The King's General Page 9

  My curiosity was piqued, though, and I bade her search for a crack in the door. She put her face to the keyhole, but saw nothing. I gave her a pair of scissors, both of us giggling like children, and she worked away at the paneling for ten minutes or so until she had scraped a wide enough crack at which to place one eye. She knelt before it for a moment or two, then turned to me in disappointment. "There's nothing there," she said. "It's a plain chamber, much the same as this, with a bed in one corner, and hangings on the wall." I felt quite aggrieved, having hoped--in my idiotic romantic fashion--for a heap of treasure. I bade her hang a picture over the crack, and turned to my dinner. But later, when Joan came to sit with me at sunset, and the shadows began to fall, she said suddenly, with a shiver, "You know, Honor, I slept once in this room when John had the ague, and I did not care for it."

  "Why so?" I asked, drinking my wine.

  "I thought I heard footsteps in the chamber next door."

  I glanced at the picture over the crack, but it was well hidden.

  "What sort of footsteps?" I said.

  She shook her head, puzzled. "Soft ones," she said, "like someone walks with slippered soles for fear he shall be heard."

  "How long ago was this?" I asked.

  "During the winter," she said. "I did not tell anyone."

  "A servant perhaps," I suggested, "who had no business to be there."

  "No," she said, "none of the servants have a key--no one has but my father-in-law, and he was from home then." She waited a moment, and then she said, glancing over her shoulder, "I believe it is a ghost."

  "Why should a ghost walk at Menabilly?" I answered. "The house has not been built fifty years."

  "People have died here, though," she said. "John's old grandfather and his uncle John." She watched me with bright eyes, and, knowing my Joan, I wagered there was more to come.

  "So you too have heard the poison story," I said, drawing a bow at venture. "But I don't believe it," she said, "it would be wicked, horrible. He is too good and kind a man. But I do think it was a ghost that I heard, the ghost of the elder brother that they called Uncle John."

  "Why should he pace the room with padded soles?" I asked.

  She did not answer for a moment, and then, guiltily, she whispered: "They never speak of it--John made me promise not to tell--but he was mad, a hopeless idiot, and they used to keep him shut up in the chamber there."

  This was something I had never heard before. I found it horrible.

  "Are you certain?" I said.

  "Oh, yes," she replied. "There is a bit about it in old Mr. Rashleigh's will--John told me. Old Mr. Rashleigh, before he died, made my father-in-law promise to look after the elder brother, give him food and drink, and shelter in the house. They say the chamber there was set aside for him, built in a special way; I don't exactly know. And then he died, you see, very suddenly of the smallpox. John and Alice and Elizabeth don't remember him--they were only babies."

  "What a disagreeable tale," I said. "Give me some more wine, and let's forget it." After a while she went away, and Matty came to draw the curtains. I had no more visitors that night. But as the shadows lengthened, and the owls began to hoot down in the warren, I found my thoughts returning to the idiot Uncle John, shut up in the chamber there, year after year, from the first building of the house, a prisoner of the mind like I was of the body.

  But in the morning I heard news that made me forget, for a while, this talk of footsteps in the night.

  8

  The day being fine, I ventured forth in my chair once more upon the causeway, returning to the house at midday to find that a messenger had ridden to Menabilly, during my absence, bearing letters from Plymouth and elsewhere to members of the household, and the family were now gathered in the gallery discussing the latest information from the war. Alice was seated in one of the long windows overlooking the garden, reading aloud a lengthy epistle from her Peter. "Sir John Digby has been wounded," she said, "and the siege is now to be conducted by a new commander, who has them all by the ears at once. Poor Peter--this will mean an end to hawking excursions and supper parties. They will have to wage the war more seriously." She turned the page of scrawled writing, shaking her head. "And who is to command them?" inquired John, who once more was acting as attendant to my chair. "Sir Richard Grenvile," answered Alice.

