The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  Far out on the beacon hills I could see Frank Penrose still searching hopelessly for Dick, while in the meadows to the west one of the women from the farm went calling to the cows, all oblivious of the troopers who were riding up the lane.

  And at that moment my godchild Joan came hurrying along the causeway to fetch me, her pretty face all strained and anxious, her soft dark hair blowing in the wind.

  "They are coming," she said. "We have seen them from the windows. Scores of them, on horseback, riding now across the park."

  Her breath caught in a sob, and she began running with me along the causeway, so that I too was caught in a sudden panic and could think of nothing but the wide door of Menabilly still open to enfold me. "I have searched everywhere for John," she faltered, "but I cannot find him. One of the servants said they saw him walking out towards the Gribben. Oh, Honor--the children--what will become of us? What is going to happen?"

  I could hear shouting from the park, and out on the hard ground beyond the gates came the steady rhythmic beat of horses trotting; not the light clatter of a company, but line upon line of them, the relentless measure of a regiment, the jingle of harness, the thin alien sound of a bugle.

  They were waiting for us by the windows of the gallery, Alice, and Mary, the Sawles, the Sparkes, a little tremulous gathering of frightened people, united now in danger, and two other faces that I did not know, the peaky, startled faces of strange children with lace caps upon their heads and wide lace collars. I remembered then the unknown lady who had flung herself upon my sister's mercy, and as we turned into the hall, slamming the door behind us, I saw the horses that had drawn the litter still standing untended in the courtyard, save that the grooms had thrown blankets upon them, colored white and crimson, and stamped at the corners with a dragon's head. A dragon's head... but even as my memory swung back into the past I heard her voice, cold and clear, rising above the others in the gallery. "If only it can be Lord Robartes, I can assure you all no harm will come to us. I have known him well these many years, and am quite prepared to speak on your behalf."

  "I forgot to tell you," whispered Joan. "She came with her two daughters, scarce an hour ago. The road was held, and they could not pass St. Blazey. It is Mrs. Denys of Orley Court."

  Her eyes swung round to me. Those same eyes, narrow, heavy lidded, that I had seen often in my more troubled dreams, and her gold hair, golder than it had been in the past, for art had taken counsel with Nature and outstripped it. She stared at the sight of me, and for a second I caught a flash of odd discomfort like a flicker in her eyes, and then she smiled her slow, false, well-remembered smile, and, stretching out her hands, she said, "Why, Honor, this is indeed a pleasure. Mary did not tell me that you too were here at Menabilly."

  I ignored the proffered hand, for a cripple in a chair can be as ill mannered as she pleases, and as I stared back at her in my own fashion, with suspicion and foreboding in my heart, we heard the horses ride into the courtyard and the bugles blow. Poor Temperance Sawle went down upon her knees, the children whimpered, and my sister Mary, with her arm about Joan and Alice, stood very white and still. Only Gartred watched with cool eyes, her hands playing gently with her girdle.

  "Pray hard and pray fast, Mrs. Sawle," I said. "The vultures are gathering."

  And, since there was no brandy in the room, I poured myself some water from a jug, and raised my glass to Gartred.

  16

  It was Will Sparke, I remember, who went to unbar the door--though he had been the first to bolt it earlier--and as he did so he excused himself in his high-pitched, shaking voice, saying, "It is useless to start by offending them. Our only hope lies in placating them."

  We could see through the windows how the troopers dismounted, staring about them with confident, hard faces beneath their close-fitting skull helmets, and it seemed to me that one and all they looked the same, with their cropped heads and their drab brown leather jerkins, and this ruthless similarity was both startling and grim. There were more of them on the eastward side now, in the gardens, the horses' hoofs trampling the green lawns and the little yew trees as a first symbol of destruction, and all the while the thin, high note of the bugle sounded, like a huntsman summoning his hounds to slaughter. In a moment we heard their heavy footsteps in the house, clamping through the dining chamber and up the stairs, and into the gallery returned Will Sparke, a nervous smile on his face, which was drained of all color. Behind him came three officers, the first a big, burly man with a long nose and heavy jaw, wearing a green sash about his waist. I recognized him at once as Lord Robartes, the owner of Lanhydrock, a big estate on the Bodmin road, who in former days had gone riding and hawking with my brother Kit, but was not much known to the rest of us. He was now our enemy, and could dispose of us as he wished. "Where is the owner of the house?" he asked, and looked towards old Nick Sawle, who turned his back.

