The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  This, then, was what we had to fear, and no one in the house knew of it but myself. So Sunday, August the eleventh, came and went, and we woke next morning to another problematical week in which anything might happen, with the three Royalist armies squeezing the rebels tighter hour by hour, the strip of country left to them becoming daily more bare and devastated, and a steady, sweeping rain turning all the roads to mud.

  Gone was the hot weather, the glazed sky, and the sun. No longer did the children hang from the windows, and listen to the bugles, and watch the troopers come and go. No more did we take our daily exercise before the windows of the gallery. A high, blustering wind broke across the park, and from my tightly shut casement I could see the closed, dripping tents, the horses tethered line upon line beneath the trees at the far end, their heads disconsolate, while the men stood about in huddled, melancholy groups, their fires dead as soon as kindled. Many of the wounded died in the farm buildings. Mary saw the burial parties go forth at dawn, a silent, gray procession in the early morning mist, and we heard they took them to the Long Mead, the valley beneath the woods at Pridmouth.

  No more wounded came to the farm buildings, and we guessed from this that the heavy weather had put a stop to fighting. But we heard also that His Majesty's Army now held the east bank of the Fowey River, from St. Veep down to the fortress at Polruan, which commanded the harbor entrance. The rebels in Fowey were thus cut off from their shipping in the Channel and could receive no supplies by sea, except from such small boats as could land at Pridmouth or Polkerris or on the sand flats at Tywardreath, which the heavy run from the southwest now made impossible. There was little laughter or chatter now from the messroom in the gallery, so Alice said, and the officers, with grim faces, clumped back and forth from the dining chamber, which Lord Robartes had taken for his own use, while every now and then his voice would be raised in irritation and anger, as a messenger would ride through the pouring rain bearing some counter-order from the Earl of Essex in Lostwithiel or some fresh item of disaster. Whether Gartred moved about the house or not I do not know. Alice said she thought she kept to her own chamber. I saw little of Joan, for poor John's ague was still unabated, but Mary came from time to time to visit me, her face each day more drawn and agonized as she learned of further devastation to the estate. More than three hundred of the sheep had already been slaughtered, thirty fatted bullocks, and sixty store bullocks. All the draft oxen taken, and all the farm horses, some forty of them in number. A dozen or so hogs were left out of the eighty there had been, and these would all be gone before the week was out. The last year's corn had vanished the first week of the rebel occupation, and now they had stripped the new, leaving no single blade to be harvested. There was nothing left, of course, of the farm wagons, or carts, or farming tools--these had all been taken. And the sheds where the winter fuel had been stored were as bare as the granaries. There was, in fact--so the servants in fear and trembling reported to Mary--scarcely anything remaining of the great estate that Jonathan Rashleigh had left in her keeping a fortnight since. The gardens spoiled, the orchards ruined, the timber felled, the livestock eaten. Whichever way the war in the west should go, my brother-in-law would be a bankrupt man.

  And they had not yet started upon the house or the inhabitants. Our feeding was already a sore problem. At midday we all gathered to the main meal of the day. This was served to us in Alice's apartment in the east wing, while John lay ill in his father's chamber, and there some twenty of us herded side by side, the children clamoring and fretful, while we dipped stale bread in the mess of watery soup provided, helped sometimes by swollen beans and cabbage. The children had their milk, but no more than two cupfuls for the day, and already I noticed a staring look about them, their eyes overlarge in the pale faces, while their play had become listless, and they yawned often. Young Jonathan started his croup, bringing fresh anxiety to Joan, and Alice had to go below to the kitchen and beg for rhubarb sticks to broil for him--a favor which was only granted her because her gentle ways won sympathy from the trooper in charge. The old people suffered like the children, and complained fretfully with the same misunderstanding of what war brings. Nick Sawle would stare long at his empty bowl when he had finished and mutter "Disgraceful! Quite unpardonable!" into his beard, and look malevolently about him as though it were the fault of someone present, while Will Sparke with sly cunning would seat himself among the younger children and under pretense of making friends sneak crumbs from them when Alice and her nurse turned their backs. The women were less selfish, and Deborah, whom I had thought as great a freak in her own way as her brother was in his, showed great tenderness, on a sudden, for all those about her who seemed helpless, nor did her deep voice and incipient mustache discourage the smallest children.

