Georgette Heyer (34 page)

  'Ay, I know Alford, but heard that he had been forced to go overseas, being too much suspected. The man I had in mind is William Ellesdon, who fought upon our side in the late Wars, and is since turned merchant, and resides at Lyme. You'll recall Sir John Berkley's escape from Lyme: that was contrived by Ellesdon's brother, John, through Colonel Bullen Reymes – the same that married my wife's sister.'

  'If Alford is still at Lyme, seek him out!' said Strang ways. 'I don't doubt the Ellesdons, but it's in my mind that one of them is wedded to a damned Puritan woman.' A thought occurred to him; he asked abruptly: 'Has the King money for his needs?'

  Wyndham said with a wry smile: 'The King has a few shillings in his pocket only, being disguised as a poor serving-man. My Lord Wilmot has a little more, but not much, I fear.'

  'Oddsblood, man, if the King is to be carried over seas, money will be required to buy his passage! Come you back to the house, for that is one need I can supply!'

  Wyndham began to protest that he himself would furnish the King with money; but Strangways broke in on his speech, to say: 'No, no, that shall not be! I know what expense you have lately been put to. You shall not deny me the right to do the only thing for the King that lies in my power!'

  He grasped Wyndham's arm again, as he spoke, and marched him up to the house. When Wyndham pres ently took his leave, and rode back to Trent, he carried in his bosom a little bag containing three hundred gold pieces, which was all the money Colonel Strangways had by him.

  The King received Strangways's messages of loyalty, and grief at being unable to wait upon him in person, with a careless nod; but when Wyndham put the bag of money into his hand, his brows flew up, and he burst out laughing. 'Harry, Harry, here is a man who sends me money unasked! Faith, I begin to think this an age of new miracles!' He loosened the cord of the bag, and spilled the gold pieces out on to the table. 'Oddsfish! A fortune!'

  'There is a hundred pounds there, sire, which was all Strangways had in the house. He sent it with his humble duty, that your Majesty might be able to buy your passage overseas.'

  'Three hundred broad pieces!' said the King, spin ning one of them into the air with a flick of his thumb. 'You shall be my steward, Harry. Put them up in your purse! What now, Frank?'

  'With your leave, sir, I think I should lose no time in seeking out Captain Ellesdon. Lyme is some thirty miles from here, so that I may easily reach it before dark, and return to you to-morrow, when I trust I shall have accom plished the business.'

  This plan receiving the King's approval, Colonel Wyndham was soon in the saddle again, his pass in his pocket, and a portmanteau strapped behind him. He left his Royal master teaching Juliana Coningsby to play some game of cards that seemed to afford both players considerable amusement, and to necessitate the King's black head being bent continually over the lady's glossy brown one. But beyond brushing one chestnut curl with his lips, and once pinching the lobe of her ear, the King attempted no familiarities. For Lady Wyndham remained throughout in the room, embroidering a length of stiff satin.

  When Juliana presently went away, the King sat idly shuffling the cards, letting them drift in cascades between his practised hands. 'Madam?' he said pres ently.

  'Sire?'

  He looked at her, a laugh in his eye. 'You need not fear me, I do assure you, for though you may have heard some sad stories of me, indeed, I was bred a gentleman!'

  She stuck her needle into the satin, and pushed the frame aside before answering him. 'I shall speak to you, sire, as an old woman to a young man – if your Majesty so permits?'

  He got up and came across the room, seating himself on a stool beside her chair. 'Nay, here is no King, but only one Charles Stewart, madam. Scold me, then – but not too harshly!' he added, with a melting glance up into her face.

  'Has anyone ever scolded you harshly, sir?' she asked, shaking her head at him.

  'My Chancellor, madam, and I know not how many godly Scottish ministers besides. The truth is I was always a sore trial to my preceptors.'

  Lady Wyndham folded her lips rather tightly for a moment; and then said with unaccustomed asperity: 'You had a bad, unprincipled woman for your nurse, sir, as well I know!'

