The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  For a moment Lord Robartes stared down at John, then, turning away, he called to his three officers. "Sack the house," he said briefly. "Strip the hangings and all furnishings. Destroy everything you find. Take all jewels, clothes, and valuables. Leave nothing of Menabilly but the bare walls."

  At this poor John struggled to his feet. "You cannot do this," he said. "What authority has Parliament given you to commit such wanton damage? I protest, my lord, in the name of common decency and humanity." And my sister Mary, coming forward, threw herself upon her knees. "My Lord Robartes," she said, "I swear to you by all I hold most dear that there is nothing concealed within my house. If it were so I would have known of it. I do implore you to show mercy to my home."

  Lord Robartes stared down at her, his eyes hard.

  "Madam," he said, "why should I show your house mercy, when none was shown to mine? Both victor and loser pay the penalty in civil war. Be thankful that I have heart enough to spare your lives." And with that he turned on his heel and went from us, taking his officers with him and leaving two sentries at the door.

  Once again he mounted his horse in the courtyard and rode away, back to the useless rearguard action that was being fought in the hedges and ditches up at Castledore, with the mizzle rain falling thick and fast. We heard the major he had left in charge snap forth an order to his men--and straightway they started tearing at the paneling in the dining chamber. We could hear the woodwork rip, and the glass shatter as they smashed the mullioned windows. At this first warning of destruction Mary turned to John, the tears ravaging her face. "For God's sake," she said, "if you know of any hiding place, tell them of it, so that we save the house. I will take full blame upon myself when your father comes." John did not answer. He looked at me. And no one of the company there present saw the look save Gartred, who at that moment raised her head. I made no motion of my lips. I stared back at him, as hard and merciless as Lord Robartes. He waited a moment, then answered very slowly, "I know naught of any hiding place."

  I think had the rebels gone about their work with shouts and merriment, or even drunken laughter, the destruction of the house would have been less hard to bear. But because they were defeated troops, and knew it well, they had cold savage murder in their hearts, and did what they had to do in silence.

  The door of the gallery was open, with the two sentries standing on guard beside it, and no voices were uplifted, no words spoken. There was only the sound of the ripping wood, the breaking of the furniture, the hacking to pieces of the great dining table, and the grunts of the men as they lifted their axes. The first thing that was thrown down to us across the hall, torn and split, was the portrait of the King, and even the muddied heel that had been ground upon the features, and the great crack across the mouth, had not distorted those melancholy eyes that stared up at us without complaint from the wrecked canvas.

  We heard them climb the stairs and break into the south rooms, and as they tore down the door of Mary's chamber she began to weep long and silently, and Alice took her in her arms and hushed her like a child. The rest of us did nothing, but sat like specters, inarticulate. Then Gartred looked towards me from her window. "You and I, Honor, being the only members of the company without a drop of Rashleigh blood, must pass the time somehow. Tell me, do you play piquet?"

  "I haven't played it since your brother taught me, sixteen years ago," I answered.

  "The odds are in my favor, then," she said. "Will you risk a partie?" As she spoke she smiled, shuffling her cards, and I guessed the double meaning she would bring to it.

  "Perhaps," I said, "there is more at stake than a few pieces of silver."

  We heard them tramping overhead, and the sound of the splitting axe, while the shivering glass from the casements fell to the terrace outside.

  "You are afraid to match your cards against mine?" said Gartred.

  "No," I said. "No, I am not afraid."

  I pushed my chair towards her and sat opposite her at the table. She handed the cards for me to cut and shuffle, and when I had done so, I returned them to her for the dealing, twelve apiece. There started then the strangest partie of piquet that I have ever played, before or since, for while Gartred risked a fortune I wagered for Richard's son, and no one knew it but myself. The rest of the company, dumb and apathetic, were too weak even to wonder at us, and if they did it was with shocked distaste and shuddering dislike, that we--because we did not belong to Menabilly--could show ourselves so heartless.

  "Five cards," called Gartred.

