Well, there was nothing she would be likely to be called upon to do during this momentous night, he supposed; nor anything more he himself could do for that matter, until he and Worsley should find themselves actually helping the King up the far side of the escarpment into freedom. Apart from the fact that the escape would be carried out from the north wall instead of the south, and that there would be no courtyard to cross, everything was to be carried out so much in accordance with Harry Firebrace’s original plans that playing one’s individual part in it had become almost routine. Walking his horse along a narrow woodland path which Worsley had shown him, he went over the stages of the plan much as Harry must have done. John Newland down at the creek with a boat. Titus on the Hampshire coast with horses. A safe night’s lodging arranged for him and the King at Arundel. Harry waiting on the road somewhere in Kent, and Jane Whorwood’s ship all set for Holland. And this time the bar of the window had been successfully loosened, so that the King would only need to lift it. The only other difference was the matter of the sentries. He and Dowcett had decided that, since their co-operation was needed rather than their negligence, to fuddle them would be useless. Most reluctantly they had been obliged to take the three men into their confidence.
This time they had to use money instead of wine. A hundred pounds apiece, raised by Sir John Oglander, the Worsleys, and himself. Worsley had it in safe keeping at the manor. It would mean a fortune to such men—particularly to an islander. And two of the men whom they had persuaded to it were islanders—the same two pikemen, Wenshall and Featherstone, whom Harry had made so drunk before. They were Sergeant Floyd’s men, of the original garrison, and had no liking for Puritan ways. If only he could have had Floyd himself for their third man! He liked him and the King had suggested him as being a man with initiative whom they could thoroughly trust; and now, having come so close to the climax of the adventure, Osborne felt that he should have insisted upon approaching him. But the man was Mary’s father; and Mistress Wheeler, who had helped them so loyally, had stipulated that he should not be drawn into the affair. And so he had persuaded instead a recently recruited young Londoner whose father had been killed fighting on the Royalist side at Nazeby, and who was baited and wretched in the Cromwellian army. A thin, sandy-haired young man called Tilling, whose ambition was to buy a mercery business in Cheapside, and whose eyes had lighted up like pale agates at thought of the money.
Osborne found it was good to be in a private household again with the kindly family at Gatcombe Manor. But relaxation in that homely atmosphere was all too short. After supper the spare horse was saddled, and boots and a pistol brought for the King; and as soon as it was dusk Worsley led him through his own woods and by various sequestered field paths back to Carisbrooke, where they took up their appointed place beside the lane.
“It is not nearly so dark as we had hoped,” whispered Worsley, looking up in the direction of the King’s unlighted window. “I could almost see anyone climbing out.”
“We decided not to use the rope after all. It is only a ten-foot drop and his Majesty can easily let himself down on to one of the sentries’ shoulders.”
“Hammond will not expect any activity to-night since he has heard so much about your courting Barnabas’s sister at Thorley!”
“Everything should work out well this time,” whispered back Osborne cheerfully.
But in spite of an eventuality important enough to change history, the ordinary events of everyday life went on.
In the early hours of that Sunday morning, Libby’s baby had been born, and Rudy had been allowed to go down to the village to see her. The child was lusty and a boy. So in his parental pride Tom Rudy had called in at the “Castle Inn” and brought back enough wine for his comrades on night-watch to celebrate the event The barracks had become even noisier than they usually were on a Sunday night, when disputes over the day’s sermons invariably ended in a brawl; and although Wenshall, Featherstone, and Tilling saw no particular cause for rejoicing over the reproduction of a Rudy, they were only too glad to avail themselves of his generosity. All three drank deeply in order to keep up their spirits for a night’s adventure which each of them secretly feared. Meanwhile Rudy, more full of himself than of wine, mounted a table in order to harangue his fellows. He excelled himself in exposing all the shortcomings, real and imaginary, of the King, and kept the barrack-room in an uproar with all manner of amusing anecdotes which had been going the rounds of London taverns about the defeated cavaliers. It was the personal kind of propaganda which men who would not listen to the preachers’ violent sermons lapped up with a drink and an easy laugh. “What does any man, just because he happens to be borne a Stuart, need with a Gentleman Carver, a Gentleman Usher, and a Groom of the Bedchamber to draw on his breeches for him? And why should all these royal minions bring servants of their own, when we who are trained soldiers have to clean out the stables?” demanded the glib orator. “Look at that idle, feather-brained fop, milord Rakehell Osborne! Allowed out any night he feels like wenching. Apes his master in a new black suit, and then sends his servant back for his best cloak to dazzle some innocent island girl he was boasting about seducing. And in the end is too impatient to get to his lechery to wait for the poor fellow!”