  'Fie, madam! A kinswoman of your own!' protested the King, but blushing a little.

  'Mrs Wyndham was no kinswoman of mine, sir, for I was born a Coningsby!' said her ladyship, sitting very upright in her chair.

  'Do not let us talk about Mrs Wyndham,' he coaxed. 'I had thought it was a Coningsby you meant to speak of.'

  She relaxed slightly. 'A pretty, fond wench, sir. Hearts mend easily at her age, yet I prefer she should not break hers.'

  'What, over this ugly face of mine?' said the King, his eyes brightening with laughter. 'Do you think she will?'

  'Yes, if you aid her to it,' replied Lady Wyndham bluntly.

  'Eh, madam, I desire no woman to break her heart for my sake! I have no taste for tragedy.'

  'Then you should take heed lest you smile too kindly upon foolish maids!' said her ladyship.

  'But, madam, my Lord of Newcastle, who was my governor, laid it down as a maxim that to women I could not be too civil!' he pleaded.

  'Fine counsel!' she said, considerably amused. 'Pray, what other useful maxims did my lord instil into your ears, sir?'

  He reflected. Some of my lord's maxims, excellent though he had found them to be, could hardly be repeated to the King's faithful subjects. '
Believe it
,' my lord had said, '
the putting off of your hat and making a leg
pleases more than reward or preservation, so much doth it take
all kind of people
.'

  Very true, thought the King cynically, but cast about in his memory for a more suitable maxim to repeat to Lady Wyndham. He found it. 'Madam, he bade me be courteous.'

  'You conned that lesson well, sir.'

  'Not to fall into a divine melancholy, to be an anchoret or a capuchin,' said the King demurely.

  'I see no fear of your doing any of those things, sir. Had my lord no moral maxims to impart?'

  '
Short prayers pierce the heaven's gates
,' had said my lord.

  'My lord left such maxims to my tutor, the Lord Bishop of Chichester,' said the King. 'But he made me what I knew not then to be a true prophecy. "
If any be
Bible mad, over much burnt with fiery zeal, they may think
it a service to God to destroy you, and say the spirit moved
them, and bring some example of a king with a hard name in
the Old Testament
." '

  This was apt enough to make her laugh, but to one who had known his father it was so odd to hear him making a jest of treason that she could not resist asking him if he found it easy to forgive his enemies.

  'I could make the most of them like me very well if they would but let me,' he replied seriously.

  She was too stiff-necked a royalist to let that pass. 'You are the King, sir, and what has liking to do with duty?'

  'Madam,' said the King, his eyes glinting, 'my Lord of Newcastle said he would not have me so seared with majesty as to think myself not of mankind; nor suffer others to flatter me so much.'

  This was too modern a thought for her; she could only shake her head, mourning a little over the passing of the old order.

  At the dinner-hour, the King being served in his own room by Joan Halsenoth, one of Lady Wynd ham's Catholic maidservants, the Church bells suddenly began to ring, clanging forth such loud and joyous peals that the King wondered what could be the reason of such a commotion. That none of the household should suspect that a guest was hidden in Lady Wynd ham's apartments, the King's meals were cooked in his room, himself, to while away the time, acting as master-cook. After the bells had been ringing for ten or fifteen minutes, Charles took the frying-pan out of Joan Halsenoth's hold, saying: 'This should portend some great event, methinks. Do you go out and discover what is going forward, Joan, while I toss the collops in the pan.'

  'Oh!' she blurted out, 'your gracious Majesty will spoil the meat!'

  'Not I, faith! Get you gone, now, for I am very desirous to know what all this rejoicing may mean.'

  She was gone for some time, returning to find the meat fried, and the King busily engaged in eating it. Her sallow little face was set into lines of the most rigid disdain, and when the King asked what news she brought, she stood before him with downcast eyes, and compressed lips, and twisted her apron into a screw between her fingers.

  Charles looked her over with a tolerant eye. 'Did they cut your tongue out, my girl? Come, why do they ring the bells so lustily?'

