The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  "They will not, they cannot, endure it," he said.

  "What is their alternative? The King is virtually a prisoner. The party with the most money and the strongest army rules the country. For those who share their views life is doubtless very pleasant."

  "No one can share their views and call his soul their own."

  "There you are wrong. It is merely a matter of being accommodating, and shaking hands with the right people. Lord Robartes lives in great comfort at Lanhydrock. The Treffrys--being related to Hugh Peters and Jack Trefusis--live very well at Place. If you chose to follow their example and truckle to the Parliament, doubtless you would find life here at Menabilly so much the easier."

  He stared at me suspiciously. "Would you have me go to them and fawn, while my father lives a pauper up in London, watched every moment of his day? I would sooner die."

  I knew he would sooner die, and loved him for it. Dear John, you might have had more years beside your Joan, and be alive today, had you spared yourself, and your poor health, in those first few months of aftermath... I watched him toil, and the women too, and there was little I could do to help but figure the accounts, an unpaid clerk, with smudgy fingers, and tot up the debts we owed on quarter days. I did not suffer as the Rashleighs did, pride being, I believe, a quality long lost to me, and I was sad only in their sadness. To see Alice, gazing wistfully from a window, brought a pain to my heart, and when Mary read a letter from her Jonathan, deep shadows beneath her eyes, I think I hated the Parliament every whit as much as they did.

  But that first year of defeat was, in some queer fashion, quiet and peaceful to me who bore no burden on my shoulders. Danger was no more. Armies were disbanded. The strain of war was lifted. The man I loved was safe across the sea, in France, and then in Italy, in the company of his son, and now and then I would have word of him from some foreign city, in good heart and spirits, and missing me, it would seem, not at all. He talked of going to fight the Turk with great enthusiasm, as if, I thought with a shrug of my shoulder, he had not had enough of fighting after three hard years of civil war. "Doubtless," he wrote, "you find your days monotonous in Cornwall." Doubtless I did. To women who have known close siege and stern privation, monotony can be a pleasant thing... A wanderer for so many months, it was restful to find a home at last, and to share it with people that I loved, even if we were all companions in defeat. God bless the Rashleighs, who permitted me those months at Menabilly. The house was bare and shorn of its former glory, but at least I had a room to call my own. The Parliament could strip the place of its possessions, take the sheep and cattle, glean the harvest, but they could not take from me, nor from the Rashleighs, the beauty that we looked on every day. The devastation of the gardens was forgotten when the primroses came in spring, and the young green budded on the trees. We, the defeated, could still listen to the birds on a May morning, and watch the clumsy cuckoo wing his way to the little wood beside the Gribben hill. The Gribben hill... I watched it, from my chair upon the causeway, in every mood from winter to midsummer. I have seen the shadows creep, on an autumn afternoon, from the deep Pridmouth valley to the summit of the hill, and there stay a moment, waiting on the sun.

  I have seen too the white sea mists of early summer turn the hill to fantasy, so that it becomes, in a single second, a ghost land of enchantment, with no sound coming but the wash of breakers on the hidden beach, where, at high noon, the children gather cowrie shells. Dark moods too of bleak November, when the rain sweeps in a curtain from the southwest. But, quietest of all, the evenings of late summer, when the sun has set, and the moon has not yet risen, but the dew is heavy in the long grass.

  The sea is very white and still, without a breath upon it, and only a single thread of wash upon the covered Cannis Rock. The jackdaws fly homeward to their nests in the warren. The sheep crop the short turf, before they too rub together beneath the stone wall by the winnowing place. Dusk comes slowly to the Gribben hill, the woods turn black, and suddenly, with stealthy pad, a fox creeps from the trees in the thistle park, and stands watching me, his ears pricked... Then his brush twitches and he is gone, for here is Matty tapping along the causeway to bring me home; and another day is over. Yes, Richard, there is comfort in monotony...

