Mary of Carisbrooke (21 page)

If now at the last moment, and without time to sound him, any other man were to be sent as the third guard he would almost certainly give Wenshall and Featherstone away and jeopardize the King’s last chance of escape. So instead of calling another musketeer or pikeman Floyd decided to go himself. He wished he could have had a word with Dowcett about it first, but it was impossible. Floyd had once helped Charles Stuart to fire off the castle cannon, and he was prepared to help him in a much bigger adventure now. And if there should be nothing in particular which he could do, at least his presence on the platform should steady Wenshall and Featherstone more than that frightened Cockney lad’s.

The guard was due to change in half an hour. His thoughts heavy within him, Floyd went back to the barracks to make sure that all was quiet and to get Tilling’s musket. He had been round by the guardroom lock-up longer than he intended and had not seen Wenshall and Featherstone cross the courtyard and slink in at the back door of the Governor’s house.

The long summer evening had faded into night at last. But for Floyd’s sister and daughter there was no thought of going to bed. Mary could not stay still indoors and had gone to the wellhouse. Sitting on the coping of the well with the door ajar she could see whoever came and went dimly outlined against the lesser dark outside. Dowcett, she knew, had made some excuse to pass the sentry at the north postern so that he might take a final look round beneath the walls and make sure that Worsley and Osborne were in their appointed place on the other side of the escarpment. Waiting for his return, Mary allowed her thoughts to project themselves into the future. By this time to-morrow the King would have seen Harry, and she felt that their meeting would be some sort of link between Harry and herself. “The King will tell him how I managed to put that letter behind the arras almost under Major Cromwell’s nose, and how happy it made him to hear of the young Duke of York’s escape,” she thought. “And he may tell him, too, how I went on helping as I promised.” Sitting there in that quiet place which had so often been their happy rendezvous, she could almost see the way Harry’s face would light up with approval.

She heard Dowcett’s footsteps and softly called him inside. It was too dark in there to see his face, but she knew at once by his restless movements that he was worried. “I saw Rolph out there,” he said. “Isn’t it enough that he must needs sit at the foot of the King’s stairway half the day, without poking round outside the walls at night? Do you suppose he suspects anything?”

“He is much more likely to be working out his own horrible scheme for getting the King away,” she told him, with an optimism she was far from feeling.

“It is to be hoped so, but I do not like it. There seem to be more people than usual about to-night. Did you hear all that noise a while back from the barracks?”

“That at least had nothing to do with us,” Mary was able to assure him. “Brett tells me Libby’s baby was born early this morning. Rudy had been down to the village to see her and the men were probably celebrating. You remembered to remove the rope from the King’s room?”

“I hid it in my own clothes press.”

“Then everything is ready. The platform sentries will be changing over any minute now.”

“If only we could be sure that that cursed Captain of the Guard had settled for the night! He has gone back to his quarters now, but who knows?”

“I suppose we had better go to ours, even though we cannot sleep,” sighed Mary. “Of course Master Worsley and Richard Osborne have arrived?”

“I barked in fine imitation of your Patters and Worsley gave one of his famous bird calls.”

Mary laughed. It gave her a sense of security to know that they were out there. She bade the worried Frenchman good-night and went up to her aunt’s room, hoping to find her resting in her chair; but Druscilla Wheeler was walking about looking distraught. “Your father has gone on guard instead of that young overner,” she said the moment Mary came into the room.

Mary stopped short. “How do you know? You cannot see from here.”

“I heard them marching out and went to that little staircase window on the north wall and looked down, just to make sure that Wenshall and Featherstone had not been put on to some other duty as they were last Sunday. And there was your father with them.”

“Are you sure? In the dark?”

“I heard his voice.”

“But what reason can there be for the change?” asked Mary, coming to the hearth and putting her firmly into a chair.

“I can think of nothing—unless the young man is sick. But even so, a sergeant does not usually—”

“Well, at least father will betray nothing. Imagine if it had been some Roundhead!”