  "My husband is from home," said Mary, coming forward, "and my stepson somewhere in the grounds."

  "Is everyone living in the place assembled here?"

  "All except the servants."

  "You have no malignants in hiding?"

  "None."

  Lord Robartes turned to the staff officer at his side.

  "Make a thorough search of the house and grounds," he said. "Break down any door you find locked, and test the paneling for places of concealment. Give orders to the farm people to round up all sheep and cattle and other livestock, and place men in charge of them, and the granaries. We will take over this gallery and all other rooms on the ground floor for our personal use. Troops to bivouac in the park."

  "Very good, sir." The officer stood to attention, and then departed about his business. Lord Robartes drew up a chair to the table and the remaining officer gave him paper and a quill.

  "Now, madam," he said to Mary, "give me your full name and the name and occupation of each member of your household."

  One by one he had us documented, looking at each victim keenly as though the very admission of name and age betrayed some sign of guilt. Only when he came to Gartred did his manner relax something of its hard suspicion. "A foolish time to journey, Mrs. Denys," he said. "You would have done better to remain at Orley Court."

  "There are so many soldiery abroad of little discipline and small respect," said Gartred languidly. "It is not very pleasant for a widow with young daughters to live alone, as I do. I hoped by traveling south to escape the fighting."

  "You thought wrong," he answered, "and I am afraid you must abide by the consequences of such an error. You will have to remain here in custody with Mrs. Rashleigh and her household."

  Gartred bowed, and did not answer. Lord Robartes rose to his feet. "When the apartments above have been searched you may go to them," he said, addressing Mary and the rest of us, "and I must request you to remain in them until further orders. Exercise once a day will be permitted in the garden here, under close escort. You must prepare your food as, and how, you are able. We shall take command of the kitchens, and certain stores will be allotted to you. Your keys, madam."

  I saw Mary falter, and then, slowly and reluctantly, she unfastened the string from her girdle. "Can I not have entry there myself?" she asked. "No, madam. The stores are no longer yours, but the possession of the Parliament, like everything pertaining to this estate."

  I thought of the jars of preserves upon Mary's shelves, the honeys, and the jams, and the salted pilchards in the larder, and the smoked hams, and the sides of salted mutton. I thought of the bread in the bakeries, the flour in the bins, the grain in the granaries, the young fruit setting in the orchards. And all the while I thought of this, the sound of heavy feet came tramping from above, and out in the grounds came the bugle's cry.

  "I thank you, madam. I must warn you, and the rest of the company, that any attempt at escape, any contravention of my orders, will be punished with extreme severity."

  "What about milk for the children?" said Joan, her cheeks very flushed, her head high. "We must have mil
k, and butter, and eggs. My little son is delicate, and inclined to croup."

  "Certain stores will be given you daily, madam--I have already said so," said Lord Robartes. "If the children need more nourishment, you must do without yourselves. I have some five hundred men to quarter here, and their needs come before yours, or your children's. Now you may go to your apartments."

  This was the moment I had waited for, and, catching Joan's eye, I summoned her to my side. "You must give up your apartment to Mrs. Denys," I murmured, "and come to me in the gatehouse. I shall move my bed into the adjoining chamber." Her lips framed a question, but I shook my head. She had sense enough to accept it, for all her agitation, and went at once to Mary with the proposition, who was so bewildered by the loss of her keys that her natural hospitality had deserted her.

  "I beg of you to make no move because of me," said Gartred, smiling, her arms about her children. "May and Gertie and I can fit in anywhere. The house is something like a warren--I remember it of old."

