Mary of Carisbrooke (18 page)

“You mean he will plan the whole thing all over again from these new rooms before he goes?” asked Mary, torn between fear and pride.

“And leave us the joy of carrying it out, my pretty gosling!” laughed Osborne, rising and lazily stretching his long limbs.

They all wrung Titus’s hand in silence. “To think I once doubted him!” sighed Mary, watching him walk dejectedly away, and considering how few of them would be left.

“You doubted me, too, I think?” said Osborne softly, as Mistress Wheeler and Dowcett followed him to the door. When Mary did not answer, he stood grinning down at her confusion; then, suddenly grown serious, held out his hand. “In spite of all my grievous shortcomings, I hope you trust me better now?”

Mary put her hand into his. “You know I do,” she said, feeling that without him she could not face the lonely blank ahead.

But for the moment nothing mattered besides the fact that Harry Firebrace had whispered in passing, “I will see you again
somehow
before I go.”

Mary slid cautiously down the side of the vast bed and drew her cloak over her night shift. She paused to listen again to her aunt’s deep even breathing; then crossed the room and silently drew the bolt. Barefoot, she felt her way along stairs and passages and once past a dozing sentry. Her heart thumped in her body when she reached Harry Firebrace’s room; but it was the only way to see him alone.

To-morrow he would be gone. His shrug and lift of the brows at supper time, so eloquent of frustration, had told her that he was being too closely watched to manoeuvre a meeting. The King would be moving into his new apartments in a day or so, and Dowcett was desperate because he could find no opportunity for a final word with Firebrace about the new escape plans. And even Aunt Druscilla, who would have struck her senseless sooner than let her go traipsing like a trollop to a man’s room at midnight, must realize how necessary it was for
someone
to have word with him.

A light showed beneath the door and Mary overrode every tenet of her up-bringing and pushed it open. If Harry would not endanger her by being seen in her company, she must go to him—whether as lover or confederate she was not sure. But she was honest enough to know that her heart drove her harder than her reason.

She found him standing by his bed in shirt and breeches, putting the finishing touches to the packing which his servant must have begun earlier in the day. He himself had been so busy about the King’s affairs, she supposed, that he had not until now found a moment for his own. He looked up sharply and the smile she loved suddenly lighted his tired face.

“Mary!” he exclaimed, with a delight which she could not doubt. He dropped the holster he was holding and came to meet her, taking both her hands. “I did not dare to hope—that you would come
here
.”

“I am not the prude men like Rolph think me.” Freeing herself, she walked to the garment bestrewn bed, instinctively hiding her embarrassment in the performance of some practical task. “
Not
riding boots on top of your cravats!” she chided. “And cannot your man pack a coat better than this? It is your best blue velvet and will crumple so that it is not fit to be seen. Let me fold it properly for you.” As methodically as if she were his wife she began putting order into the chaos he had created and packing his possessions into a leather saddlebag. Because she would never have the right to pack his things it gave her peculiar joy to do so, and the very domesticity of their occupation eased the memory of the last moments they had spent alone.

The softness of candlelight was on her face and Firebrace stood watching her, thinking how sweet such wifely administrations could be and how, during most of his married life, he had had to be dexterous for two. “You are so clever with your hands,” he said, unaware that he was echoing a dictum of her aunt’s which she still hated because at one time it had been used disparagingly.

Mary lingered over the last shirt and smiled tenderly at the gaudiness of a handkerchief. “But not so clever with my head as you. That is why one of us had to see you. The others, being more important, are being watched like felons until you go. But not even Captain Rolph would think of my coming to you in the middle of the night!”

Hearing the gallant laughter in her voice, Firebrace was filled with admiring gratitude. “Mary!” he exclaimed again, and could find no more to say—he who was so seldom tongue-tied!

With his arms about her she scorned to excuse her motives. “I had to come,” she repeated with softer emphasis. Because no previous giving had drained the sweet, strong current of her desire, the response of her senses made her defenceless against his closeness. Her hands reached up to caress his disordered hair; her eyes and lips invited him. But that way, he knew, lay irrevocable regret. Because he had inadvertently cheated her heart, all that was decent in him resisted the temptation to enjoy and then discard her body. How could any man so requite her loyal help? Remembering that she was only seventeen and recognizing her innocence, he kissed her with leashed passion and let her go.