“If Master Osborne asked your father to do it, after all I said—”

“He must have wanted to, but I am sure he did not.” Seeing her aunt so upset, Mary fetched a skillet and went to the fire to warm some milk; and as she waited for it to heat she milled the matter over in her mind. She recalled that in her first shock at hearing about the platform she had let slip some words about its undoing all Harry’s plans; but she felt sure that her father had had a pretty shrewd idea of their plans all along, and that he had wished them well and would have liked to join them. But why, to-night, had he taken Tilling’s place? Had he done so purposely, knowing what was going to happen? If so, perhaps it was all for the best. Young Tilling might have bungled things. She gave her aunt the hot milk and blew out the candle, and they both sat by the hearth waiting. Dowcett, whose room was in the older part of the building, was going to try to give them a signal when the King was well away.

But Mistress Wheeler was still restless and anxious. Calm enough in facing dangers for herself, she could not face them for her beloved brother. She kept glancing at her precious clock, and when an hour had passed and it was nearly midnight she went to the window overlooking the courtyard and looked out. She had not been there many minutes before she turned and called Mary sharply to her side. “Look! A man has just come out from the officers’ quarters. You can just see him standing there. Oh, please God it is not Rolph!”

It was difficult to discern anyone at all, save for a faint luminous glow from a steel breast-plate. Whoever it was stood still as if listening, and then turned back to close the door. And in that moment both women saw him clearly.

“It
is
Rolph!” said Mary, her heart seeming to turn over in her body.

From the open window they could hear his footsteps coming across the courtyard. “Going his rounds again!” wailed Mistress Wheeler.

“Only his ordinary rounds by the battlements, perhaps. If he turns off now toward the south ramp—“ Mary leaned out as far as she dared, but her hope was short-lived. The footsteps came straight on. Then he stopped. She could see his face as a white blur in the darkness as he looked up at the windows, and realized that probably he could see her too. She felt that he was staring specially at their window and was glad that she had snuffed out the candle.

“If he goes on round by the wellhouse he can only be making for the northern postern,” Whispered her aunt, moving away as if she could no longer bear the suspense.

“He
is
. He is going outside the walls again,” gasped Mary. “And any moment now the King will be—”

Her aunt, who so seldom lost control, gripped her wrist in panic. “Merciful God, what can we do? How can we stop him?”

There was only one way that Mary knew of, and even that might not succeed. Edmund Rolph was such a strange mixture of devotion to duty and reluctant sensuality. But there was certainly nothing anyone else could do. Now, in the last stage of the game, it was left to her to make the final move. Only she could make this last bid for success. And it was not for her to count the cost. The Captain of the Guard had always desired her, and with each frustration that veiled hunger in his eyes had grown. “I will go to him,” she said almost calmly, freeing her wrist.

Their minds were so closely fused in the tension of the moment, that Druscilla Wheeler could not mistake the full significance of that ordinary phrase. For a moment or two one fear seemed to oust another. “Mary, you cannot—you must not—” This tune she gripped her niece firmly by the arms. “I will not let you go!”

Although Mary recognized it as a last chance to carry Harry Firebrace’s cherished plan to success and to save the King, in that moment her only conscious motive was to defend her father. “If he is caught he will be shot,” she said.

Druscilla Wheeler had always had her own strange foreboding. And were they not both pledged to this cause? She gave no spoken consent, but the strength went out of her restraining arms. Mary broke from them and sped down the stairs and out into the night.

She went straight to Rolph and was enraged because he did not even show surprise. He must have seen her at the window and supposed that her interest in his movements was purely feminine. “So you had to come sooner or later, now that you can no longer get to that fancy lover of yours in Newport?” he said. “I suppose a girl starves the same as we do.”

She could have killed him. Instead she let him jerk her to him, cupping her chin in his hand. His greedy apprizing glance passed slowly from the white oval of her face to the darker outline of her body. “And what if I tell you I do not want you to-night, my pretty? What if I have more important things to do?”

She knew how he must have enjoyed saying it after all the times she had broken away from his desire. But she was beyond the lash of insolence. All she knew was that she must keep him away from the King’s window—keep him somehow for the next half hour. She summoned to her aid all those wiles she had watched and wondered at in Libby—Libby, who had this very day given birth to a child. Putting that frightening thought from her, she lifted enticing arms and forced herself to touch the man. “Is there anything more important than ourselves this summer night?” she whispered invitingly.

