The King's General (21 page)

Oh God, how I hated them upon the instant. I, who had regarded the war with irony and cynicism hitherto and a bitter shrug of the shoulder, was now filled with burning anger when it touched me close. Their muddied boots had trampled the floors and, once above, wanton damage could at once be seen where they had thrust their pikes into the panelling and stripped the hangings from the walls. In Alice's apartment the presses had been overturned and the contents spilled upon the floor, and already a broken casement hung upon its hinge with the glass shattered. Alice's nurse was standing in the centre of the room crying and wringing her hands, for the troopers had carried off some of the children's bedding, and one clumsy oaf had trodden his heel upon the children's favourite doll and smashed its head to pieces. At the sight of this, their precious toy, the little girls burst into torrents of crying, and I knew then the idiot rage that surges within a man in wartime and compels him to commit murder. In the gardens the troopers were trampling down the formal beds and with their horses had knocked down the growing flowers, whose strewn petals lay crumpled now and muddied by the horses' hoofs.

I took one glance and then bade Matty and her companions bear me to my room. It had suffered like disturbance, with the bed tumbled and the stuffing ripped from the chairs for no rhyme or reason, and they had saved me the trouble of unlocking the barred chamber, for the door was broken in and pieces of planking strewn about the floor. The arras was torn in places, but the arras that hung before the buttress was still and undisturbed.

I thanked God in my heart for the cunning of old John Rashleigh and, desiring Matty to set me down beside the window, I looked out into the courtyard and saw the soldiers all gathered below, line upon line of them, with their horses tethered and the tents gleaming white already in process of erection in the park, with the campfires burning and the cattle lowing as they were driven by the soldiers to a pen, and all the while that damned bugle blowing, high-pitched and insistent in a single key. I turned from the window and told Matty that Joan and her children would now be coming to the gatehouse and I remain here in the chamber that had been barred.

"The troopers have made short work of mystery," said Matty, looking about her and at the broken door. "There was nothing put away here, after all, then."

I did not answer, and while she busied herself with moving my bed and my own belongings I wheeled myself to the cabinet and saw that Jonathan had taken the precaution of removing his papers before he went, leaving the cabinet bare.

When the two rooms were in order and the servants had helped Matty to repair the door, thus giving me my privacy from Joan, I sent them from me to give assistance to Joan'in making place for Gartred in the southern front. All was now quiet save for the constant tramping of soldiers in the court below and the comings and goings beneath me in the kitchens. Very cautiously I drew near the northeast corner of my new apartment and lifted the arras. I ran my hands over the stone wall as I had done that time before in the darkness when Jonathan had discovered me, and once again I could find no outlet, no division in the stone.

I realised then that the means for entry must be from without only, a great handicap to us who used it now, but no doubt cunningly intended by the builder of the house, who had no desire for his idiot elder son to come and go at pleasure. I knocked with my fists against the wall, but they sounded not at all .I called, "John," in a low voice, expecting no answer; nor did I receive one.

This, then, was a new and hideous dilemma, for I had warned John not to attempt an entry to the chamber before I warned him first, being confident at the time that I would be able to find the entrance from inside. This I could not do, and John and Dick were in the meantime waiting in the cell below the buttress for a signal from me. I placed my face against the stone wall, crying, "John... John..."as loudly as I dared, but I guessed, with failing heart, that the sound of my voice would never carry through the implacable stone.

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, I let the arras fall and returned to the window, where I made pretence of looking down into the court. I heard movement in my old apartment in the gatehouse and a moment later a loud knocking on the door between.

"Please enter," I called, and the roughly repaired door was pushed aside, tottering on its hinges, and Lord Robartes himself came into the room accompanied by one of his officers and also Frank Penrose, with his arms bound tight behind him.

"I regret my sudden intrusion," said Lord Robartes, "but we have just found this man in the grounds who volunteered information I find interesting, which you may add to, if you please."

I glanced at Frank Penrose, who, half frightened out of his wits, stared about him like a hare, passing his tongue over his lips.

