The King's General by Daphne Du Maurier
"Send her away," I said to Richard. "God knows she has caused ill feeling enough already. What possible use can she be to you now, here at Menabilly?"
"If Gartred went, Ambrose would follow her," he answered. "I can't afford to lose my treasurer. You don't know the fellow as I do. He's as slippery as an eel, and as closefisted as a Jew. Once back with her in Bideford, and he might pull out of the business altogether."
"Then send Robin packing. He will be no use to you, anyway, if he continues drinking in this manner."
"Nonsense. Drink in his case is stimulation, the only way to ginger him. When the day comes I'll ply him so full of brandy that he will take St. Mawes Castle single-handed."
"I don't enjoy watching my brother go to pieces."
"He isn't here for your enjoyment. He is here because he is of use to me, and one of the few officers that I know who doesn't lose his head in battle. The more rattled he becomes, here at Menabilly, the better he will fight outside it."
He watched me balefully, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.
"My God," I said, "have you no pity at all?"
"None," he said, "where military matters are concerned."
"You can sit here, quite contentedly, with your sister behaving like a whore upstairs, holding one string of Manaton's purse and you the other; while my brother, who loves her, drinks himself to death and breaks his heart?"
"To hell with his heart. His sword is all I care about, and his ability to wield it."
And, leaning from the window in the gallery, he whistled his nephew Bunny to a game of bowls. I watched them both, jesting with one another like a pair of schoolboys without a care, casting their coats upon the short green turf. "God damn the Grenviles, one and all," I said, my nerves in ribbons. As I spoke, thinking myself alone, I felt a slim hand touch me on the shoulder, and heard a boy's voice whisper in my ear. "That's what my mother said, eighteen years ago."
And there was Dick behind me, his black eyes glowing in his pale face, gazing out across the lawn towards his father and young Bunny.
32
Thursday the eleventh of May dawned as hot and sticky as its predecessors. Eight-and-forty hours to go before the torch of war was lit once more in Cornwall. Even Richard was on edge that morning, when word came from a messenger at noon to say that spies had reported a meeting, a few days since, at Saltash, between the Parliamentary commander in the West, Sir Hardress Waller, and several of the Parliamentary gentlemen, and that instructions had been given to double the guards at the chief towns throughout the Duchy. Some members of the Cornish County Committee had gone themselves to Helston to see if all was quiet.
"One false move now," said Richard quietly, "and all our plans will have been made in vain."
We were gathered in the dining room, I well remember, save only Gartred, who was in her chamber, and I can see now the drawn, anxious faces of the men as they gazed in silence at their leader. Robin, heavy, brooding; Peter, tapping his hand upon his knee; Bunny, with knitted brows; and Dick, as ever, gnawing at his hand.
"The one thing I have feared all along," said Richard. "Those fellows in the west can't hold their tongues. Like ill-trained redhawks, too keen to sight the quarry. I warned Keigwin and Grose to stay this last week within doors, as we have done, and hold no conferences. No doubt they have been out upon the roads, the whispers have the speed of lightning." He stood by the window, his hands behind his back. We were all, I believe, a little sick with apprehension. I saw Ambrose Manaton rub his hands nervously together, his usual calm composure momentarily lost to him.
"If anything should go wrong," he ventured, hesitating, "what arrangements can be made for our own security?"
Richard threw him a contemptuous glance. "None," he said briefly. He returned to the table, and gathered up his papers.
"You have your orders, one and all," he said. "You know what you have to do. Let us rid ourselves of all this junk then, useless to us once the battle starts."
He began to throw the maps and documents into the fire, while the others still stared at him, uncertain.
"Come," said Richard. "You look, the whole damned lot of you, like a flock of crows before a funeral. On Saturday we make a bid for freedom. If any man is afraid let him say so now, and I'll put a halter round his neck for treason to the Prince of Wales."
Not one of us made answer. Richard turned to Robin. "I want you to ride to Trelawne," he said, "and tell Jonathan Trelawney and his son that the rendezvous for the thirteenth is changed. They and Sir Arthur Bassett must join Sir Charles Trevanion at Caerhayes. Tell them to go tonight, skirting the high roads, and accompany them there."
