The King's General (35 page)

I was content enough, yet strangely empty, for it comes hard to be alone again after eight months in company with the man you love. I had shared his troubles and misfortunes and his follies too. His moods were become familiar, loved, and understood.

The cruel quip, the swift malicious answer to a question, and the sudden fleeting tenderness, so unaccountable, so warming, that would change him in one moment from a ruthless soldier to a lover.

When I was with him the days were momentous and full; now they had all the chill drabness of December, when as I took my breakfast the candles must be lit, and for my brief outing on the causeway I must be wrapped in cloak and coverture. The fall of the year, always to me a moment of regret, was now become a period of tension and foreboding.

At Christmas came John and Joan from Fowey, and Peter Courtney, given a few days' grace from Sir John Digby in the watch on Plymouth, and we all made merry for the children's sake and maybe for our own as well. Fairfax was forgotten and Cromwell, too, the doughty second-in-command who led his men to battle, so we were told, with a prayer upon his lips. We roasted chestnuts before the two fires in the gallery and burnt our fingers snatching sugar plums from the flames, and I remember, too, an old blind harper who was given shelter for the night on Christmas Eve and came and played to us in the soft candlelight. There were many such wanderers on the road now, since the war, calling no home their own, straggling from village to village, receiving curses more often than silver pieces. Maybe the season had made Jonathan more generous, for this old fellow was not turned away, and I can see him now in his threadbare jerkin and torn hose, with a black shade over his eyes, sitting in the far corner of the gallery, his nimble fingers drumming the strings of his harp, his quivering old voice strangely sweet and true. I asked Jonathan if he were not afraid of thieves in these difficult times and, shaking his head, he gestured grimly to the faded tapestries on the panels and the worn chairs.

"I have nothing left of value," he said. "You yourself saw it all destroyed a year since." And then, with a half-smile and a lowered voice, "Even the secret chamber and the tunnel contain nothing now but rats and cobwebs."

I shuddered, thinking in a sudden of all I had been through when Dick had hidden there, and I turned with relief to the sight of Peter Courtney playing leapfrog with his children, the sound of their merry laughter rising above the melancholy strains of the harper's lament. The servants came to fasten the shutters, and for a moment my brother-in-law stood before the window, looking out upon the lead sky, so soon to darken, and together we watched the first pale snowflakes fall.

"The gulls are flying inland,"he said; "we shall have a hard winter." And there was something ominous in his words, harmless in themselves, that rang like a premonition of disaster. Even as he spoke the wind began to rise, echoing in the chimneys, and circling above the gardens wheeled the crying gulls which came so seldom from their ledges in the cliffs, and with them the scattered flocks of redwing from the North, birds of passage seeking sanctuary. Next morning we woke to a white world, strangely still, and a sunless sky teeming with further snow to come, while clear and compelling through the silence came the Christmas bells from the church at Tywardreath.

I thought of Richard, alone with his staff at Werrington, and I feared that he would never keep his promise now, with the weather broken and the snowdrifts maybe ten feet deep upon the Bodmin moors.

But he did come, at midday on the ninth of January, when for four and twenty hours a thaw had made a slush of the frozen snow, and the road from Launceston to Bodmin Was just passable to an intrepid horseman. He brought Jack Grenvile with him and Jack's younger brother Bunny, a youngster of about the age of Dick, with a pugnacious jaw and merry eyes, who had spent Christmas with his uncle and now never left his side, vowing he would not return to Stowe again to his mother and his tutor, but would join the Army and kill rebels. As I watched Richard tweak his ear and laugh and jest with him I felt a pang of sorrow in my heart for Dick, lonely and unloved, save for that dreary Herbert Ashley, across the sea in Normandy, and I wondered if it must always be that Richard should show himself so considerate and kind to other lads, winning their devotion, and remain a stranger to his own son.

