Mary of Carisbrooke (5 page)

The servants had finished clearing the long tables and the two girls stood just inside the serving screens. “He alus said he would if he had the money, and now he has five silver pounds in his pocket!” boasted the chambermaid.

“Oh, Libby, you don’t think that he—”

The girl whose mother had been a common troll was quick to understand Mary’s fear that he had stolen them. “They was given to him by somebody important in London,” she said defensively.

Mary stared in surprise. “Then he and Captain Rolph haven’t been on duty in Cowes all this time?” she exclaimed. “What were they doing in London?”

Libby began to speak of something else so quickly that Mary felt sure she had been told not to mention London. “Brett’s sister says I can have that room in her cottage,” she babbled on. “But I don’t want to go till my time comes. It be more exciting helping here since the King came. Will you ask Reverend Troughton to marry us this very week?”

“Of course. And I am sure he will. But Rudy will have to ask Captain Rolph’s permission.”

Libby laughed boldly. “Won’t be any difficulty there,” she said. “Tom’s in Captain’s favour. But will you see parson
now
, Mistress Mary?”

“It is late,” demurred Mary. “And surely your Rudy has a ready enough tongue to do his own asking.”

Libby put a coaxing hand on her wrist. Some of her confidence was already beginning to ooze away. “I’m not sayin’ but what Tom had been celebrating a bit,” she admitted. “Dead sober, he might change his mind.”

The Governor sat at his writing table, his inscrutable face and fairish hair illuminated by the light of two tall candles. However little he liked Edmund Rolph personally, he was glad to have his second-in-command back. “You delivered my letter to the Speaker?” he asked, immediately the Captain came into his room.

“I went straight to the House of Commons, sir.” Rolph handed him Parliament’s reply, still warm from contact with his own body, and stood watching him break the imposing-looking seals. His sharp, inquisitive mind noted with what nervous urgency Hammond’s hands unfolded the contents, and how deeply the last few days had etched tell-tale lines of sleeplessness about his eyes. Why should a man worry, he wondered, when the chance of a lifetime had just fallen into his hands? And a fine reward as well, no doubt, judging by the jubilation he had seen at Westminster. “Had I the luck to be in his shoes I would know very well what to do. And enjoy doing it,” he thought. “I would use my authority to humiliate that so-called king until he learned that he is no better than other men—not turn out of my own room for him and let him go hunting while others work. Nor let him slip out of my hands to pay visits.” Being too mannerless to wait until the Governor had finished reading, he said aloud and with truculence. “I hear you have let the Stuart go?”

“I am not his gaoler,” replied Hammond evasively, without looking up. The man’s tone, taken in conjunction with the two Houses’ stern intent, seemed to condemn him.

“It looks as if you soon will be.
If he comes back
. Did you have Nunwell watched?”

It was what Rolph himself would have done; but then he was not hampered by any of those instincts which make a man shrink from spying upon his guest. Before the civil war had opened up undreamed of possibilities for workmen with initiative, he had been a bootmaker. Knowing this, Hammond ignored his over-familiarity. “You are already acquainted with the contents of this letter, then?” he inquired coldly.

“In part, sir, by things they said to me at the time.” Rolph despised himself for still being subservient to the rebukes of his social superiors. He both resented and envied the advantage which their controlled way of speaking often gave them.

Aware of his unfair advantage, Hammond made an effort at geniality. “You must have had a hard ride, Captain. Sit down,” he invited, “and help yourself to some wine.” With his eyes still upon the all-important letter before him, he pushed a flagon of Bordeaux towards him and—although a temperate man himself—was startled by the violence of the man’s refusal. “’Tis a lure of Satan’s. Intoxicating liquors were the ruin of Rupert’s army!” the Roundhead Captain exclaimed in the jargon of his kind, pushing the good red wine away so vigorously that he almost upset an inkwell.

Hammond remembered that the man did not drink, and that Sergeant Floyd had recently reported complaints from the garrison because their ale ration had been cut down by the new Captain’s orders; but all the commotion of the last week had put such trivial matters out of his mind.

“Are we to keep the King prisoner?” asked Rolph, breaking an awkward silence.

“He is to stay here, yes. Parliament considers it will be the safest place, and I am not to allow him to depart without their orders.”

“Then are we to set a guard about him?”

“Not obviously.”

“A polite kind of guard takes twice as many men. We shall need reinforcements, sir. Good trusty Ironsides.”

Although he could not like the man, Hammond found it a relief to talk with someone of his own party. Someone who shared his knowledge of the political pattern of a wider, outside world. “Do you suppose we shall have any trouble from the islanders? When they realize it is—something more than a visit?”

