“Until I put a stop to it,” said Trattle. “And only just in time, too. Rolph’s men arrested him before he was well out of the town.”
“It seems you will never raise a finger for the King!” accused his wife angrily.
“Not unless I see some reasonable hopes of success. A forlorn hope like this may well do him more harm than good, as Master Ashburnham was telling the people just now.”
“Where are Master Ashburnham and the others?” asked Mary.
“Captain Rolph chartered a ship for them. He would have liked to pin this disturbance on to them if he could. But although that Roundhead cur who lives opposite—he who threw the mud at the King, you remember—piped up and said Master Ashburnham had been leaning out of this window inciting the people to rise for the King, everyone gave him the lie. They swore that he had only been counselling them to keep quiet, and they were in such a dangerous mood by then that Captain Rolph was only too glad to hurry him and his friends aboard for the mainland.”
“Let us hope he will be safe from Cromwell,” said Mary, who had never cared about what happened on the mainland before.
“He told me he hoped to find refuge at Netley Abbey,” said Agnes. “But what of Captain Burley? Was he brought into the castle before you left? Did they take off those awful handcuffs?”
Mary hesitated. She could not bring herself to add to their distress. “He was taken straight to the Governor’s room,” she said.
Agnes Trattle gave a sigh of relief. “Then undoubtedly the Governor will see that he is just an excitable old gentleman and will let him go. After all, nothing came of his enterprise. We shall probably have him home before the day is out.”
She began cheerfully setting the disordered room to rights, but her husband was watching Mary. He felt sure that she was holding something back. “It is getting dark and, with all this commotion in the town, I am sure your father would like me to see you home,” he said.
Frances, smoothing out her muddied gown, was almost her bright self again. “Didn’t that handsome Master Firebrace offer to bring you again this time?” she teased.
“Only those of us who live there are allowed out without a special pass,” said Mary, colouring becomingly.
“It is iniquitous!” declared Agnes, kissing her good-bye. “But at least you will still be able to come and see us.”
Trattle led Mary out to the inn yard, and called to his ostler to saddle a horse. It was already dusk and as he took a lantern from its hook outside the kitchen door the light fell on her face, so fair and serious in the soft darkness of her hood. It occurred to him that she had grown up surprisingly during the last few weeks, outstripping his own daughter in maturity. For the first time he found himself thinking of her as a woman, and one who knew when to speak and when to hold her tongue. “What did they really do to Burley?” he asked.
“He was put down in the dungeon.”
“Merciful God! And he close on seventy. You did right not to tell them.”
“Aunt Druscilla thinks it was to frighten others from following his example. The Governor has been like a cat on hot bricks since the King came.”
“It sounds more like Rolph’s work, persecuting an old man.”
“Try not to worry, Master Trattle. My father will see that he is properly fed, and there is scarcely one of the men who does not sympathize with him. Perhaps he will be set free before the reinforcements come.”
“Reinforcements?”
“They are expected any day. The garrison can talk of nothing else.”
“These New Model Ironsides?”
“I suppose so. Our men hate the thought of it.”
To Mary that score of middle-aged gunners and musketeers were personal friends.
“Everything will be tightened up. But at least you are still able to come and go,” said Edward Trattle, unconsciously echoing his wife’s words. “The Governor must be a bigger fool than we supposed.” For a moment or two he stood thoughtfully swaying the lantern, then shrugged as a man will who comes to an unwilling decision.
He kicked open a door to the crowded public room of the inn and beckoned to someone inside. A sudden buzz of conversation and laughter, a stale warmth and the smell of spilled ale assailed their senses; and through the shaft of yellow light briefly streaming across the cobbles a shabbily dressed man lurched out into the yard. “Here is someone who is going back to the castle,” Trattle told him quietly, as the door swung shut again.