"Sir," said Robin slowly, rising to his feet, and I think I was the only one who saw the flicker of his glance at Ambrose Manaton. As for myself, a weight was lifted from me. With Robin gone from the house, I, his sister, might safely breathe again. Let Gartred and her new lover make what they could of the few hours remaining. I did not care a jot so long as Robin was not there to listen to them.
"Bunny," said his uncle, "you have the boat at Pridmouth standing by in readiness?"
"Sir," said Bunny, his gray eyes dancing. He was, I think, the only one who still believed he played at soldiers.
"Then we shall rendezvous also at Caerhayes," said Richard, "at daybreak on the thirteenth. You can sail to Gorran tomorrow, and give my last directions about the beacon on the Dodman. A few hours on salt water in this weather will be good practice for your stomach." He smiled at the lad, who answered it with boyish adoration, and I saw Dick lower his head and trace imaginary lines upon the table with slow, hesitating hand.
"Peter?" said Richard.
Alice's husband leaped to his feet, drawn from some pleasant reveries of French wine and women to the harsh reality of the world about him. "My orders, sir?"
"Go to Caerhayes and warn Trevanion that the plans are changed. Tell him the Trelawneys and Bassett will be joining him. Then return here to Menabilly in the morning. And a word of warning, Peter."
"What is that, sir?"
"Don't go a-Courtneying on the way there. There is not a woman worth it, from Tywardreath to Dodman."
Peter turned pink, for all his bravado, but nerved himself to answer "Sir" with great punctility.
He and Robin left the room together, followed by Bunny and by Ambrose Manaton. Richard yawned and stretched his arms above his head, and then, wandering to the hearth, stirred the black embers of his papers in the ashes.
"Have you no commands for me?" said Dick slowly.
"Why, yes," said Richard, without turning his head. "Alice Courtney's daughters must have left some dolls behind them. Go search in the attics, and fashion them new dresses."
Dick did not answer. But he went, I think, a little whiter than before, and, turning on his heel, left the room.
"One day," I said, "you will provoke him once too often."
"That is my intention," answered Richard.
"Does it please you, then, to see him writhe in torment?"
"I hope to see him stand up to me at last, not take it lying down like a coward."
"Sometimes," I said, "I think that after twenty years I know even less about you than I did when I was eighteen."
"Very probably."
"No father in the world would act as harshly to his son as you do to your Dick."
"I only act harshly because I wish to purge his mother's whore blood from his veins."
"You will more likely kindle it."
He shrugged his shoulders and we fell silent a moment, listening to the sound of the horses' hoofs echoing across the park as Robin and Peter rode to their separate destinations.
"I saw my daughter up in London, when I lay concealed there for a while," said Richard suddenly.
Foolishly, a pang of jealousy shot through my heart, and I answered like a wasp. "Freckled, I suppose? A prancing miss?"
"Nay. Rather studious and quiet. Dependable. She put me in mind of my mother. 'Bess,' I said to her, 'will y
"Daughters," I said, "are never favorites with their mothers. Especially when they come to be of age. How old is she?"
"Near seventeen," he said, "with all that natural bloom upon her that young people have..." He stared absently before him. This moment, I thought with great lucidity and calm above the anguish, is in a sense our moment of farewell, our parting of the ways, but he does not know it. Now his daughter is of age he will not need me.
"Heigh-ho," he said. "I think I start to feel my eight-and-forty years. My leg hurts damnably today, and no excuse for it, with the sun blazing in the sky."
"Suspense," I said, "and all that goes along with it."
"When this campaign is over," he said, "and we hold all Cornwall for the Prince of Wales, I'll say good-bye to soldiering. I'll build a palace on the north coast, near to Stowe, and live in quiet retirement, like a gentleman."
"Not you," I said. "You'd quarrel with all your neighbors."
