The King's General (10 page)

"That is not the point," said Robin. "It is impossible for Jo and I and Percy to do our duty, remembering all the while that you are here alone."

He argued for half a day before I reluctantly gave way, and then with an ill grace and much disturbance in my mind.

For some fifteen years--ever since I had been crippled--I had not left Lanrest, and to set forth now, to another person's house, even though that person was my own sister, filled me with misgiving.

Menabilly was already packed with Rashleigh relatives who had taken refuge there with Jonathan, seizing the war as an excuse, and I had no wish to add to their number.

I had a great dislike for strangers, or conversing with anyone for the sake of courtesy; besides, I was set now in my ways, my days were my own, I followed a personal routine.

"You can live at Menabilly exactly as you do here at Lanrest," protested Robin, "save that you will be more comfortable. Matty will attend you; you will have your own apartment and your meals brought to you, if you do not wish to mix with the company. Set on the hill there, with the sea air blowing and the fine gardens for you to be wheeled about in, nothing could be more pleasant, to my opinion."

I disagreed, but, seeing his anxiety, I said no more; and within a week my few belongings were packed, the house was closed, and I was being carried in a litter to Menabilly.

How disturbing it was, and strange, to be on the road again. To pass through Lostwithiel, to see the people walking in the market place--the normal daily life of a community to which I had been so long absent, living in my own world at Lanrest. I felt oddly nervous and ill at ease as I peered through the curtains of my litter, as if I had been suddenly transplanted to a foreign land, where the language and the customs were unknown to me. My spirits rose as we climbed the long hill out of the town, and as we came abreast of the old redoubt at Castledore and I saw the great blue bay of Tywardreath spread out before me, I thought that maybe after all the change of place and scene might yet be bearable. John Rashleigh came riding along the highway to meet me, waving his hat, a broad smile on his thin, colourless face. He was just twenty-three, and the tragedy of his life was that he had not the health or strength to join the Army, but must bide at home and take orders from his father, being cursed from babyhood with a malignant form of ague that kept him shivering and helpless sometimes for days on end. He was a dear, lovable fellow, with a strong sense of duty, yet in great awe of his father; and his wife--my goddaughter Joan--with her merry eyes and mischievous prattle, made him a good foil. Riding with him now was his companion and second cousin, Frank Penrose, a young man of the same age as himself and who was employed by my brother-in-law as secretary and junior agent about the estate.

"All is prepared for you, Honor," smiled John as he rode beside my litter. "There are over twenty of us in the house at present, and the lot of them gathered in the courtyard to greet you. Tonight a dinner is to be given for your reception."

"Very well then," I answered, "you may tell these fellows to turn back again towards Lostwithiel."

At this he confessed that Joan had bade him tease me, and all the company were in the east wing of the house, and no one would worry me.

"My stepmother has put you," he said, "in the gatehouse, for she says you like much light and air, and the chamber there has a window looking both ways, over the outer courtyard to the west, and on to the inner court that surrounds the house. Thus you will see all that goes on about the place and have your own private peep show."

"It sounds," I answered, "like a garrison, with twenty people crammed within the walls."

"Nearly fifty altogether, counting the servants," laughed John, "but they sleep head to toe up in the attics."

My spirits sank again, and as we turned down from the highway into the park and I saw the great stone mansion at the end of it, flanked by high walls and outbuildings, I cursed myself for a fool for coming. We turned left into the outer court, surrounded by bake houses and larders and dairies, and, passing under the low archway of the gatehouse--my future dwelling--drew up within the inner court. The house was thus foursquare, built around the court, with a big clock tower or belfry at the northern end, and the entrance to the south. On the steps stood Mary now to greet me, and Alice Courtney, her eldest stepdaughter, and Joan, my godchild, both of them with their babies tugging at their skirts.

"Welcome, dearest Honor, to Menabilly," said Mary, her dear face puckered already in nervousness that I should hate it.

"The place is full of children, Honor; you must not mind," smiled Alice, who since her marriage to Peter had produced a baby every year.

