The King's General (42 page)

This was sworn upon the Book of Common Prayer.

"One incautious word that leaves this house," I said, "and your master up in London will lose his life, and ourselves also, in all probability. That is all I have to say. See that there is clean linen on the beds and sufficient food for guests. But be deaf and dumb and blind to those who come here."

It was on Matty's advice that I took them thus into my confidence.

"Each one can be trusted," she said, "but a word of faith from you will bind them together, and not all the agents in the West Country will make them blab."

The household had lived sparsely now since the siege of '44, and there were few comforts for our prospective visitors.

No hangings to the walls, no carpets to the floors in the upper chambers. Straw mattresses in place of beds. They must take what shift they could and be grateful.

Peter Courtney was the first to come. No secrecy for him. He flaunted openly his pretended return from France, dining with the Treffrys at Place upon the way and announcing loudly his desire to see his children. Gone to Trethurfe? But all his belongings were at Menabilly. Alice had misunderstood his letter....

Nothing wan or pale about Peter. He wore a velvet coat that must have cost a fortune. Poor Alice and her dowry....

"You might," I said to him, "have sent her a whisper of your safe return. She would have kept it secret."

But he shrugged a careless shoulder. "A wife can be a cursed appendage in times like these," he said, "when a man must live from day to day, from hand to mouth. To tell the truth, Honor, I am so plagued with debts that one glimpse of her reproachful eyes would drive me crazy."

"You look well on it," I said. "I doubt if your conscience worries you unduly."

He winked, his tongue in his cheek, and I thought how the looks that I had once admired were coarsened now with licence and good living. Too much French wine, too little exercise.

"And what are your plans," I asked, "when Parliament is overthrown?"

Once again he shrugged his shoulder. "I shall never settle at Trethurfe," he said.

Alice can live there if she pleases. As for myself, why, war has made me restless."

He whistled under his breath and strolled towards the window. The aftermath of war, the legacy of losing it. One more marriage in the melting pot....

The next to come was Bunny Grenvile. Bunny, at seventeen, already head and shoulders taller than his cousin Dick. Bunny with snub nose and freckles. Bunny with eager questing eyes and a map of the coast under his arm.

"Where are the beaches? Where are the landing places? No, I want no refreshment; I have work to do. I want to see the ground."

And he was off to the Gribbin, a hound to scent, another budding soldier like his brother Jack.

"You see," said Dick cynically, his black eyes fastened on me, "how all the Grenvile men but me are bred with a nose for blood? You despise me, don't you, because I do not go with him?"

"No, Dick," I answered gently.

"Ah, but you will in time. Bunny will win your affection, as he has won my father's. Bunny has courage. Bunny has guts. Poor Dick has neither. He is only fit for painting, like a woman."

He threw himself on his back upon the couch, staring upwards at the ceiling. And this, too, I thought has to be contended with. The demon jealousy sapping his strength. The wish to excel, the wish to shine before his father. His father whom he pretended to detest.

Our third arrival was Mr. Ambrose Manaton. A long familiar name to me, for my family of Harris had for generations past had lawsuits with the Manatons, respecting that same property of theirs, Trecarrel. What it was all about I could not say, but I; know my father never spoke to any of them. There was an Ambrose Manaton who; stood for Parliament before the war, at Launceston. This man was his son. He was, I s suppose, a few years older than Peter Courtney, some four and thirty years. Sleek and| suave, with a certain latent charm. He wore his own fair hair, curling to his shoulders.

Thinking it best spoken and so dismissed forever, I plunged into the family dispute, on setting eyes on him.

"Our families," I said, "have waged a private war for generations. Something to dol with property. Being the youngest daughter, you are safe with me. I can lay claim to | nothing."

"I could not refuse so fair a pleader if you did," he answered.

I considered him thoughtfully as he kissed my hand. Too ready with his compli| ment, too easy with his smile. What exactly, I wondered, was his part in this| campaign? I had not heard of him ever as a soldier. Money? Property? Those lands all Trecarrel and at Southill that my father could not claim? Richard had no doubt assessed the value. A royalist rising cannot be conducted without funds. Did Ambrose Manaton, then, hold the purse? I wondered what I induced him to risk his life and fortune. He gave me the clue a moment afterwards.

