Mary of Carisbrooke (12 page)

For once Harry Firebrace seemed disinclined for speech. His plan was not as yet perfected and even to his optimistic mind certain difficulties presented themselves. The very fact that he felt that it might finally prove to be the master-plan, so far-reaching in effect that it would change the face of history, prompted him to keep it unshared a little longer.

“When we first met here we agreed to lay all our cards on the table,” urged Titus, coming to join the intimate little group by the fire.

“And it will soon be suppertime,” warned their hostess, glancing at the clock which had once graced her husband’s manor on the mainland, and motioning to her niece to hide away the used glasses.

“It is absurdly simple really,” began Firebrace, still hesitant.

“All the best ideas are,” encouraged Dowcett.

“We plan to lower the King by rope from his bedroom window one dark night,” said Firebrace, throwing him a grateful glance, and feeling how trite it all sounded. “I will stand below in the courtyard to guide him to that spot on the south battlement where some of us first spoke of it, and then with another rope I would let him down the escarpment. The moat is dry and narrow, and Osborne and an island gentleman whom he knows will have horses waiting in that little copse opposite and one of them will help his Majesty up the counterscarp. John Newland of Newport can be persuaded, I think, to have a boat waiting on the north shore near Quarr Abbey woods. Once across the Solent—well, the King himself is even now in correspondence about another ship to France or Holland. We may be sure the Queen or the Prince of Wales will contrive to send one.”

Something purposeful in Firebrace’s unusually quiet manner, coupled with the realization that he must already have discussed the possibilities with the King himself, held the interest of his listeners.

“How will Master Osborne get outside after dark to bring the horses?” asked Druscilla Wheeler after a few moments’ silence.

“The same way as I often do, dear lady—with the Captain of the Guard’s connivance,” grinned Osborne. “To visit my relatives who are staying on the island, or a wench in Newport. Friend Rolph is marvellously sympathetic, providing I sometimes invite him to come along with me.”

“Let the cobbler not go above his last,” murmured French Dowcett, in his mother tongue.

It was Mary whose practical mind hit upon the real difficulty which had been bothering Firebrace. “Since the Burley rising Colonel Hammond has had bars fitted to the King’s window.”

“But, as you said just now, his Majesty is a small man,” he reminded her, with a confidence he was far from feeling.

“And what about the sentries on the battlements?” asked Cresset.

“We must see that they are fuddled,” said Firebrace.

“That should not be difficult with the perpetual thirst they have since Rolph cut down their liquor ration, and the grudge they bear him for it! ” said Osborne, reaching out to refill his glass before Mary put away the wine. “And the Clerk of the Kitchen can always produce a bottle or two of something particularly potent, eh, Dowcett?”

“But what about Rolph himself, who drinks water?” asked someone gloomily.

“And goes his rounds at no set time, so as to keep the men up to the mark,” added Mistress Wheeler.

That was an unforeseen difficulty. “We could perhaps provide him with some alternative distraction,” said Firebrace.

“Our versatile Osborne will not be available, being on the other side of the moat,” pointed out Titus.

“Perhaps Mistress Mary—” began Napier, who had been itching all evening to fashion a modish gown to her svelte figure.

“In the middle of the night?” countered Osborne heavily. And at Abraham Dowcett’s emphatic Gallic gesture of outraged chivalry the tactless little tailor subsided hastily.

“Why not choose a time, sir, when Sergeant Floyd and some of the original island garrison are on duty?” suggested the assistant barber—rather handsomely, Firebrace thought, seeing that the man was anxious for his own plan to be tried.

But their hostess rose up from her chair, tall and impressive. “No. My brother must not be brought into this,” she decreed. “He is loyal to the King. Whatever he may see or overhear by chance, you may be sure he will not speak of; but if my niece and I help you I insist that you do not ask him to take any active part.”

