The King's General (14 page)

"Well, sir, I believe," stammered John in great nervousness.

"I am delighted to hear it," said Richard. "Tell him so when you see him. And tell him, too, that now I am come into the West I propose to visit here very frequently-- the course of the war permitting it."

"Yes sir."

"You have accommodation for my officers, I suppose, and for a number of my men out in the park, should we wish to bivouac at any time?"

"Yes indeed, sir."

"Excellent. And now I propose to dine upstairs with Mistress Harris, who is a close kinswoman of mine, a fact of which you may not be aware. What is the usual method with her chair?"

"We carry it, sir. It is quite a simple matter."

John gave a nod to Peter, who, astonishingly subdued for him, came forward, and the pair of them each seized an arm of my chair on either side.

"It were an easier matter," said Richard, "if the occupant were bodily removed and carried separately." And before I could protest he had placed his arms about me and had lifted me from the chair.

"Lead on, gentlemen," commanded Richard.

The strange procession proceeded up the stairs, watched by the company in the gallery and by some of the servants, too, who, with their backs straight against the wall and their eyes lowered, permitted us to pass. John and Peter tramped on ahead with the chair between them, step by step, and both of them red about the neck, while I, with my head on Richard's shoulder and my arms tight about him for fear of falling, thought the way seemed overlong.

"I was in error just now," said Richard in my ear. "You have changed after all."

"In what way?" I asked.

"You are two stone heavier," he answered.

And so we came to my chamber in the gatehouse.

10

I can recollect that supper as if it were yesterday: I lying on my bed with the pillows packed behind me, and Richard seated on the end of it, with a low table in front of us both.

It might have been a day since we had parted instead of fifteen years. When Matty came into the room bearing the platters, her mouth pursed and disapproving, for she had never understood how we came to lose each other but imagined he had deserted me because of my crippled state, Richard burst out laughing on the instant, calling her "old go-between," which had been his nickname for her in those distant days, and asked her how many hearts she had broken since he saw her last. She was for replying to him shortly, but it was no use--he would have none of it--and, taking the platters from her and putting them on the table, he soon had her reconciled--blushing from head to toe--while he poked fun at her broadening figure and the frizzed curl on her forehead.

"There are some half dozen troopers in the court," he told her, "waiting to make your acquaintance. Go and prove to them that Cornish women are better than the frousts in Devon." And she went off, closing the door behind her, guessing, no doubt, that for the first time in fifteen years I had no need of her services. He fell to eating right away, being always a good trencherman, and soon clearing all that had been put before us, while I--still weak with the shock of seeing him--toyed with the wishbone of a chicken. He started walking about the chamber before he had finished, a habit I remembered well, with a great bone in one hand and a pie in the other, talking all the while about the defences at Plymouth which his predecessor had allowed to become formidable instead of razing them to the ground on first setting siege to the place.

"You'd hardly credit it, Honor," he said, "but there's that fat idiot Digby been sitting on his arse nine months before the walls of Plymouth, allowing the garrison to sortie as they please, fetch food and firewood, build up barricades, while he played cards with his junior officers. Thank God a bullet in his head will keep him to his bed for a month or two and allow me to conduct the siege instead."

"And what do you propose to do?" I asked.

"My first two tasks were simple," he replied, "and should have been done last October. I threw up a new earthwork at Mount Batten, and the guns I have placed there so damage the shipping that endeavours to pass through the Sound that the garrison are hard put to it for supplies. Secondly, I have cut off their water power, and the mills within the city can no longer grind flour for the inhabitants. Give me a month or two to play with, and I'll have 'em starved."

He took a great bite out of his pie and winked at me.

"And the blockade by land, is that effective now?" I questioned.

