Frenchman's Creek Read online

  "Lady St. Columb is very welcome," said the prisoner. "Having had little else to do during the last few days, I can offer her a fair selection. What is your favourite bird, madam?"

  "That," answered Dona, "is something I can never decide. Sometimes I think it is a night-jar."

  "I regret I cannot offer you a night-jar," he said, rummaging amongst the papers on the table. "You see, when I last heard one, I was so intent upon another occupation that I did not observe the night-jar as clearly as I might have done."

  "You mean," said Godolphin sternly, "that you were so intent upon robbing one of my friends of his possessions for your personal gratification that you gave no thought to any other distraction."

  "My lord," bowed the captain of La Mouette, "I have never before heard the occupation in question so delicately described."

  Dona turned over the drawings on the table. "Here is a herring gull," she said, "but I think you have not given him his full plumage."

  "The drawing is unfinished, madam," he replied, "this particular sea-gull dropped one of its feathers in flight. If you know anything about the species you will remember, however, that they seldom venture far to sea. This particular gull, for instance, is probably only ten miles from the coast at the present moment."

  "No doubt," said Dona, "and then tonight he will return again to the shore, in search of the feather he has lost."

  "Your ladyship knows little of ornithology," said Godolphin. "For my part I have never heard of a sea-gull or any other bird picking up feathers."

  "I had a feather mattress as a child," said Dona, talking rather quickly, and smiling at Godolphin, "and I remember the feathers became loose after a while, and one of them fluttered from the window of my bedroom and fell into the garden below. Of course the window was a large one, not like the slit that gives light to this cell."

  "Oh, of course," answered his lordship, a little puzzled, and he glanced at her doubtfully, wondering if she still had a touch of fever, for surely she sounded a little light in the head.

  "Did they ever blow under the door?" enquired the prisoner.

  "Ah, that I can't remember," said Dona, "I think that even a feather would have difficulty in passing beneath a door... unless of course it was given assistance, like a strong breath of air, you know, say the draught from a barrel of a pistol. But I have not chosen my drawing. Here is a sanderling, I wonder if this would please His Majesty.

  My lord, do I hear wheels upon the drive? If so, it must be that the physician is departing."

  Lord Godolphin clicked his tongue in annoyance, and looked towards the door. "He surely would not leave without consulting me first," he said, "are you certain you hear wheels? I am a little deaf."

  "I could not be more certain in the world," answered Dona.

  His lordship strode to the door, and thumped upon it.

  "Ho, there," he called, "unlock the door, will you, immediately?"

  The jailer called in answer, and they could hear his footstep mount the narrow stair. In a moment Dona had passed the pistol and the knife from her riding-habit onto the table, and the prisoner had seized them from her, and covered them with a mass of his drawings. The jailer unlocked the door, and Godolphin turned, and looked at Dona.

  "Well, madam," he said, "have you chosen your drawing?"

  Dona fluttered the drawings in distraction, wrinkling her brow.

  "It is really most monstrously difficult," she said. "I cannot decide between the sea-gull and the sanderling. Do not wait for me, my lord, you must know by this time that a woman can never make up her mind. I will follow you in a moment or two."

  "It is really imperative that I see the physician," said Godolphin, "so that if you will excuse me, madam. You remain here with her ladyship," he added to the guard, as he left the cell.

  Once again the guard closed the door, and this time stood against it, his arms folded and he smiled across at Dona with understanding.

  "We shall have two celebrations tomorrow, my lady," he said.

  "Yes," she said, "I hope for your sake that it proves to be a boy. There will be more ale for all of you."

  "Am I not the only cause for excitement?" asked the prisoner.

  The guard laughed, and jerked his head towards the slit in the cell.

  "You'll be forgotten by midday," he said, "you'll be dangling from the tree, while the rest of us drink to the future Lord Godolphin."

  "It seems rather hard that neither the prisoner nor myself will be here to drink the health of the son and heir," smiled Dona, and she drew her purse from her pocket, and threw it to the jailer. "I wager," she said, "that you would rather do so now, than keeping watch below, hour after hour. Supposing we drink now, the three of us, while his lordship is with the physician?"

