The King's General Part 33

He took me in his arms and, crawling sideways, dragged me through the little stone entrance to the steps and down into the cell below. I saw it for the first time, and the last, that secret room beneath the b.u.t.tress. Six feet high, four square, it was no larger than a closet, and the stone walls, clammy with years, felt icy to my touch.

There was a little stool in the corner, and by its side an empty trencher with a wooden spoon. Cobwebs and mould were thick upon them, and I thought of the last meal that had been eaten there, a quarter of a century before, by idiot Uncle John.

Above the stool hung the rope, near frayed, upon its rusty hinge, and beyond this the opening to the tunnel, a round black hole, about eighteen inches high, through which a man must crawl and wriggle if he wished to reach the farther end.

"I don't understand," I said, shuddering. "It cannot have been thus before.

Jonathan would never have used it, had it been so."

"There has been a fall of earth and stones," said Richard, "from the foundations of the house. It blocks the tunnel but for a small s.p.a.ce through which we burrowed. I think, when the tunnel was used before, the way was cleared regularly with pick and spade. Now that it has not been used for several years, Nature has claimed it for her own again. My enemies can find me a new name. Henceforth I will be badger, and not fox."

I saw d.i.c.k's white face watching me, and what is he telling me, I wondered, with his^dark eyes? What is he trying to say?

"Take me back," I said to Richard. "I have to talk to you."

He carried me to the room above, and it seemed to me, as I sat there breathing deep, Wat the bare boards and smoky ceiling were paradise compared to the black hole from which we had come.

. Had I in truth forced d.i.c.k to lie there, hour after hour, as a lad four years ago? Was Jt because of this that his eyes accused me now? G.o.d forgive me, but I thought to save We sat there, by the light of a single candle, Richard and d.i.c.k and I, while Matty kept a watch upon the door.

"Jonathan Rashleigh has returned," I said.

d.i.c.k threw me a questing glance, but Richard answered nothing.

"The fine is paid," I said. "The County Committee have allowed him to come home. He will be able to live in Cornwall, henceforth, a free man, unenc.u.mbered, if he does nothing more to rouse the suspicions of the Parliament."

"That is well for him," said Richard. "I wish him good fortune."

"Jonathan Rashleigh is a man of peace," I said, "who, though he loves his King, loves his home better. He has endured two years of suffering and privation .I think he has earned repose now, and has but one desire, to live amongst his family, in his own house, without anxiety."

"The desire," said Richard, "of almost every man."

"His desire will not be granted," I said, "if it should be proved he was a party to the rising."

Richard glanced at me, then shrugged his shoulders.

"That is something that the Parliament would find difficult to lay upon him," he said. "Rashleigh has been two years in London."

For answer I took the bill from my gown and, spreading it on the floor, put the candlestick upon it. I read it aloud, as my brother-in-law had read it to me that afternoon.

" 'Anyone who has harboured at any time, or seeks to harbour in the future, the malignant known as Richard Grenvile, shall, upon discovery, be arrested for high treason, his lands sequestered finally and forever, and his family imprisoned.'"

I waited a moment, and then I said, "They will come in the morning, Jonathan said, to search again."

A blob of grease from the candle fell upon the paper, and the edges curled. Richard placed it to the flame, and the paper caught and burnt, wisping to nothing in his hands, then fell and scattered.

"You see?" said Richard to his son. "Life is like that. A flicker and a spark, and then it's over. No trace remains."

It seemed to me that d.i.c.k looked at his father as a dumb dog gazes at his master.

Tell me, said his eyes, what you are asking me to do?

"Ah, well," said Richard with a sigh, "there's nothing for it but to run our necks into cold steel. A dreary finish. A sc.r.a.p upon the road, some dozen men upon us, handcuffs and rope, and then the marching through the streets of London, jeered at by the mob. Are you ready, d.i.c.k? Yours was the master hand that brought us to this pa.s.s. I trust you profit by it now." He rose to his feet and stretched his arms above his head. "At least," he said, "they keep a sharp axe in Whitehall. I have watched the executioner do justice before now. A little crabbed fellow, he was, last time I saw him, but with biceps in his arms like cannon b.a.l.l.s. He only takes a single stroke." He paused a moment, thoughtful. "But," he said slowly, "the blood makes a pretty mess upon the straw."

I saw d.i.c.k grip his ankle with his hand, and I turned like a fury on the man I loved.

"Will you be silent?" I said. "Hasn't he suffered enough these eighteen years?"

Richard stared down at me, one eyebrow lifted.

"What?" he said, smiling. "Do you turn against me too?"

For answer I threw him the note I was clutching in my hand. It was smeared by now; and scarcely legible. "There is no need for your fox head to lie upon the block," I said to him. "Read that and change your tune."

He bent low to the candle, and I saw his eyes change in a strange manner as he read, from black malevolence to wonder.

