The King's General (31 page)

I jogged back in the wagon to my brother's house, my spirits sinking. Shortly °efore daybreak next morning the attack began. The first we heard of it at Radford ^as the echo of the guns across the Cattwater, whether from within the garrison or r°rn the outer defences we could not tell, but by midday we had the news that three of the works had been seized and held by the royalist troops, and the most formidable of \ the forts, the Maudlyn, had been stormed by the eommanding general in person.

The guns were turned, and the men of Plymouth felt for the first time their own fire fall upon the walls of the city. I could see nothing from my window but a pall of smoke hanging like a curtain in the sky, and now and again, the wind being northerly, I thought to hear the sound of distant shouting from the besieged within the garrison.

At three o'clock, with barely three hours of daylight left, the news was not so good.

The rebels had counterattacked, and two of the forts had been recaptured. The fate of ', Plymouth now depended upon the rebels gaining back the ground they had lost and driving the royalists from their foothold all along the line, and most specially from the I Maudlyn works. I watched the setting sun, as I had done the day before, and I thought \ of all those, both rebel men and royalist, whose lives had been held forfeit withinI, these past four and twenty hours.

We dined in the hall at half-past five, with my brother Jo seated at the head of his| table as was his custom, and Phillippa at his right hand, and his little motherless son, I young John, upon his left. We ate in silence, none of us having much heart forf conversation, while the battle only a few miles away hung in the balance. We were! nearly finished when my brother Percy, who had ridden down to Plymstock to getj news, came bursting in upon us.

"The rebels have gained the day," he said grimly, "and driven off Grenvile with the! loss of three hundred men. They stormed the fort on all sides and finally recaptured it! barely an hour ago. It seems that Grenvile's covering troops, who should have cornel to his support and turned the scale to success, failed to reach him. A tremendousj blunder on the part of someone."

"No doubt the fault of the general himself," said Jo drily, "in having too much confidence."

"They say down in Plymstock that the officer responsible has been shot by Grenvile for contravention of orders," said Percy, "and is lying now in his tent with a bulle through his head. Who it is they would not tell me, but we shall hear anon."

I could think of nothing but those three hundred men who were lying now upo B their faces under the stars, and I was filled with a great war-sickness, a loathing fo guns and pikes and blood and battle cries. The brave fellows who had smiled at me t" night before, so strong, so young and confident, were now carrion for the sea gullii that swooped and dived in Plymouth Sound, and it was Richard, my Richard, wh

As I turned away to call a servant for my chair, a young secretary employed by mj! eldest brother on the Devon Commission came into the room, much agitated, with J request to speak to him.

"What is the matter?" said Jo tersely. "There is no one but my family present.

"Colonel Champernowne lies at Egg Buckland mortally wounded," said th secretary. "He was not hurt in battle but pistolled by the general himself on returning to headquarters."

There was a moment of great silence. Jo rose slowly from his chair, very white < tense, and I saw him turn round and look at me, as did my brother Percy. In a momen of perception I knew what they were thinking. Jo's brother-in-law, Edward Champer J nowne, had been my suitor seventeen years before, and they both saw, in this sudde terrible dispute after the heat of battle, no military cause but some private jealous^ wrangle, the settling of a feud.

"This," said my eldest brother slowly, "is the beginning of the end for Richa Grenvile."

His words fell upon my ear cold as steel, and calling softly to the servant, I bad him take me to my room.

The next day I left for Maddercombe, to my sister Cecilia, for to remain under ffl| brother's roof one moment longer would have been impossible. The vendetta ha begun....

My eldest brother, with the vast family of Champernowne behind him, and supported by the leading families in the county of Devon, most of them members of the commission, pressed for the removal of Sir Richard Grenvile from his position as sheriff and commander of the King's forces in the West. Richard retaliated by turning my brother out of Radford and using the house and estate as a jumping ground to a fresh assault upon Plymouth.