The man might have been a valet or a barber who had seen better days. In a thin whine he began a tale about wanting to get a message to his master who had gotten himself a fine appointment up there and owed him a month’s wages. But his host cut him short. “No need for that, Major,” he said. “Mistress Mary is one of us, and if she is to do it I will not have her hoodwinked.” At the sound of horseshoes clopping from the stable Trattle glanced over his shoulder, but his ostler had stopped to tighten a girth. “This is Major Bosvile, Mary. And the letter is for the King,” he told her tersely. “Bosvile is already suspected and there is grave risk. I would not have you take it unwillingly or unwarned.”
Cold fear struck at Mary’s heart. A sense of unreality gripped her. “How could I give a letter to the King?” she whispered, conscious of how eagerly they were both watching her.
“I do not ask you to,” said the man who had lurched out. His voice no longer whined and he was quite sober. “Do you know a young Groom of the Bedchamber called Firebrace?”
Mary nodded. Cold fear gave way to warm excitement. She remembered the sense of being specially trusted which she had experienced when Harry Firebrace had last smiled at her. She would do anything to enter yet more fully into that joyful confederacy.
“He is an ingenious young man,” the disguised Major was saying. “If you give him this letter he will somehow find means to deliver it.”
In the half light she saw him delve into the pockets of his patched coat and draw out a purse. She could hear the ostler whistling through his teeth as he brought the horse. The whiteness of a letter showed momentarily in the shifting lantern light; then she felt its crispness being thrust into her hand. It seemed incredible. Only a short while ago she had thought Frances a heroine for greeting the King as an acknowledged Royalist before an uncertain crowd; and for following, mud-splashed and romantic, in an old man’s loyal rising. That had been splendid and spectacular, of course. But mere play-acting, compared with this. This was real. And dangerous, as Trattle had so gravely warned. And within that charmed circle of danger stood a young man with a devastating smile.
Mary tucked the letter down inside her bodice, against her fast-beating heart. “I do not want your money,” she whispered brusquely, waving the diffidently proffered purse away.
Trattle took the reins and mounted and Jem the redheaded ostler thrust out a palm for her to scramble to the saddle behind him. She took the lantern in one hand and held on to Trattle’s belt with the other. As they passed out under the archway into the road she looked back; but save for old Jem, with the inevitable straw in his mouth, the inn yard was empty. There was only the sharp pricking of the letter between her breasts to convince her of the reality of the task she had undertaken.
She and Trattle rode through the town and out towards Carisbrooke in silence. At the foot of the lane by the water splash he drew in his horse under the shadow of the great beech trees which grew beneath the escarpment. “Better that I am not seen with you,” he muttered; and then, as he stretched an arm backwards to set her down, he added remorsefully, “I would not have drawn you into this, Mary, could I have seen any other way. That letter is about another ship to take the place of the French one at Southampton. But I beg you do not speak of it to my wife and Frances.”
“Why do you let them suppose that you do nothing for the King?”
“Because I can be of more use that way.” He was surprised by the radiance of Mary’s upturned face, and smiled down at her more easily. “My Frances has not your gift of retic
ence, and the dangers of the mainland are now spread to the island. Go now, my dear, so that friend Floyd may know I have brought you safely back.”
Hurrying eagerly up the path to the drawbridge, calling back friendly “good-nights” to the sentries, walking in under the great gateway with all the lights from the castle window giving her welcome—all was pleasantly familiar. And yet different because of the letter.
“Why, you are all out of breath, my poppet!” called her father, who was talking with the master-gunner just inside the gateway.
“The way up is so steep,” said Mary.
“No steeper than it has been these last seventeen years,” grinned Floyd, glad to have anything at all to grin about on such a misfortunate day.
“Let’s hope it will blow some of the breath out of this new batch of know-all Ironsides!” muttered Howe, the old master-gunner, fervently.
“Tell your aunt they have landed and should be here before nightfall,” the Sergeant of the Guard called after her.
Mary understood her father’s more than ordinary zeal that nothing should be found amiss. Anxious as she was to tell him about the letter, there was no opportunity—nor could she have found it in her heart to add to his burdens at such a time.
