  When he had gone she stood with her back to the great front door looking at me with liquid resentful eyes.

  I leaned across and lit two more candles. “I am real. Even though at first you may have doubted it.”

  “Oh—I’m—glad, Maugan. I only wished it hadn’t happened this way!”

  “The choice was yours.”

  She came slowly to the table, on which were still the remains of supper. “Was I to know?”

  “You thought I was dead?”

  “Yes!”

  “If you had been my widow your haste would have seemed indecent.”

  She flushed. “It’s a long story.”

  “It will be a long night.”

  She began to pick up the trencher plates, the knives, the spoons.

  “Leave that,” I said.

  She stopped. “ What do you want me to say? What is there to say? However long I tried I could never persuade you that what I did seemed at the time to be right.”

  “Oh, Sue …”

  She put her hands to her face. I got up but she said: “No, don’t touch me!”

  “Sue, why did you ever do this?”

  She went to one of the long narrow windows and peered out at the darkening drive.

  “Is it safe to have light? Might it not attract the Spanish?”

  “They’ll not be concerned with us tonight. Also it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.”

  “Yes, it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.” She suddenly went on in a choked voice: “Why did I marry Philip Reskymer? I’ll tell you. Because I’m a weakling and a coward! … They told me you were dead. Can you understand? They told me you were dead. I could not even grieve openly. You were supposed to be nothing to me! Only Elizabeth Arundell guessed …” She turned. “I couldn’t stay on at Tolverne—not an everlasting companion to Elizabeth in a gloom-filled house, for ever and ever. There was just an eternity before me of life without purpose. Philip Reskymer came twice to see Lady Arundell, to whom he’s related, and I saw he liked my company, but that was all. When I left I thought I should never see him again. I never wanted to see any of them. I wanted to get right away …”

  “But you changed your opinion.”

  “He found me at my aunt’s farm and asked me to marry him. He put it to me in such terms that I couldn’t refuse outright. He said he would come back in a week for an answer. It was in those days of waiting that I knew my true weakness.”

  The tears were brimming on her lashes. “ Philip is such a kind man: that was my undoing. Above all I needed kindness and some sort of comfort. Can you understand? Philip asked me to help him in his work, he asked me to be his companion and helpmate and friend. That appealed, for I felt if I could have some object in life … He told me of his work, and it seemed saintly—there are so few like him.”

  “Also he was rich.”

  She stopped and then nodded her head, so that a shower of tears fell. “Yes. That counted. I’ll not pretend otherwise. He had a house, servants, who would tend on me. That may be nothing fresh for you, Maugan, but it has been fresh for me. Ever since I can remember we’ve been in dire straits. My father was always particular to keep up a standard of manners and behaviour—I was brought up to act like a lady—but at what cost behind the stage! The meals we had with only parsnips and carrots! The endless grubbing in the fields! That had already begun again while living with my aunt. How was I to know that if I refused his offer it might not continue for the rest of my life?”

  “Have you never looked at yourself in the glass?”

  “Oh, no doubt I should do as well as the rest if I had a home and money for a dowry. But who wants a penniless girl? Nearly all marriages are a question of money … And don’t you see? Philip was not taking your place; he was taking some other place, which perhaps my father had once held—or which perhaps had never been filled before! Do you understand that?”

  “Do you love him?”

  She made a rapid impatient gesture, and took out a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “ What is love? Two or three
diverse things. I don’t love him as I—as I … But I love him in the sense that he is worthy of respect, of admiration, of help, of service. Until now I have found satisfaction, a new sort of life, in helping him, in being beside him while he worked.”

  “Did it never occur to you that I might still be alive?”

  “When I first heard, the news was that you were dead. It was not until later that I heard how you had disappeared. By then I couldn’t bring myself even to hope. That too is a weakness, I know. I have this fault of seeing things blackly. Often in my life I have hoped and prayed—and the hope has never come.”

  “Does your husband know about us?”

