Georgette Heyer (46 page)

  'I also will go,' said Wyndham grimly.

  This, however, the King would not permit. 'If you have forgotten the limits of your parole, I have not,' he said.

  'I care not
that
for my parole!' Wyndham exclaimed, with a scornful snap of his finger and thumb.

  'You may not, but I have a better regard for my head,' said the King frankly. 'If you should be stopped upon the road and found to be beyond your bound aries, a pretty coil we should be in!'

  The Colonel was silenced. Bitterness at his helpless ness welled up in him; he turned away, and walked over to the window, his face clouded and his mind much troubled. Phelips said with rough sympathy: 'We live in noisome times, Colonel, but 'deed, it will not serve his Majesty to have you taken up in his company for a parole-breaker. There's another scheme which my lord is anxious his Majesty will comply with, but which is none of mine. He would have your Majesty ride before Mrs Juliana Coningsby, as you did before.'

  'He is right,' said the Colonel briefly. 'She shall go.'

  Phelips, who thought the presence of a female would be more likely to add to the dangers of the journey than to mitigate them, looked glum, and said in a reluctant tone: 'Well – and if his Majesty so desires!'

  'You will take her, sir? You know it is a disguise which has served you better than any other. No one thinks to look closely at a groom riding before his lady!'

  'I am willing,' the King replied, 'but I'll not have Juliana constrained to go with me, mind!'

  Juliana, however, needed no persuasion. She was no sooner asked if she would ride pillion again behind the King, than she jumped up out of her chair, clap ping her hands together, and exclaiming that there was nothing in the world she would like better.

  It was decided that the King should leave Trent upon the following morning, and that Henry Peters should accompany the party, for the purpose of escorting Juliana home again from Salisbury, where she was to part from the King. Once more Charles bade farewell to the Wyndhams, bestowing upon the elder lady so fond an embrace that tears sprang to her eyes, and trickled down the cheeks he kissed. 'My dear boy – my blessed liege!' she whispered.

  'Nay, I beseech you! Let it be
my dear boy
!' he said. 'Indeed, I like it better.'

  'God keep you safe!' she said, with a catch in her voice. 'Go now, but if these new schemes they have made for you should miscarry, give me your promise that you will come back to Trent!'

  'Madam, you have my word that I will do so, yet I hope not to serve you so scurvy a trick. Why, what a guest have I been, who came to spend a couple of days in your house, and remained for nineteen! I swear you are well rid of me.'

  She shook her head, clasping him in her arms once more before she could bear to let him go. He turned from her to her son, grasping both the Colonel's hands in his. 'Frank, I cannot thank you as I would, but I shall never forget. God be with you, my friend, and when next we meet, may it be at Whitehall, and I your host!'

  He bowed over Mrs Wyndham's hand with a grace startlingly at variance with his rough clothes, and cropped hair, and in another few minutes was gone.

  'I am more fortunate than my cousin, for I am still in your company,' murmured Juliana, behind his shoulder.

  'Do you count that good fortune, sweetheart? I had thought the good fortune was all upon my side.'

  'I shall not know how to support life when I come back to Trent,' she said disconsolately. 'Oh, it will be so flat and weary!'

  He laughed. 'Why, I think you flatter me! Or were you ambitious to play the heroine while I skulked in the secret place?'

  She smiled, but said thoughtfully: 'Mrs Jane Lane wept when she left us, and I wondered at her.'

  'Did she?' The image of Jane's sweet, grave face glimmered before his mind's eye. He remembered the steadfast look she had, and the cool touch of her lips on his. He hoped she was safe at Bentley Hall, and suddenly felt impatient with the pretty, childish creature riding behind him. He turned his head towards Phelips, and began to ask him about the way they were to follow.

  Phelips had studied it to some purpose, and would have conducted the King all the way to Salisbury along country lanes and by-paths, had not Charles upset his careful plans by demanding, after riding some miles, where they were to dine.

  'Dine, sir?' repeated Phelips, taken aback. 'Your Majesty may be assured of a good supper at Heale.'

