Mary of Carisbrooke (26 page)

Wild as the suggestion was, Mary did not find it difficult to believe any evil of Edmund Rolph. “In that case, if only to set the King’s mind at rest, you will certainly have to do your best until this Sir William Boreham arrives,” she said. “And with what slight knowledge I have gleaned I will help you. Let us give those mushrooms decent burial and go down and see what is already in the store room.”

So once again she found herself working with Firebrace, and during the next few days they were thrown together far too much for her peace of mind. Too much for his, as well, she found.

She had tried to plan a series of appetising meals without being aware that he was looking closely over her shoulder, and had fought down the almost maternal tenderness that rose in her at sight of him striving to look coolly knowledgeable while ordering the necessary delicacies from the trades people or giving orders to the cook. But inevitably the day came when, at the end of a busy morning, the clamour of their senses destroyed all domestic pretence. He stood aside to let her pass through the still-room door. The room was small, the doorway narrow and both of them were young. She had to brush against him in passing, and he had only to stretch out his arms. “Let us get away from all this and ride up on to your beloved Downs this afternoon,” he begged impetuously.

He had taken up much of her time and what more natural than that he should offer her some small excursion? But he had his Elizabeth, and Osborne’s golden locket lay warm against her throat. “I am sorry,” she murmured with averted eyes. “This afternoon I am going to see my friends the Trattles.”

Recognizing it for the unpremeditated excuse it was, he had the sense not to offer to accompany her; and so that her purpose should not weaken, Mary went straightway to her aunt. “After dinner I am going to the ‘Rose and Crown,’” she said.

“It is high time one of us went,” agreed Mistress Wheeler. “Now that everyone knows we are free to come and go they might be offended if we do not.”

“You will not come with me?”

“No. This afternoon Jane Whorwood is going to present me to the Countess of Southampton. But give them my love and tell Agnes I will come later. There is so much to do.”

“You can manage without me until supper time?”

“Why not? We are all tumbling over each other in these cramped houses as it is, and in any case when I want you, you are always down in the kitchens or somewhere with that ubiquitous young man Firebrace.”

Although Mistress Wheeler spoke with asperity, Mary was well aware that her aunt was so much taken up with her new friends that she was only too glad for her to go in her stead. Crossing the Square after dinner, she slipped for a few minutes into the church. “To be loved is always less painful than to love extravagantly,” that woman of the world, Jane Whorwood, had said. But to accept love without honouring it was base. One must transmute it into a kind of spiritual armour; and for this one needed grace and strength.

Almost next door to the quiet empty church the “Rose and Crown” was full and noisy, but pushing open the door was like a homecoming. The public rooms were packed with strangers, all arguing loudly about the morning’s proceedings. Peeping into the homely, familiar parlour, Mary perceived that it had been let to some wealthy family. She finally found Mistress Trattle, knight’s daughter though she was, basting a fowl for some latecomers in the kitchen. Her quilted silk skirt was bundled up above her petticoat, she had a long iron spoon in one hand and a smudge of flour on her hot cheek, but she held out her arms and gave the orphaned Mary a daughter’s welcome. “My dear—my poor dear—you have come at last!”

It was not until that moment that Mary realized how often of late she had longed to come. “Aunt Agnes! Oh, Aunt Agnes!” she cried brokenly, burying her face against that comfortable bosom.

The chicken was left to the hustling and harassed maids, and Mary was taken up to the Trattle’s bedroom because there was nowhere else to go. Trattle was summoned from his serving and Frances came running from her improvised attic.

“Oh, Mary, it is wonderful to see you again! We thought that horrid Governor would never let you come,” she cried, hugging her excitedly. “And you have come in time for my wedding. I always vowed I could not be married without you as my chief bridesmaid.”

“Perhaps Mary scarcely feels like weddings,” suggested Edward Trattle, drawing his late friend’s daughter against his side. “You look different somehow, child—”

“I am several months older,” laughed Mary.

“But I do not think it is only that.” He looked at her searchingly, thinking of all the events which must have changed her from a carefree child to a woman. “You have done some fine work for the King, Mary. Major Bosvile told us about the letters. And he was more concerned for you than for himself when that wretched ostler of mine turned up drunk. Your father would have been very proud of you.”

“Offering the King a damask rose was nothing!” declared Frances generously, kissing her again.

Mary would have liked to tell them about emptying Major Rolph’s pistol, but shame prevented her. Perhaps one day when things were in less of a turmoil she would tell Mistress Trattle everything—and it would be as if she were talking to the mother she had never known. For the present it was balm to be welcomed, loved, and petted.

“Bosvile is staying here,” Trattle told her. “He has brought official despatches from the Prince in Holland. He says it feels as dull as flat ale to be delivering letters
openly
.”