My brother-in-law, who had known Bevil well, bade welcome Bevil's boys, and after a first fleeting moment of constraint, for the visit was unexpected, he welcomed Richard, too, with courtesy. Richard looked better, I thought, the hard weather suited him; and after five minutes his was the only voice we heard in the long gallery, a sort of hush coming upon the Rashleigh family with his presence, and my conscience told me that his coming had put an end to their festivity. Peter Courtney, the jester in chief, was stricken dumb upon the instant, and I saw him frown to Alice to chide their eldest little girl, who, unafraid, ventured to Richard's side and pulled his sash.

None of them were natural any more because of the general and, glancing at my sister Mary, I saw the well-known frown upon her face as she wondered about her larder and what fare she could provide, and I guessed, too, that she was puzzling as to which apartment could be given to him, for we were all crammed into one wing as it was, "You are on the way to Truro, I suppose?" she said to him, thinking he would be gone by morning.

"No," he answered, "I thought, while the hard weather lasted, I might bide with you a week at Menabilly and shoot duck instead of rebels."

I saw her dart a look of consternation at Jonathan, and there was a silence which Richard found not at all unusual, as he was unused to other voices but his own, and he continued cursing, with great heartiness, the irritating slowness of the Cornish people.

"On the north coast," he said, "where these lads and myself were born and bred, response is swift and sudden, as it should be. But the duchy falls to pieces south of Bodmin, and the men become like snails."

The fact that the Rashleighs had been born and bred in southeast Cornwall did not worry him at all.

"I could never," he continued, "have resided long at Killigarth. Give a fellow a command at Polperro or at Looe on Christmas Day, and with a slice of luck it will be obeyed by midsummer."

Jonathan Rashleigh, who owned land in both places, stared steadily before him.

"But whistle a fellow overnight at Stratton," said Richard, "or from Moorwinstow or Bude, and he is at your side by morning. I tell you frankly that had I none other but Atlantic men in my army I would face Fairfax tomorrow with composure. But at the first sight of cold steel the rats from Truro and beyond will turn and run."

"I think you underestimate your fellow countrymen and mine," said Jonathan quietly.

"Not a bit of it; I know them all too well."

If, I considered, the conversation of the week was to continue in this strain, the atmosphere of Menabilly would be far from easy, but Jack Grenvile, with a discretion born of long practice, tapped his uncle on the shoulder.

"Look, sir," he said, "there are your duck." And, pointing to the sky above the garden, still grey and heavy with Unfällen snow, he showed the teal in flight, heading to the Gribbin.

Richard was at once a boy again, laughing, jesting, clapping his hands upon his nephew's shoulders, and in a moment the men of the household fell under the spell of his change of mood, and John and Peter, and even my brother-in-law, were making for the shore. We wrapped ourselves in cloaks and went out upon the causeway to watch the sport, and it seemed to me, in a sudden, that the years had rolled away, as I saw Richard, with Peter's goshawk on his wrist, turn to laugh at me. The boys were running across the thistle park to the long mead in the Pridmouth Valley, they were shouting and calling to one another, and the dogs were barking. The snow still lay upon the fields, and the cattle in the beef park nosed hungrily for fodder. The flocks of lapwing, growing tame and bold, wheeled screaming round our heads. For a brief moment the sun came from the white sky and shone upon us, and the world was dazzling.

This, I thought, is an interlude, lasting a single second. I have my Richard, Alice has her Peter, Joan her John. Nothing can touch us for today. There is no war. The enemy are not in Devon, waiting for the word to march.

The events of '44 seemed but an evil dream in retrospect that could never be repeated, and as I looked across the valley to the farther hill and saw the coast road winding down the fields of Tregares and Culver Close to the beach at Pridmouth, I remembered the troopers who had appeared there on the sky line on that fateful August day. Surely Richard was mistaken. They could not come again. There was a shouting from the valley, and up from the marshes rose the duck, with the hawks above them, circling, and I shivered of a sudden for no reason. Then the sun went blank, and a cat's paw rippled the sea, while a great shadow passed across the Gribbin Hill. Something fell upon my cheek, soft and clammy white. It was snowing once again....

That night we made a circle by the fire in the gallery, while Jonathan and Mary retired early to their room.

