The King's General

by Daphne Du Maurier

  I looked at Matty, and she looked at me.

  The thoughts chased round my head in wild confusion. "What hour is it?" I asked.

  "Near five o'clock," she answered.

  "Four hours of daylight still," I said.

  "Yes," she answered.

  From the window of the dining hall I could see the sentry pacing up and down before the gates of the south garden. Now and then he paused to look about him and to chat with his fellow at the causeway steps. The sun, high in the southwest, shone down upon their muskets.

  "Take me upstairs, Matty," I said slowly.

  "To your own chamber?"

  "No, Matty. To my old room beyond the gatehouse..."

  I had not been there in all the past two years of my stay at Menabilly. The west wing was still bare, untouched. Desolate and stripped as when the rebels had come pillaging in '44. The hangings were gone from the walls. The room had neither bed, nor chair, nor table. One shutter hung limp from the further window, giving a faint creak of light. The room had a dead, fusty smell, and in the far corner lay the bleached bones of a rat. The west wing was very silent. Very still. No sound came from the deserted kitchens underneath.

  "Go to the stone," I whispered. "Put your hands against it." Matty did so, kneeling on the floor. She pressed against the square stone by the buttress, but it did not move.

  "No good," she murmured, "it is hard fixed. Have you forgotten that it only opened from the other side?"

  Had I forgotten? It was the one thing that I remembered... Smoke them out, said Gartred, it is the only way. Yes, but she did not understand. She thought they were hidden somewhere in the woods. Not behind stone walls, three foot thick...

  "Fetch wood and paper," I said to Matty. "Kindle a fire. Not in the chimney, but here, against the wall."

  There was a chance--a faint one, God knew well--that the smoke would penetrate the cracks in the stone and make a signal. They might not be there, though. They might be crouching in the tunnel at the farther end, beneath the summerhouse.

  How slow she was, good Matty, faithful Matty, fetching the dried grass and the twigs. How carefully she blew the fire, how methodically she added twig to twig. "Hurry," I said. "More wood, more flame."

  "Patience," she whispered, "it will go, in its own time."

  In its own time. Not my time. Not Richard's time...

  The room was filled with smoke. It seeped into our eyes, our hair, it clung about the windows. But whether it seeped into the stones we could not tell. Matty went to the window, and opened the crack two inches further. I held a long stick in my hands, poking helplessly at the slow, sizzling fire, pushing the sticks against the buttress wall. "There are four horsemen riding across the park," said Matty suddenly. "Troopers like those who came just now."

  My hands were wet with sweat. I threw away my useless stick and rubbed my eyes, stung and red with smoke. I think I was nearer panic at that moment than any other in my eight-and-thirty years.

  "Oh, God," I whispered. "What are we to do?"

  Matty closed the window gently. She stamped upon the embers of the fire. "Come back to your chamber," she said. "Later, tonight, I will try here once again. But we must not be found here now." She carried me in her broad arms from the dark, musty room, through the gatehouse to the corridor beyond, and down to my own chamber in the eastern wing. She lay me on my bed, bringing water for my face and hands. We heard the troopers ride into the courtyard, and then the sound of footsteps below. Impervious to man or situation, the clock beneath the belfry struck six, hammering its silly leaden notes with mechanical precision. Matty brushed the soot from my hair and changed my gown, and when she finished there came a tap upon the door. A servant, with frightened face, whispered that Mistress Harris was wanted down below. They put me in my chair and carried me downstairs. There had been four troopers, Matty said, riding across the park, but only three stood here, in the side hall, looking out across the gardens. They cast a curious glance upon me, as Matty and the servant put me down inside the door of the dining hall. The fourth man stood by the fireplace, leaning upon a stick. And it was not another trooper like themselves but my brother-in-law Jonathan Rashleigh.

  For a moment I was too stunned to speak. Then relief, bewilderment, and something of utter helplessness swept over me, and I began to cry. He took my hand and held it, saying nothing. In a minute or two I had recovered, and, looking up at him, I saw what the years had done. Two, was it, he had been away in London? It might be twenty. He was, I believe, at that time but fifty-eight. He looked seventy. His hair was gone quite white, his shoulders, once so broad, were shrunk and drooping. His very eyes seemed sunk deep in his skull. "What has happened?" I asked. "Why have you come back?"