Mary crouched terror-stricken on the bed. She stared numbly round the room—a man’s room, bare and orderly, with an army cloak lying across a shabby chair and a pistol lying on the table. At Edmund Rolph standing beside the bed she dared not look. He had thrown off his tunic and she heard the impact of his swordbelt as he threw it across the foot of the coverlet.

No sense of triumph sustained her now. At the last minute she had found the sacrifice too great and would have cheated him if she could. Once in his room, she had tried to cajole him with promises, to flatter him into talking—of the way he had risen in the world, of his promised majority, his hatreds and ambitions, of anything. But as well try to stave off a rutting stag. Ambition and lust always strove in him for mastery, and by her own doing lust was in the ascendant. He had been too urgent to drape desire with the veneer of conversation. Desire had blotted out his ever-present bogy of hell-fire. With hot hands he had stripped the gown from her shoulders and pushed her to his bed.

Past events and the world outside had been driven from her mind by present horrors; her thoughts were only of her shame and how to meet the future. She thought of Libby who had that very morning paid the natural price of some such impassioned moment. But with Libby and her man the passion had been mutual, whereas she herself felt only repugnance. Her glance went wildly to the pistol. Its owner was the sort of man who would always keep it primed. It lay within her reach, but Rolph was nearer. Would God do nothing? But why should He, when she had brought this thing upon herself? She closed her eyes and heard, without believing, a knocking on the door.

Rolph, with a hand already on her naked shoulder, stood motionless between her and the candlelight. “Go to hell!” he bawled out savagely. But the knocking only became more peremptory and a man’s voice, sharp with authority, called to him to unlock it.

“The Governor!” breathed Mary, drawing the worn coverlet about her in yet deeper shame. Yet gratitude and relief strong as joy warmed her cold body. That God should have sent him at such a moment! Until she learned the reason it seemed too fantastic to be true.

Rolph knew that voice as well as she. He came to the foot of the bed, and she saw him look from her to the door, wretchedly irresolute. One could not disobey the Governor. And only some crisis could have brought him to his officers’ quarters in the middle of the night—he, who was accustomed to sending for people when he wanted them. Reluctantly, Rolph shrugged himself into his uniform again. With coat still unbuttoned he motioned to her to keep quiet, and pulled the worn, seldom-used curtains about his bed as silently as he could.

As he went to the door Mary’s numbed mind began to work, too. She realized the circumstances which had driven her to such dangerous shame, and lay trembling behind the thin screen of worn tapestry. If Colonel Hammond found her there it was no immediate fault of Rolph’s. He could say with truth that she had enticed him like a common harlot. But much bigger concerns than her morals must have brought him. The door closed and she knew that he was in the room. “Thank God you are not yet undressed!” she heard him say. “The King is attempting another escape to-night.”

“To-night?” She knew that the dismay in Rolph’s voice was not for the plan but because he had not been told of it. “How do you know, sir?”

“Two of the platform sentries came and told me.”

Mary sat up in the bed, both hands on her racing heart.

“But they should be posted by now. I was just going out to make a surprise inspection. These fellows need watching.” Rolph still sounded flurried.

“I suppose they lost their nerve. They came and made a clean breast of it at the last minute. They’d been bribed at a hundred pounds apiece to let the King come out of his window and get away.”

The chair creaked. Evidently, the Governor had sat down. It was easy to differentiate between his crisp, cultured voice and Rolph’s rougher speech with its ineradicable Cockney accent.

“Are you sure they haven’t got it muddled, sir? That it isn’t something planned for some other night?”

“Why should it be? They tell me the bar has been tampered with. Those indefeasible fools who help the King must have got a second bottle of acid through after we dealt with their first effort.”

“Who bribed the sentries? That crafty Frenchman, probably. I met him prowling about out there earlier in the evening.”

“He is probably in it. But they both say the man who persuaded them to it was Osborne.”

“Osborne!” A foul oath ripped out of Rolph. “But he went out to supper—he was talking to me of some girl he was going to see. He—” The Captain still found it hard to believe that during all these weeks he had been fooled.

“He hoodwinked us all pretty thoroughly.”

“May the Almighty let me lay hands on him!”

“He probably will if you carry out my orders with despatch. The time set for the royal departure is midnight and it is almost midnight now.”

“Who were the men?”