Accepting her mandate and their dismissal, her guests began to take their departure. Mistress Wheeler went first to make sure the coast was clear, and they all went silently in ones and twos down the backstairs to appear later from various directions for supper. All but Richard Osborne, who still sat in the window recess, empty glass in hand. “The bell will sound for supper in a minute,” said Mary, going to take it from him. To her surprise he grasped her wrist instead. “This is not a game,” he warned.

“Why do you say that?” exclaimed Mary, wide-eyed with surprise.

“Because a girl will do anything, however risky, for the man whose love she wants.”

A week—a few days ago—Mary would have blushed and stammered in confusion, but the changed circumstances of her life were lending her a new composure. “I had supposed we were all doing things for the King,” she said coldly.

“The rest of us may be. But look into your heart, my dear.”

She knew that he had hit upon the truth, and hated him for it. “I would do anything for Harry Firebrace, if that is what you mean,” she said proudly.

“But what do you know of him?”

“How mean—oh, how mean of you! When he speaks so generously of you and your—morals!”

“God knows I need his blessed generosity! But I was not referring to his morals, which seem to me to be immaculate.”

She was too angry to heed him. “That you should preach—you who creep out at night wenching!” she cried childishly, struggling to free herself.

Osborne laughed softly. “I see some kind friend has already been helping us to get acquainted,” he said without rancour.

“You bragged of it yourself; just now. About the girl in Newport.”

“So I did. Would you like to know what she looks like?”

“Why should I care?” she snapped at him.

“Or why, for that matter, should I care what you think of me?” he questioned, with a sigh. “But for some odd reason I do. It must be those candid eyes of yours, Mary. Or the spitcat hidden beneath your gentleness. Listen, I will tell you what my last night’s companion is like.”

“I tell you I do not want to hear. Let me go!”

He turned her hand palm upwards and kissed it casually before releasing it. “Dark, six-foot-two, a remarkably good shot and lives at Gatcombe,” he enumerated, smiling up at her with narrowed, teasing eyes.

Her furious antagonism simmered down into interest. “You mean—Master Edward Worsley?”

“He will provide the horses,” he said negligently, gathering himself up from the window seat. “And if I said things which angered you it was because you are young and inexperienced, and acting without the advice of your father. Do you know how vastly anger becomes you, Mary?”

Suddenly Mary felt forlorn, and would have given almost anything for the comfort of her father’s presence. “It is the first time I have ever kept anything of importance from him,” she admitted. “Why did my aunt say what she did just now? Why must he not be with us, when you and Harry Firebrace and all of us run risks?”

“As a soldier’s daughter you should know.” But seeing how little she had thought about the matter, he stood looking down at her gravely, all his bantering recklessness gone. “If Harry or I get caught, probably the worst that will happen to us would be dismissal, imprisonment, or exile. Since we no longer hold commissions in the King’s army, we are civilians,” he explained. “But if your father were to be caught acting against orders, he would be shot.”

“Shot!” Mary’s lips formed the word, but no sound came. Her hands flew to her lips as though to stifle it unborn. Her eyes sought his in shocked terror. “You are trying to frighten me,” she accused, scarcely knowing what she said. “You are jealous. You do not want me in this!”

They could hear Mistress Wheeler’s step and the swish of her skirts coming back from the stair-head. Richard Osborne shrugged and picked up his hat, but before leaving he cupped Mary’s chin very gently in his hand. “I do not want you to get hurt,” he said.

The laundry casements stood open to let out the steam, and at a wooden tub stood Mary, her workaday brown dress bunched up over a gay quilted petticoat, washing the King’s body linen. At a table nearby, Libby, already clumsy with her pregnancy, was busy mixing the lye. The two of them were alone, for the laundry maids rose early and had finished the ordinary morning’s wash. At the other end of the long, low room shirts and smocks were soaking, packed in folds over sticks, in the huge buck tubs; while the woollens hung stretched out to dry between the hooks of the tall tenter posts.

