The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  "Tell me quickly," I said, "before they come to fetch me from the house, what you are doing here, and why."

  He looked at me doubtfully. "I am the first to come, then?" he asked. "My father is not here?"

  My heart leaped, but whether in excitement or in fear I could not tell. In a flash of intuition, it seemed that I knew everything. The waiting of the past few months was over. It was all to begin afresh... It was to start again...

  "No one is here," I answered, "but yourself. Even the Rashleighs are from home."

  "Yes, we knew that," he said. "That is why Menabilly has been chosen."

  "Chosen for what?" I asked.

  He did not answer. He started his old trick of gnawing at his hand. "They will tell you," he said, blinking his eyelids, "when they come."

  "Who are 'they'?" I asked.

  "My father, first," he answered, with his eye upon the door, "and Peter Courtney another, and Ambrose Manaton of Trecarrel, and your own brother Robin, and, of course, my Aunt Gartred."

  Gartred... At this I felt like someone who has been ill overlong, or withdrawn from the world, leading another life. There had been rumors enough, God knows, in southeast Cornwall to stun the senses, but none so formidable as fell now upon my ears.

  "I think it best," I said slowly, "if you tell me what has happened since you came to England."

  He rose then from his knee, and, dusting the dirt from his clothes with a fastidious hand, swept a place upon the windowsill to sit. "We left Italy last autumn," he said, "and came first of all to London. My father was disguised as a Dutch merchant, and I as his secretary. Since then we have traveled England, from south to north, outwardly as foreign men of business, secretly as agents for the Prince. At Christmas we crossed the Tamar into Cornwall, and went first of all to Stowe. My aunt is dead, you know, and no one was there but the steward, and my cousin Bunny, and the others. My father made himself known to the steward, and since then many secret meetings have been held throughout the county. From Stowe it is but a step to Bideford and Orley Court. There were found my aunt Gartred, who, having fallen out with her Parliamentary friends, was hot to join us, and your brother Robin also."

  Truly the world had passed me by at Menabilly. The Parliament had one grace to its credit, that the stoppage of news stopped gossip also.

  "I did not know," I said, "that my brother Robin lived at Bideford."

  Dick shrugged his shoulders. "He and my aunt are very thick," he answered. "I understand your brother has made himself her bailiff. She owns land, does she not, that belonged to your eldest brother, who is dead?"

  Yes, they could have met again that way. The ground upon which Lanrest had stood, the fields below the mill at Lometton. Why should I blame Robin, grown weary and idle in defeat?

  "And so?" I asked.

  "And so the plans matured, the clans gathered. They are all in it, you know, from east to west, the length and breadth of Cornwall. The Trelawneys, the Trevanions, the Bassetts, the Arundells. And now the time draws near. The muskets are being loaded and the swords sharpened. You will have a front seat at the slaughter."

  There was a strange note of bitterness in his soft voice, and I saw him clench his hands upon the sill.

  "And you?" I asked. "Are you not excited at the prospect? Are you not happy to be one of them?"

  He did not answer for a moment, and when he did I saw his eyes look large and black in his pale face, even as they had done as a boy four years before.

  "I tell you one thing, Honor," he said passionately. "I would give all I possess in the world, which is precious little, to be out of it."

  The force with which he spoke shocked me for an instant, but I took care that he should not guess it.

  "Why so?" I asked. "Have you no faith that they will succeed?"

  "Faith?" he said wearily. "I have no faith in anything. I begged him to let me stay in Italy, where I was content after my own fashion, but he would not let me. I found that I could paint, Honor. I wished to make painting my trade. I had friends, too, fellows of my age, for whom I felt affection. But no. Painting was womanish, a pastime fit for foreigners. My friends were womanish too, and would degrade me. If I wished to live, if I hoped to have a penny to my name, I must follow him, do his bidding, ape his ways, grow like my Grenvile cousins. God in heaven, how I have come to loathe the very name of Grenvile!"

  Eighteen, but he had not changed. Eighteen, but he was still fourteen. This was the little boy who had sobbed his hatred of his father.

  "And your mother?" I asked gently.