“And the kind man has brought me a roll of French silk for my wedding-gown. I must show it to you, Mary.”

“Perhaps I can come in my free time and help with the making,” offered Mary, thinking that it would keep her from the dangerous joy of spending idle hours with Harry. “When is the wedding to be, Frances?”

“It was to have been on Lammas Day but now it cannot be fixed at all.”

“John Newland has been under suspicion, as you know, and the Mayor has been making things as difficult for him as he could,” explained Trattle. “And now with the town full like this—”

“But as soon as the Treaty is signed and his Majesty safely back in London, perhaps we poor islanders will have time and space to consider our own affairs,” said Agnes.

“At least you can come and see the silk, Mary,” invited Frances, drawing her away for a bedroom gossip as of old. “I thought we should have been hearing of
your
wedding, my dear, with all those handsome gallants about the castle! Did you know,” she asked, as soon as they were alone in her attic, “that that tall exciting Master Osborne came here?”

“On his way to the mainland? He risked his life by taking his case to court,” remarked Mary noncommittally.

“He came here twice. And believe it or not,” confided Frances, raising her rosy face from the clothes chest she was opening, “he kissed me. Not at all as John does. I am sure you cannot imagine how different it was.”

“Perhaps he has had more experience,” suggested Mary, with a delicious smile twitching the corners of her mouth.

“Of course, I reminded him I was betrothed.”

“Of course,” agreed Mary solemnly, remembering Osborne’s jocund description of the event. And remembering, too, rather to her surprise, how very exciting his kisses could be.

“And what happened about that nice auburn-headed young man—Firebrace or some such name—whom you brought here last Christmas? I thought you were having an affair with him?” persisted Frances.

“He is already married,” Mary heard herself saying quite steadily.

“Well, with
all
those good-looking young men about the castle, I must say you seem rather to have wasted your time!” laughed Frances. “But then you never were much interested in love affairs, were you?” The bride-to-be lifted the shimmering silk from the chest and laid it reverently across her bed. “There, isn’t it lovely?” she breathed ecstatically. “Like a real Court lady’s, Mistress Bess Oglander says. And it will be all the lovelier when your clever fingers have worked on it, my pet. Oh, how I ache to wear it!” The Trattles’ pretty daughter went pouting to her mirror. “Imagine having to wait all this time for one’s wedding, just because the King came to Carisbrooke!”

Mary picked up a fold of the lovely stuff with envious fingers. “So many things have happened—because the King came,” she said.

In spite of all the overcrowding and inconvenience, high hopes of a national settlement and a better way of life insured cheerfulness and good nature in Newport. During the first week or so people of violently opposing persuasions went out of their way to be polite to each other. But as the forty days allowed for negotiations dragged by and every clause was bickered over and no settlement reached, anxiety on both sides mounted and tempers became more strained. There were arguments at street corners and free fights in the taverns, and the soldiers frequently had to be called upon to restore order.

The terms offered to the King were bitter as gall. They included the maintenance of Presbyterianism for three years and Parliamentary control of the Militia for twenty years, which would have reduced his status to that of a puppet. Charles opposed each clause with practised logic, and all present marvelled that there was no stammering hesitation in his voice. But gradually he was forced to make concession after concession, until it came to the matter of his Church where he finally stood firm. By the end of October, when he was very weary and the allotted time was running out, he even agreed to the abolishment of bishops, a concession so unpopular with some of his supporters that soldiers had to be sent to quell their demonstrations at the “George”—demonstrations which Charles himself deplored. He confessed to his friends in private that he had made the concession solely in the hope of delaying matters. He knew that the Commons were determined to reject his own proposals on religious matters and that the success of the Treaty was already doomed. And that therefore his only hope lay in effecting an escape during the few days left to him before he should be taken back to Carisbrooke.

Each day when he returned to William Hopkins’s house the serene front which he had put up before the world gave place to preoccupied silence. This time escape was so desperately necessary that, once free of the strain of discussion, he could think of nothing else. To his vast relief Parliament decided that the negotiations might go on for another fortnight, and he was still allowed to walk about the countryside, although always within sight of his guards.

“Even if his Majesty can find the opportunity he will be too proud to break his parole,” declared Mistress Wheeler. But Jane Whorwood explained that the King no longer considered his promise valid because he was not being allowed the same freedom from surveillance which he had enjoyed at Hampton Court. He had openly said as much to the Governor.

Whatever his inward feelings, Charles’s outward fortitude remained unchanged. He spent hours at his desk as a man will who must clear up his affairs. He was there one evening early in November when Mary, hearing Rogue barking resentfully at the sentries and fearing the noise might be disturbing his Majesty, carried the little dog into the Presence Chamber. She set him down before the hearth and was going out again as quietly as possible when the King called her back. “Do you know where Richard Osborne is?” he asked.

