The King's General Part 22

I saw Mary glance at Alice, and Alice made as though to say something and then desisted. And I realised that as yet no mention had been made of Richard, my relationship to him being something that the Rashleighs possibly preferred should be Snored. I had not been questioned once about the past twelve months.

"They say, who know about these things" said Mary, "that His Majesty is very hopeful and will soon send an army to the West to help us drive Fairfax out of Devon."

"His Majesty is too preoccupied in keeping his own troops together in the midlands,"

I answered, "to concern himself about the West."

"You do not think," said Alice anxiously, "that Cornwall is likely to suffer invasion once again?"

"I do not see how we can avoid it."

"But--we have plenty of troops, have we not?" said Mary, still shying from mention of their general. "I know we have been taxed hard enough to provide for them."

"Troops without boots or stockings make poor fighters," I said, "especially if they have no powder for their muskets."

"Jonathan says everything has been mismanaged," said Mary. "There is no supreme authority in the West to take command. The prince's council say one thing--the commanders say another. I, for my part, understand nothing of it. I only wish it were all over."

I could tell from their expressions, even Alice's, usually so fair and generous, that Sir Richard Grenvile had been as badly blamed at Menabilly as elsewhere for his highhanded ways and indiscretions, and that unless I broached his name now, upon the instant, there would be an uneasy silence on the subject for the whole duration of my visit. Not one of them would take the first step, and there would be an awkward barrier between us all, making for discomfort.

"Perhaps," I said, "having dwelt with Richard Grenvile for the past eight months, ever since he was wounded, I am prejudiced in his favour. I know he has many faults, but he is the best soldier that we have in the whole of His Majesty's Army. The prince's council would do well to listen to his advice on military matters, if on nothing else."

They neither of them said anything for a moment, and then Alice, colouring a little, said, "Peter is with your brother Robin, you know, under Sir John Digby, before Plymouth. He told us, when he was last here, that Sir Richard constantly sent orders to Sir John which he had no right to do."

"What sort of orders, good or bad?" I asked.

"I hardly think the orders themselves were points of dispute," said Alice; "they were possibly quite necessary. But the very fact that he gave them to Sir John, who is not subordinate, caused irritation."

At this juncture my brother-in-law came to the gallery and the discussion broke, but I wondered, with a heavy heart, how many friends were now left to my Richard, who had at first sworn fealty to his leadership.

After I had been at Menabilly a few days my brother-in-law himself put the case more bluntly. There was no discreet avoidance, on his part, of Richard's name. He asked me straight out if he had recovered of his wound, as he had heard report from Truro that on the last visit to the council the general looked far from well and very tired.

"I think he is tired," I said, "and unwell. And the present situation gives him little cause for confidence or good spirits."

"He has done himself irreparable harm here in Cornwall," said my brother-in-law, "by commanding a.s.sistance rather than requesting it."

"Hard times require hard measures," I said. "It is no moment to go cap in hand for money to pay troops, when the enemy is in the next county."

"He would have won far better response had he gone about his business with courtesy and an understanding of the general poverty of all of us. The whole duchy would have rallied to his side had he but half the understanding that was his brother.

Bevil's." And to this I could give no answer, for I knew it to be true.

The weather was cold and dreary, and I spent much of my time within my chamber, which was the same that Gartred had been given fifteen months before. It had suffered little in the general damage, for which, I suppose, thanks had to be rendered to her, and was a pleasant room with one window to the gardens, still shorn of their glory, the I new gra.s.s seeds that had been sown very clipped yet and thin, and two windows to the south, from where I could see the causeway sloping to rising ground and the view upon the bay.

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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sable to an intrepid horseman. He brought Jack Grenvile with him and Jack's younger brother Bunny, a youngster of about the age of d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k, 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 Unfllen 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.nably mouldy a hundred years hence."

He paused, c.o.c.king 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 G.o.d, 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 a.r.s.e 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, pa.s.sing 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.