Snowed up in Maddercombe with the Pollexefens, I knew little of what was happening, and Cecilia, with consummate tact and delicacy, avoided the subject. I myself had had no word from Richard since the night I had bidden him goodbye before the battle, and now that he was engaged in a struggle with foe and former friends as well, I thought it best to keep silent. He knew my whereabouts, for I had sent word of it, and should he want me he would come to me.

The thaw burst at the end of March, and we had the first tidings of the outside world for many weeks.

The peace moves between King and Parliament had come to nothing, the Treaty of Uxbridge having failed, and the war, it seemed, was to be carried on more ruthlessly than ever.

The Parliament, so we heard, was forming a new model army, likely to sweep all before it, in the opinion of the judges, while His Majesty had sent forth an edict to his enemies, saying that unless the rebels repented, their end must be damnation, ruin, and infamy. The young Prince of Wales, it seemed, was now to bear the title of supreme commander of all the forces in the West and was gone to Bristol, but being a lad of only fifteen years or so, the real authority would be vested in his advisory council, at the head of which was Hyde, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

I remember John Pollexefen shaking his head as he heard the news.

"There will be nothing but wrangles now between the prince's council and the generals," he said. "Each will countermand the orders of the other. Lawyers and soldiers never agree. And while they wrangle the King's cause will suffer. I do not like it."

I thought of Richard and how he had once vouchsafed the same opinion.

"What is happening at Plymouth?" asked my sister.

"Stalemate," said her husband. "A token force of less than a thousand men left to blockade the garrison, and Grenvile with the remainder gone to join Goring in Somerset and lay siege to Taunton. The spring campaign has started."

Soon a year would have come and gone since I left Lanrest for Menabilly.... The snow melted down in the Devon valley where Cecilia had her home, and the crocus and the daffodil appeared. I made no plans. I sat and waited. Someone brought a rumour that there was great disaffection in the high command and that Grenvile, Goring, and Berkeley were all at loggerheads.

March turned to April; the golden gorse was in full bloom. And on Easter Day a horseman came riding down the valley, wearing the Grenvile badge. He asked at once for Mistress Harris and, saluting gravely, handed me a letter.

"What is it?" I asked before I broke the seal. "Something has happened?"

My throat felt dry and strange, and my hands trembled.

"The general has been gravely wounded," replied the soldier, "in a battle before Wellington House, at Taunton. They fear for his life."

I tore open the letter and read Richard's shaky scrawl: Dear heart, this is the very devil. I am like to lose my leg, if not my life, with a great gaping hole in my thigh below the groin. I know now what you suffer. Come teach me patience. I love you.

I folded the letter and, turning to the messenger, asked him where the general lay. i( "They were bringing him from Taunton down to Exeter when I left," he answered.

His Majesty had despatched his own chirurgeon to attend upon Sir Richard. He was Very weak and bade me ride without delay to bring you this."

I looked at Cecilia, who was standing by the window.

"Would you summon Matty to pack my clothes," I said, "and ask John if he would arrange for a litter and for horses? I am going to Exeter."

23

We took the southern route to Exeter, and at every halt upon the journey I thought to hear the news of Richard's death.

Totnes, Newton Abbot, Ashburton; each delay seemed longer than the last, and when at length after six days I reached the capital of Devon and saw the great cathedral rising high above the city and the river it seemed to me I had been weeks upon the road.

Richard still lived. This was my first enquiry and the only thing that mattered. He was lodging at the hostelry in the cathedral square, to where I immediately repaired.

He had taken the whole building to his personal use and had a sentry before the door.

On giving my name a young officer immediately appeared from within, and something ruddy about his colouring and familiar in his bearing made me pause a moment before addressing him correctly.

Then his courteous smile gave me the clue.

"You are Jack Grenvile, Bevil's boy," I said, and he reminded me of how he had come once with his father to Lanrest in the days before the war. I remembered, too, how I had washed him as a baby on that memorable visit to Stowe in '28, but this I did not tell him.

