Mary of Carisbrooke (3 page)

“And how make up four beds with only six good pairs of sheets?” demanded Mistress Wheeler, looking round desperately at the half-sorted contents of her poorly stocked linen cupboard. “And the bedroom needs fresh tapestries and hangings.”

Sergeant Floyd picked up his helmet and set it in the crook of his arm. Domestic arrangements, thank God, were no concern of his. He had all the military detail to attend to, and twenty men to drill into the performance of some kind of reception parade fit for royalty, of which performance he was none too sure himself.

“If it’s a matter of moving things or nailing hangings, I can spare you a couple of men to help,” he offered. “I shall be in charge until they return with his Majesty.”

“And when, in the name of a merciful God, will that be?” asked Mistress Wheeler, facing him squarely.

“Sometime to-morrow, I imagine, if the tide serves.”

“
To-morrow
!”

“If you were the King wouldn’t you be anxious to put three miles of Solent and the good will of us islanders between yourself and such pestilential enemies?” asked Floyd, from the doorway. But when he had drawn back the bolt he turned to enquire more sympathetically, “You will be able to have the place ready, Druscilla?”

His sister took a grip on herself and regarded him from across the room with a mixture of pride and affection. Even her social and housekeeping experiences as chatelaine of a small manor on the mainland were not going to help her much now, so she guessed that her brother, who had never been off the island, must be as scared as she was at the thought of preparing a reception for a king. “Have we Floyds ever failed to do our duty when the time comes, Silas?” she asked, drawing herself up to her full height. “I pray you, have someone go to the chandlers for six gross more candles. The best tallow kind. And send Brett and Libby and the rest of the maids to me as you go past the kitchens.”

“We could get extra help perhaps from the village?” suggested Mary, gathering up a pile of folded sheets in her strong young arms as soon as he was gone.

“I make no doubt we could. Wouldn’t every lily-fingered, gossip-lapping woman among them give her eyes to come up here now?” sniffed the competent housekeeper of Carisbrooke. “But we will manage very well with such wenches as we have. At least I’ve trained them myself.”

The excellence of her training was to be severely tested during the next twenty-four hours. For the rest of the day the castle household ate cold viands picked from the buttery at odd moments. The cook and his underlings prepared dishes which they had not made since Lord Portland’s day, the scullions scoured every pot and the best silver dinner set was brought out. Maids scurried about making up beds, and a couple of stalwart troopers got in their way moving furniture. Mary stood with her aunt in the middle of the best bedroom considering what to do. Somehow the four poster did not look so grand now, only rather shabby and faded. “There are those red velvet hangings milady Portland was wont to use in the winter,” Mary remembered suddenly.

“Red velvet?” In the ferment of the afternoon’s work aunt and niece had each come to respect the other’s ability, so that much of the authoritative manner and the meekness were gone.

“Yes, Aunt Druscilla, do you not remember? They had little silver stags embroidered on them, which I adored. They may be in one of the attics. I know they were all packed up ready to take to France but milady had to leave so much behind when the Parliamentarians turned her out of the castle.”

The material had been as brave and beautiful as the Governor’s wife who had owned it. So the attics were searched and the four-poster rehung with crimson velvet, which looked quite suitable for a king. By nightfall the Colonel’s business-like writing desk had been removed and a prie-dieu put in its place because everyone knew the King was pious. Real wax candles, borrowed from the chapel, stood upon his table because it was said he liked to read. The best chair in the castle had been placed beside the wide hearth and the fire which old Brett had laid burned cheerily, throwing kindly, dancing shadows upon the faded tapestry on the wall facing the window. “The servants will have to walk quietly along the backstairs passage behind that partition wall, with no courting and no tittering,” decreed Mistress Wheeler, surveying the main scene of their labours with a critical but not unsatisfied eye. “And you and I will have to make the bed.”

Terror seized shy Mary. “You mean—come in here—with the King of England sitting maybe in that chair?” she asked with bated breath.

With a rare demonstration of affection Aunt Druscilla pushed her down upon the carved chest set for the accommodation of the King’s clothes at the bottom of the bed. “You are tired, child,” she said. “To-morrow it will not seem so alarming. And who else is there to do it? We could not have Libby in here, and in any case she will have the other beds to do.”

So Libby would not be sent away. There would be no need to plead for her after all. Having been on her feet since before noon, Mary sank down on the chest, digesting that unexpected fact with thankfulness. The ways of the Almighty were indeed exceeding strange. For instance, who would have dreamed this time yesterday that she would be making a bed for a king? And once his Majesty came here what would life be like? Would he be allowed to live in peace or would all the harrying and disturbances from the mainland follow him?