"Wentworth has been caught napping," Richard had scribbled on a torn sheet of paper, "which is exactly what I feared would happen. What might have been a small reverse is likely to turn into disaster, if a general order is given to retreat. I propose riding forthwith to the prince's council and offering my services. Unless they appoint a supreme commander to take over Wentworth's rabble, we shall have Fairfax and Cromwell across the Tamar."

Mary need not have worried after all. Sir Richard Grenvile had pa.s.sed but a single night under her roof, and not the week that she had dreaded....

I rose that morning with a heavy heart and, going downstairs to the gallery, found Alice in tears, for she knew that Peter would be foremost in the fighting when the moment came. My brother-in-law looked grave and departed at midday, also bound for Launceston, to discover what help might be needed from the landowners and gentry in the possibility of invasion. John, with Frank Penrose, set forth to warn the tenants on the estate that once again their services might be needed, and the day was wretchedly reminiscent ofthat other day in August, nearly eighteen months before.

But now it was not midsummer, but midwinter. And there was no strong Cornish army to lure the rebels to a trap, with another royalist army marching in the rear.

Our men stood alone--with His Majesty three hundred miles away or more, and General Fairfax was a very different leader from the Earl of Ess.e.x. He would walk into no trap, but if he came would cross the Tamar with a certainty. ip the afternoon Elizabeth from Coombe came to join us, her husband having gone, and told us that the rumour ran in Fowey that the siege of Plymouth had been raised, and Digby's troops, along with Wentworth's, were retreating fast to the Tamar bridges.

We sat before the mouldering fire in the gallery, a little group of wretched women, and I stared at that same branch of ash that had burnt so brightly the preceding night, when our men were here with us, and was now a blackened log amongst the ashes.

We had faced invasion before, had endured the brief horrors of enemy occupation, but we had never known defeat. Alice and Mary were talking of the children, the necessity this time of husbanding supplies beneath the floor boards of the rooms, as though a siege were all that was before us. But I said nothing, only stared into the fire.

And I wondered who would suffer most, the men who died swiftly in battle, or those who would remain to face imprisonment and torture. I knew then that I would rather Richard fought and died than stayed to fall into the hands of Parliament. It did not bear much thinking, what they would do to Skellum Grenvile if they caught him.

"The King will march West, of course," Elizabeth was saying. "He could not leave Cornwall in the lurch. They say he is raising a great body of men in Oxfordshire this moment. When the thaw breaks "

"Our defences will withstand the rebels," Joan said. "John was talking to a man in lywardreath. Much has been accomplished since last time. They say we have a new musket--with a longer barrel--I do not know exactly, but the rebels will not face it, so John says...."

'They have no money," said Mary. "Jonathan tells me the Parliament is desperate for money. In London the people are starving. They have no bread. The Parliament are bound to seek terms from the King, for they will be unable to continue the war. when the spring comes..."

I wanted to put my fingers in my ears and m.u.f.fle the sound of their voices. On and on, one against the other, the old false tales that had been told so often. It cannot go n-... They must give in.... They are worse off than we.... When the thaw breaks, when the spring comes... And suddenly I saw Elizabeth look towards me.

She had less reserve than Alice, and I did not know her so well.

"What does Sir Richard Grenvile say?" she asked. "You must hear everything of what goes on. Will he attack and drive the rebels back to Dorset?"

Her ignorance and theirs was so supreme, I had not the heart nor the will to enlighten her.

"Attack?" I said. "With what force do you suggest that he attack?"

"Why, with those at his disposal," she answered. "We have many able-bodied men in Cornwall."

I thought of the sullen bands I had seen sulking in the square at Launceston and the handful of brawny fellows in the fields below Werrington, wearing the Grenvile shield on their shoulders.

"A little force of pressed men," I said, "and volunteers, against some fifty thousand men, trained soldiers?"

"But man for man we are superior," urged Elizabeth. "Everyone says that. The rebels are well equipped, no doubt, but when our fellows meet them face to face in fair fight, in open country "