Because they were drinking his wine the three sentries due for platform duty had to listen. By sheer chance Rudy had picked upon the very man who had offered them their bribes. And had they not all heard tales of the Gentleman Usher’s levity?
“You reckon this Osborne is to be depended on?” whispered Wenshall behind his hand, huddling closer to his two comrades on a corner bench.
“Real gentleman, he be. Not the new, blusterin’ sort. Didn’t his uncle hold that gurt Guernsey fortress for the longest siege in the war?” Featherstone reassured him, with more certainty than he really felt.
“Don’t seem right ter me, his goin’ out wenchin’ and leavin’ us to do his dangerous work,” grumbled Tilling.
“Anyways, he b’aint here to know whether we does it or not,” muttered Wenshall.
Rudy, still astride the table, was well launched upon his usual tirade against the privileged classes whose lives were all pleasure and no work because they had the money, and for a time the three men in the corner exchanged congratulatory winks, for would not they soon find themselves in that felicitous company? They would be able to buy themselves all the boats and cattle and wine and wenches they wanted. And a trip to London to see some of the fine sights Rudy was always bragging about, maybe, the two islanders thought. Featherstone’s ideas of pleasure could go no further, but Wenshall’s livelier imagination had begun to work in a more sombre and immediate direction. “Master Osborne did say as how they would bear us out if we was to swear we saw nothin’; but come to think on’t, even a hundred pounds b’aint much good to a man once he be a noddy,” he remarked, with the gloomy kind of prognostication which drink always engendered in him.
“Wot’s a noddy?” asked the pale-faced Cockney.
“A dead ’un,” said Featherstone.
Tilling took a deeper swig at his tankard, hoping to imbibe some much-needed courage. He was young and, unlike Featherstone, suffered from a surplus of imagination. Moreover, he stood in vast awe of the keen-eyed Captain of the Guard, who had frequently sharpened his wits on the subject of his inadequacy with a musket. He wanted that mercer’s shop and a girl he knew in Barking. He wanted to see his mother again. And he definitely did not want to be a noddy. He passed his tankard to be refilled. Seen through a haze of Burgundy this Rudy fellow was a good sort and free with his money. He was also a fellow-Londoner and probably knew what he was talking about better than a lot of outlandish yokels whose speech he could scarcely understand. That fine big gentleman and his fellow sentries had talked as if letting your prisoner escape were an easy way to get all that money, but now he was not so sure. He would give anything not to go on duty to-night. Perhaps if he could go sick or have some sort of accident—something that would incapacitate h
im, but nothing serious, of course. Drawing his knife and screwing up his courage, he made a slash at his trigger finger, but his hands were unsteady and the knife slipped, cutting deeper than he had intended. The blood gushed out and someone guffawed at his clumsiness. And because he was not accustomed to the expensive kind of French wine which was smuggled into the Wight he was soon lying prone along the bench with red blood and red Burgundy dripping unheeded to the floor. His two mates were in no state to consider the consequences, and in any case were now too deeply engaged in some earnest half-whispered discussion to heed him.