"Mrs. Deny s has not yet arrived?"

"Not yet. You know her well?"

"We count ourselves near neighbours in north Cornwall and north Devon."

The tone was easy and the smile confident. Oh, Richard, my love of little scruple«!

So Gartred was the bait to catch the tiger.

What in the name of thunder had been going on all these long winter months; Bideford? I could imagine, with Gartred playing hostess. Well, I was hostess now in Menabilly. And the straw mattresses upstairs would be hard cheer after the feathe beds of Orley Court.

"My brother, Major General Harris, acts as bailiff to Mrs. Denys, so I understand?"

"Why, yes, something of the sort," said Ambrose Manaton. He studied the toe < his boot. His voice was a shade overcasual.

"Have you seen your brother lately?" he asked.

"Not for two years. Not since Pendennis fell."

"You will see a change in him then. His nerves have gone to pieces. The result of the siege, no doubt."

Robin never had a nerve in his body. Robin rode to battle with a falcon on his wrist.

If Robin was changed, it was not the fault of five months' siege.

They came together shortly before dark. I was alone in the gallery to receive them.

The rule of Parliament had fallen lightly on Gartred. She was, I think, a little fuller in the bosom, but it became her well. And, chancing fate, she had let nature do its damnedest with her hair, which was no longer gleaming gold, but streaked with silver white, making her look more lovely and more frail.

She tossed her cloak to Robin as she came into the room, proclaiming in that first careless gesture all that I cared to know of their relationship. The years slipped backward in a flash, and there was she, a bride of twenty-three, already tired of Kit, her slave and bondsman, who had not the strength of will to play the master.

It might have been Kit once again, standing there in the gallery at Menabilly, with a dog's look of adoration in his eyes.

But Ambrose Manton was right. There was not only adoration in Robin's eyes.

There was strain, too, doubt, anxiety. And the heavy jowls and puffy cheeks betrayed the easy drinker. Defeat and Gartred had taken toll, then, of my brother.

"We seem fated, you and I, to come together at moments of great crisis," I said to Gartred. "Do you still play piquet?"

I saw Robin look from one to the other of us, mystified, but Gartred smiled, drawing off her lacen gloves.

"Piquet is out of fashion," she answered. "Dice is a later craze, but must be done in secret, all games of chance being frowned upon by Parliament."

"I shall not join you then," I said. "You will have to play with Robin or with Ambrose Manaton."

Her glance at me was swift, but I let it pass over my head.

"I have at least the consolation," she said, "of knowing that for once we shall not play in opposition. We are all partners on a winning side."

"Are we?" I said. But only four years had passed since she had come here as a spy for Lord Robartes.

"If you doubt my loyalty," said Gartred, "you must tell Richard when he comes.

But it is rather late to make amends. I know all the secrets."

She smiled again, and as I looked at her I felt like a knight of old saluting his opponent before combat.

"I have put you," I said, "in the long chamber overhead, which Alice has with her children when she is home."

"Thank you," she said.

"Robin is on your left," I said, "and Ambrose Manaton upon your right, at the small bedroom at the stair's head. With two strong men to guard you, I think it hardly likely you'll be nervous."

She gave not a flicker of the eyelid but, turning to Robin, gave him some commands about her baggage. He went at once to obey her, like a servant.

''It has been fortunate for you," I said, "that the menfolk of my breed have proved accommodating."

''It would be more fortunate still," she answered, "if they could be at the same time less possessive." I replied, "like the motto of our house, 'What we have, we keep.''

She looked at me a moment thoughtfully.

''It is a strange power," she said, "this magnetism that you have for Richard. I give you full credit." I watched her from my chair.

''Give me no credit, Gartred," I answered. "Menabilly is but a name upon a map that will do as well as any other. An empty house, a near-by shore."

"And a secret hiding place into the bargain," she said shrewdly.

But now it was my time to smile. "The mint had the silver long ago," I said, "and what was left has gone to swell the Parliament exchequer. What are you playing for this time, Gartred?"

