The King's General (16 page)

As for herself, she had not the courage to take the key back to Langdon's house and confess the foolery. What was she then to do?

"You mean," I said, "what am I to do? For you wish to absolve yourself of all responsibility, isn't that so?"

"You are so clever, Honor," she pleaded, "and I so ignorant. Let me leave the key with you and so forget it. Baby Mary has a cough and poor John a touch of his ague; I really have so much on my mind."

"Very well then," I answered, "we will see what can be done."

I had some idea of taking Matty into my confidence and weaving a tale by which Matty would visit Mrs. Langdon and say how she had found the key thrown down on a path in the warren, which would be plausible enough, and while I turned this over in my mind I dangled the key between my fingers. It was of medium size, not larger, in fact, than the one in my own door. I compared the two and found them very similar. A sudden thought then struck me and, wheeling my chair into the passage, I listened for a moment to discover who stirred about the house.

It was a little before nine o'clock, with the servants all at their dinner and the rest of the household either talking in the gallery or already retired to their rooms for the night. The moment seemed well chosen for a very daring gamble, which might, or might not, prove nothing to me. I turned down the passage and halted outside the door of the locked chamber. I listened again, but no one stirred. Then very stealthily I pushed the key into the rusty lock. It fitted. It turned. And the door creaked open....

I was so carried away for a moment by the success of my own scheme that I was nonplussed. I sat in my chair, uncertain what to do. But that there was a link between this chamber and the summerhouse now seemed definite, for the key turned both locks.

The chance to examine the room might never come again, and for all my fear, I was devoured with horrid curiosity.

I edged my chair within the room and, kindling my candle, for it was of course in darkness with the windows barred, I looked about me. The chamber was simple enough. Two windows, one to the north and the other to the west, both with iron bars across them.

A bed in the far corner, a few pieces of heavy furniture, and the table and chair I had already seen from the crack. The walls were hung about with a heavy arras, rather old and worn in many parts. It was indeed a disappointing room, with little that seemed strange in its appointments. It had the faded, musty smell that always clings about disused apartments. I laid the candle on the table and wheeled myself to the corner that gave upon the buttress. This, too, had arras hanging from the ceiling, which I lifted--and found nothing but bare stone behind it. I ran my hands over the surface but could find no join. The wall seemed smooth to my touch. But it was murky and I could not see, so I returned to the table to fetch my candle, first listening at the door to make certain that the servants were still at supper.

It was while I waited there, with an eye to the passage that turned at right angles running beneath the belfry, that I felt a sudden breath of cold air on the back of my head.

I looked swiftly over my shoulder and noticed that the arras on the wall beside the buttress was blowing to and fro, as though a cavity had opened, letting through a blast of air; and even as I watched I saw, to my great horror, a hand appear from behind a slit in the arras and lift it to one side. There was no time to wheel my chair into the passage, no time even to reach my hand out to the table and blow out the candle.

Someone came into the room with a crimson cloak about his shoulders and stood for a moment with the arras pushed aside and a great black hole in the wall behind him. He considered me a moment and then spoke.

"Close the door gently, Honor," he said, "and leave the candle. Since you are here it is best that we should have an explanation and no further mischief."

He advanced into the room, letting the arras drop behind him, and I saw then that the man was my brother-in-law, Jonathan Rashleigh.

12

I felt like a child caught out in some misdemeanour and was hot with shame and sick embarrassment. If he, then, was the stranger in the crimson cloak, walking his house in the small hours, it was not for me to question it; and to be discovered thus, prying in his secrets, with the key not only of this door but of his summerhouse as well, was surely something he could never pardon.

"Forgive me," I said, "I have acted very ill."

He did not answer at once, but first made certain that the door was closed. Then he lit further candles and, laying aside his cloak, drew a chair up to the table.

"It was you," he said, "who made a crack there in the panel? It was not there before you came to Menabilly."

His blunt question snowed me what a shrewd grasp he had of my gaping curiosity, and I confessed that I was indeed the culprit. "I will not attempt to defend myself," I said. "I know I had no right to tamper with your walls. There was some talk of ghosts, otherwise I would not have done it. And one night during last week I heard footsteps."

"Yes," he said. "I had not thought to find your chamber occupied. I heard you stir and guessed then what had happened. We are somewhat pushed for room, as you no doubt realise, otherwise you would not have been put into the gatehouse."

He waited a moment and then, looking closely at me, he said, "You have understood, then, that there is a secret entry to this chamber?"

"Yes."

"And the reason you are here this evening is that you wished to find whither it led?"

"I knew it must be within the buttress."

"How did you come upon that key?"

This was the very devil, but there was nothing for it but to tell him the whole story, putting the blame heavily upon myself and saying little of Joan's share in the matter.

I said that I had looked about the summerhouse and admired the view, but as to my peering at his books and his father's will and lifting the heavy mat and finding the flagstone--nay, he would have to put me on the rack before I confessed to that.

He listened in silence, regarding me coldly all the while, and I knew what an interfering fool he must consider me.

"And what do you make of it now you know that the nightly intruder is none other than myself?" he questioned.

Here was a stumbling block. For I could make nothing of it. And I did not dare voice that secret, very fearful supposition that I kept hidden at the back of my mind.

"I cannot tell, Jonathan," I answered, "except that you use this entry for some purpose of your own and that your family know nothing of it."

At this he was silent, considering me slowly, and then after a long pause he said to me. "John has some knowledge of the subject, but no one else, except my steward Langdon. Indeed, the success of the royal cause we have at heart would gravely suffer should the truth become known."

This last surprised me. I did not see that his family secrets could be of any concern to His Majesty. But I said nothing.