  I return to Menabilly to find all have gone to bed, and the candles extinguished in the gallery. Matty carries me upstairs, and as she brushes my hair, and ties the curling rags, I think I am almost happy. A year has come and gone, and though we are defeated we live, we still survive. I am lonely, yes, but that has been my portion since I turned eighteen. And loneliness has compensations. Better to live inwardly alone than together in constant fear. And as I think thus, my curling rag in my hand, I see Matty's round face looking at me from the mirror opposite.

  "There were strange rumors in Fowey today," she says quietly.

  "What rumors, Matty? There are always rumors."

  She moistens a rag with her tongue, then whips it round a curl. "Our men are creeping back," she murmurs. "First one, then two, then three. Those who fled to France a year ago."

  I rub some lotion on my hands and face.

  "Why should they return? They can do nothing."

  "Not alone, but if they band together, in secret, one with another..."

  I sit still, my hands in my lap, and suddenly I remember a phrase in the last letter that came from Italy.

  "You may hear from me," he said, "before the summer closes, by a different route..." I thought him to mean he was going to fight the Turks.

  "Do they mention names?" I say to Matty, and for the first time for many months a little seed of anxiety and fear springs to my heart. She does not answer for a moment--she is busy with a curl. Then at last she speaks, her voice low and hushed.

  "They talk of a great leader," she says, "landing in secret at Plymouth from the Continent. He wore a dark wig, they said, to disguise his coloring. But they did not mention names..."

  A bat brushes itself against my windows, lost and frightened, and close to the house an owl shrieks in warning. And it seemed to me, that moment, that the bat was no airey-mouse of midsummer, but the scared symbol of all hunted things.

  29

  Rumors. Always rumors. Never anything of certainty. This was our portion during the winter of '47-'48. So strict was the Parliamentary hold on news that nothing but the bare official statements were given to us down in Cornwall, and these had no value, being simply what Whitehall thought good for us to know.

  So the whispers started, handed from one to the other, and when the whispers came to us fifth-hand we had to sift the welter of extravagance to find the seed of truth. The Royalists were arming. This was the firm base of all the allegations. Weapons were being smuggled into the country from France, and places of concealment were found for them. Gentlemen were meeting in one another's houses. The laborers were conversing together in the field. A fellow at a street corner would beckon to another, for the purpose, it would seem, of discussing market prices; there would be a question, a swift answer, and then the two would separate, but information had been passed, and another link forged.

  Outside the parish church of Tywardreath would stand a Parliamentary soldier, leaning on his musket, while the busybody agent, who had beneath his arm a fold of documents listing each member of the parish and his private affairs, gave him "Good morning"; and while he did so the old sexton, with his back turned, prepared a new grave, not for a corpse this time, but for weapons... They could have told a tale, those burial grounds of Cornwall. Cold steel beneath the green turf and the daisies, locked muskets in the dark family vaults. Let a fellow climb to repair his cottage roof against the rains of winter, and he will pause an instant and glance over his shoulder, and, thrusting his hand under the thatch, feel for the sharp edge of a sword. These would be Matty's tales. Mary would come to me, with a letter from Jonathan in London. "Fighting is likely to start again at any moment," would be his guarded word. "Discontent is rife, even here, against our masters. Many Londoners who f
ought in opposition to the King would swear loyalty to him now. I can say no more than this. Bid John have a care whom he meets and where he goes. Remember, I am bound to my oath. If we meddle in these matters he and I will answer for it with our lives."

  Mary would fold the letter anxiously and place it in her gown. "What does it mean?" she would say. "What matters does he refer to?" And to this there could be one answer only. The Royalists were rising.

  Names that had not been spoken for two years were now whispered by cautious tongues. Trelawney... Trevanion... Arundell... Bassett... Grenvile... Yes, above all, Grenvile. He had been seen at Stowe, said one. Nay, that was false, it was not Stowe, but at his sister's house near Bideford. The Isle of Wight, said another. The Red Fox was gone to Carisbrooke to take secret council of the King. He had not come to the West Country. He had been seen in Scotland. He had been spoken to in Ireland. Sir Richard Grenvile was returned. Sir Richard Grenvile was in Cornwall...

  I made myself deaf to these tales. For once too often, in my life, I had had a bellyful of rumors. Yet it was strange no letter came any more from Italy, or from France...

