The Grove of Eagles by Winston Graham

Author:Winston Graham [Graham, Winston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

BOOK FOUR

Chapter One

Life sometimes is like the phases of the moon: one dwells in deep shadow without expectation of change, rootless and motiveless; then in the term of a day the shadow has gone and one is startled and quickened by the unsheltered rays of a new sun.

The environment into which Walter Ralegh took me, besides offering me a partial escape from the cold and barren futility of my passion for Sue, was as foreign to life at Arwenack as the de Prada house in Madrid. At Arwenack there was a constant coming and going of important folk, and a thin layer of culture was laid over the bare exigencies of life like a linen cloth on a dining board. But it went no deeper and it had little or no substance. At Sherborne the demands of material forces were no less present and no less urgent, but here culture existed as a separate and independent unit, and intellect for the first time came into its own. Doors of the mind were opened looking upon new and exciting country as vivid and as unexplored as anything in Guiana or the colony of Virginia.

Here were books treating of every subject from astrology to campaigns of war, from botany to Greek history, from chemistry and experiments in alchemy to poetry and philosophical speculation.

Nor were they ranged along the walls of a single room; they proliferated about the house, left open on tables and settles, dropped where they had been temporarily abandoned and where they would be most convenient picked up. Globes and maps abounded and musical instruments and paintings and busts, and old parchments and vivid tapestries, and boxes and tables made of strange spice-smelling wood.

The Raleghs’ house was just new built, and they had barely moved in. Unlike the low design of Arwenack, this stretched out tall into the sky, supported by slender turrets at the four corners. No floor was of great expanse, but their being five gave much more space overall than at first seemed.

The kitchens were in the basement. Above them a splendid blue dining chamber looked through tall stone-mullioned windows across the formal walled gardens to the stables. Two of the turrets were incoporated in this room like ears, the others being utilised for the staircases. Here also was a narrow but handsome hall and two smaller rooms.

On the next floor was the green withdrawing chamber with the Ralegh coat of arms—the shield with the five lozenges—on the ceiling and over the wide fireplace. Behind was Ralegh’s study and a ladies’ withdrawing room with closet and close stool. Above this again was the Raleghs’ bedroom, but here the turrets were separate rooms, and behind on this floor were two guest chambers, one now given over to little Wat and his nurse. On the fourth floor were the principal guest chambers, while above was a warren in which slept and lived the indoor servants.

The accommodation was none too ample, for there were always extra people staying in the

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