"I'd have no neighbors," he answered, "save my own Grenvile clan. My God, we'd make a clean sweep of the Duchy. Jack, and Bunny, and I. D'you think the Prince would make me Earl of Launceston?" He lay his hand upon my head an instant and then was gone, whistling for Bunny, and I sat there alone, in the empty dining room, despondent, oddly sad...
That evening we all went early to our beds, with the thunder that would not come still heavy in the air. Richard had taken Jonathan Rashleigh's chamber for his own, with Dick and Bunny in the dressing rooms between.
Now Peter and Robin had gone, the one to Caerhayes, the other to Trelawne, I thought, with cynicism, that Ambrose Manaton and Gartred could indulge their separate talents for invention until the morning, should the spirit move them.
A single door between their chambers, and I the only neighbor, at the head of the stairs. I heard Gartred come first, and Ambrose follow her--then all was silent on the landing. Ah, well, I thought, wrapping my shawl around me, thank God I can grow old with some complacency. White hairs could come, and lines, and crow's-feet, and they would not worry me. I did not have to struggle for a third husband, not having had a first. But it was hard to sleep with the full moon creeping to my window.
I could not hear the clock in the belfry from my present chamber, as I used to in the gatehouse, but it must have been near midnight, or just after, when I woke suddenly from the light sleep into which I had fallen, it seemed, but a few moments earlier, with a fancy that I had heard someone moving in the dining room below. Yes, there it was distinctly. The furtive sound of one who blundered his way in darkness, and bumped into a table, or a chair. I raised myself in my bed and listened. All was silent once again. But I was not easy. I put my hand out to my chair and dragged it to me, then listened once again. Sudden, unmistakable, came the stealthy tread of a footstep on the creaking telltale stair. Some intuition, subconscious perhaps from early in the day, warned me of disaster. I lowered myself into my chair, and without waiting to light my candle--nor was there need with the moon casting a white beam on the carpet--I propelled myself across the room and turned the handle of my door.
"Who is there?" I whispered.
There was no answer, and, coming to the landing, I looked down upon the stair and saw a dark figure crouching there, his back against the wall, the moonlight gleaming on the naked sword in his hand. He stood in stockinged feet, his shirtsleeves rolled above his elbow--my brother Robin, with murder in his eyes. He said nothing to me, only waited to see what I would do.
"Two years ago," I said softly, "you disobeyed an order given you by your commander, because of a private quarrel. That was in January '46. Do you intend to do the same in May of '48?"
He crept close and stood on the top stair beside me, breathing strangely. I could smell the brandy on his breath.
"I have disobeyed no one," he said. "I gave my message. I parted with the Trelawneys at the top of Polmear Hill."
"Richard bade you accompany them to Caerhayes," I said.
"No need to do so, Trelawney told me--two horsemen pass more easily than three. Let me by, Honor."
"No, Robin. Not yet. Give me first your sword."
He did not answer. He stood staring at me, looking, with his tumbled hair and troubled eyes, so like the ghost of our dead brother Kit that I trembled, even as his hands did on his sword. "You cannot fool me," he said, "neither you nor Richard Grenvile. This business was but a pretext to send me from the house, so that they could be together."
He looked forward to the landing and the closed door of the room beyond the stairs.
"Go to bed, Robin," I said, "or come and sit with me in my chamber. Let me talk to you awhile."
"No," he said. "This is my moment. They will be together now. If you try to prevent me, I shall hurt you also."
He brushed past my chair and made across the landing, tiptoeing, furtive, in his stockinged feet, and whether he was drunk or mad I could not tell. I knew only the purpose in his eyes.
"For God's sake, Robin," I said, "do not go into that room. Reason with them in the morning, if you must, but not now, not at this hour."
For answer he turned the handle, a smile upon his lips both horrible and strange, and I wheeled then, sobbing, and went back into my room and hammered loudly to the dressing rooms where Dick and Bunny slept.
"Call Richard," I said. "Bid him come quickly, now, this instant. And you too, both of you. There is no time to lose."
