Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘“Fiona! ‘I’ll wait for thee, m’ darling—I’ll wait for thee.”’

  Orsen closed the book and stood up. ‘The whole thing is clear now. It may be a case of re-incarnation or merely the McAin strain in Fiona’s blood coupled with her given name. The restless spirit of Lord Ninan still waits for his love to join him. This world is a misty, timeless place to earth-bound spirits and that of Lord Ninan cannot distinguish between our Fiona and the Fiona who lived three hundred years ago; but it has become vaguely aware of her presence in the neighbourhood and is using all the power it can command to draw her to it.’

  ‘Then her father must be told at once,’ Bruce said quickly, ‘and arrangements made for her to leave Scotland for good tomorrow.’

  Neils nodded. ‘Yes. It is she who is haunted; not the Castle or her room. That is why no manifestation occurs when she is not present. She must be got away as soon as possible, and, in the meantime it’s most important that she should not be allowed to go anywhere near the old ruin. The gravest possible danger awaits her there. If she were drawn to the place it’s a virtual certainty that her mental resistance would be overcome and she’d feel herself compelled to throw herself down that well.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bruce. ‘I’ll go and tell her that you’ve found the root of the trouble and warn her not to leave the house.’ He turned abruptly as Clyde came into the room, saying with a worried look:

  ‘Bruce, I’m anxious about Fiona. The servants tell me she went out half an hour ago. She didn’t even take a coat and it gets damp at this time of night. I wish you’d go and …’

  Before he had time to complete his sentence Bruce leaped for the door and they heard his footsteps thunder across the hall.

  Clyde had glimpsed the look of horror in Bruce’s eyes and now he saw the strained expression on Orsen’s face.

  ‘What’s this,’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We can only pray,’ Orsen said quietly. ‘Bruce can run faster than we can. Please God he will be in time.’

  Up the rough track with the queer grey sky overhead and the lone moors hunched and darkening on either side, Bruce ran like a man possessed. A mist had risen off the sea; rags and rafes of it danced on the air. Here and there it came down solidly. He stumbled and fell over a tuft of heather. And now the mist came more shrouding and more white. A curlew sobbed its cry somewhere in the silence, and the trees at the roadside reared their great arms heavenwards in mockery.

  He ran on, his breath coming in short gasps, knowing nothing but the blind necessity to be in time. As he topped the rise above the old castle, something told him he was too late. Down into the eerie mist he plunged and instantly felt a chill, as if a cold hand grasped his throat. He fell again, staggered to his feet, and ran on desperately across the turf. His footsteps dragged as though he were wading through a bog. A cold whiteness was all about him and with its physical desolation there bore upon his brain another darkness—a sense of evil, too sickening to be borne. He was crouched and groping. He muttered a prayer that died in his throat. Out of the gloom the stones reared, spectral and forbidding. ‘Fiona!’ he shouted. ‘Fiona!’

  The swathes of fog beat at his face. ‘Fiona!’ he called again. ‘For God’s sake answer.’

  Cold, he thought suddenly. Cold—cold—cold. A faint wind whispered through the ruins. He passed his hand across his forehead. He did not know what thoughts they were which seized his brain and cramped it until no feeling came to him but one of intense fear. The wind whispered louder. Now he was up again and running forward. The evil mist was throttling him, but ahead he saw the figure of a girl—a girl who stayed at the edge of a dark, yawning pit. The mist had become a solid wall blocking his way; the wind rose to a shrill scream. He shut his eyes.

  ‘Oh, Lord God, help me because’—strangely inspired the words came to his lips—‘because there is none other that fighteth for us but only Thou, Oh God.’ Then the mist was rent as though two great hands had torn it asunder and he was at Fiona’s side, dragging her back. He felt her body fall limply against him; and now where the dark pit had gaped there was only the shallow, rockfilled ruin of an old well.

  Lifting his head he saw that the mist had gone. Cool and grey under the evening sky lay the stones of old Castle Stuart. He stood there for a time holding Fiona in his arms. She stirred and smiled at him:

  ‘What happened, Bruce? … Why are we here? … He called me … Why did he call me so urgently? … Why did he want me?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Did you send him away?’ she asked faintly. ‘Thank you, Bruce.’

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we should thank Neils Orsen.’

  STORY VII

  Old Rowley. A Very Private Life of Charles II was, I think, one of the brighter inspirations of my first year as a writer. I had already completed two thrillers and a number of short stories and, although none of these had so far been accepted for publication, I was optimistically wondering what to try my hand at next when the first acquaintance I ever made in the publishing world—Bertie van Thai—came to dine.

  At that time Bertie was manager to Messrs. Peter Davies, who were in the process of publishing a most excellent series of short biographies at 5s. a volume. With touching faith Bertie suggested that I was just the man to do a volume for this series.

  Had they been weighty, academic tomes crammed with erudition and supported by exhaustive bibliographies I should never have had the temerity to fall for the suggestion, but, since they were just brief readable accounts of famous historical characters without any ‘copious notes’ or other garnishings, I swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

  Charles II has always been one of my heroes, so I declared there and then that I would gladly write a life of England’s most maligned, but most brilliant and attractive, king Bertie hastened to cover himself by saying that, of course, he could not guarantee its acceptance, but that his firm would be delighted to give it their consideration when completed.

