Georgette Heyer (12 page)

  'If I have not this tale from John's own lips, it will be too great a hardship to bear!' said the King.

  'John would be proud to see your honour,' replied William doubtfully. 'Ay, and he will be amazed, I warrant you, him having got the notion great folks is all like my lord: but his gracious Majesty's no more like my lord than chalk is to cheese, I told him, and so he will find it. Not that we would be meaning any disrespect to his lordship,' he added. 'And, indeed, my liege, John was very diligent to serve him, and when my lord would not be at his ease with Mr Huntbach (besides which he was in a sweat over those horses of his, which was put up in an old barn, there being no other safe stable), John went off to Wolverhampton to find if he could hear of a better house for my lord to lie in. But finding no one he might trust, he was coming back when he met a priest who is very well-known to us for a good man and an honest, that is living with Mr Whitgreave of Moseley, by Wolverhampton, whom John accosted, telling him to his consterna tion that there was a great battle fought and lost at Worcester. Then he opened to Father Huddleston the business of my lord, to which the good Father replied he should go with him along to Mr Whitgreave's house, him being a staunch gentleman that fought for your Majesty's blessed father in the late wars. So John went along with him to Moseley, and Mr Whitgreave, hearing of the evil case my lord was in, straightway went back with him to Mr Huntbach's, and carried my lord out of that house to his own, with which my lord was well-satisfied.'

  'And John too, as I should judge,' said the King caus tically. 'When was all this?'

  ''Twas on the same Thursday that your honour set off by night for Madeley.'

  'Where is my lord now?'

  'Maybe he's with Mr Whitgreave still, my liege. John come home to White-Ladies yesterday, at cockcrow, my lord being wishful to get news of your honour. Which we told John you was gone with Richard to cross Severn into Wales, whereupon John goes back to Moseley, to carry the tidings to my lord. He'll be home today, if he was not returned last night, which I couldn't say.'

  'Today?' the King said, frowning with an effort of memory. 'What is today?'

  ''Tis Saturday now, my liege, the sixth day of September, so please you.'

  'Only Saturday!' the King exclaimed. He pressed his hands across his eyes for an instant. 'Is it possible?' he said, half to himself, his voice so mournful that William regarded him with a good deal of dismay.

  Major Carlis, who had been standing behind the King's chair, while William told his tale, stepped forward, and with a little jerk of his head signed to William to draw back. He himself knelt on one knee before the fire, and picked up the King's stockings, which had been spread in the hearth to dry, and tested them with his hand. After a moment he said: 'It behoves us, sir, to think where we may best bestow you this day.'

  The King's hand dropped to his knee. 'Like a bale of merchandise,' he said.

  Carlis smiled. 'Very precious merchandise, sir.'

  Dame Penderel paused in her work of clearing away the remains of the meal upon the table, to say in a low voice: 'You know we have two very safe hiding-places in the house, sir. His Majesty might lie in either, sure!'

  'If his Majesty will be guided by me, he will lie in neither,' said Carlis, looking at the King. 'There is danger here, sir, for these good people are much suspected, being Catholics, and very loyal to your Majesty. There have been some of Cromwell's soldiers searching diligently in the neighbourhood already, nor do I think we have seen the last of them.'

  'My Lord Derby commended the secret place,' Dame Penderel said, unconvinced.

  'My Lord Derby's sojourn with you likes me not at all, dame,' responded Carlis, lifting one of the King's feet on to his knee, and beginning to coax the stocking on to it. 'We do not know how many may have learned of it, and of your secret place to boot. Trust me, sir, I am not new to his game of hide-and-seek.'

  'Where will you have me go?' asked the King, wincing a little as his foot was put into the shoe. 'Into the wood again, belike?'

  'Nay, I have a better plan in my head than that, sir. You and I will go up into a very thick tree I know of, and there lie as safe as two mice in a cheese till evening, while William and Richard keep watch. If the rebels are still searching for fugitives from Worcester, and – as I think – for your Majesty in person – they will look very diligently through the wood.'