  He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, I have seen her," he said listlessly, "but it's too late now to make amends. She cares nothing for me. She has other interests. Four years ago she would have loved me still. Not now. It's too late. His fault. Always his fault."

  "Perhaps," I said, "when--when this present business is concluded, you will be free. I will speak for you. I will ask that you may return to Italy, to your painting, to your friends."

  He picked at the fringe of his coat with his long slim hands--too long, I thought, too finely slim for a Grenvile.

  "There will be fighting," he said slowly, "men killing one another for no purpose, save to spill blood. Always to spill blood..."

  It was growing dim in the summerhouse, and still I had heard no more about their plans. The fear that I read in his eyes found an echo in my heart, and the old strain and anxiety was with me once again. "When did you leave Bideford?" I asked.

  "Two days ago," he answered. "Those were my orders. We were to proceed separately, each by a different route. Lady Courtney has gone to Trethurfe, I presume?"

  "She went at the beginning of the month."

  "So Peter intended. It was part of the ruse, you see, for emptying the house. Peter has been in Cornwall and among us since before Christmas."

  Another prey for Gartred? A second bailiff to attend on Orley Court? And Alice here, with wan cheeks, and chin upon her hand, at an open window... Richard did not choose his serviteurs for kindness.

  "Mrs. Rashleigh was inveigled up to London for the same purpose," said Dick. "The scheme has been cunningly planned, like all schemes of my father's. And the last cast of all, to rid the house of John, was quite in keeping with his character."

  "John went of his own accord," I answered, "to see his wife at Mothercombe in Devon."

  "Aye, but he had a message first," said Dick, "a scrap of paper, passed to him in Fowey, saying that his wife was overfond of a neighbor, living in her father's house. I know, because I saw my father pen the letter, laughing as he did so, with Aunt Gartred at his back."

  I was silent at that. God damn them both, I thought, for cruelty. And I knew Richard's answer, even as I accused him in my thoughts: "Any means, to secure the end that I desire."

  Well, what was to come was no affair of mine. The house was empty. Let them make of it a place of assignation. I could not stop them. Let Menabilly become, in one brief hour, the headquarters of the Royalist rising. Whether they succeeded or failed was not my business. "Did your father," I said, "send any word to me? Did he know that I was here?"

  Dick stared at me blankly for a moment, as though I were in truth the half-wit I now believed myself to be.

  "Why, yes, of course," he said. "That is why he picked on Menabilly, rather than on Caerhayes. There was no woman at Caerhayes to give him comfort."

  "Does your father," I said, "still need comfort after two long years in Italy?"

  "It depends," he answered, "what you intend by comfort. I never saw my father hold converse with Italian women. It might have made him better tempered, if he had."

  I saw Richard, in my mind's eye, pen in hand, with a map of Cornwall spread on a table before him. And dotted upon the map were the houses by the coast that offered sanctuary. Trelawne... too deeply wooded. Penrice... not close enough to the sea. Caerhayes... yes, good landing ground for troops, but not a single Miss Trevanion. Menabilly... with a beach, and a hiding place, and an old love into the bargain, who ha
d shared his life before and might be induced, even now, after long silence, to smile on him a moment after supper. And the pen would make a circle round the name of Menabilly. So I was become cynic in defeat. The rule of Parliament had taught me a lesson. But as I sat there watching Dick and thinking how little he resembled his father, I knew that all my anger was but a piece of bluff deceiving no one, not even my harder self, and that there was nothing I wanted in the world so much as to play hostess once more to Richard by candlelight, and to live again that life of strain and folly, anguish and enchantment.

  30

  It fell on me to warn the servants, I summoned each one to my chamber in turn. "We are entering upon dangerous days," I said to them. "Things will pass here at Menabilly which you will not see, and will not hear. Visitors will come and go. Ask no questions. Seek no answer. I believe you are, one and all, faithful subjects of His Majesty?"

  This was sworn upon the Book of Common Prayer.

  "One incautious word that leaves this house," I said, "and your master up in London will lose his life, and ourselves also, in all probability. That is all I have to say. See that there is clean linen on the beds, and sufficient food for guests. But be deaf and dumb and blind to those who come here."