"I've bred a Grenvile after all," he answered softly. "The Frances leaves Fowey on the morning tide," I said. "She is bound for Flushing and has room for pa.s.sengers. The master can be trusted. The voyage will be swift."

"And how," asked Richard, "do the pa.s.sengers go aboard?"

"A boat, in quest of lobsters and not foxes, will call at Pridmouth," I said lightly, "as the vessel sails from harbour. The pa.s.sengers will be waiting for it. I suggest that they conceal themselves for the remainder of the night till dawn on the cowrie beach, near to the Gribbin Hill, and when the boat creeps to its pots in the early morning light, a signal will bring it to the sh.o.r.e."

"It would seem," said Richard, "that nothing could be more easy."

"You agree, then, to this method of escape? Adieu to your fine heroics of surrender?"

I think he had forgotten them already, for his eyes were travelling beyond my head to plans and schemes in which I played no part.

"From Holland to France," he murmured, "and once there, to see the prince. A new plan of campaign better than this last. A landing, perchance, in Ireland, and from Ireland to Scotland...." His eyes fell back upon the note screwed in his hand. " 'My mother christened me Elizabeth,'" he read, '"but I prefer to sign myself your daughter, Bess.'"

He whistled under his breath and tossed the note to d.i.c.k. The boy read it slowly, then handed it back in silence to his father.

"Well?" said Richard. "Shall I like your sister?"

"I think," said d.i.c.k slowly, "you will like her very well."

"It took courage, did it not," pursued his father, "to leave her home, find herself a ship, and be prepared to land alone in Holland, without friends or fortune?"

"Yes," I said, "it took courage, and something else besides."

"What was that?"

"Faith in the man she is proud to call her father. Confidence that he will not desert her should she prove unworthy."

They stared at each other, Richard and his son, brooding, watchful, as though between them both was some dark secret understanding that I, a woman, could not hope to share. Then Richard put the note into his pocket and turned, hesitating, to the entrance in the b.u.t.tress.

"Do we go," he said, "the same way by which we came?"

"The house is guarded," I said. "It is your only chance."

"And when the watchdogs come tomorrow," he said, "and seek to sniff our tracks, how will you deal with them?"

"As Jonathan Rashleigh suggested," I replied. "Dry timber in midsummer burns easily and fast. I think the family of Rashleigh will not use their summerhouse again."

"And the entrance here?"

"The stone cannot be forced. Not from this side. See the rope there and the hinge?"

We peered, all three of us, into the murky depths. And d.i.c.k, of a sudden reached out to the rope and pulled upon it, and the hinge also. He gave three tugs, and then they broke, useless forevermore.

"There," he said, smiling oddly, "no one will ever force the stone again, once you have closed it from this side."

"One day," said Richard, "a Rashleigh will come and pull the b.u.t.tress down. What shall we leave them for a legacy?" His eyes wandered to the bones in the corner. "The skeleton of a rat," he said, and with a smile he threw it down the stair.

"Go first, d.i.c.k," he said. "I will follow you."

d.i.c.k put out his hand to me, and I held it for a moment.

"Be brave," I said. "The journey will be swift. Once safe in Holland, you will make good friends."

He did not answer. He gazed at me with his great dark eyes, then turned to the little stair.

I was alone with Richard. We had had several partings, he and I. Each time I told myself it was the last. Each time we had found each other again.

"How long this time?" I said.

"Two years," he said. "Perhaps eternity."

He took my face in his hands and kissed me long.

"When I come back," he said, "we'll build that house at Stowe. You shall sink your pride at last and become a Grenvile."

I smiled and shook my head.

"Be happy with your daughter," I said to him.

He paused at the entrance to the b.u.t.tress.

"I tell you one thing," he said. "Once out in Holland, I'll put pen to paper and write the truth about the civil war. My G.o.d, I'll flay my fellow generals and show them for the sods they are. Perhaps when I have done so the Prince of Wales will take the hint and make me at last supreme commander of his forces."

"He is more likely," I said, "to degrade you to the ranks."

He climbed through the entrance and knelt upon the stair, where d.i.c.k waited for him.

"I'll do your destruction for you," he said. "Watch from your chamber in the eastern wing, and you will see the Rashleigh summerhouse make its last bow to Cornwall, and the Grenviles also."

"Beware the sentry," I said. "He stands below the causeway."

"Do you love me still, Honor?"

"For my sins, Richard."

"Are they many?"

"You know them all."

And as he waited there, his hand upon the stone, I made my last request.

"You know why d.i.c.k betrayed you to the enemy?"

"I think so."

"Not from resentment, not from revenge. But because he saw the blood on Gartred's cheek...."

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 b.u.t.tress 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 b.u.t.tress 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 d.i.c.k's eyes looking up at me, for the last time, as Richard closed the stone in the b.u.t.tress 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.