  "The debt is paid," he said, and even his voice was an old man's voice, slow and weary. "The debt is paid, the fine is now wiped out. I am free to come to Cornwall once again."

  "You have chosen an ill moment to return," I answered.

  "So they have warned me," he said slowly.

  He looked at me, and I knew, I think, in that moment that he had been, after all, a party to the plan. That all the guests who had crept like robbers to his house had come with his connivance, and that he, a prisoner in London, had risked his life because of them.

  "You came by road?" I asked him.

  "Nay. By ship," he answered. "My own ship, the Frances, which plies between Fowey and the Continent, you may remember."

  "Yes, I remember."

  "Her merchandise has helped to pay my debt. She fetched me from Gravesend a week ago, when the County Committee gave me leave to go from London and return to Fowey. We came to harbor but a few hours since."

  "Is Mary with you?"

  "No. She went ashore at Plymouth, to see Joan at Mothercombe. The guard at Plymouth told us that a rising was feared in Cornwall, and troops were gone in strength to quell it. I made all haste to come to Fowey, fearing for your safety."

  "You knew then that John was not here? You knew I was... alone?"

  "I knew you were... alone."

  We both fell silent, our eyes upon the door.

  "They have arrested Robin," I said softly, "and Peter also, I fear."

  "Yes," he said. "So my guards tell me."

  "No suspicion can fall upon yourself?"

  "Not yet," he answered strangely.

  I saw him look towards the window, where the broad back of the sentry blocked the view. Then slowly, from his pocket, he drew a folded paper, and when he opened it I saw that it was a poster, such as they stick upon the walls for wanted men. He read it to me:

  " 'Anyone who has harbored at any time, or seeks to harbor in the future, the malignant known as Richard Grenvile, shall, upon discovery, be arrested for high treason, his lands sequestered finally and forever, and his family imprisoned.' "

  He folded the paper once again. "This," he said, "is posted upon every wall in every town in Cornwall."

  For a moment I did not speak, and then I said, "They have searched this house already. Two hours ago. They found nothing."

  "They will come again," he answered, "in the morning."

  He went back to the hearth and stood in deep thought, leaning on his stick. "My ship the Frances," he said slowly, "anchors in Fowey only for the night. Tomorrow, on the first tide, she sails for Holland."

  "For Holland?"

  "She carries a light cargo as far as Flushing. The master of the vessel is an honest man, faithful to any trust that I might lay upon him. Already in his charge is a young woman whom I thought fit to call my kinswoman. Had matters been other than they are, she might have landed with me, here in Fowey. But Fate and circumstance decided otherwise. Therefore she will proceed to Flushing also, in my ship, the Frances."

  "I don't see," I said, after a moment's hesitation, "what this young woman has to do with me. Let her go to Holland by all means."

  "She would be easier in mind," said Jonathan Rashleigh, "if she had her father with her."

  I was still too bli
nd to understand his meaning until he felt in his breast pocket for a note, which he handed to me. I opened it, and read the few words scribbled in an unformed youthful hand. "If you still need a daughter in your declining years," ran the message, "she waits for you, on board the good ship Frances. Holland, they say, is healthier than England. Will you try the climate with me? My mother christened me Elizabeth, but I prefer to sign myself your daughter Bess."

  I said nothing for a little while, but held the note there in my hands. I could have asked a hundred questions, had I the time--or inclination. Women's questions, such as my sister Mary might have answered, and perhaps understood. Was she pretty? Was she kind? Had she his eyes, his mouth, his auburn hair? Would she understand his lonely moods? Would she laugh with him when his moods were gay? But none of them mattered, or were appropriate to the moment. Since I should never see her, it was not my affair.

  "You have given me this note," I said to Jonathan, "in the hope that I can pass it to her father."

  "Yes," he answered.

  Once again he looked at the broad back of the sentry by the window.

