The King's General (13 page)

I leant from my chair as far as I could and, seizing the ring with my two hands, succeeded in lifting the stone some three inches from the ground, before the weight of it caused me to drop it once again. But not before I had caught a glimpse of the sharp corner of a step descending into the darkness.... I replaced the mat just as my godchild came into the summerhouse.

"Well, Honor," she said, "have you seen all you have a mind to for the present?"

"I rather think I have," I answered, and in a few moments she had closed the door, turned the key once more in the lock, and we were bowling back along the causeway.

She prattled away about this and that, but I paid but scant attention, for my mind was full of my latest discovery. It seemed fairly certain that there was a pit tunnel underneath the flagstone in the summerhouse, and the placing of a mat on top of it and the position of the desk suggested that the hiding of it was deliberate. There was no rust about the ringbolt to show disuse, and the easiness with which I, helpless in my chair, had lifted the stone a few inches proved to me that this was no cobwebby corner of concealment long forgotten. The flagstone had been lifted frequently and recently.

I looked over my shoulder down the pathway to the beach, or Pridmouth Cove, as Joan had termed it. It was narrow and steep, flanked about with stubby trees, and I thought how easy it would be for an incoming vessel, anchored in deep water, to send a boat ashore with some half dozen men, and they to climb up the path to where it ended beneath the summerhouse on the causeway, and for a watcher at the window of the summerhouse to relieve the men of any burden they should bear upon their backs.

Was this what old John Rashleigh had foreseen when he built his tower, and did bales of silk and bars of silver lie stacked beneath the flagstone some forty years before? It seemed very probable, but whether the step beneath the flagstone had any connection with my suspicions of the buttress it was difficult to say. One thing was certain. There was a secret way of entrance to Menabilly, through the chamber next to mine, and someone had passed that way only the night before, for I had seen him with my own eyes....

"You are silent, Honor," said Joan, breaking in upon my thoughts. "Of what are you thinking?"

"I have just come to the opinion," I answered, "that I was somewhat rash to leave Lanrest, where each day was alike, and come amongst you all at Menabilly, where something different happens every day."

"I wish I thought as you did," she replied. "To me the days and weeks seem much the same, with the Sawles backbiting at the Sparkes, and the children fretful, and my dear John grousing all the while that he cannot go fighting with Peter and the rest."

We came to the end of the causeway and were about to turn in through the gate into the walled gardens, when little Jonathan, her son, a child of barely three years, came running across the path to greet us.

"Uncle Peter is come," he cried, "and another gentleman, and many soldiers. We have been stroking the horses."

I smiled up at his mother.

"What did I tell you?" I said. "Not a day passes but there is some excitement at Menabilly."

I had no wish to run the gauntlet of the long windows in the gallery, where the company would be assembled, and bade Joan wheel me to the entrance in front of the house, which was usually deserted at this time of the day, no one being within the dining chamber. Once indoors, one of the servants could carry me to my apartment in the gatehouse, and later I could send for Peter, always a favourite with me, and have his news of Robin. We passed in then through the door, little Jonathan running in front, and at once we heard laughter and talk coming from the gallery, and, the wide arched door to the inner courtyard being open, we could see some half dozen troopers with their horses watering at the well beneath the belfry. There was much bustle and clatter, a pleasant lively sound, and I saw one of the troopers look up to a casement in the attic and wave his hand in greeting to a blushing kitchen girl. He was a big strong-looking fellow with a broad grin on his face, and then he turned and signalled to his companions to follow him, which they did, each one leading his horse away from the well and following him through the archway beneath my gatehouse to the outer courtyard and the stables.

It was when they turned thus and clattered through the court that I noticed how each fellow wore upon his shoulder a scarlet shield with three gold rests upon it....

For a moment I thought my heart would stop beating, and I was seized with sudden panic.

"Find one of the servants quickly," I said to Joan. "I wish to be carried straightway to my room."

But it was too late. Even as she sent little Jonathan scampering hurriedly towards the servants' quarters Peter Courtney came out into the hall, his arm about his Alice, in company with two or three brother officers.