  'I hope I may,' said the King, 'but dinner comes before supper.'

  Phelips began to see that the task of escorting this fugitive King was fraught with more peril even than he had supposed. 'But sir, I must humbly remind your Majesty that to stop anywhere upon the road would be so imprudent that I dare not think what the conse quences might be!'

  'You may think instead of the consequences of my swooning from hunger,' said the King cheerfully.

  'But your Majesty will surely not swoon for the lack of one meal!'

  'Nay, I'll take care of that. Come, man, you are too fearful! Where shall we dine?'

  'Sir,' said the Colonel, 'if dine you must, we shall be forced to enter some town upon the highroad! What if you be recognized?'

  'Robin Phelips,' said the King, 'I dined in Bridport when the whole town, ay, and the inn itself, swarmed with Noll Cromwell's men, and not one of them looked at me twice! Now tell me where I shall dine today, and trust me not to betray myself, for I shall not.'

  Colonel Phelips, who had carefully planned to skirt every town, refrained with a strong effort from telling his Royal charge what he thought of his reck less conduct, and replied in his dourest voice: 'If your Majesty is determined, there is a house at Mere where the host is said to be honest.'

  'Then lead me there,' said the King.

  'Oh, I am glad that I am to have my dinner!' sighed Juliana, with a naughty glance cast at the Colonel's rigid profile. 'Indeed, and I am quite famished!'

  Phelips swallowed a testy retort, and rode on in silence. Presently the King said softly: 'Pray do not look so crossly, Colonel. I shall never amend my ways, tell me till Doomsday.'

  The Colonel's head was jerked round; flushing deeply, he met the King's quizzical eyes, and stared into them. An unwilling smile crept into his own; he said in a mollified tone: 'Nay, but such a spurt as this, sir – ! You know I must obey you, but I like it not at all – not at all!'

  'My dear Colonel, I have been hunted dryfoot through half England, and have come off scatheless. Be of good cheer! I am not so ill a manager of my affairs as you think.'

  The Colonel shook his head, pulling down the corners of his mouth, but attempted no further remon strance. Another couple of miles brought the party to the outskirts of Mere; they rode slowly along the main street, between two rows of plaster-faced houses turned to gold by the autumn sunlight, and pulled up at a roomy-looking inn which stood on the corner of the street.

  Making the best of a bad business, the Colonel bespoke a private parlour, and tried to divert the innkeeper's attention from the King by talking to him himself. He let a great sigh of relief when the landlord shut the door of the parlour on them, but his peace of mind did not last long, for the landlord came back while they were still eating their dinner, anxious to know whether everything was to his guests' liking. He was a pleasant fellow, with a taste for gossip, and, since he did not seem to see anything suspicious in the King's height or dark complexion, the Colonel, as the custom was, invited him to drink a glass of wine with them. He complied very readily, sitting down at the end of the table, and asking the Colonel what the news was.

  'I know of none,' Phelips replied. 'They say there are soldiers being sent to Jersey, but I know not if it be true.'

  'Well, and a pox go with them: they are rogues all! The best news that has come this way these many days is of them men at Westminster being all in a maze, notwith standing their victory at Worcester.' He chuckled, and drank some of his wine. 'Proper mazed they are, and wherefor? Why, because they can't discover what has become of the King! They say the most received opinion is that he has gone in a disguise to London, so now every man jack amongst 'em is as busy as a good-wife at oven, and neither meal nor dough, a-hunting for the Black Boy in all the likely houses. What I say is, here's a health to the King, and may he confound every snuffling Puritan of them all!' A laugh escaping the King made him look across the table at him. 'You look like an honest fellow,' he said, with bluff familiarity. 'But ye don't drink, I see. Are you Cæsar's man, or have I a rascally Roundhead under my roof ?'

  The King filled his glass from the bottle at his elbow. 'Nay, I am no Roundhead, but wholly Cæsar's man, I do assure you.'

  'Then drink a health to his Majesty!' commanded the landlord, raising his own glass. 'Here's to the King, God bless him!'