  Mary was not in the gallery at the time, and, since she was the only person at Menabilly to know of the romance long finished and forgotten, I was able to hear mention of his name without embarrassment. For it is a strange truth, as I had by then discovered, that we only become aware of hot discomfort when others are made awkward for our sakes.

  I knew, from something that Robin had let slip, that Richard was come into the west, his purpose being to raise troops for the King, so I understood, and to be placed now in command of the siege of Plymouth meant promotion. He had already become notorious, of course, for the manner in which he had hoodwinked Parliament and joined His Majesty. "And what," I heard myself saying, "does Peter think of his new commander?" Alice folded up her letter. "As a soldier, he admires him," she answered, "but I think he has not a great opinion of him as a man."

  "I have heard," said John, "that he hasn't a scruple in the world, and once an injury is done to him he will never forget it or forgive."

  "I believe," said Alice, "that when in Ireland he inflicted great cruelty on the people--though some say it was no more than they deserved. But I fear he is very different from his brother."

  It made strange hearing to have the lover who had held me once against his heart discussed in so calm and cool a fashion.

  At this moment Will Sparke came up to us, also with a letter in his hand. "So Richard Grenvile is commanding now at Plymouth," he said. "I have the news here from my kinsman in Tavistock, who is with Prince Maurice. It seems the Prince thinks highly of his ability, but, my heaven--what a scoundrel."

  I began to burn silently, my old love and loyalty rising to the surface.

  "We were just talking of him," said John.

  "You heard his first action on coming west, I suppose?" said Will Sparke, warming like all his kind to malicious gossip. "I had it direct from my kinsman at the time. Grenvile rode straight to Fitzford, his wife's property, turned out the caretakers, seized all the contents, had the agent flung into jail, and took all the money owed by the tenants to his wife for his own use."

  "I thought," said Alice, "that he had been divorced from his wife."

  "So he is divorced," replied Will. "He is not entitled to a penny from the property. But that is Richard Grenvile for you."

  "I wonder," I said calmly, "what has happened to his children?"

  "I can tell you that," said Will. "The daughter is with the mother in London--whether she has friends in Parliament or not I cannot say. But the lad was at Fitzford with his tutor when Grenvile seized the place, and by all accounts is with him now. They say the poor boy is in fear and trembling of his father, and small blame to him."

  "No doubt," I said, "he was brought up to hate him by his mother."

  "Any woman," retorted Will, "who had been as ill used as she, unhappy lady, would hardly paint her spouse in pretty colors."

  Logic was with him, as it always was with the persons who maligned Richard, and presently I bade John carry me upstairs to my apartment. But the day that had started so well when I set forth upon the causeway turned sour on me, and I lay on my bed for the rest of it, telling Matty I would see no visitors.

  For fifteen years the Honor that had been lay dead and buried, and here she was struggling beneath the surface once again at the mere mention of a name that was best forgotten. Richard in Germany, Richard in Ireland, was too remote a person to swim into my daily thoughts. When I thought of him, or dreamed of him--which was often--it was always as he had been in the past. And now he must break into the present, a mere thirty miles away, and there would be constant talk of him, criticism, and discussion, and I should be forced to hear his name bandied and besm
irched, as Will Sparke had bandied it this morning. "You know," he had said, before I went upstairs, "the Roundheads call him Skellum Grenvile, and have put a price upon his head. The nickname suits him well, and even his own soldiers whisper it behind his back."

  "And what does it signify?" I asked.

  "Oh," he said. "I thought you were a German scholar, Mistress Harris, as well as learned in the Greek and Latin." He paused. "It means a vicious beast," he sniggered.

  Oh, yes, there was much reason for me to lay moodily on my bed, with the memory of a young man smiling at me from the branches of an apple tree, and the humming of the bees in the blossom.

  Fifteen years... He would be forty-four now, ten years older than myself. "Matty," I said, before she lit the candles, "bring me a mirror."

  She glanced at me suspiciously, her long nose twitching.

  "What do you want a mirror for?" she asked.

  "God damn you, that's my business," I answered.

  We snapped at one another continually, she and I, but it meant nothing. She brought me the mirror, and I examined my appearance as though seeing myself as a stranger would.