“We shall if the King is allowed to ride abroad and talk to them. Even if it wasn’t that they are mostly for him at the moment,” answered Rolph.

“Their loyalties seem to have remained unchanged since the beginning of the Long Parliament!” laughed Hammond. The word “uncontaminated” had occurred to him because he had so often heard it on his father’s lips, but he was careful not to use it.

“It is queer how he turns people’s heads,” Rolph was saying. “I have seen it happen in London. For months they’d be grumbling about his Ship Money being levied on inland towns and his forced loans and the way they always got his troops billeted on them if they didn’t pay up, and then he’d come riding through the streets and speak civilly to some old woman, or perform some of that idolatrous wickedness when he makes himself out to be God and touches them for the Evil, and suddenly they’d all seem to be under a spell and forget about their cruel wrongs. Stagecraft, it is, like they bemuse people with in those iniquitous theatres. I was there at Twickenham when he was allowed out of Hampton to meet his two youngest children. A lot of hysterical women wept their eyes out over young Princess Elizabeth because they thought she looked frail and needed a mother’s care. And even the men helped to strew the streets with flowers. You should have seen it, sir.”

Robert Hammond, who could just remember seeing the Stuarts gay, happy, and secure at Whitehall, was glad that he had not. “All his family have a kind of charm, you know,” he explained. But when Edmund Rolph made the rude kind of noise he had learned in the backstreets of his boyhood, Hammond clutched firmly at the safeguard of common sense. “A good thing for Cromwell that you and I, Rolph, are not susceptible to it,” he commented, with his thin smile. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs more comfortably under the table. “Life here is going to be very different,” he went on. “Carisbrooke will become a miniature Hampton Court. I see that Parliament has very generously voted five thousand a year for the upkeep of his Majesty’s household.”

“Five thousand! Why, a hundred poor families could live on that!”

“Too true. But it is to be expected that his Majesty will keep up something of his accustomed state.”

Edmund Rolph muttered something about his Majesty being cheaper dead.

“Thirty of his attendants from Hampton are being sent here,” added Hammond, consulting the Speaker’s letter.

“And the attendants’ servants, no doubt,” sneered Rolph. “How do they expect you to house them all?”

“God knows!” sighed the harassed Governor. “You had better send Mistress Wheeler to me when you go.”

For a moment or two they sat in silence, each considering his particular part of a mutual problem. “Everything has gone well in the guardroom while I have been gone?” asked the garrison Captain, rousing himself.

“Floyd has done excellently.”

“A fine sergeant. Has the confidence of his men,” allowed Rolph. “A pity he isn’t twenty years younger with some knowledge of New Model Army methods!”

Hammond looked round the old stone walls of his room, and with his mind’s eye saw the much older keep and fortifications outside. “Imagine this great place being held for years by a mere score of men!” he said.

“Most of them nearly as old as their muskets!” grinned Rolph.

“All the same, in a tough place I would not mind being with them. There is something about these people of the Wight,” mused their new Governor. “They are trustworthy and ingenious. I suppose they need to be, since every man among them is half-sailor, half-farmer. And they have a natural courtesy.” His glance flickered with momentary distaste over the thick-set figure facing him. “They quarrel among themselves, no doubt. But to you or me no islander would ever give another away. At a word from this Sir John Oglander, because he is one of them, they would slaughter their best cattle or launch a boat when the sea around their treacherous coast is like a cauldron. But I sometimes wonder if a lifetime of just ruling would be enough for an overner like me to be accepted by them.”

“You have been here but a bare two months, sir,” Rolph reminded him. “And, anyhow, why should you care?”

“Except that at times it makes one feel like an exile,” smiled Hammond, marvelling at his own loneliness. Perhaps if he were to unbend to people more or give them more encouragement. “I appreciate the speed and secrecy with which you carried out this important mission. I trust that Parliament—er—appreciated it too,” he began, embarrassed at seeming to pry into the private affairs of a subordinate.

“To the tune of five hundred pounds!” Rolph told him, without any embarrassment at all. And as his boastful frankness elicited no response he gave rein to his curiosity, unconscious of offence, “I hope they have treated you as generously, sir.”

