The King's General (43 page)

He lifted his glass, draining it in one measure, then put out his hand to mine and held it on the table.

"Thank God," he said, "for a woman who does not give a damn for punctuality."

31

It was like Werrington once more. The old routine. The old haphazard sharing of our days and nights. He bursting into my chamber as I breakfasted, my toilet yet undone, my hair in curl rags, while he paced about the room, talking incessantly, touching my brushes, my combs, my bracelets on the table, cursing all the while at some delay in the plans he was proposing. Trevannion was too slow. Trelawney the elder too cautious. And those who were to lead the insurrection farther west had none of them big names; they were all small fry, lacking the right qualities for leadership.

"Grosse of St. Buryan, Maddern of Penzance, Keigwin of Mousehole," said Richard, "none of them held a higher rank than captain in '46 and have never led troops in action. But we have to use them now. It is a case of faute de mieux. The trouble is that I can't be in fifty places at the same time."

Like Werrington once more. A log fire in the dining chamber. A heap of papers scattered on the table, and a large map in the centre. Richard seated in his chair, with punny, instead of Jack, at his elbow. The red crosses on the beaches where the invading troops should land. Crinnis... Pentewan... Very an... The beacons on the headlands to warn the ships at sea. . . The Gribbin... The Dodman... The Nare My brother Robin standing by the door, where Colonel Roscarrick would have ? tood. And Peter Courtney, riding into the courtyard, bearing messages from John irelawney.

"What news from Talland?"

All well. They will wait upon our signal. Looe can easily be held. There will be no opposition there to matter." en messages sifted, one by one. Like all defeated peoples, those who had urnbled first in '46 were now the most eager to rebel.

Helston... Penzance... St. Ives... The confidence was supreme. Grenvile, as Prerne commander, had but to give the word.

I sat in my chair by the fireside, listening to it all, and I was no longer in the dining chamber at Menabilly, but back at Werrington, at Ottery St. Mary, at Exeter.... The same problems, the same arguments, the same doublings of the commanders, the same swift decisions. Richard's pen pointing to the Scillies.

"This will be the main base for the prince's army. No trouble about seizing the islands. Your brother Jack can do it with two men and a boy." And Bunny, grinning, nodding his auburn head. "Then the main landings to be where we have our strongest hold. A line between here and Falmouth, I should fancy, with St. Mawes the main objective. Hopton has sent me obstructive messages from Guernsey, tearing my proposals to pieces. He can swallow them, for all I care. If he would have his way he would send a driblet here, a driblet there, some score of pissing landings scattered round the whole of Cornwall, in order, he says, to confuse the enemy. Confuse, my arse. One big punch at a given centre, with us holding it in strength, and Hopton can land his whole army in four and twenty hours...."

The big conferences would be held at night. It was easier then to move about the:; roads. The Trelawneys from Trelawne, Sir Charles Trevannion from Carhayes, the J Arundells from Trerice, Sir Arthur Bassett from Tehidy. I would lie in my chamber! overhead and hear the drone of voices from the dining room below and always that clear tone of Richard's that would overtop them all. Was it certain that the Frenchj would play? This was the universal doubt, expressed by the whole assembly, that'; Richard would brush impatiently aside.

"Damn the French! What the hell does it matter if they don't? We can do without them. Never a Frenchman yet but was not a liability to his own side."

"But," murmured Sir Charles Trevannion, "if we at least had the promise of their support and a token force to assist the prince in landing, the moral effect uponjf Parliament would be as valuable as ten divisions put against them."

"Don't you believe it," said Richard. "The French hate fighting on any soil bu their own. Show a frog an English pike and he will show you his backside. Leave I French alone. We won't need them once we hold the Scillies and the Cornish: The Mount... Pendennis... St. Mawes... Bunny, where are my notes giving I present disposition of the enemy troops? Now, gentlemen..."

And so it would continue. Midnight, one, two, three o'clock, and what hour the went, and what hour he came to bed, I would not know, for exhaustion would la claim to me long since.

Robin, who had proved his worth those five weeks at Pendennis, had mu responsibility on his shoulders. The episode of the bridge had been forgotten. Or ha it? I would wonder sometimes, when I watched Richard's eyes upon him. Saw I smile, for no reason. Saw him tap his pen upon his chin....