  I looked at her thoughtfully, and remembered then how Kit had been at Oxford at the same time as my brother-in-law, when old Mr. Rashleigh was still alive, and that during the days of Jonathan's first marriage Kit had ridden over to Menabilly often from Lanrest.

  "You have been here before then?" I said to Gartred, speaking to her for the first time since I had come into the gallery.

  "Why, bless me, yes," she yawned. "Some five-and-twenty years ago Kit and I came for a harvest supper, and lost ourselves about the passages." But at this moment Lord Robartes, who had been conferring with his officer, turned from the door.

  "You will now, please," he said, "retire to your apartments."

  We went out the farther door, where the servants were huddled like a flock of startled sheep, and Matty and two others seized the arms of my chair. Already the troopers were in the kitchens, in full command, and the round of beef that had been roasting for our dinner was being cut into great slices and served out among them, while down the stairs came three more of them, two fellows and a noncommissioned officer, bearing loads of Mary's precious stores in their arms.

  Another had a great pile of blankets, and a rich embroidered cover that had been put aside until winter in the linen room.

  "Oh, but they cannot have that," said Mary. "Where is an officer? I must speak to someone of authority."

  "I have authority," replied the sergeant, "to remove all linen, blankets, and covers that we find. So keep a cool temper, lady, for you'll find no redress." They stared us coolly in the face, and one of them favored Alice with a bold, familiar stare, and then whispered something in the ear of his companion.

  Oh, God, how I hated them upon the instant. I, who had regarded the war with irony and cynicism hitherto, and a bitter shrug of the shoulder, was now filled with burning anger when it touched me close. Their muddied boots had trampled the floors, and upstairs wanton damage could at once be seen where they had thrust their pikes into the paneling and stripped the hangings from the walls. In Alice's apartments the presses had been overturned and the contents spilled upon the floor, and already a broken casement hung upon its hinge with the glass shattered. Alice's nurse was standing in the center of the room, crying and wringing her hands, for the troopers had carried off some of the children's bedding, and one clumsy oaf had trodden his heel upon the children's favorite doll and smashed its head to pieces. At the sight of this, their precious toy, the little girls burst into torrents of crying, and I knew then the idiot rage that surges within a man in wartime and compels him to commit murder. In the gardens the troopers were tramping down the formal beds, and with their horses had flattened the growing flowers, whose strewn petals lay crumpled now and muddied by the horses' hoofs.

  I took one glance, and then bade Matty and her companions bear me to my room. It had suffered like disturbance, with the bed tumbled and the stuffing ripped from the chairs for no rhyme or reason, and they had saved me the trouble of unlocking the barred chamber, for the door was broken in and pieces of planking strewn about the floor. The arras was torn in places, but the arras that hung before the buttress was still and undisturbed.

  I thanked God in my heart for the cunning of old John Rashleigh, and desiring Matty to set me down beside the window I looked out into the courtyard, and saw the soldiers all gathered below, line upon line of them, with their horses tethered, and the tents gleaming white already in process of erection in the park, with the campfires burning, and the cattle lowing as they were driven by the soldiers to a pen, and all the while that goddamned bugle blowing, high-pitched and insistent, in a single key. I turned from the window, and told Matty that Joan and her children would now be coming to the gatehouse, and I would remain here, in the chamber that had been barred.

  "The troopers have made short work of mystery," said Matty, looking about her, and at the broken door. "There was nothing put away here after all, then." I did not answer, and while she busied herself with moving my bed and my own belongings I wheeled myself to the cabinet and saw that Jonathan had taken the precaution of removing his papers before he went, leaving the cabinet bare.

  When the two rooms were in order, and the servants had helped Matty to repair the door, thus giving me my privacy from Joan, I sent them from me to give assistance to Joan in making place for Gartred in the southern front. All was now quiet, save for the constant tramping of soldiers in the court below, and the coming and going beneath me in the kitchens. Very cautiously I drew near the northeast corner of my new apartment, and lifted the arras. I ran my hands over the stone wall, as I had done that time before in the darkness when Jonathan had discovered me, and once again I could find no outlet, no division in the stone.

