The King's General Part 20

Harry, for G.o.d's sake, make a note of it."

"Sir," answered hurriedly a tall youth at the foot of the bed, scribbling a word upon his tablet.

The King ' s General II7 "And move these pillows, can't you? Not that way, you clumsy lout. Behind my head, thus. Where the devil is Jack? Jack is the only lad who knows how I like them placed."

"Here I am, Uncle," said his nephew, "but you will not need me now. I have brought you someone with gentler hands than I."

He pushed my chair towards the bed, smiling, and I saw Richard's hand reach out to pull back the curtains.

"Ah!" he said, sighing deeply. "You have come at last."

He was deathly white. And his eyes had grown larger, perhaps in contrast to the pallor of his face. His auburn locks were clipped short, giving him a strangely youthful look. For the first time I noticed in him a resemblance to d.i.c.k. I took his hand and held it.

"I did not wait," I said, "once I had read your letter."

He turned to the two lads standing at the foot of the bed, his nephew and the one he had named Harry.

"Get out, both of you," he said, "and if that d.a.m.ned chirurgeon shows his face, tell him to go to the devil."

"Sir," they replied, clicking their heels, and I could swear that as they left the room young Jack Grenvile winked an eye at his companion.

Richard lifted my hand to his lips and then cradled it beside his cheek.

"This is a good jest," he said, "on the part of the Almighty. You and I both smitten in the thigh."

"Does it pain you much?" I asked.

"Pain me? My G.o.d, splinters from a cannon ball striking below the groin burn something fiercer than a woman's kiss. Of course it pains me."

"Who has seen the wound?"

"Every chirurgeon in the Army, and each one makes more mess of it than his fellow."

I called for Matty, who was waiting outside the door, and she came in at once with a basin of warm water and bandages and towels.

"Good day to you, mutton-face," said Richard. "How many corporals have you bedded with en route?"

"No time to bed with anyone," snapped Matty, "carried at the rate we were, with Miss Honor delaying only to sleep a few s.n.a.t.c.hed hours every night. Now we've come here to be insulted."

"I'll not insult you, unless you tie my bandages too tight."

"Come, then," she said, "let's see what they have done to you."

She unfolded the bandages with expert fingers and exposed the wound. It was deep, in truth, the splinters having penetrated the bone and lodging there. With every probe of her fingers he winced and groaned, calling her every name under the sun, which did not worry her.

"It's clean, that's one thing," she said. "I fully expected to find it gangrenous. But you'll have some of those splinters to the end of your days, unless you let them take Your leg off."

'They'll not do that," he answered, "I'd rather keep the splinters and bear the pain."

"It will give you an excuse, at any rate, for your bad temper," she replied.

She washed the wound and dressed it once again, and all the while he held my hand as d.i.c.k might do. Then she finished, and he thumbed his finger to his nose as she left te room.

Over three months," he said, "since I have seen you. Are the Pollexefens as Un Pleasant as the rest of your family?" i('My family were not unpleasant till you made them so."

'They always disliked me from the first. Now they pursue their dislike across the county. You know the commissioners of Devon are in Exeter at this moment, with a list of complaints a mile long to launch at me?"

"I did not know."

"It's all a plot hatched by your brother. Three members of the prince's council are to come down from Bristol and discuss the business with the commissioners; and as soon as I am fit enough to move I am to go before them. Jack Berkeley, commanding here at Exeter, is up to his neck in the intrigue."

"And what exactly is the intrigue?"

"Why, to have me s.h.i.+fted from my command, of course, and for Berkeley to take my place."

"Would you mind so very much? The blockade of Plymouth has not brought you much satisfaction."

"Jack Berkeley is welcome to Plymouth. But I'm not going to lie down and accept some secondary command, dished out to me by the prince's council, while I hold authority from His Majesty himself."

"His Majesty," I said, "appears by all accounts to have his own troubles. Who is this General Cromwell we hear so much about?"