"It will be when I've had time to organise it," he answered. "The trouble is that I've arrived to find most of the officers in my command are worse than useless--I've sacked more than half of them already. I have a good fellow in charge at Saltash, who sent the rebels flying back to Plymouth with several fleas in their ears when they tried a sortie a week or two back--a sharp engagement in which my nephew Jack, Bevil's eldest boy--you remember him--did very well. Last week we sprang a little surprise on one of their outposts close to Maudlyn. We beat them out of their position there and took a hundred prisoners .I rather think the gentlemen of Plymouth sleep not entirely easy in their beds."

"Prisoners must be something of a problem," I said, "it being hard enough to find forage in the country for your own men. You are obliged to feed them, I suppose?"

"Feed them be damned," he answered. "I send the lot to Lydford Castle, where they are hanged without trial for high treason." He threw his drumstick out of the window and tore the other from the carcass.

"But, Richard," I said, hesitating, "that is hardly justice, is it? I mean--they are only fighting for what they believe to be a better cause than ours."

"I don't give a fig for justice," he replied. "The method is effective, and that's the only thing that matters."

"I am told the Parliament has put a price upon your head already," I said. "I am told you are much feared and hated by the rebels."

"What would you have them do, kiss my backside?" he asked. He smiled and came and sat beside me on the bed.

"The war is too much with us. Let us talk about ourselves," he said.

I had not wished for that but hoped to keep him busy with the siege of Plymouth.

"Where are you living at the moment?" I parried. "In tents about the fields?"

"What would I be doing in a tent," he mocked, "with the best houses in Devon at my disposal? Nay, my headquarters are at Buckland Abbey, which my grandfather sold to Francis Drake half a century ago, and I do not mind telling you that I live there very well. I have seized all the sheep and cattle upon the estate, and the tenants pay their rents to me or else are hanged. They call me the Red Fox behind my back, and the women, I understand, use the name as a threat to their children when they misbehave, saying, 'Grenvile is coming; the Red Fox will have you.'"

He laughed as if this were a fine jest, but I was watching the line of his jaw that was heavier than before, and the curve of his mouth that narrowed at the corners.

"It was not thus," I said softly, "that your brother Bevil's reputation spread throughout the West."

"No," he said, "and I have not a wife like Bevil had, nor a home I love, nor a great brood of happy children."

His voice was harsh suddenly and strangely bitter. I turned my face away and lay back on my pillows.

"Do you have your son with you at Buckland?" I asked quietly.

"My spawn?" he said. "Yes, he is somewhere about the place with his tutor."

"What is he like?"

"Dick? Oh, he's a little handful of a chap with mournful eyes. I call him 'whelp' and make him sing to me at supper. But there's no sign of Grenvile in him--he's the spit of his damned mother."

The boy we would have played with and taught and loved... I felt suddenly sad and oddly depressed that his father should dismiss him with this careless shrug of a shoulder.

"It went wrong with you then, Richard, from the beginning?" I said.

"It did," he answered.

There was a long silence, for we had entered upon dangerous ground.

"Did you never try," I asked, "to make some life of happiness?"

"Happiness was not in question," he said; "that went with you, a factor you refused to recognise."

"I am sorry," I said.

"So am I," he answered.

The shadows were creeping across the floor. Soon Matty would come to light the candles.

"When you refused to see me that last time," he said, "I knew that nothing mattered any more but bare existence. You have heard the story of my marriage with much embellishment, no doubt, but the bones of it are true."

"Had you no affection for her?"

^None whatever. I wanted her money, that was all."

"Which you did not get."

'Not then. I have it now. And her property and her son--whom I fathered in a moment of black insensibility. The girl is with her mother up in London. I shall get her, too, one day when she can be of use to me."

"You are very altered, Richard, from the man I loved."

If I am so, you know the reason why."

The sun had gone from the windows; the chamber seemed bleak and bare. Every bit oi those fifteen years was now between us. Suddenly he reached out his hand to mine and, taking it, held it against his lips. The touch I so well remembered was very hard to bear.

Why, in the name of God," he said, rising to his feet, "were you and I marked aown for such a tragedy?"

