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Georgette Heyer (10 page)

BOOK: Georgette Heyer
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  In a few minutes, Richard saw a wavering light approaching down the stairs. An old gentleman with silvered locks came down, and held his candle up the better to scrutinize Richard.
  'Who are you, fellow?' he demanded in a shrill whisper. 'I don't know you. Why do you come to this house at such an hour?'
  'I be wishful to know whether your honour will give shelter to a distressed Cavalier,' replied Richard, painstakingly reciting his lesson. 'It's a gentleman as is escaping from Worcester fight,' he added.
  Mr Wolfe gave a start that sent some of the wax from his candle spilling on to the floor. 'No!' he said sharply. 'Do you not know that I have a son even now clapped up in Shrewsbury prison? Take him to some other house!'
  'There bain't no other house, master,' said Richard stolidly.
  'It's nothing to me! It's too dangerous a matter to harbour anybody that's known. I'll venture my neck for no one unless it be the King himself!'
  Richard looked at him, a bovine expression in his eyes, but with his brain slowly working behind them. 'Well, it is the King,' he said at last.
  For a moment Wolfe stared at him, then he said: 'You lie, fellow!'
  Richard shook his head.
  Wolfe clutched at the baluster with one thin hand. 'The King himself ? Where?'
  Richard jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
  'God, what ill wind blew him here?' Wolfe muttered. He came totteringly down the last stairs, and held the candle close up to Richard's face. 'Who are you? How came the King in your charge?'
  'I'm Richard Penderel, master, from Hobbal Grange, over to Tong Parish.'
  'Where is his Majesty?'
  'Out yonder, in the orchard. He be wishful to pass into Wales.'
  'Impossible!' Wolfe ejaculated. He stood biting his nails, while Richard watched him, a hint of scorn in his eyes. He looked up at last, and said testily: 'What do you wait for, clod? Bring his Majesty in! But softly, mind! I will have no one know he has been here!'
  Richard gave him another of his long, ruminative looks, and then departed to find the King.
  Charles was sitting where he had left him, leaning his head in his hand. When he heard Richard's step and presently saw his sturdy figure approaching in the moonlight, he straightened himself with a sigh, and said as soon as Richard came up to him, 'Well? Is he willing to shelter me?'
  'Ay, he'll do it,' Richard answered. 'I did think him a better man, for sure, but there's no helping that.'
  'Did you say what I bade you?' asked the King.
  'Ay, I said it, but 'twarn't no manner of use. "I'll not risk my neck for anyone," he says, "save it be the King himself." So I up and told him it was you.'
  'Told him that? Without leave?' Charles exclaimed. 'You had no right to do so! If that is the mind the man is in, I would not for the world have had him know my whereabouts!'
  Richard was quite unmoved by this. He said reason ably: 'Seems I had to tell him. You mun get some rest, master, whether or no. Don't you be frumping at me: the old gentleman won't betray your honour, when all's said.'
  The King got to his feet, saying fatalistically: 'What's done is done. In truth, I care very little what may become of me.'
  'When you've had your sleep out, you'll maybe think different, my liege,' replied Richard.
  By the time they reached the house, both Mr Wolfe and his daughter had partially dressed themselves, and were awaiting them in the hall. As soon as Richard knocked, Wolfe opened the door, and bowed punctili ously, saying in his prim, rather chilly way: 'I am sorry to see your Majesty here in such guise.'
  'Oddsfish, you cannot be sorrier than I am!' said the King, his unquenchable humour rearing up its head for an instant.
  He stepped over the threshold, and stood blinking his eyelids in the sudden candlelight. Ann Wolfe, in the very act of dropping a deep curtsey, could not forbear uttering a little scream at the appearance he presented. His ill-fitting clothes were splashed with mud, and stained with sweat: his torn shoes squelched moisture on to the paved floor; and his hat looked more fit for a scarecrow than a man. He pulled it off as she stared at him, a hand pressed to her mouth, and with a little sigh pushed the damp ringlets back from his brow. His eyes, which were bloodshot, and heavy with weariness, alighted on her. A faint twinkle came into them; he said: 'I must be a sight to frighten honest maids out of their wits.'