With unsteady hands he began fastening the straps and buckles of the saddlebag. With an effort he concentrated upon the more practical reason for her nocturnal visit. “Will the King’s new apartments be ready by to-morrow?” he asked, picking upon a question almost at random.

“To-morrow or the next day, Aunt Druscilla says,” Mary answered automatically, her whole being concerned only with her frustration. Without full understanding of what she had desired, she knew that he would never take her now. She knew that this was the real moment of their parting. Although they might go on exchanging words for a while longer—might even catch sight of each other the following day—they would never again come into that close sharing of ecstasy. By her own quickened pulses she gauged the cost of his abstinence; and, young as she was, appreciated vaguely that the incompleteness of their union would preserve its quality of radiance.

“There is so much we must talk of,” he was saying, with unnatural briskness. He made her sit in his only chair before the hearth, and knelt to coax a flame from the dying fire. Because the early hours of the morning were cold he spread his travelling cloak about her. “The file has come at last,” he said, drawing a small piece of metal from his pocket and throwing it lightly into her lap. “You or Dowcett will have to find means to give it to his Majesty.”

“I thought you intended to use acid.”

“Mistress Whorwood sent it but it never arrived. Probably Parliament got to know about that too.”

“Who is this Mistress Whorwood I have been hearing about lately?”

There was a flatness in their voices and the spirit seemed to have gone out of their enterprise. Firebrace was leaning against the narrow window of his room, too far away to touch her; and Mary had the feeling that they were both talking for safety’s sake. Safety from their own passions, not the safety of Charles Stuart.

“Jane Whorwood used to be about the Court and is devoted to the King,” he told her. “She got the stuff through a celebrated astrologer called Lilly. I should not care to have dealings with such men myself. But she is one of those people who is never daunted, and has written to his Majesty promising to send us some more by a different messenger. You are to look out for a lean peddler, bringing Woodstock gloves to the castle.”

“I promised Master Dowcett I would find out somehow what you and the King have decided about the window.”

“It will have to be the one in the bedchamber. There are too many people up and down the stairs. After all,” mused Firebrace, remembering his nerve-racking hour in the courtyard, “it is all to the good that the windows on that side are on the outer wall. Once his Majesty has let himself down by a rope he will have only the moat to negotiate and the horses will be under the beech trees in the lane.”

Firebrace was becoming absorbed in his project again and it was easier to seem to share some of the excitement. “The only buttress on that side is close beside his window,” said Mary.

“And should provide a certain amount of cover. Don’t forget to tell Osborne that we think it will be best for his Majesty to make his way close under the wall to the bowling green and get down to the outer escarpment from there.”

“There is a kind of gully which should serve him.”

“You know every blade of grass, don’t you?”

“It is my home.” There was a proud defiance in Mary’s voice, daring anyone to imagine that she had ever dreamed of any other.

Either Firebrace did not notice it or knew of no comforting answer. “And there Osborne and Worsley will be waiting as before. But this time it will be under the north wall—instead of the south,” he said, on that note of contentment with which any craftsman, having done his best, may lay down his tools. Hearing the chapel clock strike, he roused himself and took his cloak from Mary. His hands were steady and he no longer took such care to avoid touching her. “For initiative and resolution this Mistress Jane Whorwood is really worth all of us put together,” he said, as Mary stood up. “If she should write you or even come here, trust her in everything, Mary. Dowcett knows her. He will tell you the same.”

Mary had no present interest in Mistress Jane Whorwood. “Will you go straight to the mainland?” she asked.

He walked with her to the door, his manner resolutely unemotional. “I shall try to stay a few days in Newport. I should like to see the end of this.”

“Take care of that fiend Moses,” she warned. “Perhaps Master Trattle will take you in.”

“I will go there.”

“And then you will be going back to—her?”

Firebrace was careful to answer her question only in its literal sense. “Not while I can be of any use here on the Hampshire coast. Next Sunday is the night his Majesty has decided upon.”

“Not a Monday this time?” A presentiment of calamity lent fear to the words.

“It is a matter of moon and tides. I have consulted Newland.”

“I hope you will be—somewhere close.”

Seeing her shiver he turned at the door and laid a comforting arm about her shoulders. “Do not be frightened, sweetheart. Osborne and Dowcett will make all the arrangements. There will be nothing for you to do on the night of the escape unless it be to leave some door unlocked, as you did for me.”