"Have you the latest news from Helston?"

"Here, sir. To hand."

"I shall want you to act as deputy for me tomorrow at Penrice. You can be away tv nights, no more. I must have the exact number of men they can put upon the roa between Helston and Penryn."

"Sir."

And I would see Robin hesitate a moment, his eyes drift towards the door leading t the gallery, where Gartred's laugh, of a sudden, would ring out, and clear. Later, r flushed face and bloodshot eyes told their own tale....

"Come, Robin," Richard would say curtly after supper, "we must burn midnight candle once again. Peter has brought me messages in cipher from Penzanc and you are my expert. If I can do with four hours' sleep, so can the rest of you..

Richard, Robin, Peter, and Bunny crowded round the table in the dining roc** with Dick standing sentinel at the door, watching them wearily, resentfully. Ambr Manaton standing by the fire, consulting a great sheaf of figures.

"All right, Ambrose," Richard would say. "I shan't need your assistance overt problem. Go and talk high finance to the women in the gallery."

And Ambrose Manaton, smiling, bowing his thanks. Walking from the room ^ a shade too great confidence, humming under his breath.

"Will you be late?" I said to Richard.

"H'm... H'm..." he answered absently. "Fetch me that file of papers, Bunny."

Then of a sudden, looking up at Dick, "Stand up straight, can't you? Don't slop over your feet," he said harshly. Dick's black eyes blinking, his slim hands clutching at his coat. He would open the door for me to pass through in my chair, and all I could do to give him confidence was to smile and touch his hand. No gallery for me. Three makes poor company. But upstairs to my chamber, knowing that the voices underneath would drone for four hours more. An hour, perhaps, would pass, with I reading on my bed, and then the swish of a skirt upon the landing as Gartred passed into her room.

Silence. Then that telltale creaking stair. The soft closing of a door. But beneath me in the dining room the voice would drone on till after midnight.

One evening, when the conference broke early and Richard sat with me awhile before retiring, I told him bluntly what I heard. He laughed, trimming his fingernails by the open window.

"Have you turned prude, sweetheart, in your middle years?" he said.

"Prudery be damned," I answered, "but my brother hopes to marry her. I know it, from his hints and shy allusions about rebuilding the property at Lanrest."

"Then hope will fail him," replied Richard. "Gartred will never throw herself away upon a penniless colonel. She has other fish to fry, and small blame to her."

"You mean," I asked, "this fish she is in the process of frying at this moment?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so," he answered with a shrug. "Ambrose has a pretty inheritance from his Trefusis mother, besides what he will come into when his father dies. Gartred would be a fool if she let him slip from her."

How calmly the Grenviles seized fortunes for themselves.

"What exactly," I said, "does he contribute to your present business?"

He cocked an eye at me and grinned.

"Don't poke your snub nose into my affairs," he said. "I know what I'm about. I'll tell you one thing, though: we'd have difficulty in paying for this affair without him."

"So I thought," I answered.

"Taking me all round," he said, "I'm a pretty cunning fellow."

"If you call it cunning," I said, "to play one member of your staff against another.

For my part, I would call it knavery."

"A ruse de guerre," he countered.

"Pawky politics," I argued.

"Ah, well, " he said, "if the manoeuvre serves my purpose, it matters not how many lives be broken in the process."

"Take care they're broken afterwards, not before," I said.

He came and sat beside me on the bed.

''I think you mislike me much, now my hair is black," he suggested.

"It becomes your beauty but not your disposition."

''Dark foxes leave no trail behind them."

''Red ones are more lovable."

''When the whole future of a country is at stake, emotions are thrown overboard." i(Ernotions, but not honour."

''Is that a pun upon your name?"

''If you like to take it so."

He took my hands in his and pressed them backwards on the pillow, smiling. ''Your resistance was stronger at eighteen," he said.

''And your approach more subtle."

''It had to be in that confounded apple tree."

We lay his head upon my shoulder and turned my face to his.

''I can swear in Italian now as well as Spanish," he said to me. 

''In Turkish also?"

