The King's General (49 page)

The curtains were now all drawn before the shutters and the dining hall in darkness.

Matty came and stood beside my chair.

"I lifted the flagstone," she said. "I left a letter on the steps. I said, if the rope be still in place upon the hinge, would they open the stone entrance in the buttress tonight at twelve o'clock? We would be waiting for them."

I felt her strong comforting hand and held it between mine.

"I pray they find it," she said slowly. "There must have been a fall of earth since the tunnel last was used. The place smelt of the tomb."

We clung to each other in the darkness, and as I listened I could hear the steady thumping of her heart.

36

I lay upon my bed upstairs from half-past nine until a quarter before twelve. When Matty came to rouse me the house was deadly still. The servants had gone to their beds in the attics, and the sentries were at their posts about the grounds. I could hear one of them pacing the walk beneath my window. The treacherous moon, never an, ally to a fugitive, rose slowly above the trees in the thistle park. We lit no candles, Matty crept to the door and listened. Then she lifted me in her arms, and we trod the long twisting corridor to the empty gatehouse. How bare were the rooms, how silent and accusing, and there was no moonlight here on the western side to throw a beam of light upon the floor. Inside the room that was our destination the ashes of our poor fire, kindled thatj afternoon, flickered feebly still, and the smoke hung in clouds about the ceiling. We sat down beside the wall in the far corner and we waited.... It was uncanny still. The stillness of a place that has not known a footstep or a voice for many years. The King's General quietude of a long-forgotten prison where no sunlight ever penetrates, where all seasons seem alike.

Winter, summer, spring, and autumn would all come and go, but never here, never in this room. Here was eternal night. And I thought, sitting there beside the cold wall of the buttress, that this must be the darkness that so frightened the poor idiot Uncle John when he lay here, long ago, in the first building of the house. Perhaps he lay upon this very spot on which I sat, his hands feeling the air, his wide eyes searching....

Then I felt Matty touch me on the shoulder, and as she did so the stone behind me moved.... There came, upon my back, the current of cold air I well remembered, and now, turning, I could see the yawning gulf and the narrow flight of steps behind, and I could hear the creaking of the rope upon its rusty hinge.

Although it was the sound I wanted most in all the world to hear, it struck a note of horror, like a summons from a grave. Now Matty lit her candle, and when she threw the beam onto the steps I saw him standing there, earth upon his face, his hands, his shoulders, giving him, in that weird, unnatural, ghostly light, the features of a corpse new-risen from his grave. He smiled, and the smile had in it something grim and terrible.

"I feared," he said, "you would not come. A few hours more and it would be too late."

"What do you mean? I asked.

"No air," he said. "There is only room here from the tunnel for a dog to crawl. I have no great opinion of your Rashleigh builder."

I leant forward, peering down the steps, and there was Dick, huddled at the bottom, his face as ghostly as his father's.

"It was not thus," I said, "four years ago."

"Come," said Richard, "I will show you. A jailer should have some knowledge of the cell where she puts her prisoners."

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 buttress. 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 space 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 Dick'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 Dick to lie there, hour after hour, as a lad four years ago? Was Jt because of this that his eyes accused me now? God forgive me, but I thought to save We sat there, by the light of a single candle, Richard and Dick and I, while Matty kept a watch upon the door.

"Jonathan Rashleigh has returned," I said.

Dick 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, unencumbered, 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 Dick 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 scrap 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, Dick? Yours was the master hand that brought us to this pass. 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 balls. 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 Dick 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 passengers. The master can be trusted. The voyage will be swift."

"And how," asked Richard, "do the passengers 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 passengers 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 shore."

"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 Dick. 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 Dick 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 buttress.

"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 Dick, 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 buttress 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, Dick," he said. "I will follow you."

Dick 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 buttress.

"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 God, 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 Dick 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 Dick betrayed you to the enemy?"

"I think so."

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