  It was solely with Matty's aid that I was able to feed Dick at all. By some means, fair or foul, which I did not inquire into, she had made an ally of the second scullion, to whom she pulled a long story about her ailing, crippled mistress, with the result that further soup was smuggled to my chamber beneath Matty's apron and no one the wiser for it. It was this same scullion who fed us with rumors, too--most of them disastrous to his own side--which made me wonder if a bribe would make him a deserter. At midweek we heard that Richard had seized Restormel Castle by Lostwithiel, and that Lord Goring, who commanded the King's horse, held the bridge and the road below St. Blazey. Essex was now pinned up in our peninsula, some seven miles long and two broad, with ten thousand men to feed, and the guns from Polruan trained on Fowey Harbour. It could not last much longer. Either Essex and the rebels must be relieved by a further force marching to him from the east, or he must stand and make a fight of it. And we would sit, day after day, with cold hearts and empty bellies, staring out upon the sullen soldiery as they stood huddled in the rain outside their tents, while their leaders within the house held councils of despondency. Another Sunday came, and with it a whisper of alarm among the rebels that the country people were stealing forth at night and doing murder. Sentries were found strangled at their posts, men woke to find their comrades with cut throats, others would stagger to headquarters from the high road, their hands lopped from their wrists, their eyes blinded. The Cornish were rising.

  On Tuesday, the twenty-seventh, there was no soup for our midday dinner, only half a dozen loaves among the twenty of us. On Wednesday one jugful of milk for the children, instead of three, and the milk much watered.

  On Thursday Alice and Joan and Mary, and the two Sparke sisters and I, divided our bread among the children, and made for ourselves a brew of herb tea with scalding water. We were not hungry. Desire for food left us when we saw the children tear at the stale bread and cram it in their mouths, then turn and ask for more which we could not give to them. And all the while the southwest wind tore and blustered in the teeming sky, and the rebel bugle that had haunted us so long sounded across the park like a challenge of despair.

  19

  On Friday the thirtieth of August, I lay all day upon my bed, for to gather with the others now would be a farce, and in any case I had not the strength to do so. My cowardly soul forbade me watch the children beg and cry for their one crust of bread. Matty brewed me a cup of tea, and it seemed wrong to swallow even that. Hunger had made me listless, and, heedless of danger, I let Dick come and lie upon his mattress by my bed, while he gnawed a bone that Matty had scavenged for him. His eyes looked larger than ever in his pale face, and his black curls were lank and lusterless. It seemed to me that in his hunger he grew more like his mother, and sometimes, looking down on him, I would fancy she had stepped into his place and it was Mary Howard I fed and sheltered from the enemy, and she who licked the bones with little pointed teeth and tore at the strips of flesh with small, eager paws.

  Matty herself was hollow eyed and sallow. Gone were the buxom hips and the apple cheeks. Whatever food she could purloin from her friend the scullion--and there was precious little now for the men themselves--she smuggled to Dick or to the children.
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  During the day, while I slipped from one racking dream into another, with Dick curled at my feet like a puppy, Matty leaned up against the window, staring at the mist that had followed now upon the rain, and hid the tents and horses from us.

  The hoofbeats woke me shortly after two, and Matty, opening the window, peered down into the outer court and watched them pass under the gatehouse to the courtyard. Some dozen officers, she said, with an escort of troopers, and the leader on a great black horse wearing a dark gray cloak. She slipped from the room to watch them descend from their horses in the inner court, and came back to say that Lord Robartes had stood himself on the steps to receive them, and they had all passed into the dining chamber with sentries before the doors.