  Some two months later I delivered the manuscript. By that time I’d received the good news that Messrs. Hutchinson had accepted my thriller, The Forbidden Territory, and were to publish it in January. There were still three months to go, and it occurred to me that it would be an excellent thing if Peter Davies’s took Old Rowley and brought it out on the same day as the Hutchinson-published novel. Surely, for an entirely unknown writer to make his debut with a thriller and a biography simultaneously would be unique and arouse far more interest in the literary world than either book could hope to do if published separately.

  But alas! for these rosy dreams of taking critics and book-lovers by storm. Peter Davies’s reader reported well on the book, but for commercial reasons it was out of the question for them to accept it for their series. These reasons were that each book had been commissioned from an already famous author, and it was upon this that they depended mainly for their sales. Suddenly to include a volume by an entirely unknown writer was quite impossible.

  Naturally, I was disappointed at the time, but later on I had cause to be glad about this decision. Having published two of my thrillers Hutchinson’s agreed not only to take Old Rowley, but to commission that great artist, Frank C. Papé, to do eight original engravings as illustrations. Thus, when it appeared in time for Christmas 1933, my account of the adventures of this wise, courageous, gentle king came to the public in a far more attractive form than would have been possible had I succeeded in getting it taken a year earlier.

  Some months later it occurred to me that Chapters II and III of the book would provide the most excellent background for an original historical film. In consequence I submitted the following introduction, basic material, and draft treatment. Unfortunately, costume pieces are always difficult to place owing to the expense of production, so I failed to interest any of my film friends in this project; but I do not yet despair of one day seeing this epic of English history as a movie.

  * * * * *

  Innumerable romances
and a considerable number of plays have been written about Charles II, and to the best of my belief every one of these has been based upon that portion of the King’s life which earned him the nickname of ‘The Merry Monarch’.

  With certain variations of plot he is always depicted as a middle-aged or elderly roué, and the action of the story takes place at the Court of Whitehall as portrayed in Pepys’s Diary. Nell Gwynn is generally the heroine of the piece, and the Great Fire of London or the Plague utilised for dramatic interest—despite the fact that at the date of the Plague Nell was still only fifteen and had not yet met the King, while the Duchess of Portsmouth, who is usually given the role of the hated rival, was still a girl at the Court of France.

  A new treatment of the old subject might well prove popular since the Restoration Court gives an excellent background for romance, yet I submit that THE GREAT STORY of Charles’s life has never been dramatised at all, and offers a theme, unsurpassed for human interest and thrilling adventure, in the whole of English history.

  In brief it runs as follows:

  At the age of nineteen, already a man, old beyond his years from the bitter experience of the Civil Wars, Charles, with a few loyal ships, was hovering in the Channel. There he received the news of his father’s execution by the Puritans, and thus became in theory King of England, yet after eight years’ fighting the Royalist cause was in a hopeless state, and it looked unlikely that he would ever come to wear the crown.

  With a few loyal followers, the principal of whom were George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; Lord Wilmot; Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon; the Duke of Ormond, and Lord Taaffe, Charles retired to The Hague and there, a few months later, he received an invitation to Scotland.

  In Scotland, with amazing tact and diplomacy, he manoeuvred the Covenanters into reorganising the Scottish Army for the purpose of invading England, gathered together as many of the Cavaliers as he was able and, in September 1651, marched south.

  He was met by Cromwell at Worcester, and there, owing largely to the fact that 3,000 Scottish cavalry refrained from participating in the battle, heavily defeated. The defeat speedily becoming a rout, the King was forced to fly for his life and, for forty-three days and nights, he was chased through the length and breath of England.

  Mud-stained and weary, his curls shorn off, disguised in tattered garments and a greasy old steeple hat, snatching a few hours’ sleep under hedgerows, in trees and barns and priest-holes, posing as a groom and eating with the servants in the kitchens of wayside inns, or those of houses in which loyal friends sheltered him but dared not give away the secret of his identity—for six whole weeks he was hunted like a hare—through Worcester, Shropshire, Gloucestershire, down to Bristol, then back through Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Sussex, with a price upon his head, and Cromwell’s Ironsides never more than an hour or so behind him.

  I submit that this ‘Flight of the King’ is the greatest epic of escape in history and cannot be rivalled for human interest, excitement, adventure, or romance by the wildest flights of fancy achieved by the greatest of fiction writers—and that as the main feature of a film it could be magnificently dramatised.

  Here follows the passage from my own book, Old Rowley, which describes this almost incredible series of adventures.

  The Fugitive King

  CHAPTER II

  The Scots had proclaimed him King at Edinburgh within a week of his father’s death, but Argyll and the Covenanters still controlled the country. A premature attempt by the Scottish Cavaliers to regain Scotland for the King was defeated in the following year, and their great leader, the gallant Montrose, having sought shelter with the Macleod of Assynt, was sold by him and paraded through the streets of Edinburgh on May 21st, 1650, on his way to execution.