She was still sitting there before the fire almost too tired for thought when she heard her father’s deep, cheerful voice. By the sound of it she knew that his part of the preparations must have gone well. And now he was inspecting his sister’s handiwork and commending her with the same warmth which encouraged his men.

“And how goes the State bedroom?” he was asking laughingly. “And my tired little daughter?”

“Do you suppose the King will think it all very strange and simple after Hampton Court?” she asked sleepily.

Floyd smiled down at her. “He has been here before, you know.”

“Why, of course. When I was quite small, you used to tell me at bedtime about the day Prince Charles came. But I have almost forgotten.”

Floyd had had a worrying day himself and was glad to sit down on the carved chest beside her and gather her drooping form to his side. “He came across to review the militia and watched them having a practice battle, the same as they’re practising for now up on Brighstone Down. Except that he was King James’s son he wasn’t very important then because his elder brother, Prince Henry, was still alive. And after the review Prince Charles came up to the castle to dine.”

Mary leaned in weary comfort against her father’s side. She could scarcely keep her eyes open. “And what was he like?” she asked.

“A rather frail-looking lad with a limp. Though he sat a horse well. He’d a shy way with him but he took everything in. And when he went round the battlements after dinner he asked Sir John Oglander, who was Deputy Governor here then, if he might touch off one of our biggest guns. He was but an eager lad and ’twas I who primed it for him. ’Twas my first year with the garrison and I mind how proud I was.”

For the first time the King for whom all this preparation had been going on began to take on a human personality, and to awaken pity. He had been young and shy and eager. “And now he comes back to us an escaped prisoner,” murmured Mary compassionately. And because she had worked far too hard and was dearer to him than anyone else in the world, the Sergeant of the garrison picked her up in his strong arms and carried her, already sleeping, to her bed.

Although it was Sunday and the chapel bell was ringing, few people up at the castle had time to attend morning service. In the long room above the great hall the table was being laid with the best napery and silver, and down in the kitchen everyone from cook to turnspit was in a state of nervous tension. No one knew when the King would arrive. “The wind should serve,” said Mistress Wheeler, glancing out across the courtyard at the chapel weathervane. “So even though they were not able to cross to Cowes last night, they may still be here in time for dinner.” So close a contingency shook even her determined semblance of composure. Being uncertain how people ought to sit at table with royalty and fearing that her arrangements might not be sufficiently formal, at the last minute she sent her niece down to the “Rose and Crown” to beg the loan of an imposing salt cellar which had been part of Agnes Trattle’s dowry.

“How strange it seems that we had the news this time yesterday and have not yet had time to tell even our best friends!” said Mary, hastily pulling on her cloak.

But there was no need to tell the Trattles or anyone else. She soon found that the amazing news had already seeped through the little village at the foot of the castle and spread to the town of Newport. People coming out of St. Thomas’s church were all discussing what the parson had told them, and others stood about the streets in animated groups or ran in and out of each other’s houses asking if it could possibly be true that King Charles was coming to Carisbrooke. At the “Rose and Crown” Agnes and Frances had donned their best gowns, and Captain Burley was pacing up and down their parlour as though it were a quarter-deck. “I’d train my guns on all those houses with shuttered windows and the scum who listen to that fanatic preacher and deny our King a welcome!” he kept muttering. Only Edward Trattle, unwillingly observing the new Puritanical ruling that customers should not be served upon the Sabbath, kept outwardly calm.

As soon as Mary arrived everyone crowded round her because she had come from the castle. With proud heart and willing hands Agnes wrapped up the cherished salt cellar. “What a pother you must all have had to get the rooms and table prepared!” she sympathized, half enviously. “And now your poor harassed Aunt will have to work like this every day. When she came back to the island mourning her lot as a war-impoverished widow little did she think she would soon be housekeeping for a king!”

“She says that you and Frances must come up soon and get a sight of him,” said Mary.

“I should like to come back with you now and help,” offered Frances, her eyes alight with excitement. “I would work my fingers to the bone for him!”

“It is an idea, Frances. I am sure that Mistress Wheeler can do with more help,” agreed her mother, feeling that once some fine gentleman from Court set eyes upon her pretty daughter, a fine match could be arranged for her. Something more suitable for a girl of Langdale blood than her husband’s idea of marriage with a local merchant.

“Oh, do ask her, Mary!” urged Frances.

Although Mary felt dubious of the value of her friend’s domestic services, she would readily have promised to do so had not the innkeeper himself intervened. “You’ll bide here, my girl,” he told his daughter with unusual firmness.

“Oh, father, would you not have us all serve the King?” pouted Frances, whose whims were so seldom denied her. And even Mary felt surprised and not a little shocked.