  A smile crept into the King's eyes. 'So now I must spend my day perched in a tree! Oddsfish, my life has become so rich in experience I begin to lose all knowl edge of myself. I like it very well, Carlis. But I will have John Penderel brought here to me, to go once more with a message from me to my Lord Wilmot.'

  'That shall be done, sire, and at evening you may speak with him here.'

  'Ay,' said William, from the shadows at the end of the kitchen. 'And his Majesty may lie snug in the secret place all night, for the rebels will be likely tired out with searching, and not trouble us.'

  The King turned his head. 'Fellow, have you consid ered how dangerous a guest I am? I would have you think well before you harbour me.'

  'Ay,' said William placidly.

  'Ay?' repeated the King. 'What may that mean? Have you understood me?'

  'Ay. We mun serve your Majesty. There's naught to think on. Such is fiddle-faddling waste of time, and you should ought to be away out of the house before folks starts stirring abroad.'

  'Very well answered,' said Carlis, rising to his feet, and going to the window to unbar the shutters.

  The grey light of dawn already rather coldly lit the garden, and the fields beyond. Some distance to the south, the outskirts of Spring Coppice were just visible from the window, and a little way away, situated in the open ground lying between the house and the wood, stood a big pollarded oak, which Carlis pointed out to the King. One or two other trees stood at irregular intervals in the field, but none so sturdy, or so thickly covered with leaves. It commanded a view of the house, and the sur rounding country, and from the fact of its standing outside the shelter of the wood, might be supposed to be considered by his enemies a very unlikely hiding-place for the King to choose.

  As soon as the Major had made some small arrange ments with the Penderels, the whole party escorted the King out of the house, Richard going ahead to spy out the land, and William bringing up the rear with a wooden ladder, by which means the King, who said, though gaily, that his feet were in no case to go a-climbing, was to ascend into the tree.

  Carlis went up first, and finding a suitable branch, parted the leaves which hid him from the ground, and called to the King to join him. Charles mounted the ladder as nimbly as his hurt feet would permit and no sooner saw the leafy cave where Carlis was than he declared that he would defy all the rebel forces in England to discover him there. A cushion, provided by Dame Penderel's thoughtfulness, was handed up on the end of a long hook, and placed on a broad branch for the King to sit upon. The Penderels, fearing that some farm-labourer might be already abroad, then went away, promising to keep a strict watch, and to take word to John, at White-Ladies, of the King's return.

  'I never knew such poor men to be so honest,' the King remarked, disposing himself more comfortably amongst the branches.

  Carlis smiled a little. 'How should you indeed, sir? You have not known poor men. Yet I dare swear you might find an hundred and more as honest as these.'

  There was a derisive gleam in the King's eyes. 'I should get great good from my adventures, then, for I am learning some things I knew not before. How came you to know these Penderels?'

  'William sheltered me not as much as a year ago, when I was searched for very strictly, sir. My home is not two miles distant, at Bromhall, just across the border into Staffordshire.'

  'I had forgot. Did you come here at once from Worcester? Were you here that weary day I spent in the wood?'

  'No, not then. When I escaped from Worcester, I rode first to the house of one Davy Jones, in the Heath, in Tong Parish, and there lay for two days.'

  'How did you escape from Worcester?' Charles demanded. 'Were you in the last fight in the street below my lodging?'

  'To be sure I was, and a rare shambles we made of the street,' said the Major coolly. 'Had we had some few reserves, I believe we might even then have repulsed the rebels.'

  The King gave a groan. 'Carlis, Carlis, I could not prevail upon Leslie's horse to budge! They would not follow me!'

  'Would they not? The scurvy fellows! But the victory was ours, for we held the street while your Majesty made good your escape, and that, in sooth, was all our intent.'

  'I should have died then, fighting!' the King said with suppressed violence.

  'Nay, how should that avail us?' Carlis said. 'Do you think all lost because the dice fall once amiss? I shall live to see you at Whitehall, and that without help from the Scots.'

