Georgette Heyer (43 page)

  'What, is the father still undiscovered?' asked Wyndham in some amusement. 'Has the wench nothing to say on that matter?'

  'God save your honour, woman must conceal what she knows not! That cockatrice below is as common as the highway, never doubt it! The brat will be cast on the Parish, if those eightpence-a-day soldiers get their way. They've set to brawling with the Parish officers, which came hot-foot as soon as they got wind of there being a wench in travail in the kitchen. For they want no bachelor's children dumped upon them to be a charge on the Parish, look you. The Lord knows what will be the end of it, for there's a-many below-stairs which has got a cup too much, and when the malt's above the water men will start fighting, no help for it.'

  She soon went away, but with such a roguishly inviting look cast over her shoulder at Wilmot, that the King mocked him for being only half a man to sit in the dumps when such fair entertainment was offered him. 'After her, Harry! I swear it's a scurvy trick to take a man's name, and betray his reputation!'

  'Oh no!' said Wilmot plaintively. 'Oh 'sdeath, sir, no! She has been eating largely of onions, as you would know if you had been obliged to fondle her!'

  'Go to, you are too nice! I would she had cast her naughty eye in my way. A pox on this walnut juice which has made me so hideous that as merry a wench as any I have seen will not look twice upon me!'

  'I thank God for it!' said Wilmot, with a little show of severity. 'Your affairs at this present are ill enough, without your making them worse by becoming entan gled in a woman's toils, sir.'

  'Eh, Harry, I never knew what a dull dog you could be until I took you with me upon my travels!' said Charles, pulling down the corners of his mouth.

  'Nor I,' replied my lord, sighing. 'I would I knew how we may escape unseen from this house! Why that trollop below-stairs must needs choose this of all the hostelries in England for her lying-in is a matter passing my comprehension!'

  'It seems my path is to be strewn with women in childbed,' said the King idly. 'First it was Mrs Norton of Abbotsleigh, and now a red-coat's doxy. Oddsfish, what are they at now?'

  This last remark was caused by a sudden recrudes cence of noise coming from the taproom. It continued with occasional lulls until the early hours of the morning, when the disputants, too much fuddled with liquor to retain any very clear notion of the reason of their quarrel, gradually ceased from blows and argu ments, and either staggered off to their homes, or fell asleep on the taproom floor.

  To Wilmot's relief, Mrs Jones did not come up to the attic again, but her husband appeared from time to time to regale the company with accounts of the brawl's progress. By two o'clock he was able to report all quiet below, and to prophesy that the soldiers would not rouse up from their drunken sleep until an advanced hour of the morning. As for anyone amongst them having enough wit left in his head to suspect the presence of other guests in the inn, he begged Colonel Wyndham not to trouble his mind over such a contin gency.

  It was agreed that the King should leave the inn before any of the soldiers were stirring; he lay down on the bed again to snatch a few hours' sleep, and Wilmot and Colonel Wyndham, wrapped in their cloaks, dozed uncomfortably in two straight-backed chairs.

  As soon as it was daylight, Rhys Jones carried up some beef and ale for his guests' breakfast. Henry Peters, who had slept peacefully over the stables, brought the horses to the door; and, while the red-coats still snored in their several quarters, the party mounted, and rode quietly out of the village.

  Remembering that my lord's presence in his house had given rise to some unwelcome suspicions in Trent, Colonel Wyndham was determined not to let him return there with the King. It had been arranged between them, during the night's discussion, that my lord, having reached Salisbury, and, through the Honour able John Coventry's agency, set matters in train towards the King's escape, communication should be maintained with Trent by messengers and letters. The King had not got his cypher with him, but Wyndham proposed to give his own, which he used when writing to Coventry, to my lord. Partly to enable him to do this, and partly on account of my lord's flat refusal to go as far without Robert Swan to wait upon him, Wilmot did not set out with Peters towards Salisbury immediately, but rode with the King as far as Sherborne, in which town he proposed to await the arrival of Swan, with Wyndham's cypher.