  John Rashleigh kept silent on these matters. His father had bidden him not to meddle, but to work, night and day, at the husbanding of the estate, so that the groaning debt to Parliament could be paid. But I could guess his thoughts. If there were in truth a rising, and the Prince landed, and Cornwall was freed once more, there would be no debt to pay. If the Trelawneys were a party to the plan, and the Trevanions also, and all those in the county who swore loyalty to the King in secret, then was it not something like cowardice, something like shame, for a Rashleigh to remain outside the company? Poor John. He was often restless and sharp tempered, those first weeks of spring, after plowing was done. And Joan was not with us to encourage him, for her twin boys, born the year before, were sickly, and she was with them, and the elder children, at Mothercombe in Devon. Then Jonathan fell ill up in London, and though he asked permission of the Parliament to return to Cornwall they would not grant it, so he sent for Mary, and she went to him. Alice was the next to leave. Peter wrote to her from France, desiring that she should take the children to Trethurfe, his home, which was--so he had heard--in sad state of repair, and would she go there, now spring was at hand, and see what could be done. She went, the first day of March, and it suddenly became strangely quiet at Menabilly. I had been used so long to children's voices that now to be without them, and the sound of Alice's voice calling to them, and the rustle of Mary's gown, made me more solitary than usual, even a little sad. There was no one but John now for company, and I wondered what we should make of it together, he and I, through the long evenings.

  "I have half a mind," he said to me the third day we sat together, "to leave Menabilly in your care, and go to Mothercombe."

  "I'll tell no tales of you if you do," I said to him.

  "I do not like to go against my father's wishes," he admitted, "but it's over six months now since I have seen Joan and the children, and not a word comes to us here of what is passing in the country. Only that the war has broken out again. There is fighting in places as far apart as Wales and the eastern counties. I tell you, Honor, I am sick of inactivity. For very little I would take horse and ride to Wales."

  "No need to ride to Wales," I said quietly, "when there is likely to be a rising in your own county."

  He glanced at the half-open door of the gallery. A queer, instinctive move, unnecessary when the few servants that we had could all be trusted. Yet since we had been ruled by Parliament this gesture would be force of habit. "Have you heard anything?" he said guardedly. "Some word of truth, I mean, not idle rumor?"

  "Nothing," I answered, "beyond what you hear yourself."

  "I thought perhaps Sir Richard...," he began, but I shook my head.

  "Since last year," I said, "rumor has it that he has been hiding in the country. I've had no message."

  He sighed, and glanced once more towards the door.

  "If only," he said, "I could be certain what to do. If there should be a rising, and I took no part in it, how lacking in loyalty to the King I would seem, and what dishonor it would be to the name of Rashleigh."

  "If there should be a rising and it failed," I said, "how damp your prison walls, how uneasy your head upon your shoulders."

  He smiled, for all his earnestness. "Trust a woman," he said, "to damp a fellow's ardor."

  "Trust a woman," I replied, "to keep war out of her home."

  "Do you wish to sit down indefinitely, then, under the rule of Parliament?" he asked.

  "Not so. But spit in their faces, before the time is ripe, and we shall find ourselves one and all under their feet forever."

  Once again he sighed, rumpling his hair and looking dubious.

  "Get yourself permission," I said, "and go to Mothercombe. It's your wife you need, and not a rising. But I warn you, once you are in Devon you may not find it so easy to return."

  This warning had been repeated often during the past weeks. Those who had gone into Devon or to Somerset upon their lawful business, bearing a permit from the local Parliamentary officials, would find great delay upon the homeward journey, much scrutiny and questioning, and this would be followed by a search for documents or weapons, and possibly a night or more under arrest. We, the defeated, were not the only ones to hear the rumors...

