The King's General (34 page)

This, said Richard grimly when he told me, could mean but one thing. They wanted to be near Falmouth, so that when the crisis came the Prince of Wales and the leaders of the council could take ship to France. It was then I asked him bluntly what he wished to do.

"Hold a line," he answered, "from the Bristol Channel to the Tamar and keep Cornwall for the prince. It can be done. There is no other answer."

"And His Majesty?"

Richard did not answer for a moment. He was standing, I remember well, with his back turned to the blazing log fire and his hands behind his back. He had grown more worn and lined during the past few months, the result of the endless anxieties that pressed upon him, and the silver streak that ran through his auburn locks had broadened above his brow. The raw November weather nipped his wounded leg, and I guessed, with my experience, what he must suffer.

"There is no hope for His Majesty," he said at length, "unless he can come to some agreement with the Scots and raise an army from them. If he fails, his cause is doomed."

'Forty-three, '44, '45, and, approaching us, '46. For more than three years men had fought and suffered and died for that proud, stiff little man and his rigid principles, and I thought of the picture that had hung in the dining chamber at Menabilly, which had afterwards been torn and trampled by the rebels. Would his end be as inglorious as the fate that befell his picture? Everything seemed doubtful, suddenly, and grim and hopeless.

"Richard," I said, and he caught the inflection in my voice and came beside me.

"Would you, too," I asked, "leave the sinking ship?"

"Not," he said, "if there is any chance of holding Cornwall for the prince."

"But if the prince should sail for France," I persisted, "and the whole of Cornwall be ^overrun--what then?"

"I would follow him," he answered, "and raise a French army of fifty thousand men and land again in Cornwall."

He came and knelt beside me, and I held his face between my hands.

"We have been happy in our strange way, you and I," I said.

"My camp follower"--he smiled--"my trailer of the drum."

"You know that I am given up as lost to all perdition by good persons," I said. "My family have cast me off and do not speak of me. Even my dear Robin is ashamed of his sister. I had a letter from him this very morning. He is serving with Sir John Digby Before Plymouth. He implores me to leave you and return to the Rashleighs at Menabilly."

"Do you want to go?"

"No. Not if you still need me."

'I shall always need you .I shall never part with you again. But if Fairfax comes You would be safer in Menabilly than in Launceston."

"That is what was said to me last time, and you know what happened."

"Yes, you suffered for four weeks, and the experience made a woman of you."

He looked down at me in his cruel, mocking way, and I remember how he had never thanked me yet for succouring his son.

"Next time it might be for four years," I said, "and I think I would be white-haired at the end of it."

"I shall take you with me if I lose my battle," he said. "When the crisis comes and Fairfax crosses the Tamar I will send you and Matty to Menabilly. If we win the day, so far so good. If we lose and I know the cause is lost, then I will come riding to you at your Rashleighs', and we will get a fishing boat from Polkerris and sail across the Channel to Saint-Malo and find Dick."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes, sweetheart, I promise."

And when he had reassured me and held me close I was something comforted, yet always, nagging at my mind, was the reminder that I was not only a woman but a cripple and would make a sorry burden to a fugitive. The next day the prince's council summoned him to Truro and asked him there, before the whole assembly, what advice he could give them for the defence of Cornwall against the enemy and how the safety of the Prince of Wales could be best assured.

He did not answer at once, but the next day, in his lodging, he composed a letter to the Secretary-at-War and gave full details of the plan, so far only breathed to me in confidence, of what he believed imperative to be done. He showed me the draft of it on his return, and much of what he proposed filled me with misgiving, not because of its impracticability, but because the kernel of it was so likely to be misconstrued. He proposed, in short, to make a treaty with the Parliament, by which Cornwall would become separate from the remainder of the country and be ruled by the Prince of Wales, as Duke of the Duchy. The duchy would contain its own army, its own fortifications, and control its own shipping. In return the Cornish would give a guarantee not to attack the forces of the Parliament. Thus gaining a respite, the people of Cornwall, and especially the Western army, would become so strong that in the space of a year or more they would be in ripe condition to give once more effective aid unto His Majesty.