  When the moment of parting with Charles came, his heart misgave him. His too-vivid imagination pictured nightmarish contingencies, and had it not been for the impossibility of Wyndham's journeying as far from Trent as to Salisbury, he would have insisted on the Colonel's going there in his stead, and leaving him to guard the King. The tears sprang to his eyes as he kissed Charles's hand; he begged him to take good care of himself, and told the Colonel, with a little flash of jealousy, that he should hold him answerable for his master's safety.

  Robert Swan arrived at the inn in Sherborne later in the day. He was able to report the King's safe return to Trent, but although he expressed a prim regret at the failure of the Charmouth plan, he was more shocked by the muddied condition of my lord's dress, which had not been changed since his leaving Trent, two days previously, than by the King's misadventures. He at once unpacked the portmanteau he had brought; laid out fresh linen; and stayed up long after his master had retired to bed, cleaning and ironing his doublet and breeches.

  Henry Peters watched this activity with a tolerant but rather amused eye. 'A dainty gentleman, your master,' he observed. 'Does he set such store by his clothes that he cannot abide a speck of mud though he go in fear of his life?'

  'My master,' replied Swan coldly, 'is a nobleman, and is used to go in velvet and lace. You are country-bred, I daresay, and do not understand the ways of us as have lived always in Courts.'

  'No, faith, I don't understand 'em, nor want to. But I've lived next and nigh the King these last days, and never a murmur did I hear from him that his linen was foul, or his coat bemired.'

  'His Majesty is above all, and may go as carelessly as he will,' said Swan in an expressionless voice.

  'Careless? Ay, I warrant you! He's the man for my money: a right jolly lad is the Black Boy!'

  Swan winced at this familiar way of speaking of Royalty. 'His Majesty is young and has mixed much with vulgar company. He will amend in time, yet I fear we must not look to see his father live again in him! Ah, there was a great and worshipful gentleman for you! I never saw him lose one jot of his majesty, no, not when his affairs were at their worst!'

  'God save you, d'ye think none but yourself ever laid eyes on the old King? I saw him often, and I'll tell you this, friend: he played wily beguiled with his fortunes, but his son was not born when wit was scant. I'd as lief risk my life for the Black Boy, for he'll ever give you a smile and thank you for what King Charles the Martyr would have taken for his right.'

  Swan gave a sniff, but declined to argue the point. He folded up my lord's doublet, laid a clean lace-edged collar upon it, gave a final rub to his boots, assured himself there was no hole in the fine stirrup-stockings, and went off to bed.

  My lord set out early upon the following morning to ride the thirty miles to Salisbury. He encountered no adventures upon the way, and after trotting along for some time in a mood of despondency, his spirits began to rise. He remembered that Dr Henchman, who was ever a staunch supporter of the King's Cause, was a Prebend of the Cathedral, and determined to take him into his confidence.

  The sight of Salisbury spire in the distance seemed to him like a sign of hope. He spurred on faster, and was soon riding through the twisting, narrow streets in the direction of the Cathedral Close.

  The King's Head was a tall, gabled house, standing just outside the Close, not far from St Anne's Gate. Immediately opposite to it, upon the other side of the street and within the Cathedral precincts, was a mansion built of mellow red brick, which, Peters informed my lord, was Mr Coventry's home.

  Upon my lord's riding into the courtyard round which the King's Head was built, Hewett, the land lord, came out in person to receive him, and had no sooner exchanged half-a-dozen sentences with Peters, with whom he was well acquainted, than he conveyed my lord into the house, and upstairs to an oak-panelled parlour upon the first floor. Here he lost no time in disclosing a secret place behind the panelling, which, he assured Wilmot, had never yet been discovered.

  Thinking it wisest to keep his identity concealed, Wilmot described himself merely as a distressed Cavalier who was seeking the means to escape out of England, and was glad to find that Hewett showed no disposition to enquire further.