  “No. He thinks I’m just of a melancholic nature—which may be true but not to the extent that he thinks.”

  “And what are we to do now?”

  “What is there to do? I’m married.”

  “If we told him the truth, would he not understand?”

  “Maugan, I could not. I entered into my marriage in good faith—as he did.”

  “You still love me?”

  She passed near a candle and the flame eddied in the air with the movement her body made. I felt I was like that candle, as much subject to her, as little capable of stability when she was near.

  “I must go and see if Mrs Lavelis needs me.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “The old are always dozing and waking. Come with me. From her bedroom you can see across the fields. It might be as well to look once more before darkness falls.”

  Chapter Seven

  Tamblyn returned about eleven. He said the master was safe—more villagers had drifted back but none had ventured down into Mousehole.

  Sue slept in the guest bedroom next to that of Mrs Lavelis. Tamblyn and I took it in turns to keep watch from a little turret room which commanded an excellent view to south and east. Tamblyn took the first watch—from twelve until three, while I slept on one of the beds in the room next to the hall. In spite of everything I went to sleep quickly and being wakened at three was like being dragged out of a pit.

  I went up, took the rug still warm from Tamblyn and wrapped it round. The chair gave a view from both windows and I settled down in it. The stars had disappeared, and a Spanish army could creep up on such a night.

  I sat there holding Mrs Lavelis’s musket and began to think about Sue.

  My heart was sick and my mind full of fancies. I sat there for a full hour thinking about her, with sleep pricking at my eyelids and my will not quite in control. It was the deepest part of the night when dying men die and the living have their darkest thoughts.

  I suppose it must have been near four when I found myself beginning to wake up. There was no longer any struggle with lids or limbs. Yet though I woke I woke not from my thoughts.

  I thought of Sue.

  I got up and peered out of the windows. A low wind was sighing in the trees. I went downstairs and opened the door into the room beside the hall. Tamblyn’s deep regular breathing greeted me.

  I went upstairs again, passed Mrs Lavelis’s door and listened. There was no sound. I went on to Sue’s door and gently opened it. There was no sound here either, and it was not until I was half way to the bed that I caught her quiet breathing.

  She was sleeping with the bed curtains drawn back and woke the instant I touched her hand.

  “Who is it?”

  “Maugan. I thought to see if you were safe.”

  “Is there anything wrong? What time is it?”

  “Near four. No, all’s quiet.”

  “Then …”

  “I came to be with you.”

  “Maugan, you should not!”

  “Should I not? Have I not that right?”

  “Oh, between ourselves, perhaps; but—”

  “It’s only between ourselves.”

  “That can’t be, my love.”

  “You’d call me that and yet deny me?”

  “I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have said it. It’s the shock of waking like this. You surprise words out of me.”

  “Love is the only word I have surprised …”

  I sat there for a time beside her without speaking. In the accustomed dark my eyes could see the oval of her face, and the shape of her shoulders. She had reared up from the pillows but now lay back, only her head lifted. I took her hand. It was warm and a little moist. I turned it up and kissed the palm.

  The hand contracted, tried to free itself, though not violently.

  I said: “ To whom did you first swear your love?”

  “To you.”

  “That oath to me was binding, a betrothal. For it I forsook all others.”

  “I thought you were dead I’ve told you, Maugan!”

  “If a woman marries a man and then, mistakenly thinking him dead, marries a second man, to whom is she rightly married?”

  “Oh, yes, I know. But we were not married. It was a—”

  “It was a betrothal, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes but—”

  “A betrothal is as binding as a marriage ceremony. Ask any one.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t so now in law.”

  “Can you be more cruel than that?”

  She sat up again. “ Maugan, what can I say to you? When I saw you yesterday I thought my heart would stop. Since then I have tried, tried so hard!”