While brushing out her hair before supper, she looked searchingly into her aunt’s mirror. She had fastened about her neck a string of beads which her father had given her. They were not real amber like those which Captain Rolph had brought her from London, but she touched them with a loving smile. And the smile curved her wide mouth to tenderness and lent a soft lustre to her eyes. “Of course, I am not really lovely like Frances–” she thought, turning shyly from a reflection which almost pleased her.
There was a new look about her—something more soignée, more secret and mature. And Captain Rolph was quick to notice it. At supper he managed to sit next to her. “Although you would have none from me, those yellow beads suit you,” he said, in his mannerless way. “Did Richard Osborne give them to you?”
The way she seemed to draw herself out of some private dream piqued his desire still further. “Richard Osborne?” she repeated vaguely. “Why?”
“I saw him kiss you after dinner, and you did not seem to mind.”
The kiss had meant nothing. It had merely achieved its purpose of distracting his attention. Mary laughed, but remembered in time that she must not say so. From now on there would be other things one must remember not to say. She must learn to guard her tongue, to think more quickly.
Rolph frowned, taking her laughter for flirtatious acquiescence. “Osborne’s kisses are as lavish as his love tokens. If your father hopes to get you a good husband I wonder he does not draw the line at a man of his reputation.” His thigh pressed hers as he reached ostentatiously for the jug of water which was always set before him.
“Is it true that reinforcements have landed?” asked Mary coldly.
“Two sergeants from my own company rode in. Where were you that you did not hear the excitement?”
“With my friend in Newport.”
“You should have let me take you.”
“You were on duty.”
“Too true. Rounding up a lot of hysterical Royalists.”
“And humiliating one brave old man with handcuffs.”
“As a lesson to the other crazy rustics,” admitted Rolph sheepishly. “But how did you know?”
“The people of Newport are mostly our friends and neighbours.”
“How you islanders do hang together!”
Mary would have liked to escape his attentions by going to her aunt’s quiet room; but as soon as supper was over she knelt down by the hearth and began playing with the spaniel Patters and her fast-growing pups. And presently, as she had hoped, Harry Firebrace came through the room. She knelt upright, with a small spaniel cuddled in each arm and the firelight on her hair, deliberately attracting his attention. She might have been a wanton playing one man off against another. “See how they have grown! Are they not adorable, Master Firebrace?” she called, in the middle of whatever Edmund Rolph was saying.
The young Groom of the Bedchamber came over to her at once and set the other two fat, lumbering pups racing for walnuts which he had filched from a passing servant. He minded not at all that the Captain of the Guard scowled at him, resenting the interruption and thinking such amusements childish.
“I have something for you,” Mary managed to tell him softly, as they both made a lunge after a rolling walnut.
“A letter?” asked Firebrace, apparently absorbed in preventing the pick of Patters’ litter from choking himself.
Mary looked up with flushed cheeks. “I cannot give it to you now,” she whispered. Rolph was standing with his back to the fire, watching her.
The Captain’s lascivious glance was for the white budding of her breasts at the top of her gown, but all her apprehension was for the King’s letter. She felt that even beneath her best green worsted it must be apparent to his gaze. But it was useless to run away. She had undertaken to deliver it and she must act, as Firebrace and Osborne had acted earlier in the day. For the first time in her life she dissembled. Sinking down upon one of the hearthside benches, as though out of breath, she laughed up at Firebrace. “Oh, I am too exhausted to play with the Patters family any more, after being in Newport all the afternoon! And to-morrow morning Brett and I have to begin training another donkey because so much extra water will be needed for the new troops.”
Firebrace picked up his cue immediately. “I must come and watch,” he said. It would be quiet and dark in the well-house, and only gentle old Brett would be there. But to Mary’s momentary horror—because he always played for disarming all possible suspicion—Firebrace turned invitingly to Rolph. “Have you ever watched the clever little beasts turn the wheel? Of course, you must be extra busy just now, Captain. But you really should one day. It takes so much skill and patience to train them.”