  "What do they make?" I said.

  "Making nine."

  "Good."

  "Five."

  "A quart major, nine. Three knaves."

  "Not good."

  She led with the ace of hearts, to which I played the ten, and as she took the trick we heard the rebels wrenching the tapestry from the bedroom walls above. There was a dull smoldering smell, and a wisp of smoke blew past the windows of the gallery.

  "They are setting fire," said John quietly, "to the stables and the farm buildings before the house."

  "The rain will surely quench the flames," whispered Joan.

  "They cannot burn fiercely, not in the rain."

  One of the children began to wail, and I saw gruff Deborah take her on her knee and murmur to her. The smoke of the burning buildings was rank and bitter in the steady rain, and the sound of the axes overhead and the tramping of the men was as though they were felling trees in a thick forest, instead of breaking to pieces the great four-poster bed where Alice had borne her babies. They threw the glass mirror out onto the terrace, where it splintered to a thousand fragments, and with it came the broken candlesticks, the tall vases, and the tapestried chairs.

  "Fifteen," said Gartred, leading the king of diamonds, and "Eighteen," I answered, trumping it with my ace.

  Some of the rebels, with a sergeant in charge of them, came down the staircase, and they had with them all the clothing they had found in Jonathan's and Mary's bedroom, and her jewels too, and combs, and the fine figured arras that had hung upon the walls. This they loaded in bundles upon the packhorses that waited in the courtyard. When they were fully laden a trooper led them through the archway, and two more took their place. Through the broken windows of the wrecked dining chamber we could see the disordered rebel bands still straggling past the smoldering farm buildings towards the meadows and the beach, and as they gazed up at the house, grinning, their fellows at the house windows, warming to their work and growing reckless, shouted down to them with jeers and catcalls, throwing out the mattresses, the chairs, the tables--all they could lay hands upon which would make fodder for the flames that rose reluctantly in the slow drizzle from the blackened farm buildings.

  There was one fellow making a bundle of all the clothing and the linen. Alice's wedding gown, and the little frocks she had embroidered for her children, and all Peter's rich apparel that she had kept with such care in her press till he should need it. The tramping ceased from overhead, and we heard them pass into the rooms beneath the belfry. Some fellow, in mockery, began to toll the bell, and the mournful clanging made a new sound in our ears, mingling with the shouting and yelling and rumble of wagon wheels that still came to us from the park, and the ever-increasing bark of cannon shot, now barely two miles distant.

  "They will be in the gatehouse now," said Joan. "All your books and your possessions, Honor, they will not spare them any more than ours." There was reproach in her voice, and disillusion, that her favorite aunt and godmother should show no sign of grief. "My cousin Jonathan would never have permitted this," said Will Sparke, his voice high with hysteria. "Had there been plate concealed about the premises he would have given it, and willingly, rather than have his whole house robbed, and we, his relatives, lose everything." Still the bell tolled and the ceilings shook with heavy, murderous feet, and down into the inner court now they threw the debris from the west part of the building, portraits, and benches, rugs and hangings, all piled on top of one another in hideous
confusion, while those below discarded the less valuable, and fed them to the flames.

  We started upon the third hand of the partie. "A tierce to a king," called Gartred, and "Good," I replied, following her lead of spades. And all the while I knew that the rebels had now come to the last room of the house, and were tearing down the arras before the buttress. I saw Mary raise her grief-stricken face and look toward us. "If you would say one word to the officer," she said to Gartred, "he might prevent the men from further damage. You are a friend of Lord Robartes, and have some sway with him. Is there nothing you can do?"

  "I could do much," said Gartred, "if I were permitted. But Honor tells me it is better for the house to fall about our ears. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. My trick, I fancy."

  She wrote her score on the tablets by her side.

  "Honor," said Mary, "you know that it will break Jonathan's heart to see his home laid desolate. All that he has toiled and lived for, and his father before him, for nearly fifty years. If Gartred can in some way save us, and you are trying to prevent her, I can never forgive you, nor will Jonathan, when he knows of it."

