The King's General (50 page)

He stared at me thoughtfully, and I whispered, "Forgive him, for my sake, if not for your own."

"I have forgiven him," he said slowly, "but the Grenviles are strangely fashioned. I think you will find that he cannot forgive himself."

I saw them both, father and son, standing upon the stair, with the little cell below, and then Richard pushed the stone flush against the buttress wall, and it was closed forever. I waited there beside it for a moment, then I called for Matty.

"It's all over," I said. "Finished now, and done with."

She came across the room and lifted me in her arms.

"No one," I said to her, "will ever hide in the buttress cell again." I put my hand onto my cheek. It was wet. I did not know I had been crying. "Take me to my room," I said to Matty.

I sat there, by the far window, looking out across the gardens. The moon was high now, not white as last night, but with a yellow rim about it. Clouds had gathered in the evening and were banking curled and dark against the sky. The sentry had left the causeway steps and was leaning against the hatch door of the farm buildings opposite, watching the windows of the house. He did not see me sitting there, in the darkness, with my chin upon my hand.

Hours long, it seemed, I waited there, staring to the east, with Matty crouching at my side, and at length I saw a little spurt of flame rise above the trees in the thistle park. The wind was westerly, blowing the smoke away, and the sentry down below, leaning against the barn, could not see it from where he stood.

Now, I said to myself, it will burn steadily till morning, and when daylight comes they will say poachers have lit a bonfire in the night that spread, unwittingly, catching the summerhouse alight, and someone from the estate here must go, cap in hand, with apologies for carelessness, to Jonathan Rashleigh in his house at Fowey. Now, I said also, two figures wend their way across the cowrie beach and wait there, in the shelter Of the cliff. They are safe; they are together. I can go to bed and sleep and so forget them. And yet I went on sitting there, beside my bedroom window, looking out upon the lawns, and I did not see the moon, nor the trees, nor the thin column of smoke rising into the air, but all the while Dick's eyes looking up at me, for the last time, as Richard closed the stone in the buttress wall.

37

At nine in the morning came a line of troopers riding through the park. They dismounted in the courtyard, and the officer in charge, a colonel from the staff of Sir Hardress Waller at Saltash, sent word up to me that I must dress and descend immediately and be ready to accompany him to Fowey. I was dressed already, and when the servants carried me downstairs I saw the troopers he had brought prising the panelling in the long gallery. The watchdogs had arrived....

"This house was sacked once already," I said to the officer, "and it has taken my brother-in-law four years to make what small repairs he could. Must his work begin again?"

"I am sorry," said the officer, "but the Parliament can afford to take no chances with a man like Richard Grenvile."

"You think to find him here?"

"There are a score of houses in Cornwall where he might be hidden," he replied.

"Menabilly is but one of them. This being so, I am compelled to search the house, rather too thoroughly for the comfort of those who dwell beneath its roof. I am afraid that Menabilly will not be habitable for some little while.... Therefore, I must ask you to come with me to Fowey."

I looked about me, at the place that had been my home now for two years. I had seen it sacked before. I had no wish to witness the sight again.

"I am ready," I said to the officer.

As I was placed in the litter, with Matty at my side, I heard the old sound I well remembered of axes tearing the floorboards, of swords ripping the wood, and another jester, like his predecessor in '44, had already climbed to the belfry and hung crosslegged from the beam, the rope between his hands, swinging the great bell from side to side. It tolled us from the gatehouse, tolled us from the outer court, and this, I thought to myself in premonition, is my farewell to Menabilly. I shall not live here again.

"We will go by the coast," said the officer, looking in the window of my litter.

"The highway is choked with troops bound for Helston and Penzance."

"Do you need so many," I asked, "to quell but a little rising?"

"The rising will be over in a day or so," he answered, "but the troops have come to stay. There will be no more insurrections in Cornwall, east or west, from this day forward."

And as he spoke the Menabilly bell swung backwards, forwards, in a mournful knell, echoing his words.

