Georgette Heyer (3 page)

  Lane, one of Talbot's own levies, went galloping down the ragged line, and in a few minutes the troop was at a standstill, the King, with his attendant lords, and the chief amongst the officers, withdrawn off the road for a hasty council of war.

  The light was by this time so dim that it was difficult to distinguish one face from another. The King, taller by half a head than any of those about him, addressed a group of shadows. He said: 'I have been considering, gentlemen. If we stay together we are enough to attract attention, not enough to withstand assault. All our hope lies in scattering.'

  'Our hope is in your Majesty,' Derby said. 'Consider only your own safety, for nothing else is of any moment.'

  This courtier-speech seemed to amuse the King. He said, with his irrepressible humour creeping into his voice: 'Oddsfish, does any man desire to feel a halter about his neck?'

  'So only you were safe!' Wilmot said, trying to find his hand to kiss.

  'I thank thee, Harry. My Lord Talbot, you are a native of these parts! Tell me, what good hope have I of finding honest friends here who will help me to safety?'

  'The best, sir!' Talbot answered at once. 'But you will need to put yourself in some disguise. I too have been considering. Would your Majesty consent to counterfeit a country-fellow?'

  'I will counterfeit what you please, but you will have remarked, my lord, that I have an odd, ugly face. Can you disguise that, think you?'

  'More easily than your inches, sire. Will you be pleased to let us know your mind? What will you do? Where will you go?'

  'To London,' replied the King, a ring of defiance in his voice.

  His decision, as he had foreseen, provoked a storm of censure. To some it seemed the dream of a distracted youth; to others a scheme, sound at core, but impossible to be put into action. Voices out of the dusk implored the King to abandon a notion so fraught with disaster, to trust in Leslie, to consider the difficulties to be met with, to be guided by older and wiser heads.

  Talbot only seemed undecided, until Wilmot suddenly said, his light voice jumping a little: 'I agree with you, sir, and I will go with you.'

  Buckingham, whose dare-devilry no man could deny, was nettled, and gave an unkind laugh. Wilmot flushed in the darkness, knowing his own soul's shrinking, but repeated: 'I will go with you. In London, they will never think to look for you; and in London you have faithful friends who will transport you back to France.'

  'You amaze me, Wilmot, by God, you do!' said Buckingham.

  'You should bear in mind, my Lord Duke, that I have the advantage over you of fifteen years' experi ence!' Wilmot flung back at him.

  'Oh, hush!' the King said. 'Here is nothing to quarrel about, my good friends. My resolve is taken. Now I am in your hands, my Lord Talbot.'

  'Leslie must be informed of this,' Talbot said, and again called up Cornet Lane, and sent him galloping up the road in the wake of the retreating Scots.

  Derby said, with distaste vibrating in his voice: 'Your Majesty has scarcely considered what this project must mean! To put yourself into the guise of a country fellow will require of you a behaviour which must be wholly against your birth, your breeding, your high estate! Your Majesty does not know – cannot know –'

  'My lord, my dear lord!' interrupted the King, half amused, half-soothing, 'my Majesty is not so nice, believe me!'

  'Sire, you are a King.'

  'I may be a King,' Charles replied, 'but I know something of how beggars live.'

  This frank allusion to his financial straits made Derby, a nobleman of the old school, stiffen a little.

  The King tried to see the faces about him. 'Well, gentlemen?'

  Buckingham yawned audibly. 'Dear sir, you have told us your mind is made up. We await your commands.'

  'I have only one left to give you. It is that you do now look to yourselves. You can do no more for me, and for what you have done, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you, gentlemen. I shall not forget.'

  'So please your Majesty, before we look to ourselves we will see you to some place of safety,' said Colonel Blague.

  'And where may that be?' enquired Buckingham.