The blind harper had departed with the new year, so there was none to make music for us save Alice and her lute and Peter with his singing, while the two Grenvile brothers, Jack and Bunny, whistled softly together, a schoolboy trick learnt from their father Bevil long ago, when the great house at Stowe had rung with singing and with music.

John heaped logs upon the fire and blew the candles, and the flames lit the long room from end to end, shining upon the panelling and on the faces of us, one and all, as we sat around the hearth.

I can see Alice as she was that night, fingering her lute, looking up adoringly at her Peter, who was to prove, alas, so faithless in the years to come, while he, with his constraint before his general melting with the firelight and the late hour, threw back his head and sang to us: "And wilt thou leave me thus?

Say nay, say nay, for shame.

To save thee from the blame

Of all my grief and shame,

And wilt thou leave me thus?

Say nay! Say nay!"

I saw Joan and John hold hands and smile; John, with his dear, honest face, who would never be unfaithful and a deserter to his Joan, as Peter would to Alice, but was destined to slip away from her for all that, to the land from which no one of us returns, m barely six years' time.

"And wilt thou leave me thus, And have no more pity Of him that loveth thee?

Alas, thy cruelty.

And wilt thou leave me thus?

Say nay! Say nay!"

Plaintive and gentle were Alice's fingers upon the lute, and Jack and Bunny, pupping their mouths with their hands, whistled softly to her lead. I stole a glance at "ichard. He was staring into the flames, his wounded leg propped on a stool before him. The flickering firelight cast shadows on his features, distorting them to a grimace, and I could not tell whether he smiled or wept.

"You used to sing that once long ago," I whispered, but if he heard me he made no move; he only waited for the last verse of Peter's song. Then he laid aside his pipe, blowing a long ribbon of smoke into the air, and reached across the circle for Alice's lute.

"We are all lovers here, are we not?" he said. "Each in his own fashion, except for these sprigs of boys."

He smiled maliciously and began to drum the strings of the lute.

"Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crowned, And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground, Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour That none but the stars Are thought fit to attend her, Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense, Will be damnably mouldy a hundred years hence."

He paused, cocking an eye at them, and I saw Alice shrink back in her chair, glancing uncertainly at Peter. Joan was picking at her gown, biting her lips. Oh God, I thought, why do you break the spell? Why do you hurt them? They are none of them much more than children.

"Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears, Turn all our tranquillity to sighs and to tears?

Let's eat, drink and play till the worms do corrupt us, 'Tis certain, Post Mortem Nulla voluptas For health, wealth, and beauty, wit, learning and sense, Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence."

He rippled a final chord upon the strings and, rising to his feet, handed the lute to Alice with a bow.

"Your turn again, Lady Courtney," he said, "or would you prefer to play at spillikins?"

Someone--Peter, I think it was--forced a laugh, and then John rose to light the candles. Joan leant forward and raked apart the fire, so that the logs no longer burnt a flame. They flickered dully and went dark. The spell was broken.

"It is snowing still," said Jack Grenvile, opening a shutter. "Let us hope it falls twenty feet in depth in Devon and stifles Fairfax and his merry men."

"It will more likely stifle Wentworth," said Richard, "sitting on his arse in Bovey Tracey."

"Why does everyone stand up?" asked young Bunny. "Is there to be no more music?"

But no one answered. The war was upon us once again, the fear, the doubt, the nagging insecurity, and all the quiet had vanished from the evening.

26

I slept uneasily that night, passing from one troubled dream into another, and at one moment I thought to hear the sound of horses' hoofs riding across the park, but my windows facing east, I told myself it was but fancy, and the wind stirring in the snowladen trees. But when Matty came to me with breakfast she bore a note in her; hands from Richard, and I learnt that my fancy was in truth reality, and that he and the two Grenviles and Peter Courtney had all ridden from the house shortly after daybreak.

A messenger had come to Menabilly with the news that Cromwell had made a night attack on Lord Wentworth in Bovey Tracey and, finding the royalist army asleep, had captured four hundred of the horse, while the remainder of the foot who had not been captured had fled to Tavistock in complete disorder and confusion.