"Why, Honor," he cried, "this is a joy indeed. Knowing your habits, I feared to find you hiding in your apartment, with Matty standing like a dragon at the door.

Gentlemen, I present to you Mistress Honor Harris, who has not the slightest desire to make your acquaintance."

I could have slain him for his lack of discretion, but he was one of those gay, lighthearted creatures with a love of jesting and poking fun, and no more true perception than a bumblebee. In a moment his friends were bowing before my chair and exchanging introductions, and Peter, still laughing and talking in his haphazard strident way, was pushing my chair through to the gallery. Alice, who made up in intuition all he lacked, would have stopped him had I caught her eye, but she was too glad to have a glimpse of him to do anything else but smile and hold his arm. The gallery seemed full of people, Sawles and Sparkes and Rashleighs, all chatting at the top of their voices, and at the far end by the window I caught sight of Mary in conversation with someone whose tall back and broad shoulders were painfully, almost terrifyingly, familiar.

Mary's expression, preoccupied and distrait, told me that she was at that moment wondering if I had returned yet from my promenade, for I saw her eyes search the gardens; and then she saw me, and her brow wrinkled in a well-known way and she began talking sixteen to the dozen. Her loss of composure gave me back my own, and what in hell's name do I care, after fifteen years? I told myself. There is no need to swoon at an encounter; God knows I have breeding enough to be mistress of the situation, here in Mary's house at Menabilly, with nigh a score of people in the room.

Peter, impervious to any doubtful atmosphere, propelled me slowly towards the window, and out of the corner of my eye I saw my sister Mary, overcome by cowardice, do something I dare swear I might have done myself had I been she, and that was to murmur a hasty excuse to her companion about summoning the servants to bring further refreshment, and she fled from the gallery without looking once in my direction. Richard turned and saw me. And as he looked at me it was as if my whole heart moved over in my body and was mine no longer.

"Sir," said Peter, "I am pleased to present to you my dearly loved kinswoman, Mistress Honor Harris of Lanrest."

"My kinswoman also," said Richard, and then he bent forward and kissed my hand.

"Oh, is that so, sir?" said Peter vaguely, looking from one to the other of us. "I suppose all we Cornish families are in some way near related. Let me fill your glass, sir. Honor, will you drink with us?'

"I will," I answered.

In truth, a glass of wine seemed to me my only salvation at the moment. While Peter filled the glasses I had my first long look at Richard. He had altered. There was no doubt of it. He had grown much broader, for one thing, not only in the body, but about the neck and shoulders. His face was somehow heavier than it had been. There was a brown weather-beaten air about him that was not there before, and lines beneath his eyes. It was, after all, fifteen years....

And then he turned to me, giving me my glass, and I saw that there was only one white streak in his auburn hair, high above the temple, and the eyes that looked at me were quite unchanged.

"Your health and fortune," he said quietly, and, draining his glass, he held it out with mine to be refilled. I saw the little telltale pulse beating in his right temple, and I knew then that the encounter was as startling and as moving to him as it was to me.

"I did not know," he said, "that you were at Menabilly."

I saw Peter glance at him curiously, and I wondered if this was the first time he had ever seen his commanding officer show any sign of nervousness or strain. The hand that held the glass trembled very slightly, and the voice that spoke was hard, queerly abrupt.

"I came here a few days since from Lanrest," I answered, my voice perhaps as oddly flat as his. "My brothers said I must not live alone, not while the war continues."

They showed wisdom," he replied. "Essex is moving westward all the time. It is very probable we shall see fighting once again this side the Tamar."

At this moment Peter's small daughters came running to his knees, shrieking with Joy to see their father, and Peter, laughing an apology, was swept into family life upon the instant, taking one apiece upon his shoulders and moving down the gallery >n triumph. Richard and I were thus left alone beside the window. I looked out on to l»e garden, noting the trim yew hedges and the smooth lawns, while a score of trivial observations ran insanely through my head.

