The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  "I did not know."

  "It's all a plot, hatched by your brother. Three members of the Prince's Council are to come down from Bristol and discuss the business with the Commissioners; and as soon as I am fit enough to move I am to go before them. Jack Berkeley, commanding here at Exeter, is up to his neck in the intrigue."

  "And what exactly is the intrigue?"

  "Why, to have me shifted from my command, of course, and for Berkeley to take my place."

  "Would you mind so very much? The blockade of Plymouth has not brought you much satisfaction."

  "Jack Berkeley is welcome to Plymouth. But I'm not going to lie down and accept some secondary command, dished out to me by the Prince's Council, while I hold authority from His Majesty himself."

  "His Majesty," I said, "appears by all accounts to have his own troubles. Who is this General Cromwell we hear so much about?"

  "Another goddamned Puritan with a mission," said Richard. "They say he talks with the Almighty every evening, but I think it far more likely that he drinks. He's a good soldier, though. So is Fairfax. Their New Model Army will make mincemeat of our disorganized rabble."

  "And, knowing this, you choose to quarrel with your friends?"

  "They are not my friends. They are a set of low, backbiting blackguards. And I have told them all so, to their faces."

  It was useless to argue with him. And his wound had made him more sensitive on every point. I asked if he had news of Dick, and he showed me a stilted letter from the tutor, as well as copies of instructions that he had sent to Herbert Ashley. There was nothing very friendly or encouraging among them. I caught a glimpse of the words, "For his education I desire he may constantly and diligently be kept to the learning of the French tongue; reading, writing, and arithmetic, also riding, fencing, and dancing. All this I shall expect of him, which, if he follow according to my desire for his own good, he shall not want anything. But if I understand that he neglects in any kind what I have herein commanded him to do, truly I will neither allow him a penny to maintain him, nor look on him again as my son." I folded the instructions, and put them back into the case, which he locked and kept beside him.

  "Do you think," I said, "to win his affection in that way?"

  "I don't ask for his affection," he said. "I ask for his obedience."

  "You were not harsh thus with Jo. Nor are you so unrelenting to your nephew Jack."

  "Jo was one in a million, and Jack has some likeness to him. That lad fought at Lansdown like a tiger, when poor Bevil fell. And he was but fifteen, as Dick is now. All these lads I have affection for because they hold themselves like men. But Dick, my son and heir, shudders when I speak to him, and whimpers at the sight of blood. It does not make for pride in his father."

  An argument. A blow. A baby's cry. And fifteen years of poison seeping through a child's blood. There was no panacea that I could think of to staunch the flood of resentment. Time and distance might bring a measure of healing that close contact only served to wound. Once again Richard kissed my hand. "Never mind young Dick," he said. "It is not he who has a dozen splinters through his thigh."

  No man, I think, was ever a worse patient than Richard Grenvile, and no nurse more impervious to his threats and groans and curses than was Matty. My role, if less exacting, called for great equanimity of temperament. Being a woman, I did not have his spurs hurled at my head, as did his luckless officers, but I suffered many a bitter accusation because my name was Harris, and he liked to taunt me too because I had been born and bred in southeast Cornwall, where the women all were hags and scolds, so he averred, and the men cowards and deserters. "Nothing good came out of Cornwall yet," he said, "save from the north coast." And seeing that this failed to rouse me he sought by other means to make me rankle, a strange and unprofitable pastime for a sick man, but one I could understand in full measure, for I had often wished so to indulge myself some seventeen years before, but had never the courage of my moods.

  He kept his bed for some five weeks, and then, by the end of May, was sufficiently recovered to walk in his chamber with a stick, and at the same time curse his harassed staff for idleness.

  The feathers flew when he first came downstairs, for all the world like a turkey fight, and I never saw high-ranking officers more red about the ears than the colonels and the majors he addressed that May morning. They looked at the door with longing eyes, like schoolboys, with but one thought in their mind, to win freedom from his lashing tongue, or so I judged from their expressions. But when, after I had taken my airing in the square, I conversed with them, sympathy on the tip of my tongue, they one and all remarked upon the excellence of the General's health and spirits.

