The King's General (41 page)

The sheriff of Cornwall at this time was a neighbour, Sir Thomas Herle of Prideaux, near St. Blazey, who, though firm for Parliament, was a just man and fair.

He had done all he could to mitigate the heavy fine placed upon the Rashleigh estate, through respect for my brother-in-law, but Whitehall was too strong for his local powers. It was he now, in kindness, who granted John Rashleigh permission to visit his wife in Maddercombe in Devon; so it happened, that fateful spring, I was, of all our party, the only one remaining at Menabilly. A woman and a cripple, it was not likely that such a one could foster, all alone, a grim rebellion. The Rashleighs had taken the oath. Menabilly was now above suspicion. And though the garrison at Fowey and other harbours on the coast were strengthened, and more troops quartered in the towns and villages, our little neck of land seemed undisturbed. The sheep grazed on the Gribbin Hill. The cattle browsed in the beef park. The wheat was sown in eighteen acres. And smoke from a single fire, and that my own, rose from the Menabilly chimneys. Even the steward's house was desolate, now old John Langdon had been gathered to his fathers, for with the crushing burden on the estate his place had not been filled. His keys, once so important and mysterious, were now in my keeping, and the summerhouse, so sacred to my brother-in-law, was become my routine shelter on a windy afternoon. I had no wish these days to pry into the Kashleigh papers. Most of the books were gone, stored in the house, or packed and sent after him to London. The desk was bare and empty. Cobwebs hung from the walls. Green patches of mould upon the ceiling. But the torn matting on the floor still bid the flagstone with the iron ring.... I saw a rat once creep from his corner and stare at me a moment with beady, unwinking eyes. A great black spider spun a web from a woken pane of glass in the east window, while ivy, spreading from the ground, thrust a tendril to the sill. A few years more, I thought, and nature would take toll of all. The stones of the summerhouse would crumble, the nettles force themselves through the floor, and no one would remember the flagstone with the ring upon it, nor the flight of steps and the earthy, mouldering tunnel.

Well, it had served its purpose. Those days would not return.

I looked out towards the sea one day in March and watched the shadows darken, for an instant, the pale ripple of water beyond Pridmouth. The clock in the belfry, from the house, struck four o'clock. Matty was gone to Fowey and should be back by now.

I heard a footstep on the path beneath the causeway and called, thinking it one of the farm labourers returning home who could bear a message for me to the house. The footsteps ceased, but there came no word in answer.

I called again, and this time I heard a rustle in the undergrowth. My friend the fox, perhaps, was out upon his prowl. Then I saw a hand fasten to the sill and cling there for an instant, gripping for support, but the walls of the summerhouse were smooth, giving no foothold, and in a second the hand had slipped and was gone.

Someone was playing spy upon me. . . . If one of the long-nosed Parliamentary agents who spent their days scaring the wits out of the simple country people wished to try the game on me, he would receive short measure.

"If anyone wishes to speak with Mr. Rashleigh, he is from home," I called loudly.

"There is no one but myself in charge at Menabilly. Mistress Honor Harris, at your service."

I waited a moment, my eyes still on the window, and then a shadow falling suddenly upon my right shoulder told me there was someone at the door. I whipped round in an instant, my hands on the wheels of my chair, and saw the figure of a man, small and slight, clad in plain dark clothes like a London clerk, with a hat pulled low over his face. He stood watching me, his hands upon the lintel of the door.

"Who are you?" I said. "What do you want?"

There was something in his manner struck a chord.... The way he hesitated, standing on one foot, then bit his thumbnail.... I groped for the answer, my heart beating, when he whipped his hat from his close black curls, and I saw him smile, tremulous at first, uncertain, until he saw my eyes, and my arms outstretched towards him.

"Dick," I whispered.

He came and knelt by me at once, covering my hands with kisses. I forgot the intervening years and had in my arms a little frightened boy who gnawed a bone and swore he was a dog and I his mistress. And then as he raised his head I saw he was a boy no longer, but a young man, with hair upon his lip and his curls no longer riotous I but sleek and close. His voice was low and soft, a man's voice.

"Four years," I said. "Have you grown thus in four small years?"