“Wenshall and Featherstone.”

“Islanders!” The word was so charged with contempt that it sounded as if the Captain spat. “No men of mine, God be praised!”

“I understand the third was a Londoner,” said the Governor, drily.

“From the new company Major Cromwell brought, no doubt.”

“I told the two who came to me to go on duty as though nothing had happened. To speak of it to no one—not even to their fellow-sentry. So if you watch what happens we ought to find out for certain who is involved in this and catch them red-handed. There must be someone
outside
the castle with a horse for the King.”

“Osborne, I’ll wager! A pox on his luscious wench and his supper party!”

“Send a dozen of your musketeers to set an ambush on the far side of the lane. Let them go out by the main gate and creep down through the copse from above.”

“And I’ll see to it that every man of them is a good shot!”

“Then go yourself immediately and hide in the angle of that bastion a few yards from the window. Take what men you need—men who will obey you implicitly.”

“I shall not need many.” The grimness of a threat was in Rolph’s tone.

“Wenshall and Featherstone will not raise a finger. I have told them to maintain their guard but to take no part in the affair. So you will have only one sentry to deal with. Let the King get to the edge of the escarpment before you take him so that we see who comes to meet him and help him down. Give your men orders to fire on anyone who resists, but forbid them to show any violence to the King himself. Only make sure that he is taken.”

Personal issues were momentarily forgotten. To both men it was merely an absorbing military manoeuvre. “And the third sentry?” enquired Rolph.

“Arrest him and bring him to me, unless he is seen actively helping the King. In that case shoot him at sight.”

The shabby old chair creaked again as the Governor got up to go, so that neither of them heard Mary’s smothered cry. “I will come with you, sir. I have only to collect my gear.” Rolph seemed to have forgotten her. Whatever other opportunities the night might bring he was eager to get to them.

The clink of steel told her that he was buckling on his armour. His swordbelt was still lying across the end of the bed, and his pistol on the table. Leaning across the pillow she reached out a stealthy hand between the hangings and drew the heavy, lethal weapon into the half darkness of her hiding place. She thrust it under the bedclothes to deaden the sound of the catch, and emptied out the powder. As stealthily she reached out and put it back.

Almost immediately she saw Rolph’s strong, hirsute hand appear and grope for his belt, then heard him stride to the table and pick up the pistol. “I should put on this dark cloak so that the King will not see you,” advised Colonel Hammond. Then the door closed behind them and she was alone.

Instantly Mary slipped from the bed and ran to the door, tugging her torn dress about her as she went. Memories of fatherly loving kindness and small shared jokes impelled her. Rolph would have to collect his men, she calculated. “If I run now to the north postern one of our garrison may be on duty. I will beg him to let me pass. Those old men have never refused me anything, I will tell him my aunt has been taken ill and that I must see my father.”

She might yet be able to warn him and he in turn could warn the King. She pulled at the door but could not open it. She pulled again with all her strength, and then began banging on it in a frenzy of frustration. But Edmund Rolph had locked it from the outside.

He had not been able to prevent her from overhearing the Governor’s orders, but he was taking no chances about her giving warnings. She supposed that if his mind had sufficiently recovered from the shock of Osborne’s duplicity, he must surely have realized by now that she, too, had been duping him. Had they opposed him openly in a matter of duty he would probably have borne no particular grudge. As Osborne had once said, the man had his points. But with understanding of her purpose the bubble of his masculine conceit would be pricked, and for that he would never forgive her. He would never lose an opportunity of paying off the score. And because he had basked in the belief that he was on intimate terms with a gentleman of the class which he envied, abhorred and hunted—because he had publicly boasted of it and must now look a fool—he would be Osborne’s sworn enemy for life.

Mary ran to the window overlooking the courtyard, but it was small and barred. “Most certainly he will pick all his best marksmen for the ambush!” she moaned, sinking down on the low window seat. She remembered how often Richard Osborne had tried to comfort her, and for the first time, in the midst of her terror for her father, her thoughts reached out in a passion of protectiveness to that tall reckless figure, all unaware of Cromwell’s musketeers closing in around him in the darkness of the copse.

What a puffed-up fool she must have been to suppose that she could interfere! And at what might have been such an irremediable price!