The King's General by Daphne Du Maurier

  "I must warn you, in confidence," he said, "that the Council have little expectation of Hopton's withstanding Fairfax. The Prince, with his personal household, will sail for Scilly. The rest of us within the garrison will hold Pendennis until we are burned out of it. Let the whole rebel army come. We will not surrender."

  Dear Robin. As you said that, with your blue eyes blazing and your jaw set, I forgave you for your enmity for Richard, and the silly, useless harm you did in disobeying him.

  Death or glory, I reflected. That was the way my Richard might have chosen. And here was I, plotting one thing only, that he should steal away like a thief in the night.

  "I will go back to Menabilly," I said slowly, "when the Prince of Wales sets sail for the Scillies."

  "By then," said Robin, "I shall not be able to assist you. I shall be inside the garrison, at Pendennis, with our guns turned east upon Penryn."

  "Your guns will not frighten me," I said, "any more than Fairfax's horse, thundering across the moors from the Tamar. It will look well, in after years, in the annals of the Harris family, to say that Honor died in the last stand in '46."

  Brave words, spoken in hardihood, ringing so little true...

  On the fourteenth of February, the feast of St. Valentine, that patron saint of lovers, I had a message from Jack Grenvile. The wording was vague, and purposely omitted names.

  "The snake is gone to Truro," he said, "and my friend and I will be able to receive you, for a brief space, this afternoon. I will send an escort for you. Say nothing of the matter to your brother."

  I went alone, without Matty, deeming in a matter of such delicacy it were better to have no confidante at all.

  True to his word, the escort came, and Jack himself awaited me at the entrance to the castle. No haggling this time with a captain of the guard. But a swift word to the sentry, and we were through the arch and within the precincts of the garrison before a single soul, save the sentry, was a whit the wiser.

  The thought occurred to me that this perhaps was not the first time Jack Grenvile had smuggled a woman into the fortress. Such swift handling came possibly from long experience. Two servants in the Prince's livery came to carry me, and after passing up some stairs (which I told myself were back ones, and suitable to my person), I was brought to a small room within a tower, and placed upon a couch. I would have relished the experience were not the matter upon which I sought an audience so deadly serious. There was wine and fruit at my elbow, and a posy of fresh flowers, and His Highness, I thought, for all his mother, has gained something by inheriting French blood.

  I was left for a few moments to refresh myself, and then the door opened again and Jack stood aside, to let a youngster of about his own age pass before him. He was far from handsome, more like a gipsy than a prince, with his black locks and swarthy skin, but the instant he smiled I loved him better than all the famous portraits of his father that my generation had known for thirty years. "Have my servants looked after you," he said at once, "and given you all you want? This is garrison fare, you know--you must excuse it." And as he spoke I felt his bold eyes look me up and down in cool, appraising fashion, as though I were a maid and not fifteen years his senior. "Come, Jack," he said, "present me to your kinswoman," and I wondered what the devil of a story Jack had spun.

  We ate and drank, and all the while he talked he stared, and I wondered if his boy's imagination was running riot on the thought of his notorious and rebellious general making love to me, a cripple. "I have no claim to trespass on your time, sir," I said at length, "but Sir Richard, Jack's uncle, is my dear friend, and has been so now over a span of years. His faults are many, and I have not come to dispute them. But his loyalty to yourself has never, I believe, been the issue in question."

  "I don't doubt it," said the Prince, "but you know how it was. He got up against the Council, and Sir Edward is particular. I like him immensely myself, but personal feeling cannot count in these matters. There was no choice but to sign that warrant for his arrest."

  "Sir Richard did very wrong not to serve under Lord Hopton," I said. "His worst fault is his temper, and much, I think, had gone wrong that day to kindle it. Given reflection, he would have acted otherwise."

  "He made no attempt, you know, sir," cut in Jack, "to resist arrest. The whole staff would have gone to his aid, had he given them the word. That I have on good authority. But he told all of them he wished to abide by your Highness's command."

  The Prince rose to his feet and paced up and down the room.

