The King's General Page 10

  9

  It turned to rain the next morning, and I was unable to take my usual airing in the grounds. But later in the day the fitful sun peeked through the low clouds and, wrapping my cloak about me, I announced to Matty my intention of going abroad.

  John Rashleigh was out riding round the farms on the estate, with the steward Langdon, whose house it was I had observed beyond the bowling green. Thus I had not my faithful chair attendant. Joan came with me instead, and it was an easy enough matter to persuade her to wheel me first through the archway to the outer court, where I made pretense of looking up to admire my quarters in the gatehouse.

  In reality, I was observing the formation of the buttress, which ran, as I thought it did, the whole length of the house on the northwest corner, immediately behind it being the barred chamber.

  The width of the buttress was a little over four feet, so I judged, and, if it was hollow behind a false facade of stone, could easily contain a stair. There was, however, no outlet to the court--this was certain. I bade Joan wheel me to the base, on pretense of touching the lichen which already, after only fifty years, was forming on the stone, and I satisfied myself that the outside of the buttress at any rate was solid. If my supposition was correct, then there must be a stairway within the buttress leading underground, far beneath the foundations of the house, and a passage running some distance to an outlet in the grounds. Poor Uncle John. It was significant that there was no portrait of him in the gallery, alongside the rest of the family. If so much trouble was taken by his father that he should not be seen, he must have been an object of either fear or horror. We left the outer court and, traversing the warren, came by the path outside the steward's lodge. The door was open to the parlor, and Mrs. Langdon, the steward's wife, was standing in the entrance, a comfortable, homely woman, who, on being introduced to me, insisted that I take a glass of milk. While she was absent, we glanced about the trim room, and Joan, laughing, pointed to a bunch of keys that hung on a nail beside the door. "Old Langdon is like a jailer," she whispered. "As a rule he is never parted from that bunch, but dangles them at his belt. John tells me he has a duplicate of each key belonging to my father-in-law."

  "Has he been steward long?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes," said Joan. "He came here as a young man when the house was built. There is no corner of Menabilly that he does not know."

  I wager then, I thought to myself, that he knows too the secret of the buttress, if there is a secret. Joan, with a curiosity much like mine, was examining the labels on the keys. "Summerhouse," she read, and with a mischievous smile at me, she slipped it from the bunch, and dangled it before my eyes. "You expressed a wish to peep into the tower on the causeway, did you not?" she teased. At this moment Mrs. Langdon returned with the milk, and, fearful of discovery, Joan, like a guilty child, reddened and concealed the key within her gown. We chatted for a few moments, while I drank my milk in haste and Joan gazed with great innocence at the ceiling. Then we bade the good woman farewell and turned into the gardens, through the gate in the high wall.

  "Now you have done for yourself," I said. "How in the world will you return the key?"

  Joan was laughing under her breath. "I'll give it to John," she said. "He must devise some tale or other to satisfy old Langdon. But, seeing that we have the key, Honor, it would be a pity not to make some use of it." She was an accomplice after my own heart, and a true godchild. "I make no promise," I murmured. "Wheel me along the causeway, and we will see which way the wind is blowing."

  We crossed the gardens, passing the house as we did so, and waved to Alice at the window of her apartment above the gallery. I caught sight, too, of Temperance Sawle, peering like a witch from the side door, evidently in half a mind to risk the damp ground and join us. "I am the best off in my chair," I called to her. "The walks are wringing wet, and clouds coming up again from the Gribben."

  She bolted like a rabbit within doors again, and I saw her pass into the gallery, while Joan, smothering her laughter, propelled me through the gate onto the causeway.

  It was only when mounted thus some ten feet from the ground that the fine view of the sea could be obtained, for down on the level the sloping ground masked all sight of it. Menabilly, though built on a hill, lay therefore in a saucer, and I commented on the fact to Joan as she wheeled me towards the towered summerhouse at the far end of the causeway. "Yes," she said, "John has explained to me that the house was so built that no glimpse of it should be sighted from the sea. Old Mr. Rashleigh lived in great fear of pirates. But, if the truth be told, he was not above piracy himself, and in the old days, when he was alive, there were bales of silk, and bars of silver, concealed somewhere within the house, stolen from the French and brought hither by his own ships, and then landed down at Pridmouth yonder."