“No, sir,” she answered, hoping with all her heart that he would be able to tell her.

“Unfortunately, neither do any of us. But Master Mildmay suggested that you might know.”

Mary stood there wondering why Master Mildmay should suppose any such thing, and saw that the King was pointing with his pen to a particular sentence in the letter he had just signed.

“I shall be glad if you or Mistress Wheeler can find means to send this to the Prince of Wales in Holland,” he said. “But before I seal it, there is a passage here which I should like you to read, Mary. Should you ever meet Osborne again I should like him to know what I have written. It may prove useful to him.”

His manner was gracious although not at all intimate as it had been when he had talked to her before the fire up at the castle. Mary knew that, considerate as he was, he did not usually speak intimately with any but his friends. She came to his side, still mystified as to why he connected her with Osborne and not a little confused lest she should be unable to decipher the passage. But it was very brief and his writing exceptionally clear. Looking over his shoulder, she read his request to his son. “If Osborne (who has been in trouble for me about one Major Rolph’s business) comes to you, use him well for my sake.”

Relief and gratitude welled up in her. “Somehow I will get it away,” she promised, with shining eyes.

He sealed the letter and handed it to her with a smile. “Osborne may be a very reckless young man, but I should never hesitate to trust him,” he said, in so calm a voice that she was not sure whether he was merely making a statement or giving her advice.

Seeing little hope for himself, it seemed that his Majesty was thinking a great deal just then about those who had risked their lives for him in the past. When the Army, growing impatient with Parliamentary discussions, sent their own ultimatum, the King refused it unconditionally because it contained a clause calling for the death penalty for some of his most loyal friends. Major Rolph, knowing well that he had the backing of the generals on the mainland, took more and more upon himself and, although the King complained of his offensive surveillance, Colonel Hammond dared not interfere with measures for watching his Majesty’s movements, because he knew that both Rolph and he were dealing with a desperate man.

When Jane Whorwood, determined to find out what the generals were planning and the exact extent of the King’s danger, set out for the mainland, Hammond made no objection. Foreseeing trouble on the island, he even asked her to take his mother with her so that the old lady might return home.

Jane found that the King’s danger was great indeed. A Remonstrance had been drawn up by General Ireton and others, with the all powerful Cromwell’s agreement, demanding that his Majesty be brought to justice for the bloodshed and mischief he had caused and that his two elder sons should surrender themselves for trial.

She hurried back to warn him, and somehow managed to cajole the officials at Portsmouth into providing her with a pass. Since the King had now defied the final demands of both parties, she begged Hopkins to help him to immediate escape. “Though let it be by some door and not from the top of the house or by means of ladders,” she counselled, being more in his confidence than most.

But already the net was closing and it was too late for Hopkins or anyone else to act. Still more troops had been sent over to prevent any possible rising of the island Royalists, and General Ireton was trying to persuade Hammond to put the King back into captivity in the castle.

On the last Saturday in November when the sittings in the Town Hall terminated, the violent arguing of the inhabitants of Newport gave place to a feeling of helplessness as dreary as the weather. “My Lords,” said Charles, in bidding farewell to the Commissioners, “you cannot but know that in my fall and ruin, you may see your own. I am fully informed of the plot against me and mine; and nothing so much affects me as the suffering of my subjects and the miseries that hang over my three Kingdoms, drawn upon them by those who, under pretence of good, violently pursue their own interests and ends.”

He walked quietly back to the grammar school and everyone wondered what would happen next.

As a servant of Parliament, Hammond refused to change the King’s lodgings without their orders, and General Fairfax was persuaded by fellow officers less moderate than himself to summon the Governor of the Wight to Army Headquarters at Windsor to discuss the matter. As a soldier, Hammond dared not disobey, but he immediately sent young Major Cromwell to Westminster with the General’s letter, and with much misgiving left Rolph as his Deputy, and Captain Boreman, who commanded the local militia, in charge of the castle and of the King’s safety. He knew only too well that while Parliament was still debating the question of the King’s future residence, the Army intended to seize the moment to strike and that all they wanted was to get him out of the way.

“So unpredictably turns the wheel of life,” he said to Mildmay, in a moment of rare expansion, “that only my presence, which his Majesty has so often resented, now stands between him and his bitterest enemies.”

All the members of the King’s household who had spent the past year in the castle regarded Robert Hammond’s departure with dismay. “It seems strange to think how my dear brother and all of us hated the appointment of a Parliamentarian Governor,” said Druscilla Wheeler.

“And how we tried to hoodwink him,” grinned Firebrace.

“He is very young for a governorship anyhow, and I do not think any man could have loathed his unexpected responsibility in this matter more,” mused Anthony Mildmay, who had come nearer to being Hammond’s friend than most.