  "It does one good," said a colonel of foot, "to see the General himself again. I hardly dared to hope for it, a month since."

  "Do you bear no malice then," I said, "for his words to you this morning?"

  "Malice?" said the colonel, looking puzzled. "Why should I bear malice? The General was merely taking exercise."

  The ways of professional soldiers were beyond me.

  "It is a splendid sign," said Richard's nephew Jack, "when my uncle gives vent to frowns and curses. It mostly means he is well pleased. But see him smile, and speak with courtesy, and you may well reckon that the luckless receiver of his favors is halfway to the guardroom. I once saw him curse a fellow for fifteen minutes without respite, and that evening promote him to the rank of captain. The next day he received a prisoner, a country squire, I think, from Barnstaple, who owed him money, and my uncle plied him with wine, and smiles, and favors. He was hanging from a tree at Buckland two hours afterwards."

  I remember asking Richard if these tales were true. He laughed. "It pleases my staff," he said, "to weave a legend about my person." But he did not deny them.

  Meanwhile, the Prince's Council had come to Exeter to have discussion with the Devon Commissioners and to hear the complaints they had to make against Sir Richard Grenvile. It was unfortunate, I felt, that the head of the Prince's Council was that same Sir Edward Hyde whom Richard had described to me at Radford as a jumped-up lawyer. I think the remark had been repeated to him, for when he arrived at the hostelry to call upon Richard, accompanied by Lords Culpepper and Capel, I thought his manner very cold and formal, and I could see he bore little cordiality towards the general who had so scornfully dubbed him upstart. I was presented to them, and immediately withdrew. What they thought of me I neither knew nor cared. It would be but another scandalous tale to spread, that Sir Richard Grenvile had a crippled mistress.

  What in truth transpired behind those closed doors I never discovered. As soon as the three members of the Prince's Council tried to speak they would be drowned by Richard, with a tirade of accusations against the Governor of the city, Sir John Berkeley, who, so he avowed, had done nothing for nine months now but put obstructions in his path. As to the Commissioners of Devon, they were traitors, one and all, and tried to keep their money in their pockets rather than pay the army that defended them.

  "Let Berkeley take over Plymouth, if he so desires it," Richard declared. (This he told me afterwards.) "God knows it troubles me to be confined to blocking up a place, when there is likely to be action in the field. Give me power to raise men in Cornwall and in Devon, without fear of obstruction, and I will place an army at the disposal of the Prince of Wales that will be a match for Cromwell's Puritans." Whereupon he formally handed over his resignation as Commander of the Siege of Plymouth, and sent the Lords of the Council packing off back to Bristol to receive the Prince's authority sanctioning him to a new command. "I handled them," he said to me gleefully, "with silken gloves. Let Jack Berkeley stew at Plymouth, and good luck to him." And he drank a bottle and a half of burgundy at supper, which played havoc with his wound next morning.

  I have forgotten how many days we waited for the royal warrant to arrive, confirming him in the appointment to raise troops, but it must have been ten days or more. At last Richard declared that he would not kick his
heels waiting for a piece of paper that few people would take the trouble to read, and he proceeded to raise recruits for the new army. His staff were dispatched about the countryside rounding up the men who had been idle, or had deserted and gone home, during his illness. All were promised pay and clothing. And as Sheriff of Devon (for this post he had not resigned with his command) Richard ordered his old enemies, the Commissioners, to raise fresh money for the purpose. I guessed this would bring a hornet's nest about his ears again, but I was only a woman, and it was not my business.

  I sat one day beside my window, looking out onto the cathedral, and I saw Sir John Berkeley, who had not yet gone to Plymouth, ride away from the hostelry looking like a thundercloud. There had been a stormy meeting down below, and, according to young Jack, Sir John had got the worst of it.

  "I yield to no man," said Richard's nephew, "in my admiration for my uncle. He has the better of his opponents every time. But I wish he would guard his tongue."

  "What," I asked wearily, "are they disputing now?"