  'Oh, sir! That your sacred Majesty should be put to such shifts!' she faltered.
  Her father, who had been casting uneasy glances up the well of the staircase, intervened to say: 'We must not talk aloud here. If the servants were to waken and hear, we are undone! No one must know of your Majesty's arrival. Why, the town swarms with rebels! I know not what false counsel brought you here, sire, but I am very sorry for it. You have no more loyal subject than myself, yet there is nothing I can do to assist you. I am continually watched, and spied upon, and one of my sons is even now a prisoner at Shrewsbury. I daily look for news of his release, but if this were to become known I know not what might be his fate!'
  'Oh hush, dear sir!' his daughter begged, pitifully watching the King, who was leaning on the carved back of a chair, an expression of ironic amusement in his drawn face. 'His Majesty is forespent. Come into the parlour, sir! Indeed, indeed you are safe in this house!'
  She caught up one of the branches of candles she had kindled, and led the way into a comfortable apartment in the front of the house.
  As the King sank down into the chair she set for him, she looked shrewdly at him and exclaimed: 'Have you supped, sir? Would your Majesty be pleased to partake of anything? Alas, that we are all unprepared for this great honour! But there are some slices of cold meat in the larder, if you would condescend to such simple fare.'
  The King threw her a grateful smile. 'Lady, I will be your bedesman all the days of my life for a plate of that cold meat.'
  'If only the fire be still burning, I could toss up a fric assy for your Majesty!' she said. 'I will go at once, sir.'
  Wolfe said quickly: 'No, no, Ann, cook nothing! The servants must discover it, and if they get wind of this night's work I cannot answer for the consequences. Bring in the meat, and some sack, and do it speedily, girl, do you hear me?'
  'And for my faithful servant here, if you please,' said the King.
  She withdrew, promising to be back in a very few minutes. Her father said earnestly: 'I would not have your Majesty think me unwilling to serve you. I will do all that lies in my poor power, but the best advice I may humbly give you is that you be gone from these parts as speedily as you may.'
  'Rest you, sir, I'll not let them take me in your house,' said the King. 'As soon as it may be safe to do so, I mean to go into Wales.'
  'Sir, it is impossible! There is a guard set upon the bridge, and every ford is so strictly watched a mouse might not slip past unobserved!'
  The King was silent for a moment, his underlip pouting a little. Then he gave a great yawn, and said sleepily: 'Oddsfish, then I suppose they will have my head at last! But not until I have had some rest. Is there any place hereabouts where I may lie hid?'
  'Sir, you must know that I should count it an honour to give up my bed to your Majesty! For your own sake I dare not do it, no, nor let you remain under my roof! At any time the rebels may choose to search the place. There is only one thing I can think of, and God knows it is dangerous enough! I have a barn, full of hay, wherein your Majesty might lie till nightfall. I believe none would think to look for you there.'
  'It likes me very well,' replied the King.
  Richard, who had been standing behind his chair, now came round to kneel before the King, saying in his blunt way: 'We mun go back to Boscobel, my liege. Brother William has a very safe hiding-place, ay, and I warrant he will be right fain to serve you!'
  The King looked down at him with a smile. 'Trusty Dick! Have you not yet had your fill of this grievous burden?'
  'Nay, that's foolish talk, master. I'll lend your honour safe to Boscobel as soon as you have rested.'
  'Richard, my feet will never carry me as far.'
  'Yes, master, they shall do so,' Richard said stoutly.
  Mrs Ann came back just then with cold meat and sack, which she set upon the table before the King. He thanked her, and beckoned to Richard to come and eat his share. Wolfe could not forbear saying in a shocked tone: 'The fellow may eat in the kitchen. Your Majesty will not have him sit down with you!'
  The King looked up, with his mouth full of meat, a sardonic gleam in his eyes. 'You are out, sir. He shall sit at table with me.'
  'As your Majesty pleases,' Wolfe said, with a stiff little bow.