  "Gartred can save no one, unless she likes to save herself," I answered, and began to deal for the fourth hand.

  "Five cards," called Gartred.

  "Equal," I answered.

  "A quart to a king."

  "A quart to a knave."

  We were in our fifth and last game, each winning two apiece, when we heard them tramping down the stairs, with the major in the lead. The terrace and the courtyard were heaped high with wreckage, the loved possessions and treasures of nearly fifty years, even as Mary had said, and what had not been packed upon the horses was left now to destroy. They set fire to the remainder, and watched it burn, the men leaning upon their axes and breathing hard now that the work was over. When the pile was well alight the major turned his back upon it, and coming into the gallery clicked his heels and bowed derisively to John.

  "The orders given me by Lord Robartes have been carried out with implicit fidelity," he announced. "There is nothing left within Menabilly House but yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and the bare walls."

  "And you found no silver hidden?" asked Mary.

  "None, madam, but your own--now happily in our possession."

  "Then this wanton damage, this wicked destruction, has been for nothing?"

  "A brave blow has been struck for Parliament, madam, and that is all that we, her soldiers and her servants, need consider."

  He bowed and left us, and in a moment we heard him call further orders, and horses were brought, and he mounted and rode away even as Lord Robartes had done an hour before. The flames licked the rubble in the courtyard, and save for their dull hissing, and the patter of the rain, there was suddenly no other sound. A strange silence had fallen upon the place. Even the sentries stood no longer by the door. Will Sparke crept to the hall.

  "They've gone," he said. "They've all ridden away. The house is bare, deserted."

  I looked up at Gartred, and this time it was I who smiled, and I who spread my cards upon the table.

  "Discard for carte blanche," I said softly, and, adding ten thus to my score, I led her for the first time, and with my next hand drew three aces to her one, and gained the partie.

  She rose then from the table without a word, save for one mock curtsy to me, and calling her daughters to her, went upstairs. I sat alone, shuffling the cards as she had done, while out into the hall faltered the poor weak members of our company to gaze about them, stricken at the sight that met their eyes.

  The panels ripped, the floors torn open, the windows shattered from their frames, and all the while the driving rain, that had neither doors nor windows now to bar it, blew in upon their faces, soft and silent, with great flakes of charred timber and dull soot from the burning rubble in the courtyard. The last rebels had retreated to the beaches, save for the few who still made the stand at Castledore, and there was no trace of them left now at Menabilly but the devastation they had wrought, and the black, churning slough that once was road and park. As I sat there, listening, still shuffling the cards in my hands, I heard, for the first time, a new note above the cannon and the musket shot and the steady pattering rain. Not clamoring or insistent, like the bugle that had haunted me so long, but quick, triumphant, coming ever nearer, the sharp, brisk tattoo of the Royalist drums.

  20

  The rebel army capitulated to the King in the early hours of Sunday morning. There was no escape by sea for the hundreds of men herded on the beaches. Only one fishing boat put forth from Fowey bound for Plymouth, in the dim light before dawn, and she carried in her cabin the Lord General the Earl of Essex, and his adviser, Lord Robartes. So much we learned later, and we learned too that Matty's scullion had proved faithful to his promise and borne his message to Sir Jacob Astley at Bodinnick on the Friday evening. But by the time word had reached His Majesty, the outposts upon the road were warned and the Parliament horse had successfully broken through the Royalist lines, and made good their escape to Saltash. So, by a lag in time, over two thousand rebel horse got clean away to fight another day, a serious mishap which was glossed over by our forces in the heat and excitement of the big surrender, and I think the only one of our commanders to go nearly hopping mad at the escape was Richard Grenvile.