He was still lying there when Sergeant Floyd came in to quell the noise. Mistress Hammond had complained of it and the Reverend Troughton had added his opinion that such an uproar was a disgrace to a Christian castle on the Sabbath. ‘‘That trouble-maker Rudy again!” thought Floyd, weary of this new, contentious world. But remembering that the girl Libby had given birth to a son he was as lenient as possible. He made sure that all of them would be sober enough to turn out for night duty—all except one young fool in the corner who was too far gone even to come to attention. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked, seeing that pool of blood.
“He’s cut hisself,” volunteered the fool who had guffawed.
“Any road, Sergeant, he be too drunk to go on duty,” said one of his own men more helpfully.
“An’ what now if us gets a tale-bearing Roundhead posted along o’ us this night?” thought Wenshall and Featherstone. And the hideous probability became a deciding factor in their whispered discussion.
“Put the fellow in the guardroom lock-up,” ordered Sergeant Floyd.
Seeing the cut was more serious than he had thought, he followed them and bound it up himself, and before he had finished, the young man, still maudlin and weak from loss of blood, sat up and begged to be kept in the lock-up until morning. Floyd had no intention of doing anything else, but he brought his lantern and looked at him more closely. Tilling was not one of his men but his experience of all types told him that here was a weak but decent lad, with a spot of real trouble on his mind. He asked a leading question or two and because his manner was less bullying than the recently arrived sergeants’ he soon had the whole amazing story. “You’d certainly be better selling silk than playing at soldiering!” he told Tilling brusquely, wondering whether Osborne had picked on him because of the account the lad had to square with Parliament for his loss at Nazeby or merely because he and Dowcett had been unable to find anyone else. He locked the door and walked up and down outside for a while digesting the information which had come to him so fortuitously.
So there was to be another bid for the King’s escape to-night? He had always suspected that some of the royal household discussed their plans in his sister’s room, but had half hoped that with Firebrace’s dismissal their enthusiasm would have waned. His own private opinion, based upon his knowledge of the Captain of the Guard’s efficiency, was that the time had passed when such an escape might have been safely effected. The Governor knew too much about their previous efforts. But since they meant to try again to-night his first thought was for Mary, and how far she might be involved. He guessed why Osborne had gone out, and hoped with all his heart that the King would get away this time. Going about his duties, Floyd had heard enough to know how bitterly some of the propaganda-ridden soldiery blamed King Charles for the state of the country and for their own long exile from home, and how willingly a small minority of them, inflamed by such leaders as Rolph and Rudy, would treat his Majesty with violence.
He wished that Firebrace and Osborne had taken him into their confidence in the first place and asked him to help. There were so many ways in which he could have done so. But he suspected with a glow of gratitude why they had not. And now, with a part of their scheme come by accident into his hands, it rested with him to decide for himself how much he would swerve from his immediate and apparent duty, how much he would risk.
If now at the last moment, and without time to sound him, any other man were to be sent as the third guard he would almost certainly give Wenshall and Featherstone away and jeopardize the King’s last chance of escape. So instead of calling another musketeer or pikeman Floyd decided to go himself. He wished he could have had a word with Dowcett about it first, but it was impossible. Floyd had once helped Charles Stuart to fire off the castle cannon, and he was prepared to help him in a much bigger adventure now. And if there should be nothing in particular which he could do, at least his presence on the platform should steady Wenshall and Featherstone more than that frightened Cockney lad’s.
The guard was due to change in half an hour. His thoughts heavy within him, Floyd went back to the barracks to make sure that all was quiet and to get Tilling’s musket. He had been round by the guardroom lock-up longer than he intended and had not seen Wenshall and Featherstone cross the courtyard and slink in at the back door of the Governor’s house.
