The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham
I said: “It wasn’t what I heard—about the Reskymers, I mean. Perhaps I have later news. Or perhaps you have.”
“Yes. Yes of course. The proving of a will is always complicated. No doubt the lawyers will have their own say.”
I could tell from the tone of Lady Godolphin’s voice that she thought she had the right of it. The unease at the back of my mind was always finding some new food. I borrowed a fresh horse and left for Tolverne.
It was seven before we were safely over the ferry, and the night was then so dark that I led my horse up the steep overgrown slope to the house. I thought of Jonathan dancing with Gertrude at our Christmas festivities that happy year. I thought of Gertrude, flushed and happy, pretending to be Sue when I mistook her. I thought of Sue.
There were lights in the hall, none elsewhere. Their supper was late; I was in time for it; Lady Arundell and Elizabeth and Thomas and Gertrude and Sue and five other relatives whom I do not remember and never knew.
Human nature is such that it can stand but so much grief, and I imagine that the depths of unhappiness and sorrow had been plumbed by them all. For more than a week there had been no end to grieving. A new arrival broke the chrysalis of sorrow. Minds turned with relief to look outwards for a time. We talked of war and Mr Killigrew, and the Queen, and the distress in the country and of Jack Arundell of Trerice’s betrothal to Mary Carey of Clovelly.
It was clear that Sue had told no one here of our engagement to marry. This was not perhaps surprising: coming to a bereaved household one does not unmediately advertise one’s own happiness. Her black slightly damp-looking hair hung over the narrow lovely bones of temple and upper cheek, the eyes with their green-grey liquid brilliance moved reflectively from face to face as others spoke; she sat a little in shadow, sad and rather vulnerable because of the sadness about her, yet in perfect repose. When her eyes met mine, which was seldom, they warmed and searched at the same time.
Through the talk Thomas ate apples, biting with strong white teeth which lacked two middle ones, munching slowly; his face was broad and flabby, yet within it like a hammer under a cloak was brute determination, power and stamina, things his elder brother had so sadly lacked. Through the talk Gertrude, the young widow, watched and listened, sometimes speaking a word or two, and then falling to stare so fixedly at the candles that yellow flames burned in her eyes.
No one asked why I had come. At last I was able to speak with Sue.
“Can we get away somewhere?”
“I’ll go out in a moment.”
We met in the sewing room. I kissed her face, the grey silk of her dress, the lace at her throat.
One candle only in this room: it was behind the spinning wheel, and the spokes of the wheel made bars of shadow on the ceiling. Our own shadows were one, as soon we should be. We were a strange amorphous shape on the wall.
She broke from me breathlessly. “ Someone may come.”
“Does it matter?”
“A week ago Jonathan was lying dead in the room above us.”
I took a deep breath. “ So be it … I’m as grieved as you. But life in me—in us—is strong … to express it is no disrespect. Jonathan would not begrudge us what he has lost, nor Gertrude if she knew.”
“She will know, Maugan, I promise. But just a little time …” She fingered her black fringe away. “ Tell me about London.”
I spoke of the meeting with Sir Henry Killigrew and his view that, though he wished me well, he could not at present offer me anything. I spoke of meeting Ralegh and his suggestion that I could go back to Sherborne and take my bride with me.
“He suggests nothing more at the moment, but I’m entirely sure that within twelve months he’ll find a means to advance me. Let everything be said against Sir Walter, Sue, and not his greatest opponent could ever say he was unmindful of his friends.”
“And Lord Henry Howard?”
“Oh, impossible! I could not work for such a man.” I told her of the interview. “ In effect he offered less than Sir Walter. Not a secretaryship but some sort of an irregular employment for unknown purposes. To write letters in Spanish. To convey other letters—though not, I think, to Spain; to … I think he said to Scotland. It was all so veiled, so indirect. I only know that I was asked to be a party to some conniving, though he wouldn’t say in what direction that conniving was pointed.”
“He was suggesting something dishonest?”
“I don’t know. It was hard to say. Clearly he was testing me, trying out the way I responded … But even if his offer were better, I could not take it.”
“Why?”
“He is Ralegh’s bitterest enemy.”
“Ralegh has many enemies. They are not all bad men because of it.”
“Also he has some sort of contact with Spain that I dislike and distrust. He had heard of something—events—which had happened to me in Spain that no one, I thought, in England could know. It may not be a treasonable connection but it must be illicit.”
“The Earl of Essex has his own informants all over Europe. It could well be so with Lord Henry and his cousins.”
I got up restlessly. “ You should see him. He’s surrounded by long-haired boys. I grant he has taste and learning, but they are so smeared over with a kind of personal corrosive that they seem to impair what they touch …”
“What was the outcome of it all? Did you refuse what he offered?”
“It was easier just to come away. I’ll just not write to him.”
“He asked you to write?”
“If I was interested I was to write in January. There was no hurry, he said. I thought in the meantime he might try to find out more about me.”