“Who will deal with the sentries?”

“Leave everything to Osborne. And never be deceived by his pretensions to indolent lunacy. He is far cooler headed than I in an emergency.”

“And the Captain of the Guard?” thought Mary. Once again Rolph was the incalculable factor. In his zeal he had taken to going round the battlements several times a night, her father said. But she would not add to Firebrace’s anxiety by telling him so. “I must go back now in case my aunt should wake,” she said instead.

He wanted to accompany her, but both of them knew that it would be madness.

“You think you will remember? Next Sunday, the bedroom window, the peddler, the gulley by the bowling green?” he recapitulated quickly.

“Yes, I shall remember—everything,” said Mary, trying to learn his smile so that she could keep it for ever in her heart.

“You have been wonderful. God bless you always.” The door was open, and the cold dark passage yawned before her. “I shall see you again,” he whispered. “Somehow I shall come back.”

They did not meet again before he left the castle. The workmen from Newport had finished preparing the old rooms in the north wing for the King’s use, and Mary was up early seeing that the maids swept and polished every corner before the furniture was brought in. Then there was the arranging of it, under her aunt’s supervision, while Charles himself was out on the bowling green. At the Governor’s orders an extra bar had been fitted in the window and a shelf built for the King’s books. Master Herbert himself brought in the precious volumes and arranged them while men with ladders rehung the arras and the bed tester, and soon the maids were scurrying back and forth with ewers and basins and bedclothes. If Mary’s face was pale and her eyes smudged with sleeplessness, no one had time to notice it.

“The Governor does not seem to mind our being in the room by ourselves any more,” she said, when the others had gone and she was helping her aunt to make the royal bed.

“I imagine he has more disturbing things to think about,” said Mistress Wheeler. “And then there were all those letters you say he found in the King’s desk. He must have realized they went on being delivered after you were forbidden to bring the linen into the room.”

Mary looked across the room at the arras now covering the solid thickness of mediaeval stone and thought sadly that there would no longer be any way of slipping them through the wall. A casement stood open and as she stood with raised head she could hear the clip-clop of horses. The sheet she was unfolding slipped to the floor. Had it been the Canopy of State she would have let it fall. She ran to the window and was just in time to see Harry Firebrace and his servant trotting down the lane. She could see their heads bobbing up and down behind the greening beech trees on the other side of the moat.

“The King’s lace-edged sheet on the floor!” scolded Mistress Wheeler. “Whatever are you staring at, child?”

“At Harry Firebrace going away.” The trees and the sharp descent of the lane stole him from Mary’s sight. She drew in her own head and went back listlessly to the bedside.

“Pass me the other pillowcase. I do not know what we shall do without him,” said Druscilla Wheeler.

“No,” agreed Mary, plumping up the King’s pillow.

After her aunt had gone she stayed to straighten the body linen in the chest at the bottom of the bed because it had been shifted about in the moving; and presently Brett came in with a taper to light the fire. Again she thought she heard hoof beats and half rose from the floor where she was kneeling. But this time it was only someone hammering. It went on for some time accompanied by the sound of men’s voices. She had not slept all night and her nerves were taut as fiddle-strings. She had never felt like this before. “What is that hammering?” she cried in exasperation.

“Hammerin’?” repeated Brett, at his deafest.

“Surely you can hear it? All that noise underneath the King’s window!” She got up from her knees, went to the window again and leaned out. Two soldiers were digging holes in the sharp slope of the grassy escarpment, while two more drove in stakes. Downer, the head carpenter, was measuring a pile of planks while his mate sawed them into equal lengths. “Come and look, Brett. Whatever can they be doing on so steep a bit of ground?”

But old Brett, who had spoken to the men when he fetched the donkeys in from grazing, came reluctantly; and before he joined her Mary saw that Captain Rolph was down there directing operations. He was leaning against the bastion looking remarkably pleased with himself, and when he heard her voice he looked up and grinned and pulled off his steel helmet in ironical imitation of the way Osborne had swept off his plumed hat to her in the courtyard. Mary drew in her head quickly, pushed Brett impatiently out of the way, slammed down the lid of the great carved chest, and went up to the housekeeper’s room in the other wing.