“And if he does not come back we shall all be at the beck and call of Major Rolph!” said Mary, shivering at the thought.

The weather alone was enough to make anyone shiver. The elderly Earl of Southampton had begged leave to be excused duty in the school house and had taken to his bed next door with a chill, and the Solent was a fury of white-capped waves. Yet in spite of a tearing gale two senior army officers managed to get across soon after the Governor’s departure. Although they landed as secretly as possible, they were met by Rolph, who conducted them straight to the castle. Everyone was agog to know what was going on up there and rumours soon spread that the few selected men they had brought were a force of thousands. Towards evening one of the officers, Colonel Cobbett, rode down into Newport and was closeted with Rolph, whose own company were now all billeted in Newport. The town seemed to be full of soldiers, and householders barred their windows uneasily and kept their wives and daughters indoors.

That evening the Earl of Southampton was taken worse and the women of the household were up late doing what they could for him. By nightfall his temperature had risen and his wife was seriously alarmed. “I will send one of the servants for Doctor Bagnell,” offered Mistress Wheeler, knowing that both the Countess and Jane were strangers to the town. And when Mary went down to the door to direct one of the Earl’s men how to find the doctor’s house she was surprised to see Lugley Street and St. James’s Street full of soldiers. The grammar school at the corner was surrounded. Although the rain fell in torrents they stood in groups about the doors and windows with the water pattering on their helmets and streaming from their cloaks, and when she looked out at the back she saw that there were more of them waiting silently in Master Hopkins’s little garden. One of them pounced on the amazed servant and asked him for a password. Mary stood in the shelter of the doorway, filled with alarm. She saw the man point upwards to the lighted window where his sick master lay, and a corporal came and questioned him before they were satisfied as to his business and let him go. Bolting the door, she ran upstairs to tell the others.

“What are they all doing out there?” she asked Doctor Bagnell when he came. “What does it mean?”

“According to the Sergeant in charge it merely means that Major Rolph has doubled the guard because we are cursed with so many troops that there is nowhere left to sleep them,” said the doctor, with a sceptical laugh. “But I never heard of troops yet who couldn’t sleep soundly enough in a barn.”

“Then it has come,” muttered Jane Whorwood, losing all interest in the patient and pacing ceaselessly up and down her room. When the Earl had been given a sleeping draught and the house was quiet again, Druscilla and Mary, although wildly anxious, went to take what rest they could. But it seemed to Mary that she had only just drifted into an uneasy sleep when she was being jerked back into frightened consciousness by someone holding a guttering candle before her heavy eyes and shaking her by the shoulder. “Get up, child!” her aunt was saying between chattering teeth. “They have come for the King. And I am to go along to see to his clothes. You had better come with me.”

Mary sat up, staring dazedly at her half-dressed relative. “You mean we are to go back to Carisbrooke? Now, in the middle of the night?” she asked, groping blindly for her clothes.

“No, God help us! It is almost dawn and the messenger from next door said they are taking him to Hurst.”

“Hurst Castle!” exclaimed Mary, jolted wide awake by horror.

“Where is Hurst?” asked Jane Whorwood, coming in at that moment with another candle. She set it down on a tallboy and Mary noticed how her strong, capable hand was shaking.

“It is that grim-looking castle you can see sticking out into the Solent on a long spit of sand from the Hampshire coast. Opposite Sconce Fort, just past Yarmouth haven.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

“No, except that the Captain of the castle is a black-bearded bully of a man called Ayers, and I have heard my father say that the place is in a shocking state of disrepair.”

“Rolph’s orders are that we are to be ready in a quarter of an hour,” warned her aunt, gathering up what possessions she could. “The dear Lord knows what will happen to all our things up at Carisbrooke with all those plundering Ironsides!”

She and Mary made themselves as ready as they could for the journey, too much agitated to know what to wear or take. And all the time Jane Whorwood stood there trying to give them a picture of the night’s doings and to marshall plans for their future meeting.

“I managed to see Harry Firebrace for a moment by the garden gate. They were as alarmed as we were at seeing the soldiers last night. The King sent a friendly Roundhead officer up to the castle for Captain Boreman, but he found him and his men practically prisoners. So the men next door were sure Rolph meant to make a
coup
of some kind. The Roundhead officer, may Heaven bless him, offered to get the King out under an army cloak as his servant, and Harry Firebrace was prepared to take his Majesty through the streets and knock up John Newland for a boat.”

“Heavens, what a risk!” cried Mary, fumbling at the buckles of her shoes.

“No worse than being murdered like rats in a trap, as they half expected. But it wasn’t as bad as that, God be praised! It seems a crowd of Rolph’s men broke into the house—even into the King’s bedroom—and told him to get up and dress and come with them. Before anyone was about, of course. He must be almost ready by now.”