  Derby said reluctantly: 'If your Majesty is determined on this course, there is a house known to me where you may find safe shelter for a day at least. It stands retired, and is inhabited by a very honest fellow, one of five brothers who harboured me lately, after the defeat of my force at Wigan. My Lord Talbot, you should know it, I think. It is a hunting-lodge called Boscobel, in the parish of Tong in Shropshire, and belongs, they told me, to the Giffards.'

  'I have one of the Giffards with me now,' said Talbot. 'But Tong must be forty miles from here!' He spoke hesitantly, thinking of the King, who had scarcely been out of the saddle since early morning.

  'I like it well,' Charles said decidedly. 'Can you lead me, my Lord Derby?'

  'I dare not attempt it, sir. In this darkness, only a native of the country could hope to find his way.'

  'Pass the word for Mr Charles Giffard!' Talbot commanded.

  Before Mr Giffard could come up, Lane had cantered back to them, accompanied by General Leslie, who seemed, from the sound of his voice, to be in no very good temper. He spoke civilly, however, to the King, warning him that delay was dangerous, and begging that he would keep up with the brigade. When he learned that Charles had taken the resolution of separating alto gether from the brigade, he was at first thunderstruck, and then coldly furious. He represented to the King in the strongest terms the folly of such a course, and made such an acid allusion to untrustworthy advisers that the hostility hitherto suppressed in the English lords' breasts flared up, and even some of those who had been most urgent with the King to escape into Scotland now supported his counter-plan.

  An acrimonious dispute between Leslie and Buck ingham caused the King to remark to the Lord Talbot somewhat bitterly that although he could not get Leslie's horse to stand by him against the enemy, it seemed he could not get rid of them now, when he had a mind to it.

  His voice had a carrying quality, and as he had not lowered it, it easily reached Leslie's ears. Leslie said, sitting rigidly upright in the saddle: 'Your Majesty may at least trust my men to carry you into safety!'

  'I had rather trust to my own wits,' responded Charles.

  'Your Majesty places me in an intolerable position. I am bound by honour to guard your Majesty's person.'

  A melancholy smile crossed the King's features. As though his eyes, piercing the gloom, had seen it, Leslie said with difficulty: 'Your Majesty blames me for what no man could have prevented. If my life could be of avail you might take it with my good-will.'

  'But it is of no avail,' Charles said. 'I do not go with you to Scotland, General.'

  'I beg that your Majesty will reconsider that most unwise decision,' Leslie replied, and saluted, and rode off without another word.

  The King looked towards the troop he could perceive only as vague shadows in the gathering darkness. 'Let any who have a mind to try the chances of escape into Scotland, leave me now and follow General Leslie,' he said clearly.

  No one moved. 'Your Majesty is answered,' Talbot said.

In another minute Cornet Lane had ridden up with Charles Giffard at his heels. Talbot called Giffard to him, and led him to the King. A grave, rather awed voice assured the King that Giffard was his servant to command. Talbot disclosed briefly the King's imme diate intentions, and after a moment's consideration, Giffard said that he thought he could undertake to be his Majesty's guide.

  'Will you harbour me in a house of yours?' asked the King. 'I am like to prove a dangerous guest, bethink you.'

  The direct question seemed to astonish Giffard. Again he paused, but this time searching only for words, which tripped a little on his tongue. 'Sir – all I have – all my uncle calls his own – is at your Majesty's service. Chillington – my uncle's house – is sequestrated, and my uncle even now a prisoner, else I would lead your Majesty there, not to a poor hunting-lodge.'

  'I would not have his Majesty go to Chillington,' Derby said decidedly. 'Boscobel is more remote, less likely to be searched. But can you be sure of leading his Majesty there in this darkness?'

  'Yes, my lord. I have my servant Yates with me, who, I daresay, could find his way blindfold, being a native of Shropshire.'

  'Does anyone know where we stand now?' enquired the King.

  Mr Giffard knew. 'I judge that we are within a league of Hartlebury, sir. We should proceed through Kidder minster to Himley, where, if it please your Majesty, we must strike west wards, away from the great road.'

  'It pleases me very well,' the King said. 'But tell me, Mr Giffard: which way will General Leslie's brigade take?'