"Another d.a.m.ned Puritan with a mission," said Richard. "They say he talks with the Almighty every evening, but I think it far more likely that he drinks. He's a good soldier, though. So is Fairfax. Their new model army will make mincemeat of our disorganised rabble."

"And knowing this, you choose to quarrel with your friends?"

"They are not my friends. They are a set of low backbiting blackguards. And I have told them all so to their faces."

It was useless to argue with him. And his wound made him more sensitive on every point. I asked if he had news of d.i.c.k, and he showed me a stilted letter from the tutor, also copies of instructions that he had sent to Herbert Ashley. There was nothing very friendly or encouraging amongst them. I caught a glimpse of the words, "For his education I desire he may constantly and diligently be kept to the learning of the '

', French tongue; reading, writing, and arithmetic, also riding, fencing, and dancing.; All this I shall expect of him, which if he follow according to my desire for his own ' good, he shall not want anything. But if I understand that he neglects in any kind what I have herein commanded him to do, truly I will neither allow him a penny to maintain I him, nor look on him again as my son." I folded the instructions and put them back j into the case, which he locked and kept beside him.

"Do you think," I said, "to win his affection in that way?"

"I don't ask for his affection," he said. "I ask for his obedience."

"You were not harsh thus with Joe. Nor are you so unrelenting to your nephew j Jack."

"Joe was one in a million, and Jack has some likeness to him. That lad fought at Lansdowne like a tiger when poor Bevil fell. And he was but fifteen, as d.i.c.k is now.

All these lads I have affection for because they hold themselves like men. But d.i.c.k, j my son and heir, shudders when I speak to him and whimpers at the sight of blood. It I does not make for pride in his father."

An argument. A blow. Ababy'scry. And fifteen years of poison seeping through a child's blood.... There was no panacea that I could think of to staunch the flood of; resentment. Time and distance might bring a measure of healing that close contact only served to wound. Once again Richard kissed my hand.

"Never mind young d.i.c.k," he said. "It is not he who has a dozen splinters throug his thigh."

No man, I think, was ever a worse patient than Richard Grenvile, and no nur more impervious to his threats and groans and curses than was Matty. My role, if les exacting, called for great equanimity of temperament. Being a woman, I did not have his spurs hurled at my head, as did his luckless officers, but I suffered many a bitti ' accusation because my name was Harris, and he liked to taunt me, too, because I had been born and bred in southeast Cornwall, where the women all were hags and scold en hp averred, and the men cowards and deserters.

"Nothing good came out of Cornwall yet," he said, "save from the north coast."

And seeing that this failed to rouse me, he sought by other means to make me rankle, a strange and unprofitable pastime for a sick man, but one I would understand in full measure, having often wished so to indulge myself some seventeen years before but never having the courage of my moods.

He kept to his bed for some five weeks, and then, by the end of May, was sufficiently recovered to walk his chamber with a stick and at the same time curse his hara.s.sed staff for idleness.

The feathers flew when he first came downstairs, for all the world like a turkey fight, and I never saw high-ranking officers more red about the ears than the colonels and the majors he addressed that May morning. They looked at the door with longing eyes, like schoolboys, with but one thought in their minds, to win freedom from his las.h.i.+ng tongue, or so I judged from their expressions. But when, after I had taken my airing in the square, I conversed with them, sympathy on the tip of my tongue, they one and all remarked upon the excellence of the general's health and spirits.

"It does one good," said a colonel of foot, "to see the general is himself again. I hardly dared to hope for it a month since."

"Do you bear no malice, then," I said, "for his words to you this morning?"

"Malice?" said the colonel, looking puzzled. "Why should I bear malice? The general was merely taking exercise."

The ways of professional soldiers were beyond me.