Libby soaked and strained the wood ash saved from the fires, mixing it in careful proportions with a bowlful of boiled-down fat. To this, for its bleaching properties, she added some droppings scraped from the dovecote. But a small portion of the washing lye she kept apart in a smaller bowl, scenting it with rosemary and lavender, and shaping it into small balls for personal ablutions, as her mistress had taught her. Mistress Wheeler, like most careful housekeepers, usually made the soft soap herself, and liked to keep a good stock of it for giving as seasonable gifts to her friends or to any person from whom she sought favours; but all this week she had been kept in bed with a quinsy. And of late, out of consideration for her condition, Libby had been given some of the lighter tasks.

It was a peaceful hour of the morning which both girls enjoyed. The King’s linen was scarcely soiled and needed little rubbing, and the ironing of such fine garments was a delectable art, so Mary sang snatches of songs as she worked. “It seems like it was before they all came,” said Libby not very lucidly, admiring a little regiment of her soap balls marshalled in a scooped-out trough on the window ledge.

“The King came in November and to-morrow will be St. Valentine’s Day,” said Mary, marvelling how ten weeks could have slipped by so quickly and changed her life so completely.

“Day for lovers’ tokens, Mistress Mary. Reckon I be carrying
my
token under my apron, but I wager you get a fairing or zummat this year,” remarked Libby, with a sly grin.

“It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,”

carolled Mary, feigning not to hear her.

“Remember how you said you’d not give yourself to an overner?” persisted Libby.

“I’ve not given myself to anybody!” declared Mary, rubbing with unnecessary vigour at a royal shirt until her cheeks were as red as the
C.R.
embroidered upon it.

“The will to give goes half way towards it,” chuckled Libby. “What
is
that fancy song?”

“Some play-actor called Shakespeare wrote it,” Mary told her casually. “One of the courtiers from London is always singing it.”

“Mercy on us, who speak of the devil!” ejaculated Libby, as Harry Firebrace suddenly rounded the corner beneath the laundry window.

“I wasn’t speaking of anybody in particular,” fibbed Mary, wringing out the long-suffering shirt as though it were one of her father’s strong army jerkins.

The good-looking young Groom of the Bedchamber was dressed for riding and held a squirming spaniel pup by the scruff of its fat neck. “So here is where all the real work of the castle is done?” he observed, smiling upon both girls impartially—far too impartially, Mary felt. “This witless little brute of yours was courting sudden death by yapping round the heels of Hammond’s ferocious horse, Mary.”

“Oh, thank you for rescuing him!” Mary identified the small white creature, with its tail curled meekly up between its legs, as her favourite. “It is Pride of the Litter. He is beginning to get it into his head that he’s a grown dog and no longer needs Patters’ protection.”

“
I
need some more mutton fat for my lye,” giggled Libby, picking up a by-no-means-empty bowl and making for the kitchen.

Mary blessed her for going but could have clouted her for the significant giggle. “And while you are there, Libby, tell one of the scullions to bring me some more hot water,” she called after her, hoping that the double errand would detain her still longer.

“You were not able to collect the letter yesterday?” asked Firebrace anxiously, the moment the girl was out of earshot.

“I could not go down into Newport, much less meet Major Bosvile. Captain Rolph stopped me at the gate,” Mary told him, wishing they sometimes had time to speak about themselves.

“But I thought that you of the Governor’s household were free to come and go?”

“I reminded him that I always went once a week to visit my friends. But it was of no use.”

“Do you suppose that he—suspected?”

Mary had supposed that Rolph had other reasons but she stirred the suds in her cooling tub absently while considering the matter. “It is odd that it should happen immediately after the tailor and the King’s barber have been sent away.”

“And poor Cresset, of all people!”

“Why did the Governor dismiss them?”

Firebrace stepped back a pace or two, looking this way and that, to make sure they were still unobserved. “He must have got wind of their crazy plot, even though they had no time to do anything. With Cresset, it could have been something to do with the code, I suppose. We shall miss Cresset. He was a useful man. I am going with Hammond to Cowes now to meet the new Treasurer appointed in his place. Lee, his name is. Dyed in the wool Cromwellian, probably.” He tried to speak lightly, but could not hide his anxiety. “I wish I knew what happened. There must have been a leakage somewhere.”