"I shall be eighteen in two months' time," he answered, smiling. "Have you forgotten? You wrote the first year for my birthday, but never since."

"Writing has not been possible, Dick, these past two years."

I could not take my eyes from him, he was so grown, so altered. Yet that way of; watching with dark eyes, wary and suspicious, was the same, and the trick of J gnawing at his hand.

"Tell me quickly," I said, "before they come to fetch me from the house, what you | are doing here and why."

He looked at me doubtfully.

"I am the first to come, then?" he asked. "My father is not here?"

My heart leapt, but whether in excitement or in fear, I could not tell. In a flash off intuition it seemed that I knew everything. The waiting of the past few months was| over. It was all to begin afresh.... It was all to start again....

"No one is here," I answered, "but yourself. Even the Rashleighs are from home.

"Yes, we knew that," he said. "That is why Menabilly has been chosen."

"Chosen for what?"

He did not answer. He started his old trick of gnawing at his hand.

"They will tell you," he said, blinking his eyelids, "when they come."

"Who are they?" I asked.

"My father, firstly," he answered, with his eyes upon the door, "and Peter Courtney another, and Ambrose Manaton of Trecarrel, and your own brother Robin, and of course my aunt Gartred."

Gartred.... At this I felt like someone who has been ill overlong, or withdrawn from the world, leading another life. There had been rumours enough, God knows, in southeast Cornwall, to stun the senses, but none so formidable as fell now upon my ears.

"I think it best," I said slowly, "if you tell me what has happened since you came to England."

He rose then from his knees and, dusting the dirt from his clothes with a fastidious hand, swept a place upon the window sill to sit.

"We left Italy last autumn," he said, "and came first of all to London, my father disguised as a Dutch merchant, I as his secretary. Since then we have travelled England from south to north, outwardly as foreign men of business, secretly as agents for the prince. At Christmas we crossed the Tamar into Cornwall and went first of all to Stowe. My aunt is dead, you know, and no one was there but the steward and my cousin Bunny and the others. My father made himself known to the steward, and since then many secret meetings have been held throughout the county. From Stowe it is but a step to Bideford and Orley Court. There we found my aunt Gartred, who, falling out with her Parliamentary friends, was hot to join us, and your brother Robin also."

Truly the world had passed us by at Menabilly. The Parliament had one grace to its credit, that the stoppage of news stopped gossip also.

"I did not know," I said, "that my brother Robin lived at Bideford."

Dick shrugged his shoulders.

"He and my aunt are very thick," he answered. "I understand that your brother has made himself her bailiff. She owns land, does she not, that belonged to your eldest brother who is dead?"

Yes, they could have met again that way. The ground upon which Lanrest had stood, the fields below the Mill at Lametton. Why should I blame Robin, grown weary and idle in defeat?

"And so?" I asked.

"And so the plans matured, the clans gathered. They are all in it, you know, from east to west, the length and breadth of Cornwall. The Trelawneys, the Trevannions, the Bassetts, the Arundells. And now the time draws near. The muskets are being loaded and the swords sharpened. You will have a front seat at the slaughter."

There was a strange note of bitterness in his soft voice, and I saw him clench his hands upon the sill.

"And you?" I asked. "Are you not excited at the prospect? Are you not happy to be one of them?"

He did not answer for a moment, and when he did I saw his eyes look large and black in his pale face, even as they had done as a boy four years before.

"I tell you one thing, Honor," he said passionately, "I would give all I possess in the world, which is precious little, to be out of it!"

The force with which he spoke shocked me an instant, but I took care that he should not guess it.

"Why so?" I asked. "Have you no faith that they will succeed?"

Faith," he said wearily. "I have no faith in anything. I begged him to let me stay in italy, where I was content, after my fashion, but he would not let me. I found that I c°uld paint, Honor. I wished to make painting my trade. I had friends, too, fellows of ?"y age, for whom I felt affection. But no. Painting was womanish, a pastime fit for jpreigners. My friends were womanish, too, and would degrade me. If I wished to IVe, if I hoped to have a penny to my name, I must follow him, do his bidding, ape his ways, grow like my Grenvile cousins. God in Heaven, how I have come to loathe the very name of Grenvile."