(This last, it may be realised, was not to be one of the clauses in the treaty.)

Failing an agreement with Parliament, then Richard advised that a line be held from Barnstaple to the English Channel and ditches dug from the north coast to the Tamar, so that the whole of Cornwall became virtually an island. On this riverbank would be the first line of defence, and all the bridges would be destroyed. This line, he averred, could be held for an indefinite period and any attempt at an invasion be immediately repulsed. When he had finished his report and sent it to the council he returned to me at Werrington to await an answer. Five days, a week, and no reply. And then at last a cold message from the Chancellor and the Secretary-at-War, to say that his plan had been considered but had not found approval. The prince's council would thus consider other measures and acquaint Sir Richard Grenvile when his services would be required.

"So," said Richard, throwing the letter onto my lap, "a smack in the eye for Grenvile and a warning not to rise above his station. The council prefer to lose the war in their own fashion. Let them do so. Time is getting short, and if I judge Fairfax rightly, neither snow nor hail nor frost will hamper him in Devon. It would be wise, my Honor, if you sent word of warning to Mary Rashleigh and told her that you would spend Christmas with her."

The sands were running out. I could tell it by his easy manner, his shrugging of his shoulders.

"And you?" I said with that old sick twist of foreboding in my heart.

"I will come later," he said, "and we will see the new year in together in that room above the gatehouse."

And so on the third morning of December I set forth again, after fifteen months, for; my brother-in-law's house of Menabilly.

25

My second coming was very different from my first. Then it had been spring, with the golden gorse in bloom and young John Rashleigh coming to meet me on the highway before the park. War had not touched the neighbourhood, and in the park were cattle grazing and flocks of sheep with their young lambs and the last of the blossoms falling from the fruit trees in the orchards.

Now it was December, a biting wind cutting across the hills and valleys, and no young laughing cavalier came out to greet me. As we turned in at the park gates I saw at once that the walls were still tumbled and had not been repaired since the destruction wrought there by the rebels. Where the acres dipped to the sea above Polkerris a labourer with a team of oxen ploughed a single narrow enclosure, but about it to east and west the land was left uncultivated. Where should be rich brown ploughland was left to thistle. A few lean cattle grazed within the park, and even now, after a full year or more had come and gone, I noticed the great bare patches of grassland where the rebel tents had stood, and the blackened roots of the trees they had felled for firewood. As we climbed the hill towards the house I would see the reassuring curl of smoke rise from the chimneys and could hear the barking of the stable dogs, and I wondered, with a strange feeling of sadness and regret, whether I should be as welcome now as I had been fifteen months before. Once again my litter passed into the outer court and, glancing up at my old apartment in the gatehouse, I saw that it was shuttered and untenanted, even as the barred room beside it, and that the whole west wing wore the same forlorn appearance. Mary had warned me in her letter that only the eastern portion of the house had as yet been put in order, and they were living in some half a dozen rooms, for which they had found hangings and the bare necessities of furniture. Once more into the inner court, with a glance upward at the belfry and the tall weather vane, and then--reminiscent of my former visit--came my sister Mary out upon the steps, and I noticed with a shock that her hair had gone quite white. Yet she greeted me with her same grave smile and gentle kiss, and I was taken straightway to the gallery, where I found my dear Alice strung about as always with her mob of babies, and the newest of the brood, just turned twelve months, clutching at her knee in her first steps. This was now all our party. The Sawles had returned to Penrice and the Sparkes to Devon, and my goddaughter Joan, with John and the children, were living in the Rashleigh town house at Fowey. My brother-in law, it seemed, was somewhere about the grounds, and at once, as they plied me with refreshment, I had to hear all the news of the past year, of how Jonathan had not yet received one penny piece from the Crown to help him in the restoration of his property, and whatever had been done he had done himself, with the aid of his servants and tenants.