The thoughts of both of them turned back to the warm comradery of the housekeeper’s firelit room. “Could it be Captain Titus?” Mary brought herself to suggest.

“No, I am sure not. He often urges caution because of his damnable position as Conservator. But I trust him.”

“And you trust—Richard Osborne, I suppose? Even when he is being boon companion to Rolph so successfully?”

Firebrace only laughed, so certain was he of his friend’s integrity. She ached to tell him that Osborne had seemed to be less generous about himself, but did not dare. And her reticence was rewarded. For the first time Firebrace trusted her with his inmost doubts. “The King himself is sometimes—indiscreet—in his correspondence.”

“Oh, but surely he would not endanger men who risk so much for him!” cried Mary.

“No, no, of course not,” Firebrace hastened to assure her, though without vast conviction. “It is only that he is inclined to trust too many people—people who were trustworthy enough, perhaps, so long as his fortunes stood high.”

It was the first time Mary had ever heard him utter a breath of criticism of his master, and it seemed incredible that the man in whose interests they all worked should not guard his tongue and pen the most; but Firebrace had been Charles’s page and should know. “Will it matter very much that I was not able to bring the letters?” she asked.

“Bosvile will probably guess what has happened and contrive to send a messenger. I will leave you this piece of gold for him in case you may need it.” He laid it on the window ledge because her hands were wet. “Better stay about so that he may the more easily find you.”

“Here is as good a place as any other—where I can see anyone arriving at the gate. Were the letters about something very important this time?”

It made Mary very proud that he did not hesitate to tell her. “It is young James of York his Majesty is so anxious to hear from. He has been urging him to get out of the country.”

“In that last letter I took? ”

“Yes.”

“Is the Duke in danger?”

“I do not think so. It is rather that Parliament and the Army seem to be at loggerheads, and one party or the other plans to strengthen its position by making the lad King and ruling the country from behind a puppet throne.”

Mary lifted the King’s lace nightcap from the water and stretched it over its round wooden mould to dry. It gave her time to decide whether to prod Firebrace’s interest in her by telling him about Edmund Rolph’s, and to hope that he would mind. “Captain Rolph may not have suspected anything,” she said. “You see, he made some pretext yesterday to draw me into the constable’s room—to write me a pass or something—and began to paw me. I think he would have let me go down into Newport—at a price.”

Firebrace let the wriggling puppy slip from his arms and swung round, every whit as angry as she had hoped. “The hypocritical swine!” he exclaimed, all his decent manhood up in arms. “It passes my comprehension how Osborne can maintain even the necessary semblance of friendliness towards him.” Remorsefully, he came close to the window and covered her wet hands with his own. “Dick Osborne was right. We ought not to have used you—”

“
Used
me?” Mary’s lovely amber eyes glared at him as angrily as a cat’s, and she jerked her hands away. But as usual his smile caressed her into forgiveness. “Let you risk acting as messenger,” he corrected himself penitently.

“We are all in this together. We all take risks,” she said, sullenly.

“But there is always one added risk for a girl.”

She came back to him, mollified, and leaned towards him through the open casement. After all, it was she who had provoked him to speak heedlessly. “Listen, Harry,” she said softly. “These past few weeks have been the most wonderful in my life. Oh, I know it is heartless of me to say it, with all the cruel anxiety they have meant to the King, and to you. But there is a reality—a closer sharing—as though life were lit up. You must not think of listening to Richard Osborne. If anything were to exclude me now I—I don’t know what I should do.”

Firebrace was deeply touched. He bent his burnished head and brushed his lips against her clinging fingers. “It has been all that you say,” he agreed, “though sometimes when I stop to think what I am doing I feel aged with responsibility. But sometime, sweet, it will have to end. God knows I pray it will, and soon—when the King really gets safely away from his enemies.”