She was folding and refolding a pleat in her dress. After a time I said: “ Don’t you see how impossible it would have been, Sue? To have accepted any position under this man. Yet there was no position at all, only a promise of intermittent employment. What is more, there would not even be accommodation in his house. We should have to live in lodgings or a house of our own. What he would pay me would be useless, to maintain us in such a way.”
“In that perhaps I could have helped.”
“Do you mean you’ve inherited more than you thought?”
“What I have, little as it is, would maintain us a year. To be at the centre, at the heart of things, as you would be there, that would be the great advantage.”
“This man is repulsive to me, Sue.”
She got up. “Darling Maugan, are you sure that part of the dislike is not prejudice because you so admire Ralegh? Even before you met Lord Henry, were you not taking the other side?”
“It is not only that. Believe me.”
“Then we are back at nothing, where we began?”
“Not at nothing, if we love each other.”
She sighed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You know I love you, Maugan …”
“I—believe that you do.”
“But life has made me practical. Love flourishes where man and wife flourish. If I say more of this now you’ll think me mean and calculating—”
“No!”
“Which in a sense will be true. So let us leave it for the time … You can stay a day or two?”
“Until John returns I’m needed at Arwenack. But I can come back. Sue, why is it not possible to take Sir Walter’s offer? There’s nothing equivocal about that—”
“And live with the servants?”
That stopped me. I looked at her. “I’m not treated as a menial. I eat with them. At nights I sit with them except when there is some exceptional guest. Lady Ralegh is a remarkable person; I know she would take to you. There’s nothing truly menial about the position … But even if there were … Sir Walter stands at the Queen’s right hand. A word from him can find me much greater preferment, than I can ever get from the half-Catholic Howards—”
“And how long will he be at the Queen’s right hand, Maugan? And how long will the Queen live, Maugan? Everything
“There’s no sureness in the world. All I want is to serve a man, someone not side-sexed, someone—”
She put her fingers on my lips and I stopped to kiss them. “Maugan, we shall never see this the same. But it’s stupid to quarrel. We must find a way. Let’s sleep on it tonight.”
“Sue, there was one other thing. Lord Henry had Henry Arundell’s letter before him. From it, or in some way, he had gathered that Mr Arundell had hopes of marriage. I hope it was not marriage to you.”
She smiled slightly. “ Yes.”
“He asked you to marry him? What did you say?”
“What could I say? No, of course.”
“Oh, God, I am so deeply in love with you that the smallest danger looms like a cliff … Did you tell him about me?”
“No. It was unnecessary. At present he entertains feelings of friendship for you. Let that go on as long as it can.”
I kissed her again. “ Little schemer.”
She stared at me soberly.
“Yes, Maugan. Yes.”
I stayed all the next day just to be in her company.
In the afternoon I had word alone with Thomas who had been out hawking with a half-dozen servants and came out from the stables breathing steam into the still December air.
“You know, do you, that I am thinking of betrothing Bridget Mohun of Hall?”
“I’d heard something of it.”
“They’re a good family, the Mohuns, no hysteria about them, well set with property, and protestant of temperament. Bridget’s a fine handsome girl. Good firm breasts and round thighs; I like plenty. Though God knows once on a time I’d have thrown it all away for that strip Susanna Reskymer. Bridget’s got the figure and the money too. Her father came in for much of the property forfeited by these recusants.”
“I’m happy for you.”
He stared at me. “ I doubt if you’d ever be happy for me in any good fortune … However we won’t press that. I used to think you had eyes for Susanna yourself in the old days. D’you still fancy her?”
“She’s almost too recently a widow for the thought to have arisen.”
“Well, you’d be lucky if you got her now. I must say I’ve given her one or two backward glances myself. She’s not as well found as Bridget but she’s pretty warm with all these holdings in west Cornwall and on the Devon border.”
“Most of the property is entailed.”
“Who told you that?”
“She did.”
“Ah, well, that’s a little female delicacy; take it with a pinch of salt. I think from the sound of it you’ve lost her, Maugan. If you want her, I hope you have.”
One of the grooms came to take the hooded hawk from his wrist.
“I own all this now,” Thomas said. “ I told you I should; Jonathan never had the makings of an old man. I told you there was a curse on us. But by God it’s missed me, and I’m going to step away from under it so soon as ever I can. Within five years the Arundells’ll be out of Tolverne even if I have to burn it down!”
“And your family?”
“Gertrude will marry again, no doubt of it; Jonathan has not squeezed all the juice out of her, and her father has money and connections. Elizabeth … I would not be astonished if she went to France or Italy and entered a convent. As for my mother—she can go back and live at Godolphin. Or no doubt if she chooses we can find room for her when I found my own line … But not these other old wrecks who drift in and out of the house, hangers-on: aunts and cousins and bastards and the like.”
I was no longer simple enough to take up this insult.
We went in. “What’s it like at Arwenack these days?” he asked, peering at me with his broad white grin. “Not quite the usual robber’s lair? Your father has had his wings clipped at last. Are you another doomed house?”
I took my lead from Sue that day and talked of other things. She talked of the rebuilding of Paul Church, of Philip’s sister, Amelia, who had invited her to stay with her in Pancras near London, of her mother who was not happy in her second marriage.