She did not answer for a moment, but I saw her cat's eyes watching Robin's shadow in the hall.

"My daughters are grown up," she said. "Orley Court becomes a burden. Perhaps I would like a third husband and security."

Which my brother could not give her, I thought, but which a man some fifteen years younger than herself, with lands and fortune, might be pleased to do. Mrs.

Harris.... Mrs. Deny s.... Mrs. Manaton?

"You broke one man in my family," I said. "Take care that you do not seek to break another."

"You think you can prevent me?"

"Not I. You may do as you please. I only give you warning."

"Warning of what?"

"You will never play fast and loose with Robin, as you did with Kit. Robin would; be capable of murder."

She stared at me a moment, uncomprehending. And then my brother came into the; room.

Well, for the love of God, I thought that night, here was a royalist rising, planned to kindle Cornwall from east to west, but there was enough material for| explosive purposes gathered beneath the roof of Menabilly to set light to the whole country....

We made a strange company for dinner. Gartred, her silver hair bejeweled, at the ' head of the table, and those two men on either side of her, my brother with^ ever-reaching hand to the decanter, his eyes feasting on her face, while Ambrose'!

Manaton, cool and self-possessed, kept up a flow of conversation in her right ear, j excluding Robin, about the corrupt practices of Parliament that made me suspect hfl| must have a share in it, from knowing so much detail.

On my left sat Peter Courtney, who from time to time caught Gartred's eye smiled accordingly, in knowing fashion, but as he did the same to the serving maid who passed his place, and to me when I chanced to look his way, I guessed it to I habit rather than conspiracy. I knew my Peter....

Dick glowered in the centre, throwing black looks towards his cousin opposite, who rattled on about the letters he had received from his brother Jack, who was grov so high in favour with the Prince of Wales in France that they were never parted.!| And as I looked at each in turn, seeing they were served with food and wine| playing the hostess in this house that was not mine, frowned upon, no doubt, by the ghost of old John Rashleigh, I thought with some misgiving that, had Richard soug his hardest in the county, he could not have found six people more likely to fall and disagree than those who sat around the table now.

Gartred, his sister, had never wished him well. Robin, my brother, had disobeye his orders in the past. Peter Courtney was one of those who had muttered at ' leadership. Dick, his son, feared and hated him. Ambrose Manaton was an unknov quantity, and Bunny, his nephew, a pawn who could read a map. Were these to be t leaders of the rising? If so, God help poor Cornwall and the Prince of Wales.

"My uncle," Bunny was saying, arranging the salt cellars in the fashion of a fo "never forgets an injury. He told me once if a man does him an ill turn he will set him with a worse one." He went on to describe some battle of the past, to which i one listened, I think, but Peter, who did so from good nature, but the words By "

" had spoken so lightly, without thinking, rang strangely in my head. "My uncle new forgets an injury."

He must have been injured by all of us, at one time or other, seated at the table i at Menabilly. What a time to choose to pay old scores, Richard, my lover, mocking and malevolent... The eve of a rising, and these six people deep in it to the hilt.

There was something symbolic in the empty chair beside me.

Then we fell silent, one and all, for the door opened of a sudden, and he stood there, watching us, his hat upon his head, his long cloak hanging from his shoulders.

Gone'was the auburn hair I loved so well, and the curled wig that fell below his ears gave him a dark satanic look that matched his smile.

"What a bunch of prizes," he said, "for the sheriff of the duchy if he chose to call.

Each one of you a traitor."

They stared at him blankly, even Gartred, for once, slow to follow his swift mind.

But I saw Dick start and gnaw his fingernails. Then Richard tossed his hat and cloak to the waiting servant in the hall and came to the empty chair at my right side.

"Have you been waiting long?" he said to me.

"Two years and three months," I answered him.

He filled the glass from the decanter at my side.

"In January '46," he said, "I broke a promise to our hostess here. I left her one morning at Werrington, saying I would be back again to breakfast with her. Unfortunately the Prince of Wales willed otherwise. And I breakfasted instead in Launceston Castle. I propose to make amends for this tomorrow."