  I realized then that the means for entry must be from without only, a great handicap to us, who used it now, but no doubt cunningly intended by the builder of the house, who had no desire for his idiot eldest son to come and go at pleasure. I knocked with my fists against the wall, but they sounded not at all. I called "John" in a low voice, expecting no answer; nor did I receive one.

  This, then, was a new and hideous dilemma, for I had warned John not to attempt an entry to the chamber before I warned him, since I was confident at the time that I would be able to find the entrance from inside. This I could not do, and John and Dick were in the meantime waiting in the cell below the buttress for a signal from me. I placed my face against the wall, crying "John... John..." as loudly as I dared, but I guessed, with failing heart, that the sound of my voice would never carry through the implacable stone. Hearing footsteps in the corridor I let the arras fall and returned to the window, where I made a pretense of looking down into the court. I heard movements in my old apartment in the gatehouse, and a moment later a loud knocking on the door between. "Please enter," I called, and the roughly repaired door was pushed aside, tottering on its hinge, and Lord Robartes himself came into the room, accompanied by one of his officers and Frank Penrose with his arms bound tight behind him.

  "I regret my sudden intrusion," said Lord Robartes, "but we have just found this man in the grounds. He volunteered information I find interesting, which you may add to, if you please."

  I glanced at Frank Penrose, who, half-frightened out of his wits, stared about him like a hare, passing his tongue over his lips.

  I did not answer, but waited for Lord Robartes to continue.

  "It seems you have had living here, until today, the son of Skellum Grenvile," he said, watching me intently, "as well as his tutor. They were to have left by fishing boat for St. Mawes a few hours since. You were the boy's godmother and had the care of him, I understand. Where are they now?"

  "Somewhere off the Dodman, I hope," I answered.

  "I am told that as the boat set sail from Polkerris the boy could not be found," he replied, "and Penrose here and John Rashleigh went in search of him. My men have not yet come upon John Rashleigh or the boy. Do you know what has become of them?"

  "I do not," I answered. "I only trust they are aboard the boat."
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  "You realize," he said harshly, "that there is a heavy price upon the head of Skellum Grenvile, and to harbor him or any of his family would count as treason to Parliament. The Earl of Essex has given me strict orders as to this."

  "That being the case," I said, "you had better take Mrs. Denys into closer custody. She is Sir Richard's sister, as you no doubt know."

  I had caught him off guard with this, and he looked at me nonplussed. Then he began tapping on the table in sudden irritation. "Mrs. Denys has, I understand, little or no friendship with her brother," he said stiffly. "Her late husband, Mr. Antony Denys, was known to be a good friend to Parliament and an opposer of Charles Stuart. Have you nothing further to tell me about your godson?"

  "Nothing at all," I said, "except that I have every belief that he is upon that fishing boat, and with the wind in the right quarter he will be, by this time, nearly halfway to St. Mawes."

  He turned his back on me at that and left the room, with the luckless Frank Penrose shuffling at his heels, and I realized, with relief, that the agent was ignorant as to Dick's whereabouts, like everybody else in Menabilly, and for all he knew my tale might be quite true and both Dick and John some ten miles out at sea. Not one soul, then, in the place knew the secret of the buttress but myself, for Langdon the steward had accompanied my brother-in-law to Launceston. This was a great advantage, making betrayal an impossibility. But I still could not solve the problem of how to get food and drink and reassurance to the two fugitives I had myself imprisoned. And another fear began to nag at me, with recollection of my brother-in-law's words: "Lack of air and close confinement soon rendered him unconscious and easy to handle." Uncle John, gasping for breath in the little cell beneath the buttress. How much air, then, came through to the cell from the tunnel beyond? Enough for how many hours?

  Once again, as earlier in the day, the sweat began to trickle down my face, and half-unconsciously I wiped it away with my hand. I felt myself defeated. There was no course for me to take. A little bustle from the adjoining room, and a child's cry, told me that Joan and her babies had come to my old apartment, and in a moment she came through, with little Mary whimpering in her arms and small Jonathan clinging to her skirts.