  In which case, I thought privately, a passage known to no one but himself, and perhaps his steward, would prove of great advantage.

  But we had reached the summerhouse, and Joan, glancing first over her shoulder to see that no one came, produced her key, and turned it in the lock. "I must tell you," she confessed, "that there is nothing great to see. I have been here once or twice, with my father-in-law, and it is naught but a rather musty room, the shelves lined with books and papers, and a fine view from the windows." She wheeled me through the door, and I glanced about me, half hoping, in a most childish manner, to find traces of piracy. But all was in order. The walls of the summerhouse were lined with books, save for the windows, which, even as she said, commanded the whole stretch of the bay to the Gribben and to the east showed the steep coast road that led to Fowey. Anyone, on horse or on foot, approaching Menabilly from the east would be observed by a watcher at the window, likewise a vessel sailing close inshore. Old Mr. Rashleigh had shown great cunning as a builder.

  The flagged floor was carpeted, save in one corner by my brother-in-law's writing-table, where a strip of heavy matting served for his feet. It was in keeping with his particular character that the papers on his desk were neatly documented, and filed in order. Joan left me in my chair to browse among the books, while she herself kept watch out on the causeway. There was nothing much to tempt my interest. Books of law, dry as dust, books of accountancy, and many volumes docketed as "County Affairs," no doubt filed when Jonathan was Sheriff for the Duchy of Cornwall. On a lower shelf, near to his writing-table, were volumes labeled "My Town House" and another "Menabilly," while close behind these he had "Marriage Settlements" and "Wills." He was nothing if not methodical in his business. The volume marked "Wills" was nearest to me, and surprisingly tempting to my hand. I looked over my shoulder and saw through the window that Joan, humming a tune, was busily engaged in picking posies for her children. I reached out my hand and took the volume. Page after page was covered in my brother-in-law's meticulously careful hand. I turned to the entries headed by the words "My father, John Rashleigh. Born, 1554. Died, 6 May 1624." Folded close to this--perhaps it had slipped in by accident--was an account of a case brought to the Star Chamber in the year 1616 by one Charles Bennett against the above John Rashleigh. This Charles Bennett, I remembered, was father to Robert Bennett, our neighbor at Looe, who had spread the poison rumor. The case, had I time to peruse it, would have made good reading, for it was of a highly scandalous nature; Charles Bennett accused John Rashleigh of "leading a most incontinent course of life, lying with divers women, over forty-five in number, uttering blasphemies, etc., etc., and his wife dying through grief at his behavior, she being a sober virtuous woman." I was somewhat surprised after this, glancing at the end, to find that John Rashleigh had been acquitted. What a lovely weapon, though, to hold over the head of my self-righteous brother-in-law when he made boast, as he sometimes did, of the high morals of his family. But I turned a page and came to the will I had been seeking. So old John Rashleigh had not done too badly for his relatives. Nick Sawle had got fifty pounds (which I daresay Temperance had snatched from him) and the Sparkes had benefited to the same extent. The poor of Fowey
had some twenty pounds bestowed upon them. It is really most iniquitous, I told myself, that I should be prying thus into matters that concern me not at all, but I read on. All lands in Cornwall, his house in Fowey, his house at Menabilly, and the residue of his estate to his second son Jonathan, his executor. And then the codicil at the end: "Thirty pounds annuity out of Fowey to the use of my eldest son John's maintenance, to be paid after the death of my second son Jonathan, who during his life will maintain him and allow him a chamber with meat and drink and apparel." I caught a glimpse of Joan's shadow passing the window, and with a hurried, guilty movement I shut the volume and put it back upon the shelf.

  There was no doubt then about the disability of poor Uncle John. I turned my chair from the desk, and as I did so the right wheel stuck against some obstruction on the ground beneath the heavy matting. I bent down from my chair to free the wheel, turning up the edge of the mat as I did so. I saw then that the obstruction was a ring in the flagstone, which, though flat to the ground and unnoticeable possibly to a foot treading upon it, had been enough to obstruct the smooth running of my chair.