"It is a splendid sign," said Richard's nephew Jack, "when my uncle gives vent to frowns and curses. It mostly means he is well pleased. But see him smile and speak with courtesy, and you may well reckon that the luckless receiver of his favours is halfway to the guardroom. I once saw him curse a fellow for fifteen minutes without respite and that evening promote him to the rank of captain. The next day he received a prisoner--a country squire, I think, from Barnstaple, who owed him money--and my uncle plied him with wine and smiles and favours. He was hanging from a tree at Buckland two hours afterwards."

I remember asking Richard if these tales were true. He laughed.

"It pleases my staff," he said, "to weave a legend about my person."

But he did not deny them.

Meanwhile, the prince's council had come to Exeter to have discussion with the Devon commissioners and to hear the complaints they had to make against Sir Richard Grenvile. It was unfortunate, I felt, that the head of the prince's council was that same Sir Edward Hyde whom Richard had described to me at Radford as a jumped-up lawyer. I think the remark had been repeated to him, for when he arrived at the hostelry to call upon Richard, accompanied by Lords Culpepper and Capel, I thought his manner very cold and formal, and I could see he bore little cordiality towards the general who had so scornfully dubbed him upstart. I was presented to them and immediately withdrew. What they thought of me I neither knew nor cared.

It would be but another scandalous tale to spread, that Sir Richard Grenvile had a crippled mistress.

What, in truth, transpired behind those closed doors I never discovered. As soon as the three members of the prince's council tried to speak they would be drowned by Richard, with a tirade of accusations against the governor of the city, Sir John Berkeley, who, so he avowed, had done nothing for nine months now but put obstructions in his path. As to the commissioners of Devon, they were traitors, one and all, and tried to keep their money in their pockets rather than pay the army that defended them.

"Let Berkeley take over Plymouth if he so desires it," Richard declared (this he told ute afterwards). "G.o.d knows it troubles me to be confined to blocking up a place when there is likely to be action in the field. Give me power to raise men in Cornwall and in Devon, without fear of obstruction, and I will place an army at the disposal of the Prince of Wales that will be a match for Cromwell's Puritans."

Whereupon he formally handed over his resignation as commander of the siege of Plymouth and sent the lords of the council packing off back to Bristol to receive the prince's authority sanctioning him to a new command.

"I handled them," he said to me gleefully, "with silken gloves. Let Jack Berkeley stew at Plymouth, and good luck to him."

And he drank a bottle and a half of burgundy at supper, which played havoc with his wound next morning.

I have forgotten how many days we waited for the royal warrant to arrive, confirming him in the appointment to raise troops, but it must have been ten days or more. At last Richard declared that he would not kick his heels waiting for a piece of paper that few people would take the trouble to read, and he proceeded to raise recruits for the new army. His staff were despatched about the countryside rounding up the men who had been idle or had deserted and gone home during his illness. All were promised pay and clothing. And as sheriff of Devon (for this post he had not resigned with his command) Richard commanded his old enemies, the commissioners, to raise fresh money for the purpose. I guessed this would bring a hornets' nest about his ears again, but I was only a woman, and it was not my business.

I sat one day beside my window looking out on to the cathedral and I saw Sir John Berkeley, who had not yet gone to Plymouth, ride away from the hostelry looking like a thundercloud. There had been a stormy meeting down below and, according to young Jack, Sir John had got the worst of it.

"I yield to no man," said Richard's nephew, "in my admiration for my uncle. He has the better of his opponents every time. But I wish he would guard his tongue."

"What," I asked wearily, "are they disputing now?"

"It is always the same story," said Jack. "My uncle says that as sheriff of the county he can compel the commissioners to pay his troops. Sir John declares the contrary.

That it is to him, as governor of the city and commander before Plymouth, to whom the money should be paid. They'll fight a duel about it before they have finished."

Shortly afterwards Richard came to my room, white with pa.s.sion.

"My G.o.d," he said, "I cannot stand this hopeless mess an instant longer. I shall ride at once to Bristol to see the prince. When in doubt, go to the highest authority. That has always been my rule. Unless I can get satisfaction out of His Highness, I shall chuck the whole affair."