I was to leave the following morning at ten. We broke our fast while light was still pushing through the thick spears of the cypress trees. The day was fine with a wintry sunlight, and after I had been to see that my horse was ready I walked back to the house and met Sue coming out to look for me. We walked down to the river.
Thus in silence until we came out on the small stone quay where I and the Killigrew children had tied up that day nearly six years ago when this had all begun. I brushed soil off the stone bench and we sat on it looking out over the river. She was wearing a violet-coloured cloak with the hood thrown back.
She said: “Maugan …”
“Yes?”
“You truly believe that I love you?”
“It’s a never ceasing joy to realise it.”
“Then that gives me a right—a different right from anyone else—to ask favours of you?”
“Yes.”
“I have thought so much of what you told me of London. If we are to be married in February, then somehow our lives—at least to begin—must be based on one of those interviews.”
“There might be other ways.”
“Not well. You could stay at Arwenack, but that is hardly feasible if we married. Henry Arundell might find some employment for you, but the stewardship is gone, and knowing how he feels about me I can hardly ask him more favours for you.”
“No, I grant that. Then—”
“If we go to London without any prospect or recommendation I think we should quickly fail. So that leaves Sir Walter’s offer and Lord Henry’s.”
“If you put it that way”
“How else can I put it? And here is the problem. You want to accept Sir Walter’s offer—which I see as menial and unworthy of your gifts. I want you to accept Lord Henry’s, which you greatly despise.”
I stared at her. “You really wish me to work for such a man?”
“I want you to accept his offer. He must have taken a very great liking to you or he would not have made it. I’ve heard he is a shrewd judge of character. There are not lacking likely young men anxious to be taken up by the most powerful family in England. Must one’s personal feeling come into this? Must you necessarily admire whom you serve?”
“Not admire. But surely respect, else one loses one’s self respect. Henry Howard is a dangerous man. No good could come of being at his beck and call.”
“Try it and see. Such a steadfast person as you is hardly likely to be contaminated in a matter of months. You would come to know many men—other opportunities would arise.”
I looked out over the river, which was a deep oily green. The mass of trees on both banks grew so low that at high tide many of the branches dipped in the water. The undergrowth was dense and few men penetrated it.
“I could not, Sue. You ask me not to go back to Ralegh. Well, I can agree to that if you’re set against it. I can agree not to follow Ralegh. But I cannot go from him to one of his bitterest enemies. That would be—a betrayal.”
She got up. “Have we not really got to the truth of it now, Maugan? Isn’t that really why you will not work for Henry Howard? Ralegh has you under a spell, and you cannot or will not break away.”
I wondered at the tone of her voice; there was such feeling in it.
“For you I’ll break away from Ralegh; I’ve said so; but I will not be an instrument for attacking him.”
“Who says he’ll be attacked? And if attacked, who says the Howards will do it? What of Essex? What of Cecil? What of a hundred others? Don’t you know how he’s thought of in London and at Court? He’s the best hated man in England.”
“Yet among his own people he excites hero wo
“Which is what has happened to you!”
“Oh, no. I don’t see him as a hero … He has many faults—but also a greatness! I would not follow him blindly. But for me he stands—above other men.”
The sun was obscured by a cloud shaped like a dog. The water darkened and a breeze moved over it, ruffling the surface.
“Do you mean you will serve no other but him?”
“Of course not. It is only Henry Howard I’ll not serve.”
“Not even for me?”
“I don’t believe you will ask me.”
“I have asked you.”
“Then I must say no.”
Chapter Eight
All the way home I puzzled over Sue’s hostility towards Ralegh. It exceeded logic, and in her was therefore to be wondered at. All the rest was reasonable enough, no doubt, if looked on from her point of view. She saw the Howards as the vastly influential family that they were, Sir Walter as an upstart who sooner or later might come to no good. But I could not understand the tone of her voice. That was not logic.
There had been no reconciliation between us before I left, nor any promise of a further meeting. There must be some compromise which could be reached, but just at present we were both too heated to give way.
The gate was well guarded today. Long Peter gave me the news that John and his bride were home.
I had it out with them in the big withdrawing chamber that night.
The room was without carpet; the good chairs had gone and been replaced by stools from the kitchens. The table remained because it was so heavy. Candles burned in cheap sticks, a fire flickered with green logs.
Young Jane Killigrew occupied the one good chair and warmed her hands at the fire. She wore a carnation-coloured dress of figured velvet, with over it a cloak of fine watered chamlet. It had cost a deal of money. Her jet black hair hung like curtains beside a stage, and the stage was a milk-white face coloured with two dabs of red ochre, small fierce eyes, a precise well-shaped mouth, all attention as I talked.
“Let’s not waste time in recrimination. I was back in time to save something, but the house is as you see it. In another day they’d have been in Mrs Killigrew’s and Lady Killigrew’s bedrooms. These and four others—which Meg Stable had the forethought to lock—were the only rooms untouched. Even the old aunts have lost some things. They snatched a bracelet from Miss Wolverstone’s wrist and took Aunt Mary’s clock and outdoor shoes.”