"We are thinking out a plan to attach a rope of your own to the bell in the belfry," said Joan, "so that if the noise becomes too deafening you can pull it in warning and the household will be silenced."

"I am already established, then, as a dragon," I replied, "which is all to the good, for I mean to do as I please, as Robin may have warned you."

They carried me into the dark-panelled hall and, ignoring the long gallery which ran the whole length of the house and from which I could hear the ominous sound of voices, bore me up the broad staircase and along a passage to the western wing. I was, I must confess, immediately delighted with my apartment, which, though low ceilinged, was wide and full of light. There were windows at each end, as John had said, the western one looking down over the archway to the outer court and the park beyond, and the eastern one facing the inner court. There was a small room to the right for Matty, and nothing had been forgotten for my comfort.

"You will be bothered by no one," said Mary. "The apartments beyond the dressing room belong to the Sawles--cousins of Jonathan's--who are very sober and retiring and will not worry you. The chamber to your left is never occupied."

They left me then, and with Matty's aid I undressed and got myself to bed, a good deal exhausted from my journey and glad to be alone.

The first few days passed in becoming accustomed to my new surroundings and settling down, like an old hound to a change of kennel.

My chamber was very pleasant, and I had no wish to leave it; also, I liked the chiming of the clock in the belfry, and once I told myself firmly that the quietude of Lanrest must be forgotten, I came to listen to the comings and goings that were part of this big house, the bustle in the outer court, the footsteps passing under the arch below me, and also--though I would have denied the accusation--taking peep from my curtains at the windows opposite that, like mine, looked down upon the inner court and from which, now and again, people would lean, talking to others within. At intervals during the day the young people would come and converse with me and I would get a picture of the other inmates of the house, the two families of Sawle and Sparke, cousins to the Rashleighs, between whom passed, it seemed, perpetual bickering. When my brother-in-law Jonathan was from home it fell upon his son John to keep the peace, a heavy burden for his none too brawny shoulders, there being nothing so irritating to a young man as scolding spinsters and short-tempered elderly folk, while Mary, in a fever of unending housekeeping, was from dawn to dusk superintending dairy, store, and stillroom to keep her household fed. There were the grandchildren, too, to keep in order--Alice had three small daughters, and Joan a boy and girl, with another baby expected in the autumn--so one way and another Menabilly was a colony to itself, with a different family in every wing.

By the fifth day I was sufficiently at home and mistress of my nerves to leave my chamber and take to my chair, in which, with John propelling it and Joan and Alice on either side and the children running before, I made a tour of the domain. The gardens were extensive, surrounded by high walls and laid out to the eastward on rising ground, which, when the summit was reached, looked down over dense woodland across to farther hills and the highway that ran to Fowey, three miles distant. To the south lay pasture land and farm buildings and another pleasure garden, also walled, which had above it a high causeway leading to a summerhouse, fashioned like a tower with long leaded windows, commanding a fine view of the sea and the Gribbin Head.

"This," said Alice, "is my father's sanctum. Here he does his writing and accounts and, watching from the windows, can observe every ship that passes, bound for Fowey."

She tried the door of the summerhouse, but it was locked.

"We must ask him for the key when he returns," she said. "It would be just the place for Honor and her chair, when the wind is too fresh upon the causeway."

But John did not answer, and it occurred to him, perhaps, as it had to me, that his father might not wish me for companion. We made a circle of the grounds, returning by the steward's house and the bowling green, and so through the warren at the back to the outer court. I looked up at the gatehouse, already grown familiar with the vase of flowers set in my window, and noticed for the first time the barred window of the apartment next to mine and the great buttress that jutted out beside it.

"Why is that apartment never used?" I asked idly, and John waited for a moment or two before replying. "My father goes to it at times," he said. "He has furniture and valuables shut away."

"It was my uncle's room," said Alice, hesitating, with a glance at John. "He died very suddenly, you know, when we were children."