  It was on Matty's advice that I took them thus into my confidence. "Each one can be trusted," she said, "but a word of faith from you will bind them together, and not all the agents in the West Country will make them blab."

  The household had lived sparsely since the siege of '44, and there were few comforts for our prospective visitors. No hangings to the walls, no carpets on the floors in the upper chambers. Straw mattresses in place of beds. They must make what shift they could, and be grateful.

  Peter Courtney was the first to come. No secrecy for him. He flaunted openly his pretended return from France, dining with the Treffrys at Place upon the way and loudly announcing his desire to see his children. Gone to Trethurfe? But all his belongings were at Menabilly. Alice had misunderstood his letter...

  Nothing wan or pale about Peter. He wore a velvet coat that must have cost a fortune. Poor Alice and her dowry...

  "You might," I said to him, "have sent her a whisper of your safe return. She would have kept it secret."

  He shrugged a careless shoulder. "A wife can be a cursed appendage in times like these," he said, "when a man must live from day to day, from hand to mouth. To tell the truth, Honor, I am so plagued with debts that one glimpse of her reproachful eyes would drive me crazy."

  "You look well on it," I said. "I doubt if your conscience worries you unduly." He winked, his tongue in his cheek, and I thought how the looks that I had once admired were coarsened now with license and good living. Too much French wine, too little exercise.

  "And what are your plans," I asked, "when Parliament is overthrown?"

  Once again he shrugged his shoulders. "I shall never settle at Trethurfe," he said. "Alice can live there if she pleases. As for myself, why, war has made me restless."

  He whistled under his breath and strolled towards the window. The aftermath of war, the legacy of losing it. Another marriage in the melting pot...

  The next to come was Bunny Grenvile. Bunny, at seventeen, already head and shoulders taller than his cousin Dick. Bunny with snub nose and freckles. Bunny with eager, questing eyes, and a map of the coast under his arm. "Where are the beaches? Where are the landing places? No, I want no refreshment. I have work to do. I want to see the ground." And he was off to the Gribben, a hound to scent, another budding soldier, like his brother Jack.

  "You see," said Dick cynically, his black eyes fastened on me, "how all Grenvile men but me are bred with a nose for blood? You despise me, don't you, because I do not go with him?"

  "No, Dick," I answered gently.

  "Ah, but you will in time. Bunny will win your affection, as he has won my father's. Bunny has courage. Bunny has guts. Poor Dick has neither. He is only fit for painting, like a woman."

  He threw himself on his back upon the couch, staring upward at the ceiling. And this, too, I thought, has to be contended with. The demon jealousy, sapping his strength. The wish to excel, the wish to shine before his father. His father whom he pretended to detest. Our third arrival was Mr. Ambrose Manaton--a long-familiar name to me, for my family of Harris had for generations past had lawsuits with the Manatons, respecting that same property of theirs, Trecarrel. What it was all about I could not say, but I know my father never spoke to any of them. There was an Ambrose Manaton who stood for Parliament before the war at Launceston. This man was his son. He was, I suppose, a few years older than Peter Courtney, some four-and-thirty years. Sleek and suave, with a certain latent charm. He wore his own fair hair, curling to his shoulders. Thinking it best spoken and so dismissed forever, I plunged into the family dispute as soon as I set eyes on him. "Our families," I said, "have waged a private war for generations. Something to do with property. Since I am the youngest daughter, you are safe with me. I can lay claim to nothing."

  "I could not refuse so fair a pleader, if you did," he answered.

  I considered him thoughtfully as he kissed my hand. Too ready with his compliment, too easy with his smile. What exactly, I wondered, was his part in this campaign? I had not heard of him ever as a soldier. Money?... Property?... Those lands at Trecarrel and at Southill that my father could not claim? Richard had no doubt assessed the value. A Royalist rising cannot be conducted without funds. Did Ambrose Manaton, then, hold the purse? I wondered what had induced him to risk his life and fortune. He gave me the clue a moment afterwards.

  "Mrs. Denys has not yet arrived?"