  "It's a wretched affair all round," he said. "Grenvile is the one fellow who might have saved Cornwall, and all the while Hopton fights a hopeless battle up in Torrington. I can't do anything about it, you know--that's the devil of it. I shall be whisked away myself before I know what is happening."

  "There is one thing you can do, sir, if you will forgive my saying so," I said.

  "What then?"

  "Send word to the Mount that when you and the Council sail for the Scillies Sir Richard Grenvile shall be permitted to escape at the same time, and commandeer a fishing boat for France."

  The Prince of Wales stared at me a moment, and then that same smile I had remarked upon his face before lit his whole ugly countenance. "Sir Richard Grenvile is most fortunate," he said, "to have so fidele an ally as yourself. If I am ever in his shoes, and find myself a fugitive, I hope I can rely on half so good a friend."

  He glanced across at Jack. "You can arrange that, can't you?" he said. "I will write a letter to Sir Arthur Bassett at the Mount, and you can take it there, and see your uncle at the same time. I don't suggest we ask for his company in the frigate when we sail, because I hardly think the ship would bear his weight, alongside Sir Edward Hyde." The two lads laughed, for all the world like a pair of schoolboys caught in mischief. Then the Prince turned, and, coming to the couch, bent low and kissed my hand.

  "Have no fear," he said. "I will arrange it. Sir Richard shall be free the instant we sail for the Scillies. And when I return--for I shall return, you know, one day--I shall hope to see you, and him also, at Whitehall." He bowed, and went, forgetting me, I daresay, for evermore, but leaving with me an impression of black eyes and gipsy features that I have not forgotten to this day...

  Jack escorted me to the castle entrance once again. "He will remember his promise," he said. "That I swear to you. I have never known him go back on his word. Tomorrow I shall ride with that letter to the Mount."

  I returned to Penryn, worn out and utterly exhausted now that my mission was fulfilled. I wanted nothing but my bed, and silence. Matty received me with sour looks and the grim, pursed mouth that spelled disapproval. "You have wanted to be ill for weeks," she said. "Now that we are here, in a strange lodging, with no comforts, you decide to do so. Very well. I'll not answer for the consequences."

  "No one asks you to," I said, turning my face to the wall. "For God's sake, if I want to, let me sleep, or die."

  Two days later Lord Hopton was defeated outside Torrington, and the whole western army in full retreat across the Tamar. It concerned me little, lying in that lodging at Penryn with a high fever. On the twenty-fifth of February Fairfax had marched and taken Launceston, and on the second of March had crossed the moors to Bodmin.

  That night the Prince of Wales, with his Council, set sail in the frigate Phoenix--and the war in the West was over...

  The day Lord Hopton signed the treaty in Truro with General Fairfax, my brother-in-law, Jonathan Rashleigh, by permission of the Parliament, came down to Penryn to fetch me back to Menabilly. The streets were lined with soldiers, not ours, but theirs, and the whole route from Truro to St. Austell bore signs of surrender and defeat. I sat, with stony face, looking out of the curtains of my litter, while Jonathan Rashleigh rode by my side, his shoulders bowed, his face set in deep, grim lines.

  We did not converse. We had no words to say. We crossed St. Blazey's bridge and Jonathan handed his pass to the rebel sentry at the post, who stared at us with insolence and
then jerked his head and let us pass. They were everywhere. In the road, in the cottage doors at Tywardreath, at the barrier, at the foot of Polmear Hill. This was our future then, for evermore, to ask, in deep humility, if we might travel our own roads. That it should be so worried me no longer, for my days of journeying were over. I was returning to Menabilly, to be no longer a camp follower, no longer a lady of the drum, but plain Honor Harris, a cripple on her back. And it did not matter to me, I did not care.

  For Richard Grenvile had escaped to France.