I looked up from the path beneath the causeway, and the summerhouse that had stood there yesterday, a little tower with its long windows, was now charred rubble, a neap of sticks and stones.

"By whose orders," called the officer, "was that fire kindled?"

. I heard him take counsel of his men, and they climbed to the causeway to investigate the pile, while Matty and I waited in the litter. In a few moments the officer returned.

"What building stood there?" he asked me. "I can make nothing of it from the mess. But the fire is recent and smoulders still."

"A summerhouse," I said. "My sister, Mrs. Rashleigh, loved it well. We sat there often when she was home... This will vex her sorely. Colonel Bennett, when he came here yesterday, gave orders, I believe, for its destruction."

"Colonel Bennett," said the officer, frowning, "had no authority without permission of the sheriff, Sir Thomas Herle."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"He may have had permission, I cannot tell you. But he is a member of the County Committee, and therefore can do much as he pleases."

"The County Committee takes too much upon itself," said the officer. "One day they will have trouble with us in the Army."

He mounted his horse in high ill temper and shouted an order to his men. A civil war within a civil war. Did no faction ever keep the peace amongst themselves? Let the Army and the Parliament quarrel as they pleased, it would help our cause in the end, in the long run.... And as I turned and looked for the last time to the smouldering pile upon the causeway and the tall trees in the thistle park I thought of the words that had been whispered two years ago in '46: When the snow melts, when the thaw breaks, when the spring comes...

We descended the steep path to Pridmouth. The tide was low, the Cannis Rock showed big and clear, and on the far horizon was the black smudge of a sail. The millstream gurgled out upon the stones and ran sharply to the beach, and from the marsh at the farther end a swan rose suddenly, thrashing his way across the water, and, circling in the air a moment, winged his way out to sea.

We climbed the farther hill, past Coombe Manor, where the Rashleigh cousins lived, and so down to my brother-in-law's town house on Fowey quay. The first thing I looked for was a ship at anchor in the Rashleigh roads, but none was there. The harbour water was still and grey, and no vessels but little fishing craft anchored at Polruan. The people on the quayside watched with curiosity as I was lifted from my litter and taken to the house.

My brother-in-law was waiting for me in the parlour. The room was dark-panelled, like the dining hall at Menabilly, with great windows looking out upon the quay. On the ledge stood a model of a ship. The same ship that his father had built and commissioned forty years before, to sail with Drake against the Armada. She, too, was named the Frances.

"I regret," said the officer, "that for a day or so, until the trouble in the West has quietened down, it will be necessary to keep a watch upon this house. I must ask you, sir, and this lady here, to stay within your doors."

"I understand," said Jonathan. "I have been so long accustomed to surveillance that a few more days of it will not hurt me now."

The officer withdrew, and I saw a sentry take up his position outside the window, as his fellow had done the night before at Menabilly.

"I have news of Robin," said my brother-in-law. "He is detained in Plymouth, but II think they can fasten little upon him. When this matter has blown over he will be released, on condition that he take the oath of allegiance to the Parliament, as I was forced to do."

"And then?" I said.

"Why, then he can become his own master and settle down to peace and quietude. I, have a little house in Tywardreath that would suit him well, and you too, Honor, if| you should wish to share it with him. That is--if you have no other plan."

"No," I said. "No, I have no other plan."

He rose from his chair and walked slowly to the window, looking out upon the | quay, white-haired and bent, leaning heavily upon his stick. The sound of gulls came to us as they wheeled and dived above the harbour.

"The Frances sailed at five this morning," he said slowly.

I did not answer.

"The fishing lad who went to lift his pots pulled first into Pridmouth for his passenger. He found him waiting on the beach as he expected. He looked tired and wan, the lad said, but otherwise little the worse for his ordeal."

"One passenger?" I said.

"Why, yes, there was but one," said Jonathan, staring at me. "Is anything the matter? You look wisht and strange."

I went on listening to the gulls above the harbour, and now there were children's voices also, laughing and crying, as they played upon the steps of the quay.