  He waited, fidgeting about the room, and listening from time to time for any sound from above-stairs, while the King and Richard ate and drank their fill. He was so anxious to convey them to the safety of his barn that he hardly gave the King time to set down his empty tankard before urging him to make haste out of the house. He bade his daughter fetch a lantern, and, with this in his hand, led his guests out into the yard by a back-door, and across it to one of the great barns they had seen from the field.
  Inside, the barn smelt sweet with the scent of hay: a hen clucked sleepily from a nest in one corner; and a rat scuttered across the floor almost under their feet.
  A bed was made for the King in the hay at the back of the barn. He lowered himself into it, murmuring that he would need no Venice treacle to send him to sleep. Richard spread an armful of hay over him, and stretched himself alongside. Mr Wolfe, after holding up the lantern to assure himself that neither man was visible, went away, shutting the door behind him.
  'I do be sorry I brought your honour to this place,' Richard said.
  'Richard, I am asleep,' responded the King drowsily.
  In ten minutes this statement became true. Worn out with the exertions and the anxieties of the past two days and nights, the King sank fathoms deep into the sleep of exhaustion. Throughout the long day he continued so, yet Richard, dozing and waking beside him, could not think that the sleep refreshed him, for it was restless, accompanied by the twitching of limbs, and ugly dreams which made Charles mutter, and sometimes call out. Once, Richard was forced to wake him, for fear that his dreaming voice should betray him. The King stirred, and opened his eyes, murmuring the name of one of his Gentlemen. When the film of sleep cleared a little, he started up on his elbow, bewildered, and half-thinking himself in his bed at Worcester. The hay tickling his hand made him blink stupidly, but his eyes alighted on Richard's grave face, and he remem bered where he was. 'What is it?' he whispered.
  'Nay, my liege, you called out so loud in your sleep I was bound to waken you. 'Tis naught.'
  'I have had bad dreams,' the King said, pressing his hands to his eyes. 'What o'clock is it?'
  Richard shook his head. ' 'Tis full day, that's all I know, master.'
  The King lay down again, and for a little while lay thinking of his future. It had been agreed at Hobbal Grange, on the previous evening, that word of his resolve to escape into Wales should be carried by one or other of the Penderels to Lord Wilmot; and it occurred to him now that he might by this time have lost touch with the sole friend left to him, for he had bidden the Penderels give a message to Wilmot that he was to save himself. His only course, now that his plan of crossing into Wales had miscarried, seemed to be to return to the neighbourhood of White-Ladies, as Richard proposed; and to try from there to make his way, either to London, according to his original scheme, or to Bristol, where he had a good hope of finding a vessel bound for France. Either town seemed to his weary brain almost impossible to reach, and as he lay looking with half closed eyes at the rafters high above him, the harsh lines running downwards from his jutting nose to his mouth grew more clearly marked, and a sound between a sign and a groan escaped him.
  It brought Richard up on his elbow at once, concern in his face. 'My liege?'
  'It's nothing,' Charles answered. 'Only my troubles weighing upon me.'
  Richard, to whom Boscobel was a goal, not a mere stage in a journey, thought he was dreading the nine mile walk and said: 'When your honour has slept again and eaten, you'll not care a button for the trudge, I warrant you.'
'I hope you may be right,' Charles said.
  ''Deed and I be so. Why, when all's said, it's naught! If you had been reared right, you would do it twice over in a night, my liege, and reckon naught to it.'
  'Alack that I was reared so ill, then!' said the King.
  The day wore on, the King sleeping and waking by turns. In the early afternoon, an elderly lady with a basket over her arm slipped into the barn, and, after looking back into the yard to be sure that no one was watching her, began to climb over the piled hay towards the corner where the King lay, whispering rather breathlessly as she came: 'Sire, Sire!'
  ''Tis the old dame, Mistress Wolfe herself,' muttered Richard in the King's ear.
  Charles sat up, brushing the hay from his person. As soon as she set eyes on him, Mrs Wolfe went down upon her knees. 'Alas to see your Majesty thus! Oh sir, forgive the harsh necessity that will not let me receive you into my house as I should. Indeed, indeed I dare not for my life!'
BOOK: Georgette Heyer
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