  The jailer grinned, and winked at his prisoner.

  "If we do, it won't be the first time I've drunk ale before an execution," he said. "But I will say one thing, and that is that I've never seen a Frenchman hang yet. They tell me they die quicker than what we do. The bones in their neck are more brittle," and winking again, he unlocked the door, and called down to his assistant.

  "Bring three glasses, and a jug of ale."

  While his back was turned Dona questioned the prisoner with her eyes, and his lips moved soundlessly.

  "Tonight at eleven."

  She nodded, and whispered, "William and I."

  The jailer looked over his shoulder. "If his lordship catches us there'll be the devil to pay," he said.

  "I would absolve you," said Dona, "this is the sort of jest that will please His Majesty when I see him at Court. What is your name?"

  "Zachariah Smith, my lady."

  "Very well, then, Zachariah, if trouble comes of this, I will plead your case to the King himself."

  The jailer laughed, and his assistant coming this moment with the ale, he closed the door, and carried the tray to the table.

  "Long life then to your ladyship," he said, "a full purse and a good appetite to myself, and to you, sir, a speedy death."

  He poured the ale into the glasses, and Dona, clinking hers against the jailer's said, "Long life, then, to the future Lord Godolphin."

  The jailer smacked his lips, and tilted his head.

  The prisoner raised his glass and smiled at Dona.

  "Should we not also drink to Lady Godolphin, at this moment, I imagine, suffering something of discomfort?"

  "And," replied Dona, "to the physician also, who will be rather heated." As she drank, an idea flashed suddenly to her mind, and glancing at the Frenchman, she knew instinctively that the same thought had come to him, for he was looking at her.

  "Zachariah Smith, are you a married man?" she said.

  The jailer laughed. "Twice married," he said, "and the father of fourteen."

  "Then you know what his lordship is enduring at this moment," she smiled, "but with so able a physician as Doctor Williams there is little cause for anxiety. You know the doctor well, I suppose?"

  "No, my lady. I come from the north coast. I am not a Helston man."

  "Doctor Williams," said Dona dreamily, "is a funny little fellow, with a round solemn face, and a mouth like a button. I have heard it said that he is as good a judge of ale as any man living."

  "Then it's a great pity," said the prisoner, laying down his glass, "that he does not drink with us now. Perhaps he will do so later, when his day's work is finished, and he has made a father of Lord Godolphin."

  "Which will not be much before midnight, what do you say, Zachariah Smith, and father of fourteen?" asked Dona.

  "Midnight is generally the hour, your ladyship," laughed the jailer, "all nine of my boys were born as the clock struck twelve."

  "Very well, then," said Dona, "when I see Doctor Williams directly I will tell him that in honour of the occasion, Zachariah Smith, who can boast of more than a baker's dozen, will be pleased to drink a glass of ale with him before he goes on duty for the night."

  "Zachariah, you will remember this eve
ning for the rest of your life," said the prisoner.

  The jailer replaced the glasses on the tray. "If Lord Godolphin has a son," he said, winking an eye, "there'll be so much rejoicing on the estate that we'll be forgetting to hang you in the morning."

  Dona took up the drawing of the sea-gull from the table.

  "Well," she said, "I have chosen my drawing. And rather than his lordship should see you with the tray, Zachariah, I will descend with you, and we will leave your prisoner with his pen and his birds. Good-bye, Frenchman, and may you slip away tomorrow as easily as the feather did from my mattress."

  The prisoner bowed. "It will all depend," he said, "upon the quantity of ale that my jailer consumes tonight with Doctor Williams."

  "He'll have to boast a stout head if he can beat mine," said the jailer, and he unlocked the door, and held it open for her to pass.