  'I be not wishful for to tell your Majesty. They are rogues,' said Joan darkly.

  'Oho! Now, what makes you say so?'

  'There is some of Cromwell's soldiers come into the village, prating of the great battle that was fought at Worcester, and saying as how your Majesty's army was o'erthrown.'

  'Well, so it was, indeed,' said Charles, with a grimace. 'Is that all?'

  'No, your honour.'

  'Let me know the rest, then.'

  'There's one of them has on a buff coat, which he says your Majesty wore at the battle. And he is brag ging of how he slew your blessed Majesty, and you was buried on the field; and the rebels here are so tickled they are building up a great bonfire, and drinking themselves silly, and ringing all the bells for joy!'

  'Ringing the bells for joy!' repeated the King. 'Alas, poor people!'

  'They had ought to be hanged, every one!' said Joan ferociously.

  'That is what they say of me. I hope they may not come here to search for me – though I suppose, if they do indeed believe me dead, there is little fear of that.'

  None of the soldiers did come to the house, but their presence in the village put my Lord Wilmot into a state of fidgeting alarm, and made him insist upon the secret hiding-place's being furnished with cushions and blankets in case the King should be forced to go into it. All that evening the window-panes glowed redly with the reflec tion of the huge bonfire burning in the village, and the sounds of shouting and of singing penetrated even to the King's chamber. Mrs Anne Wyndham's cheeks were crimson with shame, while Juliana, eyes flashing and breast stormy, enumerated the various fates she would like every one of the villagers to suffer. Lady Wyndham, saying calmly that they were but ignorant hinds, shut the windows, and drew the curtains across them, for although the King made a jest of the celebrations upon his supposed death, she thought he must be a very odd man who could listen unmoved to such rejoicings.

  The troopers all left the village at nightfall, for they were upon their way to the coast; and upon the following day, which was Friday, Colonel Wyndham came back from Lyme.

  Wilmot, who was taking the air with Mrs Wyndham in the garden, saw the Colonel first, and knew from the way he flung himself out of the saddle, and from the ring in his voice when he hailed them, that his mission had been successful. They hurried forward to meet him, Wilmot asking, as he grasped his hand: 'You found a vessel?'

  'Ay! All is in train. I must go to the King at once with my news. He is well? Safe?'

  'Safe enough, but I like not the humour of this village,' said Wilmot. 'The people spent yesterday evening dancing for joy, and all most beastly drunk, because a report came in that the King was killed at Worcester.'

  'Oh, Frank, it was horrible!' Anne said, with a shudder.

  'Better that than that a report should come in of the King's being at my house,' responded the Colonel.

  He and Wilmot went upstairs to the King's apart ment, where they found Charles engaged in boring a hole through one of the gold pieces sent to him by Giles Strangways. He looked up as the door opened, and hailed his host with a cheerful wave of one hand. 'Come in, Frank! How did you fare?'

  'Well, sir, as I do hope,' Wyndham replied. 'I could not discover Captain Alford, he having been forced, as I had heard, to leave England, but William Ellesdon I soon found. He is willing and anxious to aid you, sir, for all his wife is a most strict Puritan.'

  'I give him thanks, and you too, Frank. Shall I go to France?'

  'Upon Monday night, sire, if our mariner keep faith, which please God he will do!'

  'Not until Monday!' Wilmot exclaimed. 'Ah, that likes me not at all! I would not have his Majesty remain so long in this neighbourhood.'

  'I am very well-pleased to remain,' said the King, intent upon his coin. 'Go on, Frank: tell me the whole!'

  'Why, sir, there is little enough. I waited upon Ellesdon at his place of business, and, finding him apt, I opened to him the matter I had come upon, but with holding your name, sire, and calling you a Cavalier that was a fugitive from Worcester. He said at once, and very earnestly, that he was still of the same mind as he had ever been, and would do what lay in his power to help anyone who had fought upon our side. Upon his enquiring more closely who my gentleman might be, I told him one was my Lord Wilmot, and the other a friend of my lord.'