“Probably for the moment we can all serve him best by going about our own work as usual and keeping a quiet tongue in our heads,” said Trattle, with an anxious eye on the excitable old Captain who was stamping restlessly out into the street.

“But it would be such a chance for Frances,” persisted her mother. “Other Royalists are bound to gather here and it would be like living at Court.”

“For a time, perhaps. But don’t forget that even over here there are some who wish him ill,” answered Trattle, watching the furtive movements of a sour-looking, tall-hatted Puritan on the opposite side of the street.

Further argument was stopped by the sudden appearance of Captain Burley’s grizzled head at the open window. “Frances, child! All of you! Come out quickly!” he called. “There is a party of horsemen coming along the road from Cowes. And I can hear cheering. I believe it is the King himself.”

They all crowded through the door and out into the street to find everyone gazing in the direction of Cowes. Certainly there was cheering and it was coming nearer; but it sounded spasmodic and half-hearted. People still refused to believe the fantastic rumour that the King was coming. Some of the older folk assumed importance because, like Silas Floyd, they remembered his coming as a young prince; but as most of them had never seen so much as a painting of him they would not know him even if he did come. The more soberly dressed men and women of Cromwellian persuasion stared in silence and even the majority of loyal islanders seemed uncertain what to do.

Mary, lined up among the Trattle family and servants, stared wonderingly too. She had taken it for granted that when the King arrived she would be up at the castle, under the direction of her father or her aunt. Here, in the capital of the island, there was a feeling of being caught unawares. After a stormy night, thin sunshine was making a wet radiance of the rain-washed cobbles. Shading her eyes against it she could see a little cavalcade of six trotting smartly towards her. Two of them, she supposed, must be the gentlemen whom she had directed the day before. Colonel Hammond, of course, was easily distinguishable on his tall roan, and bluff Captain Baskett from Cowes she knew by sight. And riding between the two of them but a pace or two ahead was a man of much slighter build with a pale, thoughtful face and small, pointed brown beard. His clothes were neither militarily severe like Hammond’s nor flamboyant in the cavalier style, but in such quiet good taste that all eyes were drawn to him. And each time he rose in the saddle the glittering insignia of some order showed beneath the plain dark cloak he wore. “Is
he
the King? That little man in front?” Mary asked involuntarily.

“He is a better horseman than any of them. The best in England.” Captain Burley flung the words at her over his shoulder, having noted the faint disappointment in her voice. Stepping forward, he almost elbowed her aside. “Let us welcome his Majesty to Newport!” he called, raising both hands commandingly so that nearly all the people about him broke into a really rousing cheer. The King slowed his mount to a walking pace. Cheers could not have been too plentiful of late, for a look of pleasure warmed the still composure of his face. Mistress Trattle, making a charming picture against the homely walls of the inn, picked up the skirts of her best plum-coloured satin and swept a splendid curtsy which Mary, standing a little behind her, tried self-consciously to imitate. The irrepressible Captain drew smartly to attention and saluted. Some prentice lads standing near threw up their Sunday caps into the air. The maid servants of the “Rose and Crown” flung wide an upper casement to wave, while their master stood respectfully, cap in hand, his keen knowledgeable eyes searching his Sovereign’s face.

Colonel Hammond’s horse reared a little and swerved at all the noise and commotion; or more probably, thought Mary with her close understanding of animals, because of some nervous tension passing from man to beast. Although etiquette demanded that he must ride a little behind the King, it seemed almost as though the Governor were hurrying him forward. And just at that moment, the sour-faced man Trattle had been watching stooped down behind a knot of people, his white-cuffed arm shot upwards and a handful of mud splashed against the King’s borrowed cloak, some of it even spattering the sparkling George beneath.

Charles Stuart disdained to notice it, but Mary saw his face tighten with angry hurt at the indignity.

“Oh shame!” cried the women in the crowd, while their men, furious at the slur upon the hospitality of their town, closed in to catch the mud-slinger. But he was too quick for them, or lived too close. The front door of his house banged in their faces. And it was not for them, without the Governor’s orders, to break it open. Ashburnham pricked his horse forward and would have wiped the mud away with his handkerchief, but the King stayed him with an authoritative gesture. The people of Newport stopped cheering, feeling that part of the shame was theirs.

In the sudden silence before the royal party had time to ride on, Frances Trattle’s wit and facile emotion told her what to do to efface the insult. With a sure sense of the dramatic she turned to pull one of her mother’s damask roses from the inn wall and ran forward with it into the middle of the street. Without any formality she held it up to the King. All the freshness of youth and the impulsiveness of loyalty were in the gesture. She looked lovely as a rose herself in her close-fitting cap and pink-tabbed gown. The King’s set face broke into a smile. With quick courtesy he drew off a glove to take the stiff-stemmed bloom, lifting it delicately to his nostrils to inhale the sweetness of its perfume.