  There were my two eyes, my nose, my mouth, much as they had always been, but I was fuller in the face now than I had been as a maid--sluggish from lying on my back, I told myself. There were little lines, too, beneath my eyes, lines that had grown there from pain when my legs hurt me. I had less color than I had once. My hair was the best point, for this was Matty's special pride, and she would brush it for hours to make it glossy. I handed back the mirror to Matty with a sigh. "What do you make of it?" she asked.

  "In ten years," I said, "I'll be an old woman."

  She sniffed and began to fold my garments on a chair.

  "I'll tell you one thing," she said, drawing in her underlip.

  "What's that?"

  "You're fairer now as a woman than you ever were as a prinking, blushing maid, and I'm not the only one that thinks it."

  This was encouraging, and I had an immediate vision of a long train of suitors all tiptoeing up the stairs to pay me homage. A pretty fancy, but where the devil were they?

  "You're like an old hen," I said to Matty, "who always thinks her poorest chick the loveliest. Go to bed."

  I lay there for some time, thinking of Richard, wondering too about his little son, who must be a lad now of fourteen. Could it be true, as Will Sparke had said, that the boy went in fear of his father? Supposing we had wedded, Richard and I, and this had been our son. Would we have sported with him as a child, danced him upon our knees, gone down with him on all fours on the ground and played at tigers? Would he have come running to me with muddied hands, his hair about his face, laughing? Would he be auburn haired like Richard?

  Would we all three have ridden to the chase, and Richard have shown him how to sit straight in the saddle? Vain, idle supposition, drenched in sentiment, like buttercups by the dew on a wet morning. I was half-asleep, muzzy with a dream, when I heard a movement in the next chamber. I raised my head from the pillow, thinking it might be Matty in the dressing room, but the sound came from the other side. I held my breath and waited. Yes, there it was again. A stealthy footstep padding to and fro. I remembered in a flash the tale that Joan had told me of the mad Rashleigh uncle, confined in there for years. Was it his ghost in truth that stole there in the shadows? The night was pitchy, for it was only quarter moon, and no glimmer came to me from either casement. The clock in the belfry struck one. The footsteps ceased, then proceeded once again, and for the first time too I was aware of a cold current of air coming to my apartment from the chamber beyond.

  My own casements were closed, save the one that looked into the inner court, and this was only open to a few inches; besides, the draft did not come from that direction. I remembered then that the closed-up door into the empty chamber did not meet the floor at its base, but was raised two inches or so from the ground, for Matty had tried to look under it before she made the crack with the scissors.

  It was from beneath this door that the current of air blew now--and to my certain knowledge there had never been a draft from there before. Something, then, had happened in the empty chamber next to mine to cause the current. The muffled tread continued, stealthy, soft, and with the sweat running down my face I thought of the ghost stories my brothers had recounted to me as a child, of how an earthbound spirit would haunt the place he hated, bringing with him from the darker regions a whisper of chill dank air. One of the dogs barked from the stables, and this homely sound brought me to my senses. Was it not more likely that a living person was responsible for the cold current that swept beneath the door, and that the cause of it was the opening of the barred window that, like my western one, looked out onto the outer court? The ghost of poor idiot Uncle John would have kept me in my bed forever, but a living soul, treading furtively in the night hours in a locked chamber, was something to stir the burning curiosity of one who, it may be remembered, had from early childhood shown a propensity to eavesdrop where she was not wanted.