"Cornwall is become totally impoverished," said my sister sadly, "and everyone dissatisfied. The harvest of this summer could not make up for all we lost last year, and each man with an estate to foster said the same. Unless the war ends swiftly we shall all be ruined."

"It may end swiftly," I answered, "but not as you would wish it."

I saw Mary glance at Alice, and Alice made as though to say something and then desisted. And I realised that as yet no mention had been made of Richard, my relationship to him being something that the Rashleighs possibly preferred should be Snored. I had not been questioned once about the past twelve months.

"They say, who know about these things" said Mary, "that His Majesty is very hopeful and will soon send an army to the West to help us drive Fairfax out of Devon."

"His Majesty is too preoccupied in keeping his own troops together in the midlands,"

I answered, "to concern himself about the West."

"You do not think," said Alice anxiously, "that Cornwall is likely to suffer invasion once again?"

"I do not see how we can avoid it."

"But--we have plenty of troops, have we not?" said Mary, still shying from mention of their general. "I know we have been taxed hard enough to provide for them."

"Troops without boots or stockings make poor fighters," I said, "especially if they have no powder for their muskets."

"Jonathan says everything has been mismanaged," said Mary. "There is no supreme authority in the West to take command. The prince's council say one thing--the commanders say another. I, for my part, understand nothing of it. I only wish it were all over."

I could tell from their expressions, even Alice's, usually so fair and generous, that Sir Richard Grenvile had been as badly blamed at Menabilly as elsewhere for his highhanded ways and indiscretions, and that unless I broached his name now, upon the instant, there would be an uneasy silence on the subject for the whole duration of my visit. Not one of them would take the first step, and there would be an awkward barrier between us all, making for discomfort.

"Perhaps," I said, "having dwelt with Richard Grenvile for the past eight months, ever since he was wounded, I am prejudiced in his favour. I know he has many faults, but he is the best soldier that we have in the whole of His Majesty's Army. The prince's council would do well to listen to his advice on military matters, if on nothing else."

They neither of them said anything for a moment, and then Alice, colouring a little, said, "Peter is with your brother Robin, you know, under Sir John Digby, before Plymouth. He told us, when he was last here, that Sir Richard constantly sent orders to Sir John which he had no right to do."

"What sort of orders, good or bad?" I asked.

"I hardly think the orders themselves were points of dispute," said Alice; "they were possibly quite necessary. But the very fact that he gave them to Sir John, who is not subordinate, caused irritation."

At this juncture my brother-in-law came to the gallery and the discussion broke, but I wondered, with a heavy heart, how many friends were now left to my Richard, who had at first sworn fealty to his leadership.

After I had been at Menabilly a few days my brother-in-law himself put the case more bluntly. There was no discreet avoidance, on his part, of Richard's name. He asked me straight out if he had recovered of his wound, as he had heard report from Truro that on the last visit to the council the general looked far from well and very tired.

"I think he is tired," I said, "and unwell. And the present situation gives him little cause for confidence or good spirits."

"He has done himself irreparable harm here in Cornwall," said my brother-in-law, "by commanding assistance rather than requesting it."

"Hard times require hard measures," I said. "It is no moment to go cap in hand for money to pay troops, when the enemy is in the next county."

"He would have won far better response had he gone about his business with courtesy and an understanding of the general poverty of all of us. The whole duchy would have rallied to his side had he but half the understanding that was his brother.

Bevil's." And to this I could give no answer, for I knew it to be true.

The weather was cold and dreary, and I spent much of my time within my chamber, which was the same that Gartred had been given fifteen months before. It had suffered little in the general damage, for which, I suppose, thanks had to be rendered to her, and was a pleasant room with one window to the gardens, still shorn of their glory, the I new grass seeds that had been sown very clipped yet and thin, and two windows to the south, from where I could see the causeway sloping to rising ground and the view upon the bay.