"My uncle will be most heartily glad to see you," he said as I was lifted from my litter. "He has talked of little else since writing to you. He has sent at least ten women flying from his side since coming here, swearing they were rough and did not know their business, nor how to dress his wound. 'Matty shall do it,' he said, 'while Honor talks to me.'"

I saw Matty colour up with pleasure at these words and assume at once an air of ' authority before the corporal who shouldered our trunks.

"And how is he?" I asked as I was set down within the great inn parlour, which had been, judging by the long table in the centre, turned into a messroom for the general's staff.

"Better these last three days than hitherto," replied his nephew. "But at first we thought to lose him. Directly he was wounded I applied to the Prince of Wales to wait on him and I attended him here from Taunton. Now he declares he will not send me back. Nor have I any wish to go."

"Your uncle," I said, "likes to have a Grenvile by his side."

"I know one thing," said the young man; "he finds fellows of my age better company than his contemporaries, which I take as a great compliment."

At this moment Richard's servant came down the stairs, saying the general wished to see Mistress Harris upon this instant. I went first to my room, where Matty washed me and changed my gown, and then with Jack Grenvile to escort me I went along the corridor in my wheeled chair to Richard's room.

It looked out upon the cobbled square, and as we entered the great bell from the cathedral chimed four o'clock.

"God confound that blasted bell," said a familiar voice, sounding stronger than I had dared hope, from the dark curtained bed in the far corner. "A dozen times I have asked the mayor of this damned city to have it silenced, and nothing has been done.

Harry, for God's sake, make a note of it."

"Sir," answered hurriedly a tall youth at the foot of the bed, scribbling a word upon his tablet.

The King ' s General II7 "And move these pillows, can't you? Not that way, you clumsy lout. Behind my head, thus. Where the devil is Jack? Jack is the only lad who knows how I like them placed."

"Here I am, Uncle," said his nephew, "but you will not need me now. I have brought you someone with gentler hands than I."

He pushed my chair towards the bed, smiling, and I saw Richard's hand reach out to pull back the curtains.

"Ah!" he said, sighing deeply. "You have come at last."

He was deathly white. And his eyes had grown larger, perhaps in contrast to the pallor of his face. His auburn locks were clipped short, giving him a strangely youthful look. For the first time I noticed in him a resemblance to Dick. I took his hand and held it.

"I did not wait," I said, "once I had read your letter."

He turned to the two lads standing at the foot of the bed, his nephew and the one he had named Harry.

"Get out, both of you," he said, "and if that damned chirurgeon shows his face, tell him to go to the devil."

"Sir," they replied, clicking their heels, and I could swear that as they left the room young Jack Grenvile winked an eye at his companion.

Richard lifted my hand to his lips and then cradled it beside his cheek.

"This is a good jest," he said, "on the part of the Almighty. You and I both smitten in the thigh."

"Does it pain you much?" I asked.

"Pain me? My God, splinters from a cannon ball striking below the groin burn something fiercer than a woman's kiss. Of course it pains me."

"Who has seen the wound?"

"Every chirurgeon in the Army, and each one makes more mess of it than his fellow."

I called for Matty, who was waiting outside the door, and she came in at once with a basin of warm water and bandages and towels.

"Good day to you, mutton-face," said Richard. "How many corporals have you bedded with en route?"

"No time to bed with anyone," snapped Matty, "carried at the rate we were, with Miss Honor delaying only to sleep a few snatched hours every night. Now we've come here to be insulted."

"I'll not insult you, unless you tie my bandages too tight."

"Come, then," she said, "let's see what they have done to you."

She unfolded the bandages with expert fingers and exposed the wound. It was deep, in truth, the splinters having penetrated the bone and lodging there. With every probe of her fingers he winced and groaned, calling her every name under the sun, which did not worry her.

"It's clean, that's one thing," she said. "I fully expected to find it gangrenous. But you'll have some of those splinters to the end of your days, unless you let them take Your leg off."

'They'll not do that," he answered, "I'd rather keep the splinters and bear the pain."