  The Sheriff of Cornwall at this time was a neighbor, Sir Thomas Herle of Prideaux, near St. Blazey, who, though firm for Parliament, was a just and fair man. He had done all he could to mitigate the heavy fine placed upon the Rashleigh estate, through respect for my brother-in-law, but Whitehall was too strong for his local powers. It was he now, in kindness, who granted John Rashleigh permission to visit his wife at Mothercombe in Devon, and so it happened, this fateful spring, that I was, of all our party, the only one remaining at Menabilly. A woman and a cripple--it was not likely that such a one could foster, all alone, a grim rebellion. The Rashleighs had taken the oath. Menabilly was now above suspicion. And though the garrison at Fowey and other harbors on the coast were strengthened, and more troops quartered in the towns and villages, our little neck of land seemed undisturbed. The sheep grazed on the Gribben hill. The cattle browsed in the beef park. The wheat was sown in Eighteen Acres. And smoke from a single fire--my own--rose from the Menabilly chimneys. Even the steward's house was desolate, now old John Langdon had been gathered to his fathers, for with the crushing burden on the estate his place had not been filled. His keys, once so important and mysterious, were now in my keeping, and the summerhouse, so sacred to my brother-in-law, had become my routine shelter on a windy afternoon. I had no wish these days to pry into the Rashleigh papers. Most of the books were gone, stored in the house or packed and sent after him to London. The desk was bare and empty. Cobwebs hung from the walls. Green patches of mold showed upon the ceiling. But the torn matting on the floor still hid the flagstone with the iron ring... I saw a rat once creep from his corner and stare at me a moment with beady, unwinking eyes. A great black spider spun a web from a broken pane of glass in the east window, while ivy, spreading from the ground, thrust a tendril to the sill. A few years more, I thought, and Nature would take toll of it all. The stones of the summerhouse would crumble, the nettles force themselves through the floor, and no one would remember the flagstone with the ring upon it, or the flight of steps, and the earthy, moldering tunnel. Well, it had served its purpose. Those days would not return.

  I looked out towards the sea, one day in March, and watched the shadows darken, for an instant, the pale ripple of the water beyond Pridmouth. The clock in the belfry struck four o'clock. Matty had gone to Fowey, and should be back by now. I heard a footstep on the path beneath the causeway, and called, thinking it was one of the farm laborers returning home, who could bear a message for me to the house. The footsteps ceased, but there came no word in answer.

  I called again, and this time I heard a rustle in the undergrowth. My friend, the fox, perhaps, was out on his p
rowl. Then I saw a hand fasten to the sill and cling there for an instant, gripping for support. But the walls of the summerhouse were smooth, giving no foothold, and in a second the hand had slipped and was gone.

  Someone was playing spy upon me... If one of the long-nosed Parliamentary agents who spent their days scaring the wits out of the simple country people wished to try the game on me, he would receive short measure.

  "If anyone wishes to speak with Mr. Rashleigh, he is from home," I called loudly. "There is no one but myself in charge at Menabilly. Mistress Honor Harris, at your service."

  I waited a moment, my eye still on the window, and then a shadow, falling suddenly upon my right shoulder, told me there was someone at the door. I whipped round, in an instant, my hands on the wheels of my chair, and saw the figure of a man, small and slight, clad in plain dark clothes like a London clerk, with a hat pulled low over his face. He stood watching me, his hand upon the lintel of the door.

  "Who are you?" I said. "What do you want?" There was something in his manner which struck a chord... The way he hesitated, standing on one foot, then bit his thumbnail... I groped for the answer, my heart beating, when he whipped his hat from his close black curls, and I saw him smile, tremulous at first, uncertain, until he saw me smile and stretch my arms towards him.

  "Dick...," I whispered. He came and knelt by me at once, covering my hand with kisses.

  I forgot the intervening years, and had in my arms a little frightened boy who gnawed a bone and swore he was a dog and I his mistress. And then, raising his head, I saw he was a boy no longer, but a young man, with hair upon his lip, and curls no longer riotous, but sleek and close. His voice was low and soft, a man's voice.

  "Four years," I said. "Have you grown thus in four small years?"

  "I shall be eighteen in two months' time," he answered, smiling. "Have you forgotten? You wrote the first year for my birthday, but never since."

  "Writing has not been possible, Dick, these past two years."

  I could not take my eyes from him, he was so grown, so altered. Yet that way of watching with dark eyes, wary and suspicious, was the same, and the trick of gnawing at his hand.