  'You may lie safe in my house, sir,' he said. 'Indeed, your honour is not the first Royalist gentleman I have hidden here, for you must know I have been a King's man all my life, and mean to continue so to the day of my death.'

  He went off at once to order his guest's dinner to be prepared, and my lord, with a sigh of thankfulness to find himself once again in civilized surroundings, sank down in a cushioned chair before the fire, and permitted Robert Swan to draw off his boots. By the time he had partaken of an excellent meal, and the covers had been withdrawn, Henry Peters had contrived to get speech with Mr Coventry, and, confiding to him my lord's name and business, had conducted him across the street to the inn.

  Upon his coming into the parlour and addressing my lord by name, Wilmot was at first inclined to be very much on his guard, but John Coventry's frank, easy manners, and evident good-will, soon allayed his qualms, and he opened to him the whole business, giving him so vivid an account of the King's move ments during the three weeks that had elapsed since Worcester fight, that Coventry was held spellbound with wonder. In common with many others, he had feared that the King had indeed fallen in the battle, and his joy at learning that he was alive quite overcame the horror he could not but feel at the thought of the hardships Charles had undergone. He was unable to give Wilmot, in return for his news, any tidings of the lords who had parted from the King at White-Ladies, but he said that there was no doubt that the Duke of Hamilton had died at Worcester.

  Wilmot thought that the King's mind was prepared for this sad news; he sighed a little over it, but almost at once banished it from his thoughts, and asked Coventry what chance there was of the King's being able to set sail from Southampton.

  Coventry replied that he hoped to arrange the busi ness safely, even though he himself had no interest with any merchant or mariner in Southampton. After walking about the parlour for a few minutes, plunged in thought, he asked my lord's permission to despatch Henry Peters to summon one Colonel Robert Phelips to the inn. He assured Wilmot that he and his brother Edward were wholehearted for the King, both having fought upon his side in the late Wars; and Wilmot, after begging him very earnestly not to divulge his name or business to the Colonel, consented to his being brought to him.

  It was not long before Peters brought Phelips to the King's Head, and conducted him upstairs to the private parlour. He was a thick-set man, obviously country bred. His face was heavy-featured, with a craggy nose, slightly pouched eyes, and a fleshy jowl. He did not smile very readily, his habitual expression being one of stolid severity, but his regard was unwavering, and he looked to be honest as well as rather dull.

  He entered the room with a firm tread and held out a square hand to Coventry, who had risen to greet him. He said in a deep, rough voice: 'Good-day to you, Mr Coventry. I'm told ye have need of my services. You're very welcome.'

  'Great need,' Coventry replied, shaking him by the hand. 'But first I must present you to this gentleman, who was at Worcester fight, in the King's service, and is seeking to escape out of England.'

  Phelips's eyes travelled past him to where Lord Wilmot stood with his back to the fire. They remained fixed on Wilmot's face in a hard unfathom able stare, but the Colonel uttered not a word.

  Not knowing how much of the truth my lord meant to divulge, and thinking that he might prefer to be alone with the Colonel, Coventry said, with his pleasant smile: 'Well, I will go into the next room to take a pipe of tobacco with my good friend Hewett, and leave you together for a while.'

  Colonel Phelips gave no sign of having heard this remark. He continued to stand stock-still in the middle of the floor, looking at Wilmot, who found his fixed gaze so embarrassing that he gave a forced laugh, and said with more bluntness than he had meant to use: 'Can you help a gentleman in distress out of the Kingdom, sir?'

  The Colonel replied after a chilling pause: 'I will give you the best directions I can, my lord, since it is a duty one gentleman owes another.'

  Wilmot coloured, and said quickly: 'You know me, then?'

  'Yes, my lord, I know you very well.'

  'You do not seem much pleased to see me!' exclaimed Wilmot, the flush mounting in his cheeks.

  'I am sorry to see any gentleman in such straits,' replied the Colonel, picking his words with laborious care.