I did not answer but waited for Lord Robartes to continue.

"It seems you have had living here, until today, the son of Skellum Grenvile," he said, watching me intently, "also his tutor. They were to have left by fishing boat for St. Mawes a few hours since. You were the boy's godmother and had the care of him, I understand. Where are they now?"

"Somewhere off the Dodman, I hope," I answered.

"I am told that as the boat set sail from Polkerris the boy could not be found," he replied, "and Penrose here and John Rashleigh went in search of him. My men have not yet come upon John Rashleigh or the boy. Do you know what has become of them?"

"I do not," I answered. "I only trust they are aboard the boat."

"You realise," he said harshly, "that there is a heavy price upon the head of ^kellum Grenvile, and to harbour him or any of his family would count as treason to Parliament. The Earl of Essex has given me strict orders as to this."

"That being the case," I said, "you had better take Mrs. Denys into closer custody.

"She is Sir Richard's sister, as you no doubt know."

I had caught him off his guard with this, and he looked at me nonplussed. Then he Degan tapping on the table in sudden irritation. "Mrs. Denys has, I understand, little °r no friendship with her brother," he said stiffly. "Her late husband, Mr. Antony ^enys, was known to be a good friend to Parliament and an opposer of Charles Stuart.

"Have you nothing further to tell me about your godson?"

"Nothing at all," I said, "except that I have every belief that he is upon that fishing boat, and with the wind in the right quarter he will be, by this time, nigh halfway to St.Mawes."

He turned his back on me at that and left the room, with the luckless Frank Penrose shuffling at his heels, and I realised, with relief, that the agent was ignorant as to Dick's whereabouts, like everybody else in Menabilly, and for all he knew my tale might be quite true and both Dick and John some ten miles out to sea.

Not one soul then, in the place, knew the secret of the buttress but myself, for Langdon, the steward, had accompanied my brother-in-law to Launceston. This was a great advantage, making betrayal an impossibility. But I still could not solve the problem of how to get food and drink and reassurance to the two fugitives I had myself imprisoned. And another fear began to nag at me with a recollection of my brother-in-law's words: "Lack of air and close confinement soon rendered him unconscious and easy to handle." Uncle John gasping for breath in the little cell beneath the buttress... How much air, then, came through to the cell from the tunnel beyond? Enough for how many hours?

Once again, as earlier in the day, the sweat began to trickle down my face, and half consciously I wiped it away with my hand. I felt myself defeated. There was no course for me to take. A little bustle from the adjoining room and a child's cry told me that Joan and her babies had come to my old apartment, and in a moment she came through with little Mary whimpering in her arms and small Jonathan clinging to her skirts.

"Why did you move, Honor dear?" she said. "There was no need." And, like Matty, she gazed about the room in curiosity. "It is very plain and bare," she added, "nothing valuable at all. I am much relieved, for these brutes would have got it. Come back in your own chamber, Honor, if you can bear with the babies."

"No," I said, "I am well enough."

"You look so tired and drawn," she said, "but I dare swear I do the same. I feel I have aged ten years these last two hours. What will they do to us?"

"Nothing," I said, "if we keep to our rooms."

"If only John would return," she said, tears rising to her eyes. "Supposing he has had some skirmish on the road and has been hurt? I cannot understand what can have become of him."

The children began to whimper, hearing the anxiety in her voice, and then Matty, who loved children, came and coaxed the baby and proceeded to undress her for her cot, while little Jonathan, with a small boy's sharp, nervous way, began to plague us all with questions: why did they come to their aunt Honor's room, and who were all the soldiers, and how long would they stay?

The hours wore on with horrid dragging tedium, and the sun began to sink behind the trees at the far end of the park, while the air was thick with smoke from the fires lit by the troopers.

All the time there was tramping below and orders called and the pacing to and fro of horses, with the insistent bugle sometimes far distant in the park, echoed by a fellow bugle, and sometimes directly beneath the windows. The children were restless, turning continually in their cots and calling for either Matty or their mother, and when Joan was not hushing them she was gazing from my window, reporting fresh actions of destruction, her cheeks aflame with indignation.