"You are not well enough to ride," I said.

"I can't help that. I won't stay here and have that hopeless nincomp.o.o.p Jack Berkeley obstruct every move I make. He is hand in glove with your blasted brother, that's the trouble."

"You began the trouble," I said, "by making an enemy of my brother. All this has come about because you shot Edward Champernowne."

"What would you have had me do, promote the sod?" he stormed. "A weak-bellied rat who caused the death of three hundred of my finest troops because he was too lily-livered to face the rebel guns and come to my support. Shooting was too good for him. A hundred years ago he would have been drawn and quartered."

The next day he left for Barnstaple, where the Prince of Wales had gone to escape the plague at Bristol, and I was thankful that he took his nephew Jack as aide-decamp.

He had three men to hoist him in the saddle and he still looked most d.a.m.nably unwell. He smiled up at me as I leant from my window in the hostelry, and saluted with his sword.

"Have no fear," he said, "I'll return within a fortnight. Keep well. Be happy."

But he never did return, and that was the end of my sojourn as a nurse and comforter at Exeter....

On the eighteenth of June the King and Prince Rupert were heavily defeated by ( General Cromwell at Naseby, and the rebel army, under the supreme command of I General Fairfax, was marching once again towards the West. The whole of the! royalist strategy had now to be changed to meet this new menace, and while rumours I ran rife that Fairfax was coming upon Taunton, I had a message from Richard to say that he had been ordered by the Prince of Wales to besiege Lyme and had the commission of field marshal in his pocket.

"I will send for you," he said, "when I have fixed my headquarters. In the meantime, rest where you are. I think it very likely that we shall all of us, before the summer is out, be on the run again."

This news was hardly pleasant hearing, and I bethought me of the relentless marching feet that I had heard a year ago at Menabilly. Was the whole horror of invasion to be endured once again?

I did as he bade me and stayed at Exeter. I had no home, and one roof was as good to me now as another. If I lacked humility, I also had no pride. I was nothing more nor less, by this time, than a camp follower. A pursuivant of the drum.

The last day of June, Jack Grenvile came for me with a troop of horse to bear my litter. Matty and I were already packed and ready. We had been waiting since the message a fortnight before.

"Where are we bound," I said gaily, "for Lyme or London?"

"For neither," he said grimly. "For a tumbled-down residence in Ottery St. Mary.

The general has thrown up his comission."

He could tell me little of what had happened, except that the bulk of the new forces that had been a.s.signed to Richard's new command, and who were to rendezvous at Tiverton, had suddenly been withdrawn by the orders of the prince's council and diverted to the defence of Barnstaple, without a word of explanation to the general.

We came to Ottery St. Mary, a sleepy Devon village where the inhabitants stared at the strange equipage that drew before the manor house as though the world were suddenly grown crazy, in which they showed good reason, and in the meadows behind the village were drawn Richard's own horse and foot that had followed him from the beginning.

Richard himself was seated in the dining chamber of his headquarters, his wounded leg propped up on a chair before him.

"Greetings," he said maliciously, "from one cripple to another. Let us retire to bed and see who has the greatest talent for invention."

"If that," I said, "is your mood, we will discuss it presently. At the moment I am tired, hungry, and thirsty. But would you care to tell me what the devil you are doing in Ottery St. Mary?"

"I am become a free man," he answered, smiling, "beholden to neither man nor beast. Let them fight the new model army in their own fas.h.i.+on. If they won't give me the troops I do not propose to ride alone with Nephew Jack against Fairfax and some twenty thousand men."

"I thought," I said, "that you were become field marshal."

"An empty honour," he said, "signifying nothing. I have returned the commission to the Prince of Wales in an empty envelope, desiring him to place it up a certain portion of his person. What shall we drink for supper, hock or burgundy?"