  I leaned from my chair as far as I could, and, seizing the ring with my two hands, succeeded in lifting the stone some three inches from the ground, before the weight of it caused me to drop it once again--but not before I had caught a glimpse of the sharp corner of a step descending into darkness. I replaced the mat just as my godchild came into the summerhouse.

  "Well, Honor," she said, "have you seen all you have a mind to for the present?"

  "I rather think I have," I answered, and in a few moments she had closed the door, turned the key once more in the lock, and we were bowling back along the causeway. She prattled away about this and that, but I paid but scant attention, for my mind was full of my latest discovery. It seemed fairly certain that there was a pit or tunnel underneath the flagstone in the summerhouse, and the placing of a mat on top of it, and the position of the desk, suggested that the hiding of it was deliberate. There was no rust about the ringbolt to show disuse, and the ease with which I, helpless in my chair, had lifted the stone a few inches proved to me that this was no cobwebby corner of concealment long forgotten. The flagstone had been lifted frequently, and recently. I looked over my shoulder down the pathway to the beach, or Pridmouth Cove, as Joan had termed it. It was narrow and steep, flanked with stubby trees, and I thought how easy it would be for an incoming vessel, anchored in deep water, to send a boat ashore with some half-dozen men, who could climb up the path to where it ended beneath the summerhouse on the causeway, and for a watcher at the window of the summerhouse to relieve the men of any burden they should bear upon their backs. Was this what old John Rashleigh had foreseen when he built his tower, and did bales of silk and bars of silver lie stacked beneath the flagstone some forty years before? It seemed very probable, but whether the step beneath the flagstone had any connection with my suspicion of the buttress it was difficult to say. One thing was certain. There was a secret entrance to Menabilly through the chamber next to mine, and someone had passed that way only the night before, for I had seen him with my own eyes.

  "You are silent, Honor," said Joan, breaking in upon my thoughts. "What are you thinking of?"

  "I have just come to the opinion," I answered, "that I was somewhat rash to leave Lanrest, where each day was alike, and come among you all at Menabilly, where something different happens every day."

  "I wish I thought as you did," she replied. "To me the days and weeks seem much the same, with the Sawles backbiting at the Sparkes, and the children fretful, and my dear John grousing all the while that he cannot go fighting with Peter and the rest."

  We came to the end of the causeway, and were about to turn in through the gate into the walled gardens when her little son Jonathan, a child of barely three years, came running across the path to greet us. "Uncle Peter is come," he cried, "and another gentleman, and many soldiers. We have been stroking the horses."

  I smiled up at his mother. "What did I tell you?" I said. "Not a day passes but there is some excitement at Menabilly."

  I had no wish to run the gauntlet of the long windows in the gallery, where the company would be assembled, and bade Joan wheel me to the entrance in the front of the house, which was usually deserted at this time of the day, when no one was within the dining chamber. Once indoors, one of the servants could carry me to my apartment in the gatehouse, and later I could send for Peter, always a favorite with me, and have his news of Robin. We passed in then through the door, little Jonathan running in front, and at once we heard laughter and talk coming from the gallery. The wide arched door to the inner courtyard was open, and we could see some half-dozen troopers with their horses watering at the well beneath the belfry. There was much bustle and clatter, a pleasant, lively sound, and I saw one of the troopers look up to a casement in the attic and wave his hand in greeting to a blushing kitchen-girl. He was a big, strong-looking fellow with a broad grin on his face, and then he turned, and signaled to his companions to follow him, which they did, each one leading his horse away from the well and following him through the archway beneath my gatehouse to the outer courtyard and the stables.

  It was when they turned thus and clattered through the court that I noticed how each fellow wore upon his shoulder a scarlet shield with three gold rests upon it. For a moment I thought my heart would stop beating, and I was seized with sudden panic.

  "Find one of the servants quickly," I said to Joan. "I wish to be carried straightway to my room."