  It was, I think, most typical of his character that when he sent a regiment of his foot to come to our succor on that Sunday morning, bringing us food from their own wagons, he did not come himself, but forwarded me this brief message, stopping not to consider whether I lived or died, or whether his son was with me still: "You will soon learn," he wrote, "that my plan has only partially succeeded. The horse have got away, all owing to that besotted idiot Goring lying in a stupor at his headquarters, and permitting--you will scarcely credit it--the rebels to slip through his lines without as much as a musket shot at their backsides. May God preserve us from our own commanders. I go now in haste to Saltash in pursuit, but have little hope of overtaking the sods, if Goring, with his cavalry, has already failed."

  First a soldier, last a lover, my Richard had no time to waste over a starving household and a crippled woman who had let a whole house be laid waste about her for the sake of the son he did not love. So it was not the father after all who carried the fainting lad into my chamber once again, and laid him down, but poor sick John Rashleigh, who crawling for the second time into the tunnel beneath the summerhouse, found Dick unconscious in the buttress cell, tugged at the rope, and so opened the hinged stone into the room.

  This was about nine o'clock on the Saturday night, after the house had been abandoned by the rebels, and we were all too weak to do much more than smile at the Royalist foot when they beat their drums under our gaping windows on the Sunday morning.

  The first necessity was milk for the children and bread for ourselves, and later in the day, when we had regained a little measure of our strength and the soldiers had kindled a fire for us in the gallery--the only room left livable--we heard once more the sound of horses, but this time heartening and welcome, for they were our own men coming home. I suppose I had been through a deal of strain those past four weeks, something harder than the others because of the secret I had guarded; and so, when it was over, I suffered a strange relapse, accentuated, maybe, by natural weakness, and had not the strength for several days to lift my head. The scenes of joy and reunion, then, were not for me. Alice had her Peter, Elizabeth her John of Coombe, Mary had her Jonathan, and there was kissing, and crying, and kissing again, and all the horrors of our past days to be described, and the desolation to be witnessed. But I had no shoulder on which to lean my head, and no breast to weep upon. A truckle bed from the attic served me for support, this being one of the few things found that the rebels had not destroyed. I recollect that my brother-in-law bent over me when he returned, and praised me for my courage, saying that John had told him everything and I had acted as he would have done himself, had he been home. But I did not want
my brother-in-law. I wanted Richard. And Richard had gone to Saltash, chasing rebels. All the rejoicing came as an anticlimax. The bells pealing in Fowey Church, echoed by the bells at Tywardreath, and His Majesty summoning the gentlemen of the county to his headquarters at Boconnoc and thanking them for their support--he presented Jonathan with his own lace handkerchief and prayer book--and a sudden wild thanksgiving for deliverance and for victory, seemed premature to me, and strangely sour. Perhaps it was some fault in my own character, some cripple quality, but I turned my face to the wall, and my heart was heavy. The war was not over, for all the triumphs in the west. Only Essex had been defeated, and his eight thousand men. There were many thousands in the north and east of England who had yet to show their heels. "And what is it all for?" I thought. "Why can they not make peace? Is it to continue thus, with the land laid waste, and houses devastated, until we are all grown old?"

  Victory had a hollow sound, with our enemy Lord Robartes in command at Plymouth, still stubbornly defended, and there was something narrow and parochial in thinking the war over because Cornwall was now free. It was the second day of our release, when the menfolk had ridden off to Boconnoc to take leave of His Majesty, that I heard the sound of wheels in the outer court, and preparation for departure, and then those wheels creaking over the cobbles and disappearing through the park. I was too tired then to question it, but later in the day, when Matty came to me, I asked her who it was that went away from Menabilly in so confident a fashion. "Who else could it be," Matty answered, "but Mrs. Denys?" So Gartred, like a true gambler, had thought best to cut her losses and be quit of us.

  "How did she find the transport?" I inquired.

  Matty sniffed as she wrung out a piece of cloth to bathe my back. "There was a gentleman she knew, it seems, among the Royalist party who rode hither yesterday with Mr. Rashleigh. A Mr. Ambrose Manaton. And it's he who has provided her the escort for today."

  I smiled, in spite of myself. However much I hated Gartred I had to bow to the fashion in which she landed on her feet in all and every circumstance.