  "Good-bye, Lady St. Columb," said the prisoner, and she stood for a moment looking at him, realising that the plan they had in mind was more hazardous and more foolhardy than any that he had yet attempted, and that if it should fail there would be no further chance of escape, for tomorrow he would hang from the tree there in the park. Then he smiled, as though in secret, and it seemed to her that his smile was the personification of himself; it was the thing in him that she had first loved, and would always cherish, and it conjured the picture in her mind of La Mouette, and the sun, and the wind upon the sea, and with it too the dark shadows of the creek, the wood fire and the silence. She went out of the cell without looking at him, her head in the air, and her drawing in her hand, and "He will never know," she thought, "at what moment I have loved him best."

  She followed the jailer down the narrow stair, her heart heavy, her body suddenly tired with all the weariness of anticlimax. The jailer, grinning at her, put the tray under the steps, and said, "Cold-blooded, isn't he, for a man about to die? They say these Frenchmen have no feelings."

  She summoned a smile, and held out her hand. "You are a good fellow, Zachariah," she said, "and may you drink many glasses of ale in the future, and some of them tonight. I won't forget to tell the physician to call upon you. A little man, remember, with a mouth like a button."

  "But a throat like a well," laughed the jailer. "Very good, your ladyship, I will look out for him, and he shall quench his thirst. Not a word to his lordship, though."

  "Not a word, Zachariah," said Dona solemnly, and she went out of the dark keep into the sunshine, and there was Godolphin himself coming down the drive to meet her.

  "You were wrong, madam," he said, wiping his forehead, "the carriage has not moved, and the physician is still with my wife. He has decided after all that he will remain for the present,, as poor Lucy is in some distress. Your ears must have played you false."

  "And I sent you back to the house, all to no purpose," said Dona. "So very stupid of me, dear Lord Godolphin, but then women, you know, are very stupid creatures. Here is the picture of a sea-gull. Do you think it will please His Majesty?"

  "You are a better judge of his taste than I, madam," said Godolphin, "or so I presume. Well, did you find the pirate as ruthless as you expected?"

  "Prison has softened him, my lord, or perhaps it is not prison, but the realisation that in your keeping, escape is impossible. It seemed to me that when he looked at you he knew that he had at last met a better, and a more cunning brain than his own."

  "Ah, he gave you that impression, did he? Strange, I have sometimes thought the opposite. But these foreigners are half women, you know. You never know what they are thinking."

  "Very true, my lord." They stood before the steps of the house, and there was the physician's carriage, and the servant still holding Dona's cob. "You will take some refreshment, madam, before you go?" enquired Godolphin, and "No," she answered, "no, I have stayed too long as it is, for I have much to do tonight before my journey in the morning. My respects to your wife, when she is in a state to receive them, and I hope that before the evening is out, she will have presented you with a replica of yourself, dear Lord Godolphin."

  "That, madam," he said gravely, "is in the hands of the Almighty."

  "But very soon," she said, mounting her horse, "in the equally capable hands of the physician. Good-bye." She waved her hand to him, and was gone, striking the cob into a startled canter with her whip, and as she drew rein past the keep and looked up at the slit in the tower she whistled a bar of the song that Pierre Blanc played on his lute, and slowly, like a snow-flake, a feather drifted down in the air towards her, a feather torn from the quill of a pen. She caught it, caring not a whit if Godolphin saw her from the steps of his house, and she waved her hand again, and rode out onto the highroad laughing, with the feather in her hat.

  Chapter XXIII

  DONA LEANED from the casement of her bedroom at Navron, and as she looked up into the sky she saw, for the first time, the little gold crescent of the new moon high above the dark trees.

  "That is for luck," she thought, and she waited a moment, watching the shadows in the still garden, and breathing the heavy sweet scent of the magnolia tree that climbed the wall beneath her. These things must be stored and remembered in her heart with all the other beauty that had gone, for she would never look upon them again.

  Already the room itself wore the appearance of desertion, like the rest of the house, and her boxes were strapped upon the floor, her clothes folded and packed by the maid-servant, according to instruction. When she had returned, late in the afternoon, hot and dusty from her ride, and the groom had taken the cob from her in the courtyard, the ostler from the Inn at Helston was waiting to speak to her.