But, as he had safely reckoned, the dark-jowled Captain of the Guard had no interest in donkeys.
“God knows it takes me all my time to train the human variety!” he laughed, his good humour restored.
Chapter Ten
Materially, Edward Trattle’s prophecy proved true. After the failure of Captain Burley’s ill-considered rising, the King was kept in much closer confinement. A special commission was set up at Derby House in London to deal with his captivity, and from their Speaker Hammond received his orders. Half the officers of the royal household who had come from Hampton were dismissed, and from the remainder he was bidden to choose four of the most trustworthy to act as wardens of the King’s person. Pompously, the gentlemen of Derby House called them conservators, insisting that one or other of them must always be on guard outside the two doors of the State Room. Every night their beds were pushed one against the main door and one against the backstairs entrance so that, once his Majesty had retired, he could not come forth without their knowledge and neither could any unauthorized person enter. For the first time Hammond not only had full backing for his orders, but the power to enforce them; for General Fairfax had sent two companies of foot, and the castle barracks were full to overflowing.
But in more subtle ways the arrest and imprisonment of Captain Burley had exactly the opposite effect. The harsh way in which he was treated swung public sympathy towards the Royalist cause which he so courageously represented. During his captaincy of Yarmouth he had been popular with the people, and even those who were normally indifferent to politics were moved to indignant pity. “If the Governor had dispersed the crowd and let the old sea-dog go, no one would have been any the worse off,” they said. “But he allowed that wild-eyed Mayor of Newport to persuade him.”
And Hammond himself saw, too late, that reporting the affair had been a bad error of judgment; for after doing so the Captain’s fate was out of his hands. There was nothing he could do to mitigate it, however much he might regret its cruelty. His own genuine desire to make pleasant contact with the islanders was doo
med. Just as he himself had done in the first place, Parliament used the unfortunate Burley as a scapegoat and an example. And by sending him to an unjust trial at Winchester they presented the King he so fearlessly upheld with scores of secret sympathisers. No decent man on the island or in Hampshire would be a party to that travesty of a trial. And when at last by some legal chicanery the excitable Captain was condemned to death, an executioner had to be sent down from London because no one else would carry out the foul sentence.
“Hanged, drawn and quartered—that kindly, upright old man! The Trattles must be heart-broken,” lamented Druscilla Wheeler, staring out unseeingly at the bleak February day.
“And on a charge of high treason, of all absurdities! The one true man among a pack of traitors!” added her brother, thankful to be for an hour or two where he could speak his mind away from the king-hating, Psalm-singing type of men now in barracks. “The Governor dare not go out to Yarmouth Haven, where all the ships’ pennants are at half-mast. And down in Newport almost every inn and shop is closed. He pretends not to notice, but I wager he wishes the whole miserable business undone.”
Mary crouched in the window seat, sick with pity, cradling her favourite spaniel pup in protective arms. Death to her had always seemed too far away to think about, a vague frightening shadow which would one day threaten her in some unapprehended state of illness or old age. How could people face it, in full health, seeing its certain approach? How summon the courage to walk out to meet it, while the sun shone and the birds still sang? How keep their brave defiance unbroken, as ruddy-faced Captain Burley had done, knowing the horrible, unspeakable things that were to be done to him? “I shall always remember the day he took Frances and me on the downs,” she said, her hot tears splashing on to the small dog’s head. “It was such an ordinary, happy day. The last day before the King came and everything on the island changed.”
Everywhere in the castle the execution at Winchester was being discussed. Four of the younger courtiers, waiting about in the ante-room to accompany their royal master on his morning walk, were equally concerned. “If your Parliament can twist words to take the life of an unimportant retired officer, what may not the canailles attempt against the King himself?” propounded Abraham Dowcett, the French Clerk of the Kitchen, who had long ago conceived a great admiration for Charles Stuart.
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