"They have rounded up all the cattle from the beef park and the beacon fields and driven them into the park here with a pen about them," she said, "and they are dividing up the steers now to another pen." Suddenly she gave a little cry of dismay.

"They have slaughtered three of them," she said; "the men are quartering them already by the fires. Now they are driving the sheep."

We could hear the anxious baaing of the ewes to the sturdy lambs and the lowing of the cattle. I thought of the five hundred men encamped there in the park and the many hundreds more between us and Lostwithiel and how they and their horses must be fed, but I said nothing. Joan shut the window, for the smoke from the carnpfires blew thick about the room, and the noise of the men shouting and calling orders made a vile and sickening clamour. The sun set in a dull crimson sky and the shadows lengthened.

About half-past eight Matty brought us a small portion of a pie upon one plate with a carafe of water. Her lips were grimly set.

"This for the two of you," she said. "Mrs. Rashleigh and Mrs. Courtney fare no better. Lady Courtney is making a little broth for the children's breakfast in case they give us no eggs."

Joan ate my piece of pie as well as hers, for I had no appetite. I could think of one thing only, and that was that it was now nearly five hours since her husband and Richard's son had lain hidden in the buttress. Matty brought candles, and presently Alice and Mary came to say good night, poor Mary looking suddenly like an old woman from anxiety and shock, with great shadows under her eyes.

"They're axing the trees in the orchard," she said. "I saw them myself sawing the branches and stripping the young fruit that has scarce formed. I sent down a message to Lord Robartes, but he returned no answer. The servants have been told by the soldiers that tomorrow they are going to cut the corn, strip all the barley from eighteen acres and the wheat from the Great Meadow. And it wants three weeks to harvest."

The tears began to course down her cheeks and she turned to Joan. "Why does John not come?" she said in useless reproach. "Why is he not here to stand up for his father's home?"

"If John were here he could do nothing," I said swiftly before Joan could lash back in anger. "Don't you understand, Mary, that this is war? This is what has been happening all over England, and we in Cornwall are having our first taste of it."

Even as I spoke there came a great burst of laughter from the courtyard and a tongue of flame shot up to the windows. The troopers were roasting an ox in the clearing above the warren, and because they were too idle to search for firewood they had broken down the doors from the dairy and the bakery and were piling them upon the fire.

"There must have been thirty officers or more at dinner in the gallery," said Alice quietly. "We saw them from our windows afterwards walk up and down the terrace before the house. One or two were Cornish--I remember meeting them before the war--but most of them were strangers."

"They say the Earl of Essex is in Fowey," said Joan, "and set up his headquarters at Place. Whether it is true or not I do not know."

"They Treffrys will not suffer," said Mary bitterly. "They have too many relatives fighting for the rebels. You won't find Bridget has her stores pillaged and her larders ransacked."

"Come to bed, Mother," said Alice gently. "Honor is right; it does no good to worry. We have been spared so happily until now. If my father and Peter are somewhere safe with the King's Army, nothing else can matter."

They went to their own apartments and Joan to the children next door, while Matty--all oblivious of my own hidden fears--helped me undress for bed.

There's one discovery I've made this night, anyway," she said grimly as she brushed my hair.

''What is that, Matty?"

"Mrs. Denys hasn't lost her taste for gentlemen."

I said nothing, waiting for what would follow.

You and the others and Mrs. Sawle and Mistress Sparke had pie for your suppers," she said, "but there was roast beef and burgundy taken up to Mrs. Denys and places set for two upon the tray. Her children were put together in the dressing foom and had a chicken between them."

I realised that Matty's partiality for eavesdropping and her nose for gossip might stand us in good stead in the immediate future.

'And who was the fortunate who dined with Mrs. Denys?" I asked.

"Lord Robartes himself," said Matty with sour triumph.

My first suspicion became a certainty. It was not mere chance that had so strangely brought Gartred to Menabilly after five and twenty years. She was here for a purpose.