  'They must follow the great road, sir.'

  'Then lead me off the great road,' commanded the King, 'for I have a fixed resolve to escape from the Scots, and that before they take it into their heads to set a guard about my person. Can you do that?'

  'Yes, sir,' replied Giffard, 'but to do so we must leave Kidderminster on our left, and pass through Stour bridge instead.'

  'Mr Giffard, I am in your debt. Lead on!'

  'In good time!' Lauderdale said. 'Look ye, now, no more delays!'

  'God send the man does not lead us astray!' Talbot muttered to Wilmot, as the cavalcade moved froward. 'Forty miles to ride, and the night upon us!'

  'Weel,' said Lauderdale tartly, for although, being an Engager, he fully shared the King's detestation of the Covenanting party that ruled Scotland, he could not but regret Charles's decision not to make for the border, and was consequently in a testy humour, 'weel, Talbot, I'll call on ye to mind 'tis ain of your own gentlemen ye've delivered us to!'

  A mile farther on, the road branched, and Giffard, who was riding ahead of the King, with his servant beside him, wheeled into the right-hand fork. The troop of horse was smaller than it had been, for some, too badly wounded in the last skirmish in Worcester to keep their saddles, had been forced to fall out and seek shelter in the countryside. The main body, in compact order, kept on, maintaining a steady trot. Faster, no one dared to go, for by this time there was scarcely light enough left for each man to discern the haunches of the horse in front of him. Giffard's servant had produced a lantern, and although its feeble glow did little to illu mine the way, it served as a beacon, bobbing ahead of the troop like a dim guiding star.

  The road was undulating, full of pits in which the water stood, stagnant and muddy. The country was so still that the thud of hooves, and the frequent splashes, sounded abnormally loud. From time to time, belts of great trees loomed up suddenly, but the greater part of the way lay through open country across which a chill wind, which carried with it a menace of rain, blew steadily and depressingly.

  It was past eleven o'clock when the first straggling houses on the outskirts of Stourbridge warned the troop that they were approaching the town. Only a few lights in upper windows still burned here and there. A momentary halt was called, and the word passed back to walk the horses through the town. In this way, the party passed down the sleeping main street, so silently that no citizen awoke to the alarming noise of hoof-beats, or thrust his head out of window to spy upon the King's escape.

  The Lord Talbot pushed forward to the King's side, asking anxiously: 'How does your Majesty?'

  'Well,' the King answered, rousing himself from his thoughts.

  'You have been in the saddle so long,' Talbot said com passionately. 'I wish –'

  'I am not tired – only hungry,' said the King, with the ghost of a laugh.

  The Lord Talbot remembered with consternation that the King had not touched food since early in the morning, when he had breakfasted. That he himself, and probably most of their companions, had been fasting for just as long seemed a matter of minor impor tance. He spoke to Lord Wilmot, whose voluminous form was just visible beyond the King. 'Harry, we must find food for his Majesty!'

  'Oh, the devil! Where?' said Wilmot, in a voice drenched with sleep. 'Are you so hungry, sir?'

  'I could eat an ox,' replied the King frankly.

  'Pass the word for an ox for his Majesty,' murmured Buckingham, close behind.

  That made the King laugh, but Talbot was too worried to see any humour in their predicament. 'We dare not let your Majesty stop in the town,' he said. 'I wish to God I knew where it may be safe to halt!'

  'Safe?' said Wilmot. 'Nowhere!'

  'I hope you may be wrong,' remarked the King, 'for if you are not I am as good as hanged already.'

  The spectre, not indeed of a halter, but of an axe, hovered before the eyes of the three who heard him. No one spoke, until the King said cheerfully: 'But I think you are wrong.'

  They had passed out of the town by this time, and once more set their horses at a trot. A mile on, lying at the foot of a steep hill, a solitary house stood by the wayside. A board swinging on creaking chains proclaimed it to be an ale-house, and a halt was called.