  28

  Defeat, and the aftermath of war... Not pleasant for the losers. God knows that we endure it still--and I write in the autumn of 1653--but in the year '46 we were new to defeat, and had not yet begun to learn our lesson. It was, I think, the loss of freedom that hit the Cornish hardest. We had been used, for generations, to minding our own affairs, and each man lived after his fashion. Landlords were fair, and usually well liked, with tenant and laborer living in amity together. We had our local disagreements, as every man with his neighbor, and our family feuds, but no body of persons had ever before interfered with our way of living, nor given us commands. Now all was changed. Our orders came to us from Whitehall, and a Cornish County Committee, way up in London, sat in judgment upon us. We could no longer pass our own measures and decide, by local consultation, what was suited to each town and village. The County Committee made our decisions for us.

  Their first action was to demand a weekly payment from the people of Cornwall to the revenue, and this weekly assessment was rated so high that it was impossible to find the money, for the ravages of war had stripped the country bare. Their next move was to sequester the estate of every landlord who had fought for the King. Because the County Committee had not the time nor the persons to administer these estates, the owners were allowed to dwell there, if they so desired, but had to pay to the Committee, month by month, the full and total value of the property. This crippling injunction was made the harder because the estates were assessed at the value they had held before the war, and now that most of them were fallen into ruin, through the fighting, it would take generations before the land gave a return once more.

  A host of petty officials who were paid fixed salaries by the Parliament, and were the only men at these times to have their pockets well lined, came down from Whitehall to collect the sums due to the County Committee; and these agents were found in every town and borough, forming themselves in their turns into committees and subcommittees, so that no man could buy as little as a loaf of bread without first going cap in hand to one of these fellows and signing his name to a piece of paper. Besides these civil employees of the Parliament, we had the military to contend with, and whosoever should wish to pass from one village to another must first have a pass from the officer in charge, and then his motives questioned, his family history gone into, detail for detail, and as likely as not find himself arrested for delinquency at the end of it.

  I truly believe that Cornwall was, in the first summer of '46, the most wretched county in the kingdom. The harvest was bad--another bitter blow to landlord and laborer alike--and the price of wheat immediately rose to fantastic prices. The price of tin, on the contrary, fell low, and many mines closed down on this account. Poverty and sickness were rife by the autumn, and our old enemy the plague appeared, killing great numbers in St. Ives and in the western districts. Another burden was the care of the many wounded and disabled soldiers, who, half-naked and half-starved, roamed the villages, begging for charity. There was no single man or woman or little child who benefited in any way by this new handling of affairs by Parliament, and the only ones to live well were those Whitehall agents who poked their noses into our affairs from dawn till dusk, and their wealthy masters, the big Parliamentary landlords. We had grumbled in the old days at the high taxes of the King, but the taxes were intermittent. Now they were continuous. Salt, meat, starch, lead, iron--all came under the control of Parliament, and the poor man had to pay accordingly.

  What happened up country I cannot say--I speak for Cornwall. No news came to us, much beyond the Tamar. If living was hard, leisure was equally restricted. The Puritans had the upper hand of us. No man must be seen out of doors upon a Sunday unless he were bound for church. Dancing was forbidden--not that many had the heart to dance, but youngsters have light hearts and lighter feet--and any game of chance or village festival was frowned upon. Gaiety meant license, and license spelled the abomination of the Lord. I often thought how Temperance Sawle would have rejoiced in the brave new world, for all her Royalist traditions, but poor Temperance fell an early victim to the plague.

  The one glory of that most dismal year of '46 was the gallant, though alas! so useless, holding of Pendennis Castle for the King through five long months of siege. The rest of us were long conquered and subdued, caught fast in the meshes of Whitehall, while Pendennis still defied the enemy. Their commander was Jack Arundell, who had been in the old days a close friend as well as kinsman to the Grenviles, and Sir John Digby was his second-in-command. My own brother Robin was made a major general under him. It gave us, I think, some last measure of pride in our defeat, that this little body of men, with no hope of rescue and scarce a boatload of provisions, should fly the King's flag from March the second until August the seventeenth, and that even then they wished to blow themselves and the whole garrison to eternity, rather than surrender. But starvation and sickness had made weaklings of the men, and for their sakes only did Jack Arundell haul down his flag. Even the enemy respected their courage, and the garrison were permitted to march out, so Robin told us afterwards, with the full honors of war, drums beating, colors flying, trumpets sounding... Yes, we have had our moments, here in Cornwall... When they surrendered, though, our last hopes vanished, and there was nothing now to do but sigh, and look into the black well of the future.