Eighteen, but he had not changed. Eighteen, but he was still fourteen. This was the little boy who sobbed his hatred of his father.

"And your mother?" I asked gently. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Yes, I have seen her," he said listlessly, "but it's too late now to make amends.

She cares nothing for me. She has other interests. Four years ago she would have loved me still. Not now. It's too late. His fault. Always his fault."

"Perhaps," I said, "when--when this present business is concluded, you will be free. I will speak for you; I will ask that you may return to Italy, to your painting, to your friends."

He picked at the fringe of his coat with his long slim hands, too long, I thought, too finely slim for a Grenvile.

"There will be fighting," he said slowly, "men killing one another for no purpose, save to spill blood. Always to spill blood...."

It was growing murky in the summerhouse, and still I had heard no more about their plans. The fear that I read in his eyes found an echo in my heart, and the old strain and anxiety were with me once again.

"When did you leave Bideford?" I asked.

"Two days ago," he answered; "those were my orders. We were to proceed separately, each by a different route. Lady Courtney has gone to Trethurfe, I presume?"

"She went at the beginning of the month."

"So Peter intended. It was part of the ruse, you see, for emptying the house. He has been in Cornwall, Peter Courtney, and amongst us since before Christmas."

Another prey for Gartred? A second bailiff to attend on Orley Court? And Alice here, with wan cheeks and chin upon her hand, at an open window.... Richard did not choose his serviteurs for kindness.

"Mrs. Rashleigh was inveigled up to London for the same purpose," said Dick.

"The scheme has been cunningly planned, like all schemes of my father's. And the last cast of all, to rid the house of John, was quite in keeping with his character."

"John went of his own accord," I answered, "to see his wife at Maddercombe in Devon."

"Aye, but he had a message first," said Dick. "A scrap of paper, passed to him in Fowey, saying his wife was overfond of a neighbour living in her father's house. I, know, because I saw my father pen the letter, laughing as he did so, with Aunt; Gartred at his back."

I was silent at that. Damn them both, I thought, for cruelty. And I knew Richard's answer, even as I accused him in my thoughts. "Any means to secure the end that I desire."

Well, what was to come was no affair of mine. The house was empty. Let them make it a place of assignation; I could not stop them. Let Menabilly become, in one < brief hour, the headquarters of the royalist rising. Whether they succeeded or failed j was not my business.

"Did your father," I said, "send any word to me? Did he know that I was here?'

Dick stared at me blankly for a moment, as though I were in truth the half-wit I now | believed myself to be.

"Why, yes, of course," he said. "That is why he picked on Menabilly rather than | Carhayes. There was no woman at Carhayes to give him comfort."

"Does your father," I said, "still need comfort after two long years in Italy?"

"It depends," he answered, "what you intend by comfort. I never saw my fatherI hold converse with Italian women. It might have made him better-tempered if he I had."

I saw Richard, in my mind's eye, pen in hand, with a map of Cornwall spread on S| table before him. And dotted upon the map were the houses by the coast that offer [ The King's General I55 sanctuary. Trelawne--too deeply wooded. Penrice--not close enough to the sea.

Carhayes--yes, good landing ground for troops, but not a single Miss Trevannion.

Menabilly--with a beach and a hiding place and an old love into the bargain who had shared his life before and might be induced, even now, after long silence, to smile on him a moment after supper.... And the pen would make a circle round the name of Menabilly.

So I was become cynic in defeat. The rule of Parliament had taught me a lesson.

But as I sat there, watching Dick and thinking how little he resembled his father, I knew that all my anger was but a piece of bluff deceiving no one, not even my harder self, and that there was nothing I wanted in the world so much but to play hostess once more to Richard, by candlelight, in secret, and to live again that life of strain and folly, anguish and enchantment.

30

It fell on me to warn the servants. I summoned each one to my chamber in turn.

"We are entering upon dangerous days," I said to them. "Things will pass here at Menabilly which you do not see and do not hear. Visitors will come and go. Ask no questions. Seek no answer. I believe you are one and all faithful subjects of His Majesty?"