  "Not yet. You know her well?"

  "We found ourselves near neighbors in north Cornwall and north Devon." The tone was easy, the smile confident. Oh, Richard, my love of little scruple. So Gartred was the bait to catch the tiger.

  What in the name of thunder had been going on all these long winter months at Bideford? I could imagine, with Gartred playing hostess. Well, I was hostess now at Menabilly. And the straw mattresses upstairs would be hard cheer after the feather beds of Orley Court. "My brother, General Harris, acts as bailiff to Mrs. Denys, so I understand?"

  "Why, yes, something of the sort," said Ambrose Manaton. He studied the toe of his boot. His voice was a shade over-casual.

  "Have you seen your brother lately?" he asked.

  "Not for two years. Not since Pendennis fell."

  "You will see a change in him then. His nerves have gone to pieces. The result of the siege, no doubt."

  Robin never had a nerve in his body. Robin rode to battle with a falcon on his wrist. If Robin was changed, it was not the fault of five months' siege...

  They came together, shortly before dark. I was alone in the gallery to receive them. The rule of Parliament had fallen light on Gartred. She was, I think, a little fuller in the bosom, but it became her well. And, chancing Fate, she had let Nature do its damnedest with her hair, which was no longer gleaming gold, but streaked with silver white, making her look more lovely and more frail.

  She tossed her cloak to Robin as she came into the room, proclaiming in that first careless gesture all that I cared to know of their relationship. The years slipped backward in a flash, and she was a bride of twenty-three, already tired of Kit, her slave and bondsman, who had not the strength of will to play the master.

  It might have been Kit once again, standing there in the gallery at Menabilly, with a dog's look of adoration in his eyes.

  But Ambrose Manaton was right. There was not only adoration in Robin's eyes. There was strain too, doubt, anxiety. And the heavy jowl and puffy cheeks betrayed the easy drinker. Defeat and Gartred had taken toll of my brother.

  "We seem fated, you and I, to come together at moments of great crisis," I said to Gartred. "Do you still play piquet?"

  I saw Robin look from one to the other of us, mystified, but Gartred smiled, drawing off her lace gloves.

  "Piquet is out of fashion," she answered. "Dice is a later craze
, but must be done in secret, since all games of chance are frowned upon by Parliament."

  "I shall not join you, then," I said. "You will have to play with Robin or with Ambrose Manaton."

  Her glance at me was swift, but I let it pass over my head.

  "I have at least the consolation," she said, "of knowing that for once we shall not play in opposition. We are all partners on a winning side?"

  "Are we?" I said. It was only four years since she had come here as a spy for Lord Robartes.

  "If you doubt my loyalty," said Gartred, "you must tell Richard when he comes. But it is rather late to make amends. I know all the secrets." She smiled again, and as I looked at her I felt like a knight of old, saluting his opponent before combat.

  "I have put you," I said, "in the long chamber overhead, which Alice has with her children when she is home."

  "Thank you," she said.

  "Robin is on your left," I said, "and Ambrose Manaton upon your right, at the small bedroom at the stairs' head. With two strong men to guard you, I think it hardly likely you'll be nervous."

  She gave not a flicker of the eyelid, but, turning to Robin, gave him some commands about her baggage. He went at once to obey her, like a servant.

  "It has been fortunate for you," I said, "that the menfolk of my breed have proved accommodating."

  "It would be more fortunate still," she answered, "if they could be at the same time less possessive."

  "A family failing," I replied, "like the motto of our house, 'What we have, we hold.' "

  She looked at me a moment thoughtfully. "It is a strange power," she said, "this magnetism that you have for Richard. I give you full credit."

  I bowed to her from my chair. "Give me no credit, Gartred," I answered. "Menabilly is but a name upon a map, that will do as well as any other. An empty house, a nearby shore."

  "And a secret hiding place into the bargain," she said shrewdly.

  But now it was my time to smile.

  "The Mint had the silver long ago," I said, "and what was left has gone to swell the Parliament exchequer. What are you playing for this time, Gartred?"

  She did not answer for a moment, but I saw her cat's eyes watching Robin's shadow in the hall.