  My brother-in-law, Jonathan Rashleigh, like the rest of his Royalist landlords, had his lands sequestered by the County Committee, and was told, when he went down to Truro in June, that he must pay a fine of some one thousand and eighty pounds to the Committee before he could redeem them. His losses, after the '44 campaign, were already above eight thousand, but there was nothing for it but to bow his head to the victors and agree to pay the ransom during the years to come. He might have quitted the country and gone to France, as many of our neighbors did, but the ties of his own soil were too strong, and in July, broken and dispirited, he took the National Covenant, by which he vowed never again to take arms against the Parliament. This bitter blow to his pride, self-inflicted though it was, did not satisfy the Committee, and shortly afterwards he was summoned to London and ordered to remain there, nor to return to Cornwall until his full fine was paid. So yet another home was broken, and we, at Menabilly, tasted the full flavor of defeat. He left us, one day in September, when the last of the poor harvest had been gathered in, looking a good ten years older than his five-and-fifty years, and I knew then, watching his eyes, how loss of freedom can so blight the human soul that a man cares no longer if he lives or dies.

  It remained for Mary, my poor sister, and John, his son, so to husband his estate that the debt could month by month be paid, but we well knew that it might take years, even the remainder of his life. His last words to me, before he went to London, were kind and deeply generous. "Menabilly is your home," he said, "for as long a time as you should so desire it. We are one and all sufferers in this misfortune. Guard your sister for me; share her troubles. And help John, I pray you. You have a wiser head than all I leave behind."

  A wiser head... I doubted it. It needed a pettifogging mind, with every low lawyer's trick at the finger's end, to break even with the County Committee and the paid agents of the Parliament. There was none to help us. My brother Robin, after the surrender of Pendennis, had gone to Radford, to my brother Jo, who was in much the same straits as ourselves, while Peter Courtney, loathing inactivity, left the West Country altogether, and the next we heard from him was that he had gone abroa
d to join the Prince of Wales. Many young men followed this example--living was good at the French Court. I think, had they loved their homes better, they would have stayed behind and shared the burdens of defeat with their womenfolk.

  Alice never spoke a word of blame, but I think her heart broke when we heard that he had gone... It was strange, at first, to watch John and Frank Penrose work in the fields side by side with the tenants, for every hand was needed if the land was to be tilled entirely and yield a full return. Even our womenfolk went out at harvesting--Mary herself, and Alice, and Elizabeth, while the children, thinking it fine sport, helped to carry the corn. Left to ourselves, we would have soon grown reconciled and even well content with our labors, but the Parliament agents were forever coming to spy upon us, to question us on this and that, to count the sheep and cattle, to reckon, it almost seemed, each ear of corn, and nothing must be gathered, nothing spent, nothing distributed among ourselves, but all laid before the smug, well-satisfied officials in Fowey town, who held their license from the Parliament. The Parliament... The Parliament... From day to day the word rang in our ears. The Parliament decrees that produce shall be brought to market only upon a Tuesday... The Parliament has ordered that all fairs shall henceforth be discontinued... The Parliament warns every inhabitant within the above-prescribed area that no one, save by permission, shall walk abroad one hour after sunset... The Parliament warns each householder that every dwelling will be searched each week for concealed firearms, weapons, and ammunition, from this day forward, and any holder of the same shall be immediately imprisoned...

  "The Parliament," said John Rashleigh wearily, "decrees that no man may breathe God's air, save by a special license, and that one hour in every other day. My God, Honor, no man can stand this long."

  "You forget," I said, "that Cornwall is only one portion of the kingdom. The whole of England, before long, will suffer the same fate."