"There is nothing the matter," I said. "What else have you to tell me?"

He went to his desk in the far corner and, opening a drawer, took out a length of rope with a rusted hinge upon it.

"As the passenger was about to board the vessel," said my brother-in-law, "he gave the fisher-lad this piece of rope and bade him hand it, on his return, to Mr. Rashleigh.

The lad brought it to me as I breakfasted just now. There was a piece of paper wrapped about it, with these words written on the face: Tell Honor that the least of the Grenviles chose his own method of escape. ' " He handed me the little scrap of paper.

"What does it mean?" he asked. "Do you understand it?"

For a long while I did not answer. I sat there with the paper in my hands, and I saw once more the ashes of the summerhouse blocking forevermore the secret tunnel, and I saw, too, the silent cell, like a dark tomb, in the thick buttress wall.

"Yes, Jonathan," I said, "I understand."

He looked at me a moment and then went to the table and put the rope and hinge back in the drawer.

"Well," he said, "it's over now, praise heaven. The danger and the strain. There is nothing more we can do."

"No," I answered, "nothing more that we can do."

He fetched two glasses from the sideboard and filled them with wine from the decanter. Then he handed one to me. "Drink this," he said kindly, his hand upon my arm. "You have been through great anxiety." He took his glass and lifted it to the ship that had carried his father to the Armada. "To the other Frances, " he said, "and to the King's General in the West. May he find sanctuary and happiness in Holland."

I drank the toast in silence, then put the glass back upon the table.

"You have not finished it," he said. "That spells ill luck to him whom we have toasted."

I took the glass again, and this time I held it up against the light so the wine shone clear and red.

"Did you ever hear," I said, "those words that Bevil Grenvile wrote to John Trelawney?"

"What words were those?"

Once more we were assembled, four and twenty hours ago, in the long gallery at Menabilly. Richard at the window, Gartred on the couch, and Dick, in his dark corner, with his eyes upon his father.

" 'And for mine own part,' " I quoted slowly, " 'I desire to acquire an honest name °r an honourable grave. I never loved my life or ease so much as to shun such occasion, which, if I should, I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine who have so many of them, in several ages, sacrificed their lives for their country.'"

I drank my wine then to the dregs and gave the glass to Jonathan.

'Great words," said my brother-in-law, "and the Grenviles were all great men. As jpng as the name endures we shall be proud of them in Cornwall. But Bevil was the finest of them. He showed great courage at the last."

"The least of them," I said, "showed great courage also."

"Which one was that?" he asked.

"Only a boy," I said, "whose name will never now be written in the great book at ktowe, nor his grave be found in the little churchyard in Kilkhampton."

"You are crying," said Jonathan slowly. "This time has been hard and long for you.

There is a bed prepared for you above. Let Matty take you to it. Come now, take heart. The worst is over. The best is yet to be. One day the King will come into his own again; one day your Richard will return."

I looked up at the model of the ship upon the ledge and across the masts to the blue harbour water. The fishing boats were making sail, and the gulls flew above them, crying, white wings against the sky.

"One day," I said, "when the snow melts, when the thaw breaks, when the spring comes..."

The End

What Happened to the People in the Story

Sir Richard Grenvile

The King's general never returned to England again. He bought a house in Holland, where he lived with his daughter Elizabeth, until his death in 1659, just a year before the Restoration. He offered his services to the Prince of Wales in exile (afterwards Charles II), but they were not accepted, owing to the ill feeling between himself and Sir Edward Hyde, later Earl of Clarendon. The exact date of his death is uncertain, but he is said to have died in Ghent, lonely and embittered, with these words only for his epitaph: "Sir Richard Grenvile, the King's General in the West."

Sir John Grenvile (Jack), Bernard Grenvile (Bunny)

These two brothers were largely instrumental in bringing about the restoration of Charles II in 1660. They both married, lived happily, and were in high favour with the King. John was created Earl of Bath.