"Since you already know something of the truth," he said, "I will acquaint you further, desiring you first to guard all knowledge of it to yourself."

I promised after a moment's hesitation, being uncertain what dire secret I might now be asked to share.

"You know," he said, "that at the beginning of hostilities I, with certain other gentlemen, was appointed by His Majesty's Council to collect and receive the plate given to the royal cause in Cornwall and arrange for it to be taken to the mint at Truro and there melted down?"

"I knew you were collector, Jonathan, no more than that."

"Last year another mint was erected at Exeter, under the supervision of my kinsman, Sir Richard Vyvyan, hence my constant business with that city. You will appreciate, Honor, that to receive a great quantity of very valuable plate and be responsible for its safety until it reaches the mint lies a heavy burden upon my shoulders."

"Yes, Jonathan."

"Spies abound, as you are well aware. Neighbours have long ears, and even a close friend can turn informer. If some member of the rebel army could but lay his hands upon the treasure that so frequently passes into my keeping the Parliament would be ten times the richer and His Majesty ten times the poorer. Therefore, all cartage of the plate has to be done at night, when the roads are quiet. Also, it is necessary to have depots throughout the county, where the plate can be stored until the necessary transport can be arranged. You have followed me so far?"

"Yes, Jonathan, and with interest."

"Very well then. These depots must be secret. As few people as possible must know their whereabouts. It is therefore imperative that the houses or buildings that serve as depots should contain hiding places known only to their owners. Menabilly, as you have already discovered, has such a hiding place."

I found myself getting hot under the skin, not at the implied sarcasm of his words, but because his revelation was so very different from what I--with excess of imagination--had supposed.

"The buttress against the far corner of this room," he continued, "is hollow in the centre. A flight of narrow steps leads to a small room, built in the thickness of the wall and beneath the courtyard, where it is possible for a man to stand and sit, though it is but five feet square. This room is connected with a passage, or rather tunnel, which runs under the house and so beneath the causeway to an outlet in the summerhouse.

"It is in this small buttress room that I have been accustomed, during the past year, to hide the plate. You understand me?"

I nodded, gripped by his story and deeply interested.

"When bringing the plate to this depot, or taking it away, we work by night, my steward, John Langdon, and I. The wagons wait down at Pridmouth, and we bring the plate from the buttress room, along the tunnel to the summerhouse, and so down to the cove in one of my handcarts, from where it is placed in the wagons. The men who conduct the procession from here to Exeter are all trustworthy, but none of them, naturally, know where abouts at Menabilly I have kept the plate hidden. That is not their business. No one knows that but myself and Langdon, and now you, Honor, who--I regret to say--have really no right at all to share the secret."

I said nothing, for there was no possible defence.

"John knows the plate has been concealed in the house but has never enquired where. He is, as yet, ignorant of the room beneath the buttress, likewise the tunnel to the summerhouse."

Here I risked offence by interrupting him.

"It was providential," I said, "that Menabilly possessed so excellent a hiding place."

"Very providential," he agreed. "Had it not been so, I could hardly have set about the business. You wonder, no doubt, why the house should have been so constructed?"

I confessed to some small wonder on the subject.

"My father," he said briefly, "had certain--how shall I put it?--shipping transactions which necessitated privacy. The tunnel was, therefore, useful in many ways."

In other words, I said to myself, your father, dear Jonathan, was nothing more or less than a pirate of the first order, whatever his standing and reputation in Fowey and the county.

"It happened, also," he said in a lower tone, "that my unfortunate elder brother was not in full possession of his faculties. This was his chamber from the time the house was built, in I600, until his death, poor fellow, twenty-four years later. At times he was violent, hence the reason for the little cell beneath the buttress, where lack of air and close confinement soon rendered him unconscious and easy then to handle."

He spoke naturally and without restraint, but the picture that his words conjured turned me sick. I saw the wretched, shivering maniac choking for air in the dark room beneath the buttress, with the four walls closing in upon him. And now this same room stacked with silver plate like a treasure house in a fairy tale.

Jonathan must have seen my change of face, for he looked kindly at me and rose from his chair.

"I know," he said, "it is not a pretty story. It was a relief to me, I must admit, when the smallpox that carried off my father took my brother too. It was not a happy business, caring for him, with young children in the house. You have heard, no doubt, the malicious tales that Robert Bennett spread abroad?"

I mentioned vaguely that some rumour had passed me by.

"He took the disease some five days after my father," said Jonathan. "Why he should have taken it, and my wife and I escaped, we shall never know. But so he did, and, becoming violent at the same time with one of his periodic fits, he stood not a chance. It was over very quickly."

There were sounds now of the servants moving from the kitchens.

"You will return now to your apartment," he said, "and I will go back the way I came. You may give me John Langdon's key. If in future you hear me come to this apartment you will understand what I am about. I keep accounts here of the plate temporarily in my possession which I refer to from time to time. I need hardly tell you that not a word of what has this night passed between us must be spoken about to any other person."

"I give you my solemn promise, Jonathan."

"Good night then, Honor."

He helped me turn my chair into the passage and then, very softly, closed the door behind me. I got to my room a few moments before Matty came upstairs to draw the curtains.

13

Although there never were any ties of affection between me and my brother-in- law, I certainly held him in greater respect and regard after our encounter of that evening. I knew now that "the King's business" on which he travelled to and fro was no light matter, and it was small wonder he was often short-tempered with his family.

Men with less sense of duty would have long since shelved the responsibility to other shoulders. I respected him, too, for having taken me into his confidence after my unwarrantable intrusion into his locked chamber. I was left only with a sneaking regret that he had not shown me the staircase in the buttress nor the cell beneath it, but this would have been too much to expect. I had a vivid picture, though, of the flapping arras and the black gulf behind.