  "I have told you that the Frances leaves Fowey on the early tide," he said. "A boat will put off to Pridmouth, as they go from harbor, to lift lobster pots dropped between the shore and the Cannis Rock. It would be a simple matter to pick up a passenger in the half light of morning."

  "A simple matter," I answered, "if the passenger is there."

  "It is your business," he said, "to see, then, that he is."

  He guessed that Richard was concealed within the buttress--so much I could tell from his eyes and the look he fastened now upon me. "The sentries," I said, "keep a watch upon the causeway."

  "At this end only," he said softly. "Not at the other."

  "The risk is very great," I said, "even by night, even by early morning."

  "I know that," he answered, "but I think the person of whom we speak will dare that risk."

  Once again he drew the poster from his pocket. "If you should deliver the note," he said quietly, "you could give him this as well." I took the poster in silence, and placed it in my gown.

  "There is one other thing that I would have you do," he said to me.

  "What is that?"

  "Destroy all trace of what has been. The men who will come tomorrow have keener noses than the troops who came today. They are scent hounds, trained to the business."

  "They can find nothing from within," I answered. "You know that. Your father had the cunning of all time when he built his buttress."

  "But from without," he said, "the secret is less sure. I give you leave to finish the work begun by the Parliament in '44. I shall not seek to use the summerhouse again."

  I guessed his meaning as he stood there watching me, leaning on his stick. "Timber burns fiercely in dry weather," he said to me, "and rubble makes a pile, and the nettles and the thistles grow apace in midsummer. There will be no need to clear those nettles in my lifetime, nor in John's either."

  "Why do you not stay," I whispered, "and do this work yourself?"

  But even as I spoke, the door of the dining hall was opened and the leader of the three troopers, waiting in the hall, entered the room. "I am sorry, sir," he said, "but you have already had fifteen minutes of the ten allotted to you. I cannot go against my orders. Will you please make your farewell now, and return with me to Fowey?"

  I stared at him blankly, my heart sinking in my breast again.

  "I thought Mr. Rashleigh was a free agent once again?"

  "The times being troublesome, my dear Honor," said Jonathan quietly, "the gentlemen in authority deem it best that I should remain at present under surveillance, if not exactly custody. I am to spend the night, therefore, in my town house at Fowey. I regret if I did not make myself more clear." He turned to the trooper. "I am grateful to you," he said, "for allowing me this interview with my sister-in-law. She suffers from poor health, and we have all been anxious for her." And without another word, he went from me and I was left there, with the note in my hand and the poster in my gown, and the lives of not only Richard and his son, but those of the whole family of Rashleigh, depending upon my wits and my sagacity.

  I waited for Matty, but she did not come to me, and, impatient at last, I rang the bell beside the hearth. The startled servant who came running at the sound told me that Matty was not to be found--he had sought for her in the kitchens, in her bedroom, but she had not answered. "No matter," I said, and made a pretense of taking up a book and turning the pages. "Will you dine now, madam?" he said to me. "It is nearly seven. Long past your usual hour."

  "Why, yes," I said, "if you care to bring it," feigning intensity upon my book, yet all the while counting the hours to darkness, and wondering with an anxious heart what had become of Matty. I ate my meat and drank my wine, tasting them not at all, and as I sat there in the dark-paneled dining hall, with the portrait of old John Rashleigh and his wife frowning down upon me, I watched the shadows lengthen, and the murky evening creep on, and the great banked clouds of evening steal across the sky.

  It was close on nine o'clock when I heard the door open with a creak. Turning in my chair I saw Matty standing there, her gown stained green and brown with bracken and with earth. She put her finger to her lips and I said nothing. She came across the room and closed the shutters. As she folded the last one into place, she spoke softly over her shoulder. "He is not ill looking, the sentry on the causeway."

  "No?"

  "He knows my cousin's wife at Liskeard."

  "Introductions have been made on less than that."

  She fastened the hasp of the shutter, and drew the heavy curtain. "It was somewhat damp in thistle park," she said.

  "So I perceive," I answered.

  "But he found a sheltered place beneath a bush, where we could talk about my cousin's wife... While he was looking for it I waited in the summerhouse."