  Even my tired brain seized the salient possibility--that this was the last council to be held, and that the Earl of Essex had come to it in person. I pressed my hands over my eyes to still my aching head. "Go find your scullion," I said to Matty. "Do what you will to him, but make him talk." She nodded, tightening her lips, and before she went she brought another bone to Dick, from some lair within her own small room, and, luring him with it like a dog to his kennel, got him to his cell beneath the buttress.

  Three, four, five, and it was already murky, the evening drawing in early because of the mist and rain, when I heard the horses pass beneath the archway once again, and so out across the park. At half past five Matty returned. What she had been doing those intervening hours I never asked her from that day to this, but she told me the scullion was without, and wished to speak to me. She lit the candles, for I was in darkness, and as I raised myself upon my elbow I questioned her with my eyes, and she gave a jerk of her head towards the passage.

  "If you give him money," she whispered, "he will do anything you ask him." I bade her fetch my purse, which she did, and then, going to the door, she beckoned him within.

  He stood blinking in the dim light, a sheepish grin on his face--but that face, like ours, was lean and hungry.

  I beckoned him to my bed, and he came near, with a furtive glance over his shoulder. I gave him a gold piece, which he pocketed instantly. "What news have you?" I asked.

  He looked at Matty, and she nodded. He ran his tongue over his lips.

  " 'Tis only rumor," he said, "but it's what they're saying in the courtyard." He paused, and looked again towards the door.

  "The retreat begins tonight," he said. "There'll be five thousand of them marching through darkness to the beaches. You'll hear them, if you listen. They'll come this way, down to Pridmouth and Polkerris. The boats will take them off when the wind eases."

  "Horses can't embark in small boats," I said. "What will your generals do with their two thousand horse?"

  He shook his head, and glanced at Matty. I gave him another gold piece.

  "I had but a word with Sir William Balfour's groom," he said. "There's talk of breaking through the Royalist lines tonight, when the foot retreat. I can't answer for the truth of it, nor could he."

  "What will happen to you and the other cooks?" I asked.

  "We'll go by sea, same as the rest," he said.

  "Not likely," I said. "Listen to the wind."

  It was soughing through the trees in the warren, and the rain spattered against my casement.

  "I can tell you what will happen to you," I said. "The morning will come, and there won't be any boats to take you from the beaches. You will huddle there, in the driving wind and rain with a thundering great southwest sea breaking down at Pridmouth and the country people coming down on you all from the cliffs with pitchforks in their hands. Cornish folk are not pleasant when they are hungry."

  The man was silent, and passed his tongue over his lips once again.

  "Why don't you desert?" I said. "Go off tonight, before worse can happen to you. I can give you a note to a Royalist leader."

  "That's what I told him," said Matty. "A word from you to Sir Richard Grenvile would see him through to our lines."

  The man looked from one to the other of us, foolish, doubtful, greedy. I gave him a third gold piece. "If you break through to the King's army," I said, "within an hour, and tell them there what you have just told me--about the horse trying to run for it before morning--they'll give you plenty more of these gold pieces, and a full supper into the bargain." He scratched his head, and looked again at Matty. "If the worst comes to the worst and you're held prisoner," I told him, "it would be better than having the bowels torn out of you by Cornishmen."

  It was this last word that settled him. "I'll go," he said, "if you'll write a word for me."

  I scribbled a few words to Richard, which were as like as not never to reach his hands (nor did they do so, as I afterward discovered), and bade the fellow find his way through the woods to Fowey if he could, and in the growing darkness get a boat to Bodinnick, which was held by the Royalists, and there give warning of the rebel plan.

  It would be too late, no doubt, to do much good, but it was at least a venture worth the trying. When he had gone, with Matty to speed him on his way, I lay back on my bed and listened to the rain, and as it fell I heard in the far distance, from the high road beyond the park, the tramp of marching feet. Hour after hour they sounded, tramp, tramp, without a pause, through the long hours of the night, with the bugle crying thin and clear above the moaning of the wind. When the morning broke, misty, and wet, and gray, they were still marching there upon the high road, bedraggled, damp, and dirty, hundred upon hundred straggling in broken lines across the park and making for the beaches.