“But that does not mean that our lives will end,” she reminded him with a warm flurry of laughter. “That we must separate—” It was as near an avowal of love as a girl of her sensitivity could make. Her fingers clung to his, her eyes and lips invited him. Slowly, as though drawn against his will, Firebrace kissed her and reluctantly drew away. For Mary the whole promise of love’s sweetness and surrender was held in those moments, to be kept sacred through the years.

They smiled at each other in a kind of surprised, wordless liking; only to be drawn back from the brink of ecstasy by approaching footsteps and voices. “Libby and the man with the hot water,” announced Firebrace flatly. Why must all their best moments together be interrupted, wondered Mary, and how can he accept it with such ease and common sense?

“I find I shall not need the water now. Set it down for the maids when they come back,” she bade the scullion. As the man hurried back to his pots a horse whinnied impatiently in the courtyard and both girls’ accustomed ears recognized the distant clatter of sentries springing to attention outside the officers’ quarters. “The Governor,” warned Libby, going back to her soap-making. And when Firebrace had hurried away to join him and the two of them, followed by a couple of troopers, had ridden out through the archway, Mary stood idly staring out of the laundry window. Pride of the Litter, crazy with new-found liberty and enticed by the whistles of the men clustered about the guardroom, streaked across to them and jumped to their rough play in a frenzy of canine excitement. At any other time his absurd antics would have enchanted her. But her mind registered little of the scene. She was living over again the moments of her lover’s embrace. Brief as they were, all her girlhood had been waiting for them, leading up to them. And surely she might think of him as her lover now, since he had so ardently kissed her. She had had her St. Valentine’s token indeed. She smiled almost maternally over his devotion to the Stuart. She could afford to now. After the King’s escape they two would have all the time in the world to settle their own affairs. Quite understandably, Firebrace must put her and their dawning love second for a time. She wished that she had talked to her father about it, but the two matters were somehow so inextricably mixed and of some things she must not speak. Silas Floyd would be the first, surely, to chide her for wanting to put her womanish desires before the safety of the King. As ever, the thought of the plans in which she had become involved sobered and amazed her. “The whole island talked about Frances Trattle greeting his Majesty with the red November rose,” she thought, “and here am I, Mary Floyd the Sergeant’s daughter, smuggling in secret letters about affairs of State, and having a number in the King’s code which may even be recorded in history!”

“Shall I mix rose water in this next working of soap?” asked Libby. “They do say the King dotes on their perfume.”

“If you like,” agreed Mary, rousing herself to put away her work. Soon the other maids would be back to push the weighted rollers back and forth across the ordinary household sheets; but she must leave the King’s linen until it was just damp enough for expert laundering. Then she would fill the little pan with live red coals and slide it into the iron for his shirts, heat the goffering tongs for the frilled rosettes on his shoes and the round knobbed pressers for his lace cravat and nightcap. Until then she would stay within sight of the gatehouse in case Major Bosvile contrived to send a messenger. It would be tedious, particularly as she had no idea what kind of person to look out for.

But she did not have long to wait.

“Here comes Master Newland’s cart with the corn,” announced Libby. “Lord, how quickly Saturday mornings come round!”

Even when the great iron-studded oak doors stood wide, the familiar creaking cart piled high with sacks could only just pass through. It lurched to a standstill just inside while the driver stopped to exchange pleasantries with the soldiers. While the small spaniel barked at it importantly, and the day’s news was being exchanged, the driver’s mate slid down from the tail of the cart. Instead of staying to help unload the sacks he began to make straight for the residential part of the castle. He was a horsy-looking individual with a tattered hat perched at the back of a tousled, flaming-red head and a long straw hanging from his mouth. Mary recognized him with relief as Edward Trattle’s ostler, and stood in the open doorway where he must see her. No opportunity could be better, she thought, with the men all preoccupied and no one near her but Libby, who would only suppose that friends in Newport had taken the opportunity to send her some message.