  “You have tried so hard to defeat your true feelings. You say you’re weak. I think I am weak. You are far too strong …”

  We looked at each other and I put my hand up to her neck. I pulled her towards me. She resisted, pushing at my chest, but it was the resistance of one far gone in some illness or trial of strength. It was as if she had burned herself up inwardly during the day and now had no reserves left.

  I think if it had not been for my experiences with Meg I should not have gone into Sue’s room that night. Yet to say that the knowledge of one woman breeds confidence with the next is to state a truism that puts too base a value on it. I was not going from one light creature to another but from a simple romantic scullery maid with whom I had learned all I knew to the girl who should have been my wife.

  The first dawn light picking out the gap in the bed curtains showed up Sue’s face pale and drowned against my arm. Her hair lay like seaweed over the pillow.

  I said: “ But I don’t understand …”

  Her eyes flickered but she did not open them.

  “You have been married—how long?” I said. “ If—”

  She said sulkily: “It is not that sort of a marriage. I tried to explain.”

  “Then what sort in God’s name—”

  “Before we married, Philip made it clear he sought nothing of me but companionship. He feels that a relationship of the body between a man of fifty and a girl of seventeen is unnatural and wrong. I believe he loves me. I know he does—in the fullest way; but he’s a principled man and has never attempted to amend his views as we have grown closer in friendship … So you have found me as I am.”

  I drew her closer to me. Her body was slighter than Meg’s, less rounded, the bones small but more noticeable. I was enamoured and enraptured with her out of my senses. We lay for a time unspeaking.

  At last she said: “It’s getting light.”

  I reached up and pulled the curtains closer.

  “Maugan, you must go.”

  I stopped her mouth in the only way. And in that way our rational minds ceased to work. I knew that first light was the most likely time to be surprised by the Spaniards. I knew that Tamblyn might get up and find me no longer in the turret room and raise the alarm. It was possible that Philip Reskymer might come over at dawn. But my brain was submerged; nothing mattered.

  But however narrow the slit in the curtains, daylight crept through and was suddenly in possession of our dark fortress, and the curtains were high walls against the world no longer.

  She sat up: “ I think I hear something.”

  “No, it’s the wind.”

  She listened intently. Eventuall
y she gave way to the pull on her arm and lay down. She tried to push her hair back from her brow.

  A bird was cheeping under the eaves; it was an alarmed sound as if a cat were stalking him. There was a scraping on the roof above us made by a crow or a chough as he edged along the thatch. Far away a cow was lowing.

  I said: “ We must make plans.”

  “How can you make plans to defeat fate?”

  “Not defeat it perhaps but circumvent it. Sue, you can’t go on living this unnatural life for ever. If we survive this invasion, then some way must be found to free you of an impossible tie. It will poison and distort Reskymer’s life as well as yours and mine.”

  “In whatever we do we must go slow.”

  “I have a feeling that if he loves you as you say he does he’ll not be able to keep to his principles much longer. Look at you? Would any man?”

  “He doesn’t see me like this.”

  “No, but one day he may. Have you separate rooms?”

  “Of course.”

  “With a connecting door?”

  “Maugan, don’t torture yourself! Accept my assurance that nothing …” She stopped.

  “What is it?”

  “Listen.”

  I listened.

  Outside a horse neighed, and there was the jingle of harness.

  I leapt out of the bed and began to claw into my shirt and doublet and slops and shoes. Half clad I hobbled to the window. It was broad day. Some men on horses were disappearing round to the front of the house. I grabbed the musket from where I had propped it and fumblingly primed it with powder.

  “Who is it?” Sue whispered.

  “Men. I don’t know them. Dress but wait here.”

  This room led on to a landing looking down into the hall. It was still gloomy here, but light fell in from the open front door. Three men were already in the hall.

  “Halt!” I shouted.

  They stayed there motionless, but two men coming in the door raised guns.

  “Hold!” said the man in front. “ Who the devil calls? I don’t recognise the voice.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Since this is my home I’ve a better right to ask you that.”

  I lowered my gun. “Your home?”