It's no use being angry," I said. "I gave that up long ago. At first, yes, but not now. Not for many years. Lying on my back has taught me some discipline--but not the kind you engender in your troops."

He came and stood beside my bed, looking down upon me.

"Has no one told you," he said, "that you are more lovely now than you were then?"

I smiled, thinking of Matty and the mirror.

"I think you flatter me," I answered, "or maybe I have more time now. I lie idle to play with paint and powder."

No doubt he thought me cool and at my ease and had no knowledge that his tone of voice ripped wide the dusty years and sent them scattering.

"There is no part of you," he said, "that I do not now remember. You had a mole in the small of your back which gave you much distress; you thought it ugly--but I liked it well."

"Is it not time," I said, "that you went downstairs to join your officers? I heard one of them say you were to sleep this night at Grampound."

"There was a bruise on your left thigh," he said, "caused by that confounded branch that protruded halfway up the apple tree .I compared it to a dark-sized plum, and you were much offended."

"I can hear the horses in the courtyard," I said. "Your troopers are preparing for the journey. You will never reach your destination before morning."

"You lie there," he said, "so smug and so complacent on your bed, very certain of yourself now you are thirty-four. I tell you, Honor, I care not two straws for your civility."

And he knelt then at my bed with his arms about me, and the fifteen years went whistling down the wind.

"Are you still queasy when you eat roast swan?" he whispered.

He wiped away the silly childish tears that pricked my eyes and laughed at me and smoothed my hair.

"Beloved half-wit, with your damned pride," he said, "do you understand now that you blighted both our lives?"

"I understood that then," I told him.

"Why, then, in the name of heaven, did you do it?"

"Had I not done so, you would soon have hated me, as you hated Mary Howard."

"That is a lie, Honor."

"Perhaps. What does it matter? There is no reason now to harp back on the past."

"There I agree with you. The past is over. But we have the future with us. My marriage is annulled; you know that, I suppose? I am free to wed again."

"Then do so, to another heiress."

"I have no need of another heiress now, with all the estates in Devon to my plunder.

I have become a gentleman of fortune, to be looked upon with favour by the spinsters of the West."

"There are many you might choose from, all agog for husbands."

"In all probability. But I want one spinster only, and that yourself."

I put my two hands on his shoulders and stared straight at him. The auburn hair, the hazel eyes, the little pulse that beat in his right temple. He was not the only one with recollections. I had my memories, too, and could have reminded him--had I the mind and lack of modesty--of a patch of freckles that had been as much a matter for discussion as the mole upon my back.

"No, Richard."

"Why?"

"Because I will not have you wedded to a cripple."

"You will never change your mind?"

"Never."

"And if I carry you by force to Buckland?"

"Do so, if you will; I can't prevent you. But I shall still be a cripple."

I leant back on my pillows, faint suddenly, and exhausted. It had not been a light thing to bear, this strain of seeing him, of beating down the years. Very gently he released me and smoothed my blankets, and when I asked for a glass of water he gave me one in silence.

It was nearly dark; the clock in the belfry had struck eight a long while since. I could hear the jingling of harness from the courtyard and the scraping sound of horses.

"I must ride to Grampound," he said at length.

"Yes," I said.

He stood for a moment looking down on to the court. The candles were lit now throughout the house. The west windows of the gallery were open, sending a beam of light into my chamber. There was a sound of music. Alice was playing her lute and Peter singing. Richard came once more and knelt beside my bed.

"I understand," he said, "what you have tried so hard to tell me. There can never be between us what there was once. Is that it?"

"Yes," I said.

"I knew that all along, but it would make no difference," he said.

"It would," I said, "after a little while."

Peter had a young voice, clear and gay, and his song was happy. I thought how Alice would be looking at him over her lute.

"I shall always love you," said Richard, "and you will love me too. We cannot lose each other now, not since I have found you again. May I come and see you often, that we may be together?"