  "That," I said, "was understandable."

  The curtains were now all drawn before the shutters, and the dining hall in darkness. Matty came and stood beside my chair. "I lifted the flagstone," she said. "I left a letter on the steps. I said, if the rope be still in place upon the hinge, would they open the stone entrance in the buttress tonight at twelve o'clock. We would be waiting for them."

  I felt for her strong, comforting hand and held it between mine.

  "I pray they find it," she said slowly. "There must have been a fall of earth since the tunnel was last used. The place smelled of the tomb..."

  We clung to one another in the darkness, and as I listened I could hear the steady thumping of her heart.

  36

  I lay upon my bed upstairs from half past nine until a quarter before twelve. When Matty came to rouse me the house was deadly still. The servants had gone to their beds in the attics, and the sentries were at their posts about the grounds. I could hear one of them pacing the walk beneath my window. The treacherous moon, never an ally to a fugitive, rose slowly above the trees in thistle park. We lit no candles. Matty crept to the door and listened. Then she lifted me in her arms, and trod the long, twisting corridor to the empty gatehouse. How bare were the rooms, how silently accusing; and there was no moonlight here, on the western side, to throw a beam of light upon the floor.

  Inside the room that was our destination the ashes of our poor fire, kindled that afternoon, flickered feebly still, and the smoke hung in clouds about the ceiling. We sat down beside the wall in the far corner, and waited... It was uncannily still--the stillness of a place that has not known a footstep or a voice for many years. The quietude of a long-forgotten prison where no sunlight ever penetrates, where all seasons seem alike.

  Winter, summer, spring, and autumn, would all come and go, but never here, never in this room. Here was eternal night. And I thought, sitting there beside the cold wall of the buttress, that this must be the darkness that so frightened the poor idiot Uncle John when he lay here, long ago, in the first building of the house. Perhaps he lay upon this very spo
t on which I sat, his hands feeling the air, his wide eyes searching...

  Then I felt Matty touch me on the shoulder, and as she did so the stone behind me moved... There came, upon my back, the current of cold air I well remembered, and now, turning, I could see the yawning gulf, and the narrow flight of steps behind, and could hear the creaking of the rope upon its rusty hinge.

  Although it was the sound I wanted most in all the world to hear, it struck a note of horror, like a summons from the grave. Now Matty lit her candle, and, throwing the beam onto the steps, I saw him standing there, earth upon his face, his hands, his shoulders, giving him, in that weird, unnatural light, the features of a corpse new risen from his grave. He smiled, and the smile had in it something grim and terrible.

  "I feared," he said, "you would not come. A few hours more, and it would have been too late."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "No air," he said. "There is only room here from the tunnel for a dog to crawl. I have no great opinion of your Rashleigh builder."

  I leaned forward, peering down the steps, and there was Dick huddled at the bottom, his face as ghostly as his father's.

  "It was not thus," I said, "four years ago."

  "Come," said Richard. "I will show you. A jailer should have knowledge of the cell where she puts her prisoners."

  He took me in his arms, and, crawling sideways, dragged me through the little stone entrance to the steps and down to the cell below. I saw it for the first time, and the last, that secret room beneath the buttress. Six foot high, foursquare, it was no larger than a closet, and the stone walls, clammy cold with years, icy to my touch. There was a little stool against the corner, and by its side an empty trencher with a wooden spoon. Cobwebs and mold were thick upon them, and I thought of the last meal that had been eaten there, a quarter of a century before, by idiot Uncle John. Above the stool hung the rope, near frayed, upon its rusty hinge, and beyond this the opening of the tunnel, a round black hole about eighteen inches high, through which a man must crawl and wriggle if he wished to reach the further end. "I don't understand," I said shuddering. "It could not have been thus before. Jonathan would never have used it had it been so."

  "There has been a fall of earth and stones," said Richard, "from the foundations of the house. It blocks the tunnel, save for a small space through which we burrowed. I think, when the tunnel was used before, the way was cleared regularly with pick and spade. Now that it has not been used for several years, Nature has claimed it for her own again. My enemies can find me a new name. Henceforth I will be badger, and not fox."