  But it was too late. Even as she sent little Jonathan scampering hurriedly towards the servants' quarters, Peter Courtney came out into the hall, his arm about his Alice, in company with two or three brother officers. "Why, Honor," he cried. "This is a joy indeed. Knowing your habits, I feared to find you hiding in your apartment, with Matty standing like a dragon at the door. Gentlemen, I present to you Mistress Honor Harris, who has not the slightest desire to make your acquaintance." I could have slain him for his lack of discretion, but he was one of those gay lighthearted creatures with a love of jesting and poking fun, and no more true perception than a bumblebee. In a moment his friends were bowing before my chair and exchanging introductions, and Peter, still laughing and talking in his haphazard strident way, was pushing my chair through to the gallery. Alice, who made up in intuition all he lacked, would have stopped him had I caught her eye, but she was too glad to have a glimpse of him to do anything but smile and hold his arm. The gallery seemed full of people--Sawles, and Sparkes, and Rashleighs all chatting at the top of their voices, and at the far end by the window I caught sight of Mary in conversation with someone whose tall back and broad shoulders were painfully, almost terrifyingly familiar. Mary's expression, preoccupied and distrait, told me that she was at that moment wondering if I had returned from my promenade, for I saw her eyes search the gardens; and then she saw me, and her brow wrinkled in a well-known way and she began talking sixteen to the dozen. Her loss of composure gave me back my own. What in hell's name do I care, after fifteen years, I told myself? There is no need to swoon at an encounter. God knows I have breeding enough to be mistress of the situation, here in Mary's house at Menabilly, with nigh a score of people in the room.

  Peter, impervious to any doubtful atmosphere, propelled me slowly towards the window, and out of the corner of my eye I saw my sister Mary, overcome by cowardice, do something that I dare swear I might have done myself had I been her, and that was to murmur a hasty excuse to her companion about summoning the servants to bring further refreshment, before she fled from the gallery without looking once in my direction. Richard turned and saw me. And as he looked at me it was as if my whole heart moved over in my body and was mine no longer.

  "Sir," said Peter, "I am pleased to present to you my dearly loved kinswoman, Mistress Honor Harris of Lanrest."

  "My kinswoman also," said Richard--and then he bent forward and kissed my hand.

  "Oh, is that so, sir?" said Peter vaguely, looking from one to t
he other of us. "I suppose all we Cornish families are in some way near related. Let me fill your glass, sir. Honor, will you drink with us?"

  "I will," I answered. In truth, a glass of wine seemed to me my only salvation at the moment. While Peter filled the glasses I had my first long look at Richard. He had altered. There was no doubt of it. He had grown much broader, for one thing, not only in the body, but about the neck and shoulders. His face was somewhat heavier than it had been. There was a brown, weather-beaten air about him that was not there before, and lines beneath his eyes. It was, after all, fifteen years. And then he turned to me, giving me my glass, and I saw that there was only one white streak in his auburn hair, high above the temple, and the eyes that looked at me were quite unchanged.

  "Your health and fortune," he said quietly, and draining his glass, he held it out, with mine, to be refilled. I saw the little telltale pulse beating on his right temple, and I knew then that the encounter was as startling and as moving to him as it was to me.

  "I did not know," he said, "that you were at Menabilly."

  I saw Peter glance at him curiously, and I wondered if this was the first time he had ever seen his commanding officer show any sign of nervousness or strain. The hand that held the glass trembled very slightly, and the voice that spoke was hard, queerly abrupt.

  "I came here a few days since from Lanrest," I answered, my voice perhaps as oddly flat as his. "My brothers said I must not live alone while the war continues."

  "They showed wisdom," he replied. "Essex is moving westward all the time. It is very probable we shall see fighting once again this side of the Tamar." At this moment Peter's small daughters came running to his knees, shrieking with joy to see their father, and Peter, laughing an apology, was swept into family life upon the instant, taking one apiece upon his shoulder and moving down the gallery in triumph. Richard and I were thus left alone beside the window. I looked out onto the garden, noting the trim yew hedges and the smooth lawns, while a score of trivial observations ran insanely through my head.