  Secretly, stealthily, I reached out my hand to the flint that Matty from long custom left beside my bed, and lit my candle. My chair was also within reach. I pulled it close to me, and, with the labor that years of practice had never mitigated, lowered myself into it. The footsteps ceased abruptly. So I am right, I thought in triumph. No ghost would hesitate at the sound of a creaking chair. I waited perhaps for as long as five minutes, and then the intruder must have recovered himself, for I heard the faint noise of the opening of a drawer. Softly I wheeled myself across the room. Whoever is there, I smiled grimly, is not aware that a cripple can be mobile, granted she has a resourceful brother with a talent for invention. I came abreast the door and waited once again. The picture that Matty had hung over the crack was on a level with my eye. I blew out my candle, trusting to fortune to blunder my way back to bed when my curiosity was satisfied. Then, very softly, holding my breath, I lifted the picture from the nail, and, framing my face with my hands for cover, I peered with one eye into the slit. The chamber was in half darkness, lit by a single candle on a bare table. I could not see to right or left--the crack was not large enough--but the table was in a direct line with my eye. A man was sitting at the table, his back turned to me. He was booted and spurred, and wore a riding-cloak about his shoulders. He had a pen in his hand, and was writing on a long white slip of paper, consulting, now and again, another list propped up before him on the table. Here was flesh and blood indeed, and no ghost; the intruder was writing away as calmly as though he were a clerk on a copying-stool. I watched him come to the end of the long slip of paper, and then he folded it, and, going to the cabinet in the wall, opened the drawer with the same sound I had heard before. The light was murky, as I have said, and, with his back turned to me and his hat upon his head, I could make little of him except that his riding-cloak was a dark crimson. Then he moved out of my line of vision, taking the candle, and walked softly to the far corner of the room. I heard nothing after that, and no further footsteps, and while I waited puzzled, with my eye still to the crack, I became aware suddenly that the draft of air was no longer blowing beneath the door. Yet I had heard no sound of a closing window. I bent down from my chair, testing the bottom of the door with my hand, but no current came. The intruder, therefore, had by some action unperceived by me cut off the draft, making his exit at the same time. He had left the chamber, as he had entered it, by some entrance other than the door that led into the corridor. I blundered back across my room in clumsy fashion, having first replaced the picture on its nail, and knocking into a table on the way, woke that light sleeper, Matty. "Have you lost your senses?" she scolded, "circling round your chamber in the pitch black?" And she lifted me like a child and dumped me in my bed.

  "I had a nightmare," I lied, "and thought I heard footsteps. Is there anyone moving in the courtyard, Matty?"

  She drew aside the curtain. "Not a soul," she grumbled, "not even a cat scratching on the cobbles. Everyone is asleep."
<
br />   "You will think me mazed, I don't doubt," I answered, "but venture with your candle a moment into the passage, and try the door of the locked apartment next to this."

  "Mazed it is," she snapped. "This comes of looking into the mirror on a Friday night." In a moment she was back again. "The door is locked as it always is," she said, "and, judging by the dust upon the latch, it has not been opened for months, or more."

  "No," I mused. "That is just what I supposed."

  She stared at me, and shook her head.

  "I'd best brew you a hot cordial," she said.

  "I do not want a hot cordial," I answered.

  "There's nothing like it for putting a stop to bad dreams," she said. She tucked in my blankets, and, after grumbling a moment or two, went back to her own room. But my mind was far too lively to find sleep for several hours. I kept trying to remember the formation of the house, seen from without, and what it was that struck me as peculiar the day before, when John had wheeled me in my chair towards the gatehouse. It was past four in the morning when the answer came to me. Menabilly was built foursquare around the courtyard, with clean, straight lines and no protruding wings. But at the northwest corner of the house, jutting from the wall outside the fastened chamber, was a buttress, running tall and straight from the roof down to the cobbles. Why in the name of heaven, when old John Rashleigh built his house in 1600, did he build the northwest corner with a buttress? And had it some connection with the fact that the apartment behind was designed for the special use of his idiot eldest son?

  Some lunatics are harmless, some are not. But even the worst, the truly animal, are given air and exercise at certain periods of the day, and would hardly be paraded through the corridors of the house itself. I smiled to myself in the darkness, for I had guessed, after three restless hours of tossing on my back, how the intruder had crept into the apartment next to mine without using the locked door into the passage. He had come, and he had gone, as poor Uncle John had doubtless done nearly half a century before, by a hidden stairway in the buttress. But why he had come, and what was his business, I had yet to discover.