  "It is always the same story," said Jack. "My uncle says that as Sheriff of the county he can compel the Commissioners to pay his troops. Sir John declares the contrary. That it is to him, as Governor of the city and commander before Plymouth, to whom the money should be paid. They'll fight a duel about it before they have finished." Shortly afterwards Richard came to my room white with passion. "My God," he said, "I cannot stand this hopeless mess an instant longer. I shall ride at once to Bristol to see the Prince. When in doubt, go to the highest authority. That has always been my rule. Unless I can get satisfaction out of His Highness I shall chuck the whole affair."

  "You are not well enough to ride," I said.

  "I can't help that. I won't stay here and have that hopeless nincompoop Jack Berkeley obstruct every move I make. He is hand in glove with your blasted brother, that's the trouble."

  "You began the trouble," I said, "by making an enemy of my brother. All this has come about because you shot Edward Champernowne."

  "What would you have had me do--promote the sod?" he stormed. "A weak-bellied rat who caused the death of three hundred of my finest troops because he was too lily-livered to face the rebel guns and come to my support? Shooting was too good for him. A hundred years ago he would have been drawn and quartered."

  The next day he left for Barnstaple, where the Prince of Wales had gone to escape the plague at Bristol, and I was thankful that he took his nephew Jack as aide-de-camp. He had three men to hoist him into the saddle, and he still looked most damnably unwell. He smiled up at me as I leaned from my window in the hostelry, and saluted with his sword. "Have no fear," he said, "I'll return within a fortnight. Keep well. Be happy."

  But he never did return, and that was the end of my sojourn as a nurse and comforter at Exeter. On the eighteenth of June the King and Prince Rupert were heavily defeated by General Cromwell at Naseby, and the rebel army, under the supreme command of General Fairfax, was marching once again towards the west. The whole of the Royalist strategy had now to be changed to meet this new menace, and, while rumors ran rife that Fairfax was coming upon Taunton, I had a message from Richard to say that he had been ordered by the Prince of Wales to besiege Lyme and had the commission of field marshal in his pocket.

  "I will send for you," he said, "when I have fixed my headquarters. In the meantime, rest where you are. I think it very likely that we shall all of us, before the summer is out, be on the run again." This news was hardly pleasant hearing, and I bethought me of the relentless marching feet that I had heard a year ago at Menabilly. Was the whole horror of invasion to be endured once again? I did as he bade me, and stayed at Exeter. I had no home, and one roof was as good to me now as another. If I lacked humility, I also had no pride. I was nothing more nor less, by this time, than a camp follower. A pursuivant of the drum.

  On the last day of June Jack Grenvile came for me, with a troop of horse to bear my litter. Matty and I were already packed and ready. We had been waiting since the message a fortnight before.

  "Where are we bound?" I said gaily. "For Lyme or London?"

  "For neither," he said grimly. "For a tumbledown residence in Ottery St. Mary. The General has thrown up his commission."

  He could tell me little of what had happened, except that the bulk of the new forces that had been assigned to Richard's new command, and were to rendezvous at Tiverton, had suddenly been withdrawn by the orders of the Prince's Council and diverted to the defense of Barnstaple, without a word of explanation to the General. We came to Ottery St. Mary, a sleepy Devon village where the inhabitants stared at the strange equipage that drew up before the manor house as though the world were suddenly grown crazy--in which they showed good reason. In the meadows behind the village were drawn Richard's own horse and foot, who had followed him from the beginning. Richard himself was seated in the dining chamber of his headquarters, his wounded leg propped upon a chair before him.

  "Greetings," he said maliciously, "from one cripple to another. Let us retire to bed and see who has the greatest talent for invention."

  "If that," I said, "is your mood, we will discuss it presently. At the moment I am tired, hungry, and thirsty. But would you care to tell me what the devil you are doing in Ottery St. Mary?"

  "I am become a free man," he answered, smiling, "beholden to neither man nor beast. Let them fight the New Model Army in their own fashion. If they won't give me the troops, I do not propose to ride alone with nephew Jack against Fairfax and some twenty thousand men."

  "I thought," I said, "that you were become field marshal."