  "Sir Harry left word with us, your ladyship," he said, "that you would be hiring a chaise tomorrow, to follow him to Okehampton."

  "Yes," she said.

  "And the landlord sent me to tell you, your ladyship, that the chaise will be available, and will be here for you at noon tomorrow."

  "Thank you," she had said, staring away from him towards the trees in the avenue, and the woods that led to the creek, for everything he said to her lacked reality, the future was something with which she had no concern. As she left him and went into the house he looked after her, puzzled, scratching his head, for she seemed to him like a sleepwalker, and he did not believe she had fully understood what he had told her. She wandered then to the nursery, and stared down at the stripped beds, and the bare boards, for the carpets had been taken up. The curtains were drawn too, and the air was already hot and unused. Beneath one of the beds lay the arm of a stuffed rabbit that James had sucked, and then torn from the rabbit's body in a tantrum.

  She picked it up and held it, turning it over in her hands. There was something forlorn about it, like a relic of by-gone days. She could not leave it lying there on the floor, so she opened the great wardrobe in the corner, and threw it inside, and shut the door upon it, then left the room and did not go into it again.

  At seven her supper was brought to her on a tray, and she ate little of it, not being hungry. Then she gave orders to the servant not to disturb her again during the evening, for she was tired, and not to call her in the morning, for she would sleep late in all probability, before the tedium of the journey.

  When she was alone, she undid the bundle that William had given her on her return from Lord Godolphin. Smiling to herself she drew out the rough stockings, the worn breeches, and the patched though gaily coloured shirt. She remembered his look of embarrassment as he had given them to her, and his words: "These are the best Grace can do for you, my lady, they belong to her brother."

  "They are perfect, William," she had replied, "and Pierre Blanc himself could have done no better." For she must play the boy again, for the last time, and escape from her woman's clothes for this night at least. "I will be able to run better without petticoats," she said to William, "and I can ride astride my horse, as I used to as a child." He had procured the horses, as he had promised, and was to meet her with them on the road from Navron to Gweek just after nine
o'clock.

  "You must not forget, my William," she said, "that you are a physician, and that I am your groom, and it were better that you should drop 'my lady' and call me Tom."

  He looked away from her in embarrassment. "My lady," he said, "my lips could not frame the word, it would be too distressing." She had laughed, and told him that physicians must never be embarrassed, especially when they had just brought sons and heirs into the world. And now she was dressing herself in the lad's clothes, and they fitted her well, even the shoes, unlike the clumsy clogs belonging to Pierre Blanc; there was a handkerchief too, which she wound about her head, and a leather strap for her waist. She looked at herself in the mirror, her dark curls concealed, her skin a gypsy brown, and "I am a cabin-boy again," she thought, "and Dona St. Columb is asleep and dreaming."

  She listened at her door, and all was still; the servants were safe in their own quarters. She braced herself for the ordeal of descending the stairway to the dining-hall, for this was what she dreaded most, in the darkness, with the candles unlit, and flooding her mind with sharp intensity was the memory of Rockingham crouching there, his knife in his hands. It was better, she thought, to shut her eyes, and feel her way along the landing to the stairs, for then she would not see the great shield on the wall, nor the outline of the stairs themselves. So she went down, her hands before her and her eyes tight shut, and all the while her heart was beating, and it seemed to her that Rockingham still waited for her in the darkest corner of the hall. With a sudden panic she flung herself upon the door, wrenching back the bolts, and ran out into the gathering dusk to the safety and stillness of the avenue. Once she was free of the house she was no longer afraid, the air was soft and warm, and the gravel crunched under her feet, while high in the pale sky the new moon gleamed like a sickle.

  She walked swiftly, for there was freedom in her boy's clothes, and her spirits rose, and once again she fell to whistling Pierre Blanc's song, and she thought of him too, with his merry monkey face and his white teeth, waiting now on the deck of La Mouette somewhere in mid-channel, for the master he had left behind.

  She saw a shadow move towards her, round the bend of the road, and there was William with the horses, and there was a lad with him, Grace's brother she presumed, and the owner of the clothes she wore.