  Order was gone by midday on Saturday, discipline was broken, for as a watery sun gleamed through the scurrying clouds we heard the first sounds of gunfire from Lostwithiel, as Richard's army broke upon them from the rear. We sat at our windows, hunger at last forgotten, with the rain blowing in our weary faces, and all day long they trudged across the park, a hopeless tangle now of men and horses and wagons; voices yelling orders that were not once obeyed, men falling to the ground in weariness and refusing to move further, horses, carts, and the few cattle that remained all jammed and bogged together in the sea of mud that once had been a park. The sound of the gunfire drew nearer, and the rattle of musket shots, and one of the servants, climbing to the belfry, reported that the high ground near Castledore was black with troops and smoke and flame, while down from the fields came little running figures, first a score, then fifty, then a hundred, then a hundred more, to join the swelling throng about the lanes and in the park.

  And the rain went on, and the retreat continued.

  At five o'clock word went round the house that we were every one of us to descend to the gallery. Even John, from his sickbed, must obey the order. The rest had little strength to drag their feet, and I found difficulty in holding to my chair. Nothing had passed our lips now but weak herb tea for two whole days. Alice looked like a ghost, for I think she had denied herself entirely for the sake of her three little girls. Her sister Elizabeth was scarcely better, and her year-old baby in her arms was as still as a waxen doll. Before I left my chamber I saw that Dick was safe within his cell, and this time, in spite of protestations, I closed the stone that formed the entrance.

  A strange band we were, huddled there together in the gallery, with wan faces; the children strangely quiet, and an ominously heavy look about their hollow eyes. It was the first time I had seen John since that morning a month ago, and he seemed most wretchedly ill, his skin a dull yellow color, and shaking still in every limb. He looked across at me as though to ask a question, and I nodded to him, summoning a smile. We sat there waiting, no one with the heart or strength to speak. A little apart from us, near the center window, sat Gartred with her daughters. They too were thinner and paler than before, and I think had not tasted chicken now for many days, but, compared to the poor Rashleigh and Courtney babies, they were not ill nourished.

  I noticed that Gartred wore no jewels and was very plainly dressed, and somehow the sight of this gave me a strange foreboding. She took no notice of
us, beyond a few words to Mary on her entrance, and seated beside the little table in the window she proceeded to play patience. She turned the cards with faces uppermost, considering them with great intentness. This, I thought, is the moment she has been waiting for for over thirty days.

  Suddenly there was a tramping in the hall and into the gallery came Lord Robartes, his boots splashed with mud, the rain running from his coat. His staff officers stood beside him, and one and all wore faces grim and purposeful.

  "Is everybody in the household here?" he called harshly.

  Some sort of murmur rose from among us, which he took to be assent.

  "Very well, then," he said, and, walking towards my sister Mary and her stepson John, he stood confronting them.

  "It has come to my knowledge," he said, "that your malignant husband, madam, and your father, sir, have concealed upon the premises large quantities of silver, which should by right belong to Parliament. The time has ended for any trifling or protestation. Pressure is being brought to bear upon our armies at this moment, forcing us to a temporary withdrawal. The Parliament needs every ounce of silver in the land, to bring this war to a successful conclusion. I ask you, madam, therefore, to tell me where the silver is concealed."

  Mary, God bless her ignorance, turned up her bewildered face to him.

  "I know nothing of any silver," she said, "except the few pieces of plate we have kept of our own, which you now possess, having my keys."

  "I talk of great quantities, madam, stored in some place of hiding, until it can be transported by your husband to the Mint."

  "My husband was Collector for Cornwall, that is true, my lord. But he has never said a word to me about concealing it at Menabilly."

  He turned from her to John.

  "And you sir? No doubt your father told you all his affairs?"

  "No," said John firmly. "I know nothing of my father's business, nor have I any knowledge of a hiding place. My father's only confidant is his steward, Langdon, who is with him at present. No one here at Menabilly can tell you anything at all."