The long summer evening had faded into night at last. But for Floyd’s sister and daughter there was no thought of going to bed. Mary could not stay still indoors and had gone to the wellhouse. Sitting on the coping of the well with the door ajar she could see whoever came and went dimly outlined against the lesser dark outside. Dowcett, she knew, had made some excuse to pass the sentry at the north postern so that he might take a final look round beneath the walls and make sure that Worsley and Osborne were in their appointed place on the other side of the escarpment. Waiting for his return, Mary allowed her thoughts to project themselves into the future. By this time to-morrow the King would have seen Harry, and she felt that their meeting would be some sort of link between Harry and herself. “The King will tell him how I managed to put that letter behind the arras almost under Major Cromwell’s nose, and how happy it made him to hear of the young Duke of York’s escape,” she thought. “And he may tell him, too, how I went on helping as I promised.” Sitting there in that quiet place which had so often been their happy rendezvous, she could almost see the way Harry’s face would light up with approval.
She heard Dowcett’s footsteps and softly called him inside. It was too dark in there to see his face, but she knew at once by his restless movements that he was worried. “I saw Rolph out there,” he said. “Isn’t it enough that he must needs sit at the foot of the King’s stairway half the day, without poking round outside the walls at night? Do you suppose he suspects anything?”
“He is much more likely to be working out his own horrible scheme for getting the King away,” she told him, with an optimism she was far from feeling.
“It is to be hoped so, but I do not like it. There seem to be more people than usual about to-night. Did you hear all that noise a while back from the barracks?”
“That at least had nothing to do with us,” Mary was able to assure him. “Brett tells me Libby’s baby was born early this morning. Rudy had been down to the village to see her and the men were probably celebrating. You remembered to remove the rope from the King’s room?”
“I hid it in my own clothes press.”
“Then everything is ready. The platform sentries will be changing over any minute now.”
“If only we could be sure that that cursed Captain of the Guard had settled for the night! He has gone back to his quarters now, but who knows?”
“I suppose we had better go to ours, even though we cannot sleep,” sighed Mary. “Of course Master Worsley and Richard Osborne have arrived?”
“I barked in fine imitation of your Patters and Worsley gave one of his famous bird calls.”
Mary laughed. It gave her a sense of security to know that they were out there. She bade the worried Frenchman good-night and went up to her aunt’s room, hoping to find her resting in her chair; but Druscilla Wheeler was walking about looking distraught. “Your father has gone on guard instead of that young overner,” she said the moment Mary came into the room.
Mary stopped short. “How do you know? You cannot see from here.”
“I heard them marching out an
d went to that little staircase window on the north wall and looked down, just to make sure that Wenshall and Featherstone had not been put on to some other duty as they were last Sunday. And there was your father with them.”
“Are you sure? In the dark?”
“I heard his voice.”
“But what reason can there be for the change?” asked Mary, coming to the hearth and putting her firmly into a chair.
“I can think of nothing—unless the young man is sick. But even so, a sergeant does not usually—”
“Well, at least father will betray nothing. Imagine if it had been some Roundhead!”
“If Master Osborne asked your father to do it, after all I said—”
“He must have wanted to, but I am sure he did not.” Seeing her aunt so upset, Mary fetched a skillet and went to the fire to warm some milk; and as she waited for it to heat she milled the matter over in her mind. She recalled that in her first shock at hearing about the platform she had let slip some words about its undoing all Harry’s plans; but she felt sure that her father had had a pretty shrewd idea of their plans all along, and that he had wished them well and would have liked to join them. But why, to-night, had he taken Tilling’s place? Had he done so purposely, knowing what was going to happen? If so, perhaps it was all for the best. Young Tilling might have bungled things. She gave her aunt the hot milk and blew out the candle, and they both sat by the hearth waiting. Dowcett, whose room was in the older part of the building, was going to try to give them a signal when the King was well away.
But Mistress Wheeler was still restless and anxious. Calm enough in facing dangers for herself, she could not face them for her beloved brother. She kept glancing at her precious clock, and when an hour had passed and it was nearly midnight she went to the window overlooking the courtyard and looked out. She had not been there many minutes before she turned and called Mary sharply to her side. “Look! A man has just come out from the officers’ quarters. You can just see him standing there. Oh, please God it is not Rolph!”
Mary of Carisbrooke Page 21