''A word or two. The bare necessities."

He settled himself against me in contentment. One eye drooped. The other regarded me malevolently from the pillow.

"There was a woman I encountered once in Naples..."

"With whom you passed an hour?"

"Three, to be exact."

"Tell the tale to Peter." I yawned. "It doesn't interest me."

He lifted his hands to my hair and took the curlers from it.

"If you placed these rags upon you in the day it would be more to your advantage and to mine," he mused. "Where was I, though? Ah, yes, the Neapolitan."

"Let her sleep, Richard, and me also."

"I only wished to tell you her remark to me on leaving. 'So it is true, what I have; always heard,' she said to me, 'that Cornishmen are famed for one thing only, which is wrestling.'

'Signorina,' I replied, 'there is a lady waiting for me in Cornwall who! would give me credit for something else besides.'" He stretched and yawned and,! propping himself on his elbow, blew the candle. "But there," he said, "these southern! women were as dull as milk. My vulpine methods were too much for them."

The nights passed thus, and the days as I have described them. Little by little thef plans fell into line, the schemes were tabulated. The final message came from thef prince in France that the French fleet had been put at his disposal, and an army, unde the command of Lord Hopton, would land in force in Cornwall, while the prince with| Sir John Grenvile seized the Scillies. The landing to coincide with the insurrection of the royalists, under Sir Richard Grenvile, who would take and hold the key points inf the duchy.

Saturday, the thirteenth of May, was the date chosen for the Cornish rising..

The daffodils had bloomed, the blossom was all blown, and the first hot days summer came without warning on the first of May. The sea below the Gribbin wa glassy calm. The sky deep blue, without a single cloud. The labourers worked in I fields, and the fishing boats put out to sea from Gorran and Polperro.

In Fowey all was quiet. The townsfolk went about their business, the Parliament agents scribbled their roll upon roll of useless records to be filed in dusty piles up i Whitehall, and the sentries at the castle stared yawning out to sea. I sat out on causeway, watching the young lambs, thinking, as the hot sun shone upon my ba head, how in a bare week now the whole peaceful countryside would be in upr once again. Men shouting, fighting, dying.... The sheep scattered, the cattle drive the people running homeless on the roads. Gunfire once again, the rattle of musket The galloping of horses, the tramp of marching feet. Wounded men, draggii themselves into the hedges, there to die untended. The young corn trampled, cottage thatch in flames. All the old anxiety, the old strain and terror. The enemy < advancing.... The enemy are in retreat.... Hopton has landed in force.... Hopti has been repulsed. . .. The Cornish are triumphant. . . . The Cornish have been drtv back.... Rumours, counter-rumours.... The bloody stench of war....

The planning was all over now, and the long wait had begun. A week-of nen sitting one by one, with eyes upon the clock, at Menabilly. Richard, in high spirits! always before battle, played bowls with Bunny in the little walled green beside the steward's empty lodge. Peter, with sudden realisation of his flabby stomach muscle, rode furiously up and down the sands at Par to reduce his weight. Robin was silent. He took long walks alone down in the woods, and on returning went first to the dining room, where the wine decanter stood. I would find him there sometimes, g« in hand, brooding; and when I questioned him he would answer me evasively, his strangely watchful, like a dog listening for the footstep of a stranger. Gartred, usually so cool and indifferent when having the whip hand in a love affair, showed hers for the first time, less certain and less sure. Whether it was because Ambrose Manaton was fifteen years her junior, and the possibility of marriage with him upon a thread, I do not know, but a new carelessness had come upon her which, to my mind, the symbol of a losing touch. That she was heavily in debt at Orley I knew for certain. Richard had told me as much. Youth lay behind her. And a future without a third husband to support her would be hard going, once her beauty went. A dowager, living in retirement with her married daughters, dependent on the charity of a son-in-law? What an end for Gartred Grenvile! So she became careless. She smiled too openly at Ambrose Manaton. She put her hand in his at the dining table. She watched him over the rim of her glass with that same greed I had noticed years before, when, peeping through her chamber door, I had seen her stuff the trinkets in her gown. And Ambrose Manaton, flattered, confident, raised his glass to her in return.