“You say, Madam, that Monday is the best day for us to meet?” the swarthy little tailor was saying.
“Because it is Court day,” confirmed Druscilla Wheeler.
“The Governor has to spend most of it trying cases down in the Court Room—millers who have overcharged for grinding people’s corn or men caught plundering a wreck,” explained Mary, who knew that the little man had only recently come across from London with Cromwell’s permission to make the King a generous supply of new clothes.
“Even now, although it is almost dark, they are still coming in,” added Titus, holding back a corner of the heavy curtain and peering out. “Judging by the number of lanterns I can see bobbing about, Hammond should be kept down there safely until supper time.”
“And what about Busybody Rolph?” asked Dowcett.
“Last time I saw him he was in the officers’ quarters talking to Dick Osborne,” said Firebrace, with a hint of amused satisfaction in his voice.
Mary looked at him in puzzled surprise. “They are always together nowadays, thick as thieves,” she said. “I had supposed Master Osborne was your friend.”
“My invaluable friend! ” replied Firebrace. “Keeping the gallant Captain of the Guard occupied and no doubt learning things at the same time.”
“What sort of things?” asked Mary, feeling that he was making fun of her.
“Oh, how best to wheedle a pass to go outside the gates, and when and where normally humane men of the original garrison are likely to be on guard,” replied Firebrace airily.
“And Rolph is like to be learning a variety of things too, if I know Osborne!” chuckled Francis Cresset. “How to pick a wench, for instance—saving your presence, Mistress Wheeler—and how not to pick his teeth at table.”
“It is odd how these self-righteous, jumped-up Puritans secretly hanker after the very things they affect to despise,” agreed Druscilla Wheeler contemptuously. “Master Osborne’s good birth and wild reputation with women make even easier bait in that direction than we dared to hope. And the impressive fact that his uncle is Deputy Governor of Guernsey.”
Mary was surprised at the reference to Osborne’s reputation, but from her lowly stool she looked up at her aunt admiringly. Although older than all of them Druscilla Wheeler had, without fuss or Royalist protestations, entered into their scheme with the same matter-of-fact efficiency that she brought to bear upon her extra household burdens. Several of them smiled at her incongruous duplicity; but their time was precious, and while Titus kept watch from time to time from either window, they came abruptly to the matters for which they were met.
“For the passing of the King’s private correspondence Witherings, the newly appointed postmaster, can by no means be trusted,” announced Cresset, who had sounded him while arranging for the forwarding of financial accounts to Parliament. “Did Hammond appoint him purposely in place of some honest island fellow, Madam?”
“We never had a postmaster before,” his hostess told him. “The few letters we wrote before you all came were taken across by the coney man who sells our rabbits in the mainland markets.”
“How exquisitely casual!” laughed Firebrace. “But mercifully we have other means now. Before coming over here I made sure of two trusty messengers between Southampton and London and so far every letter in or out has arrived safely.”
“And Bosvile is often in Newport in some fantastic disguise or other. Friend Trattle always knows where to find him,” said Cresset.
“And our Mary here is invaluable, with letters from half the Stuart family neatly folded in the King’s clean linen!” declared Dowcett, drawing her back in friendly fashion so that she leaned against his knee.
“In code, I hope!” put in Titus anxiously.
“His Majesty has been using one for months, and since figures are my metier I have been helping him to keep it up to date,” Cresset assured him. “And besides the code numbers for ordinary words, all those whom he corresponds with—his family, his friends in Scotland, even we here who are prepared to help him escape—are known by letters of the alphabet. Did you know, Mary, that you are called ‘B’ in the King of England’s code?”
“And sometimes referred to as ‘asparagus’ or ‘artichokes’,” teased Dowcett, noting how she blushed with pleasure. “You would laugh to hear our conversation at dinner, all of the King’s devising, and held quite openly under the Governor’s very nose. ‘An it please your Majesty I have been able to get some asparagus from London,’ I say, as a careful Clerk of the Kitchen should. Which means that I have passed a packet of his letters on to you. And if I should add ‘Knowing how your Majesty dotes on them, I have also ordered some artichokes,’ then he understands that you have been able to pass them on to Major Bosvile, and looks inordinately pleased.”
“Why, I did not know that he so much as noticed me when I go in to make the bed or bring the linen!” gasped Mary.
“His Majesty is remarkably observant, but for safety’s sake must pretend not to be. For the same reason he often looks sourly at me when the Governor or other members of the household are present, and then of his graciousness asks my forgiveness afterwards.” Cresset turned more soberly to Firebrace. “Who would you say, of the household, can be counted upon not to betray us even though they take no active part, Harry?”
“Anthony Mildmay and certainly Thomas Herbert,” decided Firebrace, after a moment’s consideration.
“And, of the garrison, my brother,” promised Mistress Wheeler.
“And among the servants old Brett, who can pretend to be deaf as an adder when it suits him. And I think my aunt’s maid, Libby,” added Mary.
“But you told me she is married to that long Cromwellian fellow, Rudy,” objected Firebrace.