  The Covenanters, however, were greatly disappointed in the English Parliament. The victorious Commons were beginning to dispute among themselves, and the old Industrialist party, now called ‘Independents’, whose ranks contained most of the Army Commanders, who had fought in the late war, were definitely gaining the upper hand. It occurred to the Covenanters that if they could gain possession of the person of Charles, they might yet be able to assist their allies the Zealots to overthrow the ‘Independents’, and force their stricter morality on the land.

  A deputation of Scottish Commissioners therefore arrived at The Hague with an invitation for the King to place himself in their hands, and were received with becoming gravity. The bottles of Rhenish and Schnapps were pushed in the cupboard, Lucy was told that she must get herself a dress with a higher neck, and the collection of scalliwags, opportunists, and serious loyalists who composed the Court, proceeded to listen to a number of sermons of unusual length.

  The fact that the Covenanters had just killed his devoted servant Montrose, together with their previous conduct, naturally made Charles extremely sceptical of their new-found loyalty, and the conditions which they proposed were harsh in the extreme. He knew, too, that they only wished to use him for their own ends, but, after having listened to much conflicting advice from his council, he decided to take a chance on being able to use them for his.

  It may well be that the words of his grandfather, Henry IV of France, recurred to him at that time, for was it not the wily Bernais who in a very similar situation decided to pacify his rebellious subjects once and for all by declaring, ‘Ah, well—Paris is worth a mass.’

  In June 1650, therefore, Charles arrived in Scotland, ostensibly, at all events, a meek and sober member of the Kirk. Knowing, as he must have done, the completely alien nature of this dour folk to the natural gaiety of his twenty years, the fact that he ever went on this adventure shows his determination to leave no chance untried which might regain his Crown.

  Had he ever been brought to trial for the undoubted immorality of his later years, no fair-minded jury could have failed to make a recommendation to mercy, in consideration of that incredible time which he spent in Scotland. Indeed, had he actually served a sentence of imprisonment his situation could hardly have been worse, for his life was ordered as strictly as that of any Benedictine monk. The long-faced elders would not even allow him to walk abroad on the Sabbath, spies were set about his person to report the least attempt at merriment or joke—cards and dancing were forbidden and fast-days observed with such rigour that the poor young man was compelled to listen to no less than six sermons in a single day. Yet such was his tact and patience, that apart from one outbreak, he bore it all with apparent equanimity, while preparing in secret his principal design.

  While the Covenanters connived at Buckingham’s dissolute course of life because he agreed to advise the King to rely wholly upon their guidance, and sent deputations to Charles, to reprove him, and request that he ‘at least close the window,’ when he was found in converse with a wench, the King was steadily gaining adherents among the Moderates by his personal charm, and succeeded in getting them to crown him at Scone in January 1651. He now felt himself strong enough to dispense with the treacherous Argyll, and proceeded to manoeuvre the Scottish Army into some semblance of activity.

  During the previous summer, the Covenanters had so feared Charles’s popularity with the Army that they had refused to allow him to join it when Cromwell marched north against them. The Lord Protector had gained a sweeping victory at Dunbar in September, and the fact that the King had not been defeated in person was now all to the good.

  Unfortunately for Charles, the Navy, which his father had been largely instrumental in bringing to such a high standard for the times, was now turned against him, and, holding the seas under the gallant Blake, prevented friends and assistance reaching him from abroad. His policy of peaceful penetration, however, proved equal to the task of reconciling the various factions among the Scots, and at the head of considerable forces, he invaded England in the late summer of 1651.

  This was the one attempt made by Charles to regain his throne by force of arms, and it might well have succeeded had he had with him the loy
al Highlanders of Montrose. Instead, he was saddled with dour old Leslie, who, when the King inquired why he looked so gloomy at an inspection of the troops, replied that, gallant as the Army might appear, he knew it well, and was certain that it would not fight.

  The King marched south to Worcester, and there gave battle to the Parliamentary troops. Charles showed great personal courage, leading the first charge of the Cavaliers with such impetuous gallantry that even Cromwell’s veteran Ironsides were temporarily broken. He had two horses shot under him and was one of the last to leave the field, refusing to retire until, after four hours of strenuous engagement, he found his troops were being scattered in all directions.

  He then fell back upon the city of Worcester and with calm courage endeavoured to rally his forces, but the Cromwellians entering the town in great numbers, it became obvious that any attempt to convert the rout into an orderly retreat must prove hopeless.

  As usual, the counsels of his principal supporters were divided. The greater number were for joining Leslie, who, true to his own prophecy, had only played the part of looker-on, and therefore had been able to withdraw his 3,000 cavalry in good order. But at all times of real crisis Charles was very capable of making up his own mind, and he had had enough of the Covenanters to last him a lifetime. His principal embarrassment was the number of people he had with him, for, as he afterwards said, ‘I began to think of the best way of saving myself, and though I could not get them to stand with me against the enemy, I could not get rid of them now I had a mind to it. Eventually, however, having persuaded the majority of his companions to seek their own safety and leave him to seek his as best he might, he took the road to Kidderminster, with Buckingham, Derby, Lauderdale, Wilmot, and others of his immediate following, numbering some sixty persons in all.