"How green the grass is after the morning rain" and "It is something chilly for the tune of year" were phrases I had never yet used in my life, even to a stranger, but they seemed, at that moment, to be what was needed to the occasion. Yet though they rose unbidden to my tongue I did not frame them, but continued looking out upon the garden in silence, with Richard as dumb as myself. And then in a low voice, clipped and hard, he said: "If I am silent you must forgive me. I had not thought, after fifteen years, to find you so damnably unchanged."

This streak back to the intimate past from the indifferent present was a new shock to be borne, but a curiously exciting one.

"Why damnably?" I said, watching him over the rim of my glass.

"I had become used, over a long period, to a very different picture," he said. "I thought of you as an invalid, wan and pale, a sort of shadow without substance, hedged about with doctors and attendants. And instead I find--this." He looked me then full in the face, with a directness and a lack of reserve that I remembered well.

"I am sorry," I answered, "to disappoint you."

"You misinterpret me," he said. "I have not said I was disappointed. I am merely speechless." He drained his glass once more and put it back upon the table. "I shall recover," he said, "in a moment or two. Where can we talk?"

"Talk?" I asked. "Why, we can talk here, I suppose, if you wish to."

"Amidst a host of babbling fools and screaming children? Not on your life," he answered. "Have you not your own apartment?"

"I have," I replied with some small attempt at dignity, "but it would be considered somewhat odd if we retired there." .

"You were not used to quibble at similar suggestions in the past," he replied.

This was something of a blow beneath the belt, and I had no answer for him.

"I would have you remember," I said with lameness, "that we have been strangers to each other for fifteen years."

"Do you think," he said, "that I forget it for a moment?"

At this juncture we were interrupted by Temperance Sawle, who with baleful eyes had been watching us from a distance and now moved within our orbit.

"Sir Richard Grenvile, I believe," she said.

"Your servant, ma'am," replied Richard with a look that would have slain anyone less soul-absorbed than Temperance.

"The Evil One seeks you for his own," she announced. "Even at this moment I see his talons at your throat and his jaws open to devour you. Repent, repent, before it is too late."

"What the devil does she mean?" said Richard.

I shook my head and pointed to the heavens, but Temperance, warming to her theme, continued: "The mark of the Beast is on your forehead," she declared; "the men you lead are become as ravening wolves. You will all perish, every one of you, in the bottomless pit."

"Tell the old fool to go to hell," said Richard.

I offered Mistress Sawle a glass of wine, but she flinched as if it had been boiling oil. "There shall be a weeping and a gnashing of teeth," she continued.

"My God, you're right," said Richard, and, taking her by the shoulders, he twisted her round like a top and walked her across the room to the fireplace and her husband.

"Keep this woman under control," he ordered, and there was an immediate silence, followed by a little flutter of embarrassed conversation. Peter Courtney, very red about the neck, hurried forward with a brimming decanter.

"Some more wine, sir?" he said.

"Thank you, no, I've had about as much as I can stand," said Richard.

I noticed the young officers, all their backs turned, examining the portraits on the walls with amazing interest. Will Sparkes was one of the little crowd about the fireplace, staring hard at the King's general, his mouth wide open.

"A good day for catching flies, sir," said Richard pleasantly.

A little ripple of laughter came from Joan, hastily suppressed as Richard turned his eyes upon her.

Will Sparkes pressed forward.

"I have a young kinsman under your command," he said, "an ensign of the twenty-third regiment of foot--"

"Very probably," said Richard. "I never speak to ensigns." He beckoned to John Rashleigh, who had returned but a few moments ago from his day's ride and was now hovering at the entrance to the gallery, somewhat mudstained and splashed, bewildered by the unexpected company.

"Hi, you," called Richard, "will you summon one of your fellow servants and carry Mistress Harris's chair to her apartment? She has had enough of the company downstairs."

"That is John Rashleigh, sir," whispered Peter hurriedly, "the son of the house, and your host in his father's absence."

"Ha! My apologies," said Richard, walking forward with a smile. "Your dress being somewhat in disorder, I mistook you for a menial. My own young officers lose their rank if they appear so before me. How is your father?"