“I doubt if Libby notices what a man’s politics are so long as his body pleases her,” said her Mistress, with an almost tolerant smile.
“It is just that she thinks I was once kind to her,” murmured Mary. “And Brett goes in and out of the State Room several times a day to see to the fires. I think I could persuade him—”
Firebrace slid down from the table and came to join her by the hearth. “The castle must be full of people you have been kind to!” he laughed. “What ingenious plan have you been hatching now, Mary Floyd?”
“I thought perhaps if he and the King changed clothes when he goes in last thing in the evening and the King is alone—they are both little men—” In her modesty, Mary glanced round the room, half expecting the simplicity of her idea to meet with ridicule; but seven pairs of eyes were regarding her attentively. And presently they were all discussing the project with animation.
His Majesty would have to pass one of the Conservators,” pointed out his tailor.
“It could be Captain Titus,” Mistress Wheeler reminded them.
“The plan sounds feasible,” agreed Dowcett eagerly. “His Majesty, carrying the empty coal hod, would then walk towards the servants’ quarters, I take it? And then make for the little postern gate near the keep.”
“How would he get past the sentries there?” two of them asked in unison.
“Brett has a sister in the village whom he is allowed to visit of an evening when his work is done. He wears an old hooded cloak when he goes out and limps a little like the King does when he is tired,” Mary told them. “And if the King would deign to smear his face with wood ash—”
“If your plan worked it would give his Majesty a whole night’s start,” admitted Titus, impressed.
“But what would they do to poor Brett when they found him in the State Room next morning?” At thought of that inevitable sequel the colour faded from Mary’s face. She could have bitten her tongue for speaking so glibly on the spur of the moment. Her one thought had been to please Harry Firebrace; but bent old Brett, who had shown her small kindnesses since her childhood, meant more to her than any king. “No, no, we cannot ask the poor old man to do that! ” she cried, catching at Firebrace’s hand as he stood beside her. “Please
, please, forget what I said!”
Firebrace squeezed her hand reassuringly. Besides realizing her distress, he doubted his royal master’s ability to act the part or to improvise quickly enough in strange surroundings. Moreover, he had for days been trying to work out a plan of his own. “It seems to me that we who serve his Majesty and wish to save him should bear the risks ourselves,” he said, and turned towards the two men seated on the floor. “What was the idea you two were beginning to speak of when we were down in the courtyard and Captain Rolph came prying by?” he asked.
The King’s assistant barber, who had so far contributed nothing to the conversation, rose from the hearth and began pressing at the floorboards with his foot as though to test their thickness. “From where we were standing it seemed to us that this room must be the one above his Majesty’s bedroom,” he said.
“Immediately above,” confirmed Mary.
He nodded in the direction of the bolted door. “And outside, on this floor, there would be no guards at all?”
“No. These are our own private quarters,” Mistress Wheeler told him. “Why?”
“It occurred to Napier and me that if we could cut a hole in the State Room ceiling—”
“Which no one would notice, of course!” scoffed Titus.
“Neither would they. Not if it was made over the disused music gallery,” snapped the little tailor, his eyes shining in the firelight as he sat cross-legged by the hearth. “First thing I saw when I was fitting his Majesty was that gallery, and that no one coming in and out of the room ever thinks of looking up there. A man working right at the back of it would scarcely be seen.”
“There is no way up to it since the backstairs passage has been built,” Mistress Wheeler told him.
“I could take a length of rope in my bag, and a saw hidden in a bale of cloth. As Groom-of-the-Bedchamber, Master Firebrace is usually the only person in attendance while his Majesty is being fitted.”
“And early one morning while I am shaving his Majesty I could choose my opportunity to call up to you and some of you could draw him up,” said the barber.
They discussed the fantastic plan and found it over-weighted with difficulties. “If by the ceiling why not by the window?” suggested Cresset.
“And if it be possible by the window, why not straight down into the courtyard and be done with it?” asked Firebrace.
“In full view of the guardhouse?” pointed out Titus.
“We should have to choose a very dark night,” conceded Firebrace.
“You have a definite plan?” asked Dowcett.
“Osborne and I have a half-made one.”
“Tell us.”
“Wait! There is someone outside the door,” warned Mary.
Some of them sprang silently to their feet and for a moment or two all stood tense, listening to a faint scratching sound. “It is Osborne!” said Firebrace, relaxing. And as the others resumed their places with a sigh of relief, he hurried to admit him.
“I have held your Captain enthralled with all my best bawdy stories for the best part of an hour. He abhors liquor and I am parched,” announced the King’s tall Usher. “A glass of wine, I beseech you Mistress Wheeler, before I wilt.”
He took the wine from Mary, smiled down at her with a quirk of his strongly marked brows and lounged over to the window seat. All the little company turned eagerly towards him. “We hear you have a plan,” they said. But he merely waved his glass in the direction of his friend. “It is Harry who is gifted with powers of invention,” he told them, disclaiming all merit in the matter. “I merely clown or play watchdog as I am bid.”
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!”
Mary of Carisbrooke Page 12