  'If I come to my throne, it will indeed be without help from the Scots!' the King said, an ugly sneer curling his mouth. 'I should have known better than to have trusted Argyll, who sold my father to Cromwell! But they urged me so, all of them, save only Hyde –' He broke off, his brows lowering, the sneer more strongly marked. 'Well! I have learnt my lesson,' he said. 'A boy I was, but my God, I am not one now!'

  'I dare swear you learnt other lessons in Scotland, sir,' said Carlis. 'Myself, I had never a liking for your Scottish Covenanter.'

  A sharp crack of laughter broke from the King. 'What I could tell you of their beastly hypocrisy!' he said. 'You cannot imagine the villainy of Argyll and all his party! Indeed, it has done me a great deal of good, for nothing could have confirmed me more to the Church of England than being in Scotland, and seeing their hypocrisy!' The sneer vanished into a dancing smile of pure amusement. 'They bade me draw blinds if I wished to take my plea sures on a Sunday! I have had as many as six sermons preached to me in one day, and by men so puffed up with pride it would turn your stomach to hear them! Yea, and I have been forced to repent me of mine own sins, of my father's wickedness – God save the mark! – of what they were pleased to call my mother's idolatry, – and all by men so bloody-minded and so bigoted –'

  'And you did so?' Carlis interrupted, his pointed beard jutting belligerently.

  The sneer came back, the great eyes glanced cynically towards him. 'Ay, I did so. What should I care for a few empty words, who had a kingdom at stake?'

  Carlis said pitifully: 'Alas, that so sweet a prince should have learnt so grievous a lesson!'

  The King laughed. 'So sweet a prince! I warrant, they thought me one! Carlis, there is a lesson from my book: give honey for gall, keep your counsel, and trust no man farther than his own interest!' He heaved a sigh, and leaned his head against the tree-trunk, saying: 'Alack, that I am not like to live long enough to profit by my lessons!'

  'Why, what is this?' said Carlis. 'Do you lose heart, sir? I think you were not born to die with your head upon a block.'

  'No, but I think I may very well break my neck falling out of this tree,' replied the King. 'I never knew how stupid a body I have, that craves so much sleep, and has legs that will not bear me nine miles without making me ready to weep with fatigue. Trusty Dick said that if I had been reared right I had not failed so grievously, and oddsblood, he spoke naught but the truth! Yet I did not think myself so softly reared. I had witnessed battles when other lads were busy over their hornbooks.'

  'Comfort you, sir,' Carlis said. 'When John Penderel complained of my Lord Wilmot's being (he said) as soft as a cushion, William told him: "Then he is not like the King, for his Majesty is as tough as whitleather".'

  The King chuckled. 'He had not seen my Majesty panting for breath in a ditch. A miller at some place on the road to Madeley – I forget – chased us till I bade Richard leap over the hedge beside the lane. It would have made you split your sides to have seen us!'

  'It would have made me split the miller's sides, my liege, but not my own,' replied Carlis grimly.

  'Why, what a fierce fellow you are,' murmured the King, closing his eyes. 'For all the poor man knew, we were a pair of lawless vagrants.'

  'If he, and others like him, had joined your Majesty's standard –'

  'Oh, you cannot blame him that he stayed safe at home!' said Charles. 'I should not have come into England at the head of an army of Scots. I blame no Englishman for holding aloof from me.'

  'I have some other thoughts on that matter,' replied Carlis. He shifted his position in the tree a little, and added: 'If you would lay your head in my lap, sir, I think you might sleep a while. You are so tired.'

  'Oh no,' Charles said, his heavy lids lifting momen tarily. 'I must learn to overcome this plaguey inclina tion to sleep. You have burdens enough to support without adding my head to the rest.'

  'Put your head in my lap,' Carlis said, not as subject to monarch, but as a man to a boy. 'Come, do you think that is not a burden I would give my life to bear? Can you be comfortable so?'