“With the future of the country pushed into my hands I shall have much added responsibility,” Hammond said stiffly. He had been even more overcome by the generosity of Parliament than his messenger, but he preferred to think of the thousand pounds and the annuity they had promised him as an increase in salary rather as a reward for betrayal. Receiving it had started the old argument in his conscientious mind. “The King put himself voluntarily into my hands,” he thought, “or rather he sent Ashburnham and Berkeley to sound me and I said I would do what I could, and I forced his hand by insisting upon going back with them and taking Baskett with me. Before ever I met him at Southampton I had betrayed him by giving Rolph secret orders. But it was not betrayal. It was my duty to Parliament. As a paid soldier on a battlefield, sure of my convictions, I have been fighting against him for years. Why must it seem different here? Why must their thousand pounds feel like thirty pieces of silver?” Hammond pulled his mind back to his companion and rose. “You must have had a hard journey. Have you eaten?” he enquired, in order to terminate the interview.

“At Cowes, while Rudy was getting us horses. A useful fellow, Rudy.” Rolph lingered for a moment, smiling reminiscently. “Too promising to throw himself away on a rustic chambermaid.”

“One of our servants?”

“He spoke of marriage. But I should imagine he has had all he wants of her.”

“Then see that he
does
marry her,” ordered the Governor sharply. “We do not want our Puritan army to get a Godless reputation for pilfering and raping.”

“No, sir.”

Captain Rolph went down the stairs and out into the courtyard, intending to send one of his men to tell Mistress Wheeler that the Governor wanted her. Seeing no one about, he strolled towards the barracks. Some of the lights in the castle had already been put out. The Solent had been smooth and the sky was starlit. He paused by the well-house, struck by the stillness of the evening. After the bustle of mainland towns the quality of the silence on the island seemed tangible, and was almost disconcerting to a town-bred man. He was glad when it was broken by the occasional rhythmic tramp of a guard on the battlements, or by a sudden burst of rough laughter from the barracks. And then by quick footsteps, much lighter than the sentry’s. Peering through the darkness he was able to discern the figure of a girl hurrying towards him from the direction of the chapel. The hood of her cloak was thrown back, and he knew by the starlight on her short mop of curls that it must be Mary Floyd. With quickened interest he calculated that whether she were bound for her aunt’s room or merely going to bed she must pass him. He stepped back into the shadow of the well-house and waited, so that she ran almost into his arms before being aware that anyone was there. When she shrank back with a startled cry, he caught hold of her, pretending to steady her; for even in his wenching Edmund Rolph tried to cover his sensuality with the moral hypocrisy of his kind. “What tryst have you been keeping so late, my pretty one?” he asked almost sternly.

“I have been to see the parson.”

“That for a likely tale, with a score of lustier men about the place!” he laughed coarsely, still holding her.

“About Libby and Tom Rudy,” she explained, sounding almost stupid in her confusion.

“That fellow Rudy has all the good fortune. At least I warrant she gave him a warm welcome. I, too, have been gone a week. Have you not missed me?”

It was the first time Mary had been held close against a man. Fear set her heart racing, and she hoped he could not hear it. “I—I scarcely noticed—” she stammered.

He threw back his cropped black head and laughed. “Scarcely noticed!” he mocked, sure of his masculine power. “Then what reddens your cheeks every time I look at you across the supper table?”

“Let me go,” she begged. “
Please
, Captain Rolph!”

“’Twas you who put yourself into bondage,” he teased. “What if I make the ransom a kiss?”

She had the sense not to struggle. Either a belated recollection of the Governor’s parting words or the preacher’s reiterated talk about hellfire restrained his lustfulness, and to Mary’s surprise he released her. “You are only a foolish child,” he said, hiding behind the age-old pretence that his feelings were paternal. “But I did not forget
you
. See, I bought you something when I was on the mainland.” He reached down into one of the capacious pockets of his buff army coat and pulled forth a string of beautifully carved amber beads. Drawing her towards the light of a lantern hanging above a doorway, he held them out to her; and Mary gave a little gasp of admiration, for they were even finer than the ones which Master Newland, the merchant, had given to Frances. “Such things breed vanity, but I overheard you admiring your friend’s,” Rolph said.

She had done more than admire them. She had sighed with envy because they were just the colour which suited her best. And because she had never possessed any jewellery. It had been clever of him to choose them, but Mary called to mind her aunt’s warnings and tried to avert her gaze. “I cannot possibly accept anything so expensive,” she excused herself.

“I can well afford it,” he bragged. “And other trinkets. And maybe perhaps a visit to the mainland—if you will be kind to me.”

She knew that he was talking to her as Rudy must have talked to Libby. “My father would not let me wear them,” she protested.

“Your father takes his orders from me.”

Although her aunt had married into a titled family, it was true. Since the civil war the social life of the country had become muddled up like that. She must do nothing to prejudice her beloved father. Reluctantly, almost as though he had placed a snake in her hands, Mary let the cool beads slide through her fingers.