“He has a daughter of about her age from whom he has so recently been forced to part,” murmured Agnes Trattle, her eyes abrim with tears.

Hammond looked annoyed and was clearly as anxious to terminate this kind of demonstration as the other, but short of running Frances down he was forced to rein in his horse.

A murmur of admiring approval ran through the crowd. Only a few Newport girls, less fortunate than she, muttered something about Frances Trattle always knowing how to put herself into the picture. For a moment or two cavalcade and onlookers kept still, so that King Charles and Frances seemed to be momentarily alone and the centre of all attention.

“God bless you, my child, for this good omen!”

Their King’s pleasant, cultured voice came to them clearly in the stillness before he rode on towards Carisbrooke with the red rose in his hand.

Agnes Trattle was beaming with maternal pride. Captain Burley almost pranced with jubilation. Mary was torn between admiration and envy. “Oh, Frances, how splendid of you!” she cried, running to embrace her friend. Frances herself began to laugh self-consciously, her cheeks aflame. As soon as the riders had passed on and the staring crowds closed after them everyone crowded around her. A few hours ago none of them had expected ever to behold a king, and now the Sovereign of Great Britain had actually spoken to young Frances Trattle, and given her his blessing.

“It is something that will always be remembered about her,” prophesied the doting old Captain.

“If only I could think of things like that and do them without becoming tongue-tied and clumsy!” thought Mary, suddenly conscious that she, unlike the rest of them, had not even had time to change from her workaday clothes.

Presently they were all indoors again drinking to the King’s health, and to the safety of young Prince Charles over the water, and then—upon Burley’s fond insistence—lifting their glasses laughingly to Frances. “Now you
must
let her go back with Mary to help Druscilla—now that the King himself has noticed her!” exulted Agnes Trattle, slipping persuasive arms about her husband’s shoulders. When she smiled like that it was easy to see from whom Frances inherited her coaxing ways, and difficult to deny her. But Edward Trattle was a long-thinking man, not readily moved from his convictions by the emotions of the moment. Gently he detached Agnes’s clinging hands. “’Twas prettily done and I was as proud as you, wife,” he admitted. “But maybe ’twas unwise.”

His wife stared at him in amazement. “Edward Trattle, you’d never be chicken-hearted enough to fawn to the opinions of these ranting Puritans?” she gasped.

“Or be thinking of your own skin?” joined in Burley indignantly.

“’Tis Charles Stuart’s skin I am thinking of,” answered the innkeeper, thoughtfully twirling the contents of his half-empty glass. “Many’s the time I’ve seen it happen in a brawl that you can help a man better if you are not suspected of being his friend.” He looked up to make sure the door was shut and the servants gone before attempting to explain a half-formulated idea. “Men come and go in my house. Men of all kinds and parties. Their tongues are loosened with my good liquor, so that whether I will or not I hear a mort of things. The ‘Bull’ has a definitely Cromwellian trade. Jackson of the ‘George’ hears many a royalist toast raised over his tankards. A time may come when it will be wiser for the ‘Rose and Crown’ to cater for no particular party.”

“Meaning that you want the trade of both?” accused Burley, because his blood was overheated by excitement and a good deal more of his host’s good Burgundy than his doctor would have allowed.

Mercifully Trattle, who knew all the old man’s weaknesses, was both morally and financially above any need to defend himself. “I mean because no one is sure which side the Governor himself is really on,” he said quietly. “On Saturday before he left for the Main he told some of us councillors that he had insisted upon going with those two gentlemen to escort the King across so as to ensure his Majesty’s safety. Yet as you saw just now he did not have that mud-slinging crop-head clapped into the stocks. So who knows but what—should the King stay here long—it may not prove useful for his friends to be able to come into my house without being labelled royalists?”

The serious moment passed, and was soon relieved by Mary’s anxious insistence that she must get back to the castle. Attention focused upon her now because she would presently be in the place where all their thoughts were. “You will see the King every day!” they said.

“And I suppose she may even help make his Majesty’s bed!” pouted Frances enviously.

“And perhaps be allowed to launder that priceless lace collar he was wearing!” sighed Agnes Trattle, wishing that she had brought up her own daughter to be less decorative and more domesticated.

But Mary only laughed as she kissed her friend’s flushed cheek. “Even if I do is it likely that his Majesty would ever be aware of my existence? Much less speak to me as he did to you,” she said comfortingly. “And truly, Frances, I should feel like sinking through the floor if he did!”