Their manner was diffident, and I did not press the question, remembering all at once Jonathan's elder brother, who had died within eight days of his old father, supposedly of smallpox, and about whom the Parliamentarian Rob Bennett had spread his poison rumour.

We then went below the archway, and I schooled myself to an introduction to the Rashleigh cousins. They were all assembled in the long gallery, a great dark-panelled chamber with windows looking out on to the court and also eastward to the gardens.

There were fireplaces at either end, with the Sawles seated before the first and the Sparkes circled round the other, glaring at one another like animals in a cage, while in the centre of the gallery my sister Mary held the balance with her other stepdaughter Elizabeth, who was twice a Rashleigh, having married her first cousin a mile away at Coombe. John propelled me up the gallery and with fitting solemnity presented me to the rival factions.

There were but two Sawles to three Sparkes, and my godchild Joan had made a pun upon their names, saying that what the Sparkes possessed in flame the Sawles made up in soul. They were indeed a dour, forbidding couple, old Nick Sawle doubled up with rheumatics and almost as great a cripple as I was myself, while Temperance, his wife, came of Puritan stock, as her name suggested, and was never without a prayer book in her hand. She fell to prayer as soon as she observed me--God knows I had never had that effect before on man or woman--and when she had finished asked me if I knew that we were all of us, saving herself, damned to eternity. It was a startling greeting, but I replied cheerfully enough that this was something I had long suspected, whereupon she proceeded to tell me in a rapid whisper, with many spiteful glances at the farther fireplace, that anti-Christ was come into the world. I looked over my shoulder and saw the rounded shoulders of Will Sparke engaged in a harmless game of cribbage with his sisters.

"Providence has sent you amongst us to keep watch," hissed Temperance Sawle, and while she tore to shreds the characters of her cousins, piece by piece, her husband, Nick Sawle, droned in my left ear a full account of his rheumatic history, from the first twinge in his left toe some forty years ago to his present dire incapacity to lift either elbow above the perpendicular. Half stupefied, I made a signal to John, who propelled me to the Sparkes--two sisters and a brother--Will being one of those unfortunate high-voiced old fellows with a woman's mincing ways, whom I felt instinctively must be malformed beneath his clothes. His tongue seemed as two edged as his cousin Temperance's, and he fell to jesting with me at once about the habits of the Sawles, as though I were an ally. Deborah made up in masculinity what her brother lacked, being heavily moustached and speaking from her shoes, while Gillian, the younger sister, was all coy prettiness in spite of her forty years, bedecked with rouge and ribbons and having a high thin laugh that pierced my eardrums like a sword.

"This dread war," said Deborah in bass tones, "has brought us all together," which seemed to me a hollow sentiment, as none of them were on speaking terms with one another, and while Gillian praised my looks and my gown I saw Will, out of the tail of my eye, make a cheating move upon the cribbage board.

The air seemed purer somehow in the gatehouse than in the gallery, and after I had visited the apartments of Alice and Joan and Elizabeth, and watched the rompings of the children and the kicking of the babies, I was thankful enough to retire to my own chamber and blissful solitude. Matty brought me my dinner--this being a privilege to which I clung--and was full of gossip, as was her nature, about the servants in the house and what they said of their masters.

Jonathan, my brother-in-law, was respected, feared, but not much loved. They were all easier when he was from home. He kept an account of every penny spent, and any servant wasting food or produce was instantly dismissed. Mary, my sister, was more liked, though she was said to be a tyrant in the stillroom. The young people were all in high favour, especially Alice, whose sweet face and temper would have endeared her to the devil himself, but there was much shaking of heads over her handsome husband Peter, who had a hot eye for a fine leg, as Matty put it, and was apt to put his arm round the kitchen girls if he had the chance. I could well believe this, having flung a pillow at Peter often enough myself for taking liberties.

"Master John and Mistress Joan are also liked," said Matty, "but they say Master John should stand up more to his father."

Her words put me in mind of the afternoon, and I asked her what she knew of the apartment next to mine.