A startled voice--Bunny's, I believe--made answer, and I heard him clamber from his bed. But I had turned again, and crossed my room towards the landing, where all was silent still, and undisturbed. Nothing but the moonlight shining strong into the eastern windows. And then there came that sound for which I waited, piercing the silence with its shrill intensity. Not an oath, not a man's voice raised in anger, but the shocking horror of a woman's scream.
33
Across the landing, through Ambrose Manaton's empty room to Gartred's chamber beyond. The wheels of my chair turning slowly, for all my labor. And all the while calling "Richard... Richard..." with a note in my voice I did not recognize.
Oh, God, that fight there in the moonlight, the cold white light pouring into the unshuttered windows, and Gartred with a crimson gash upon her face clinging to the hangings of the bed. Ambrose Manaton, his silken nightshirt stained with blood, warding off with his bare hands the desperate blows that Robin aimed at him, until, with a despairing cry, he reached the sword that lay among his heap of clothes upon a chair. Their bare feet padded on the boards, their breath came quick and short, and they seemed, the two of them, like phantom figures, lunging, thrusting, now in moonlight and now in shadow, with no word uttered. "Richard...," I called again, for this was murder, here before my eyes, with the two men between me and the bed where Gartred crouched, her hands to her face, the blood running down between her fingers.
He came at last, half-clad, carrying his sword, with Dick and Bunny at his heels bearing candles. "An end to this, you goddamned idiots," he shouted, forcing himself between them, his own sword shivering their blades, and there was Robin, his right wrist hanging limp, with Richard holding him, and Ambrose Manaton back against the farther wall, with Bunny by his side.
They stared at one another, Robin and Ambrose Manaton, like animals in battle, chests heaving, eyes bloodshot, and suddenly Robin, seeing Gartred's face, realized what his work had done. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. He trembled, powerless to move or utter, and Richard pushed him to a chair and held him there. "Call Matty," said Richard to me. "Get water, bandages..."
Once more I turned to the landing, but already the household were astir, the frightened servants gathering in the hall below, the candles lit. "Go back to bed," said Richard harshly. "No one of you is needed, save Mistress Honor's woman. There has been a trifling accident, but no harm done." I heard them shuffle, whisper, retire to their own quarters, and here was Matty,
Those tumbled clothes upon the floor, Gartred's and his. Manaton leaning upon Bunny's arm, staunching the cuts he had received, his fair curls lank and damp with sweat. Robin upon a chair, his head buried in his hands, all passion spent. Richard standing by his side, grim and purposeful. And one and all we looked at Gartred on the bed, with that great gash upon her face from her right eyebrow to her chin. It was then, for the first time, that I noticed Dick.
His face was ashen white, his eyes transfixed in horror, and suddenly he reeled and fell, as the blood that stained the clean white linen spread and trickled onto Matty's hand.
Richard made no move. He said to Bunny, between clenched teeth, his eyes averted from his son's limp body, "Carry the spawn to his bed and leave him." Bunny obeyed, and as I watched him stagger from the room, his cousin in his arms, I thought with cold and deadly weariness: "This is the end. This is finality."
Someone brought brandy. Bunny, I suppose, on his return. We had our measure, all of us. Robin drinking slow and deep, his hands shaking as he held his glass. Ambrose Manaton quick and nervous, the color that had gone soon coming to his face again. Then Gartred, moaning faintly, with her head on Matty's shoulder, her silver hair still horribly bespattered with her blood.
"I do not propose," said Richard slowly, "to hold an inquest. What has been, has been. We are on the eve of deadly matters, with the whole future of a kingdom now at stake. This is no time for any man to seek private vengeance in a quarrel. When men have sworn an oath to my command, I demand obedience."
Not one of them made answer. Robin gazed, limp and shattered, at the floor.
"We will snatch," said Richard, "what hours of sleep we can, until the morning. I will remain with Ambrose in his room, and Bunny, stay with Robin. In the morning you will go together to Caerhayes, where I shall join you. Can I ask you, Matty, to remain here with Mrs. Denys?"