  'The King!' said Colonel Phelips, draining his glass.

  'The Black Boy!' said Charles, with a laugh quivering in his throat. 'And may you not be hanged for wishing him well, friend!'

It was dusk when the King reached Heale. Colonel Phelips having represented to him in the strongest terms the folly of his passing through Salisbury, he had parted from Juliana at the village of Lower Woodford, less than a mile from Heale House. Juliana had wept a little, but the King, drying her cheeks with his own handkerchief, and planting the lightest of kisses on her mouth, had coaxed her back to smiles, bidding her look forward to the day when she would come to Court in her best gown, and find herself the prettiest lady there. He had exchanged horses then with Henry Peters, had lifted Juliana into the pillion with his own hands, and stood in the road with Colonel Phelips, to watch her ride away towards Salisbury.

  'Now we shall do very well,' said the Colonel, with frank relief, when Juliana was out of sight. 'It mislikes me, taking women along on such a journey as this.'

  'Without one woman's devotion I should not be standing here today, Robin Phelips,' said the King.

  'Well, and I wish your Majesty would not stand here, but would mount and ride on before some prying fellow comes upon us,' replied the Colonel, unimpressed.

  The King swung himself up into the saddle, remarking,

more to himself than to his companion: 'They seem to be lost in the past, all who have helped me. I wonder, shall I see them again?'

  'Ay, fast enough, when you come to your own, sir,' replied the Colonel.

  The rest of the way to Heale winding beside the river Avon, which here ran through a pretty, lush valley, and was bordered by pollard-willows. Heale House was situated with the river in its front, and a belt of tall cedar trees sheltering its gardens. There were no other houses within sight of it, a circumstance which the Colonel took care to point out to the King.

  Upon their arrival, their horses were taken in charge by a groom, and they were admitted at once into the house, and led across a wide, panelled hall to a parlour, where several persons were gathered round a small wood-fire. An elderly lady, wearing widow's weeds, rose at their entrance, and came forward to greet them. The Colonel, who had walked in before the King, bowed to her, and, having kissed her hand, begged leave to present his friend, Mr Jackson. She turned towards the King with a pleasant smile, and, held out her hand saying: 'I bid you welcome, sir, and am very glad to see you here.'

  The King pulled off his hat, and took her hand in his to kiss it. He found that it was shaking, and, raising his head, saw that the smile had been wiped from her face, and that she was gazing at him as though he were a ghost. He said easily: 'You are very good, madam. I warrant you, Robin Phelips and I are mighty glad to be here.'

  She moistened her lips. 'Yes,' she said. 'Indeed, sir –' She broke off, and seemed to swallow some obstruction in her throat. 'You must let me make you known to my sister, Mrs Mary Tichborne, and my good brother-in law, Sir Frederick Hyde, and Dr Henchman here.'

  A younger woman, who bore a marked resemblance to the widow, curtseyed; Sir Frederick, who was shaking hands with Phelips, looked a little curiously at the shabby figure beside Mrs Hyde, but bade him a civil good-evening. The King glanced beyond him towards Dr Henchman, a twinkle in his eye. The doctor, a stately Churchman with a neat beard, and carefully curled white locks, slightly inclined his head, and made a gesture with one thin hand to invite the King to a chair beside his own. Charles walked across the room to him, and held out his hand. 'Sir, I am happy to see you here. You must know, madam,' he added, turning his head towards Mrs Hyde, 'that I have the honour to be a little acquainted with Dr Henchman.'

  She replied, with a faint gasp: 'It is a fortunate chance which brings you both here to sup with me tonight. Will you not be seated, sir?'

  Her sister looked at her in some surprise, for she was in general a very calm woman; but before she could make any remark, Mrs Hyde had begun to talk to Colonel Phelips, rather fast, and breathlessly, but with a good deal of vivacity. Sir Frederick was soon drawn into the conversation, a circumstance which enabled the King to exchange a few sentences with Dr Henchman. Leaning a little sideways in his chair, he said softly: 'Where is Wilmot?'