The King's General Part 28

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 s.h.i.+ps 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 p.i.s.sing landings scattered round the whole of Cornwall, in order, he says, to confuse the enemy. Confuse, my a.r.s.e. 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 Ba.s.sett 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 a.s.sembly, that'; Richard would brush impatiently aside.

"d.a.m.n the French! What the h.e.l.l 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 a.s.sist 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 d.i.c.k 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 a.s.sistance 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 d.i.c.k, "Stand up straight, can't you? Don't slop over your feet," he said harshly. d.i.c.k's black eyes blinking, his slim hands clutching at his coat. He would open the door for me to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s, with I reading on my bed, and then the swish of a skirt upon the landing as Gartred pa.s.sed 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, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his fingernails by the open window.

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

"Prudery be d.a.m.ned," 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 c.o.c.ked 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.

Sat.u.r.day, 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 gla.s.sy calm. The sky deep blue, without a single cloud. The labourers worked in I fields, and the fis.h.i.+ng 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="" b.l.o.o.d.y="" stench="" of="">

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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s to her in return.

"Send her away," I said to Richard. "G.o.d knows she has caused ill feeling enough already. What possible use can she be to you now here at Menabilly?"

"If Gartred went, Ambrose would follow her," he answered. "I can't afford to lose my treasurer. You don't know the fellow as I do. He's as slippery as an eel and as close-fisted as a Jew. Once back with her in Bideford, and he might pull out of the business altogether."

"Then send Robin packing. He will be no use to you anyway, if he continues drinking in this manner."

"Nonsense. Drink in his case is stimulation. The only way to ginger him. When the day comes I'll ply him so full of brandy that he will take St. Mawes Castle single-handed."

"I don't enjoy watching my brother go to pieces."

"He isn't here for your enjoyment. He is here because he is of use to me, and one of the few officers that I know who doesn't lose his head in battle. The more rattled he becomes here at Menabilly, the better he will fight outside it."

He watched me balefully, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.

"My G.o.d," I said, "have you no pity at all?"

"None," he said, "where military matters are concerned."

"You can sit here quite contentedly, with your sister behaving like a wh.o.r.e upstairs, holding one string of Manaton's purse, and you the other, while my brother, who loves her, drinks himself to death and breaks his heart?"

"b.u.g.g.e.r his heart. His sword is all I care about, and his ability to wield it."

And leaning from the window in the gallery, he whistled his nephew Bunny to a game of bowls. I watched them both jesting with each other like a pair of schoolboys without a care, casting their coats upon the short green turf.

"d.a.m.n the Grenviles one and all," I said, my nerves in ribbons, and as I spoke, thinking myself alone, I felt a slim hand touch me on the shoulder and heard a boy's voice whisper in my ear: "That's what my mother said eighteen years ago."

And there was d.i.c.k behind me, his black eyes glowing in his pale face, gazing out across the lawn towards his father and young Bunny.

32.

Thursday, the eleventh of May, dawned hot and sticky as its predecessors. Eight nd forty hours to go before the torch of war was lit once more in Cornwall.... Even iphard was on edge that morning, when word came from a messenger at noon to say Pies had reported a meeting a few days since at Saltash between the Parliamentary commander in the West, Sir Hardress Waller, and several of the Parliamentary gentlemen, and instructions had been given to double the guards at the chief towns throughout the duchy. Some members of the Cornish County Committee had gone themselves to Helston to see if all was quiet. ''One false move now," said Richard quietly, "and all our plans will have been made in vain."

We were gathered in the dining room, I well remember, save only Gartred, who was in her chamber, and I can see now the drawn, anxious faces of the men as they gazed in silence at their leader. Robin, heavy, brooding; Peter, tapping his hand upon his knee; Bunny, with knitted brows; and d.i.c.k, as ever, gnawing at his hand.

"The one thing I have feared all along," said Richard, "those fellows in the West can't hold their tongues. Like ill-trained redhawks, too keen to sight the quarry. I warned Keigwin and Grosse to stay this last week withindoors, as we have done, and hold no conferences. No doubt they have been out upon the roads, and whispers have the speed of lightning."

He stood by the window, his hands behind his back. We were all, I believe, a little sick with apprehension. I saw Ambrose Manaton rub his hands nervously together, his usual calm composure momentarily lost to him.

"If anything should go wrong," he ventured, hesitating, "what arrangements can be made for our own security?"

Richard threw him a contemptuous glance.

"None," he said briefly. He returned to the table and gathered up his papers. "You have your orders, one and all," he said. "You know what you have to do. Let us rid ourselves then of all this junk, useless to us once the battle starts." He began to throw the maps and doc.u.ments into the fire, while the others still stared at him, uncertain.

"Come," said Richard, "you look, the whole d.a.m.ned lot of you, like a flock of crows before a funeral. On Sat.u.r.day we make a bid for freedom. If any man is afraid let him say so now, and I'll put a halter round his neck for treason to the Prince of Wales."

Not one of us made answer. Richard turned to Robin.