  "An empty honor," he said, "signifying nothing. I have just returned the commission to the Prince of Wales in an empty envelope, desiring him to place it up a certain portion of his person. What shall we drink for supper, hock or burgundy?"

  24

  That was, I think, the most fantastic fortnight I have ever known. Richard, with no command and no commission, lived like a royal prince in the humble village of Ottery St. Mary, the people for miles around bringing their produce to the camp, their corn, their cattle, in the firm belief that he was the supreme commander of His Majesty's troops from Lyme to Land's End. For payment he referred them graciously to the Commissioners of Devon. The first Sunday after his arrival he caused an edict to be read in the Church of Ottery St. Mary and other churches in the neighboring parishes, desiring that all those persons who had been plundered by the Governor of Exeter, Sir John Berkeley, when quartering troops upon them, should bring to him, Sir Richard Grenvile, the King's General in the West, an account of their losses, and he would see that they were righted.

  The humble village folk, thinking that a savior had come to dwell among them, came on foot from a distance of twenty miles or more, each one bearing in his hands a list of crimes and excesses committed, according to them, by Lord Goring's troopers and Sir John Berkeley's men, and I can see Richard now, standing in the village place before the church, distributing largesse in princely fashion from a sum of money he had discovered behind a panel in his headquarters, a house belonging to an unfortunate squire with vague Parliamentary tendencies, whom Richard had immediately arrested. On the Wednesday, since it was fine, he held a review of his troops--the sight being free to the villagers--and the drums sounded, and the church bells pealed, and in the evening bonfires were lit and a great supper was served at the headquarters to the officers, at which I presided like a queen.

  "We may as well be merry," said Richard, "while the money lasts." I thought of that letter to the Prince of Wales, which must by now have reached the Prince's Council, and I pictured the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Edward Hyde, opening the paper before the assembly.

  I thought also of Sir John Berkeley, and what he would say when he heard about the edict in the churches, and it seemed to me that my rash and indiscreet lover would be wiser if he struck his camp and hid in the mists of Dartmoor, for he could not bluff the world much longer in Ottery St. Mary.

  The bluff was su
perb while it lasted, and, since the Parliamentary squire whom we had superseded kept a well-stocked cellar, we soon had every bottle sampled, and Richard drank perdition to the supporters of both Parliament and Crown.

  "What will you do," I asked, "if the Council sends for you?"

  "Exactly nothing," he answered, "unless I have a letter, in his own handwriting, from the Prince of Wales himself."

  And, with a smile that his nephew would call ominous, he opened yet another bottle.

  "If we continue thus," I said, turning my glass down upon the table, "you will become as great a sot as Goring."

  "Goring cannot stand after five glasses," said Richard. "I can drill a whole division after twelve." And, rising from the table, he called to the orderly who stood without the door. "Summon Sir John Grenvile," he said. In a moment Jack appeared, also a little flushed and gay about the eyes.

  "My compliments," said Richard, "to Colonels Roscarrock and Arundell. I wish the troops to be paraded on the green. I intend to drill them."

  His nephew did not flicker an eyelid, but I saw his lips quiver.

  "Sir," he said, "it is past eight o'clock. The men have been dismissed to their quarters."

  "I am well aware of the fact," replied his uncle. "It was for the purpose of rousing them that drums were first bestowed upon the army. My compliments to Colonels Roscarrock and Arundell."

  Jack clicked his heels and left the room. Richard walked slowly, and very solemnly, towards the chair where lay his sling and sword. He proceeded to buckle them about his waist.

  "The sling," I said softly, "is upside down."

  He bowed gravely in acknowledgment, and made the necessary adjustment. And from without the drums began to beat, sharp and alert, in the gathering twilight.

  I was, I must confess, only a trifle less dazed about the head than I had been on that memorable occasion long before, when I had indulged too heavily in burgundy and swan. This time--and it was my only safeguard--I had my chair to sit in, and I can remember, through a sort of haze, being propelled towards the village green with the drums sounding in my ears and the soldiers running from all directions to form lines upon the grass sward. Villagers leaned from their casements, and I remember one old fellow in a nightcap shrieking out that Fairfax was come upon them and they would all be murdered in their beds.