Georgette Heyer (5 page)

  As he knelt, staring and wondering, the King glanced down at him. Bartholomew found himself to be looking into dark, heavy-lidded eyes that held his for an incurious moment, and then turned again towards the stout gentleman who stood nearest to him.

  Bartholomew began to lay his billets upon the fire, and then to blow up the thin flame. He heard George Penderel's voice saying: 'Yes, my lord,' and 'No, my lord,' and screwed his head over his shoulder to look at him. A proud-seeming gentleman, whom the King addressed as my Lord Derby, was talking to George. It seemed that George must go at once, and secretly, to Hobbal Grange to fetch his brother Richard to the King. This seemed a very odd thing, for what could the King want of a poor wood-cutter? Perhaps George thought it odd too; his eyes were fixed earnestly on my Lord Derby's face, and his hands gripped his hat in front of him, twisting it uneasily between them. Next it appeared that William Penderel also must be fetched, from Boscobel House. Then a very alarming thing happened. A tall man was pointing at him, and saying: 'Send the lad for him: I warrant he will bring him fast enough.'

  It seemed to Bartholomew that every head was turned towards him. He stayed on his knees, blushing, and pulling his forelock, as he had been taught to do when gentlemen accosted him.

  Derby said: 'The risk is too great. A boy of his age can never keep a still tongue in his head. There's a priest in the house: let him be sent!'

  'I had rather send young legs than old, my lord,' said Colonel Roscarrock. He nodded at Bartholomew, and said: 'Get up, boy! How far is Boscobel from here?'

  Bartholomew scrambled to his feet, and muttered shyly: 'A little mile.'

  'A little mile, eh? Could you find your way there, dark as it is?'

  'Ay.'

  'Do you want to earn a silver shilling for yourself ?'

  'Ay.'

  'You may do so very easily, look you. Go to Boscobel as fast as your legs will carry you, and bid William Penderel hither on the King's business.'

  'Are you mad?' Derby said. 'As well inform the whole countryside the King is here!'

  'Fie, you wrong the boy!' the King was speaking. He looked at Bartholomew, and crooked a long finger. 'Come hither, boy. What do they call you?'

  'Bartholomew Martin – please your Majesty,' answered Bartholomew, louting awkwardly.

  'Would you like to serve me, Bartholomew?'

  'Ay, please your Majesty.' He saw the smile in the King's eyes, and said firmly: 'I would!'

  'Then you must go to this William Penderel, as that gentle man bade you, and tell him that I have need of him. But you must not tell any other that you have seen the King. If you should meet with a neighbour you must say that you are going upon an errand for Mr Giffard. Do you understand?'

  'Ay. There's enemies after you – please your Majesty. Scotch 'uns,' he added, with a vague recollection of the snatches of talk he had heard in the hall.

  A burst of laughter covered him with confusion; he ducked his tousled head, and ran out of the room.

  Wilmot, who had been standing behind the King's chair, moved round it, and knelt with one knee on a joint-stool, his delicate hand grasping the back of the chair. 'Dear sir, do you indeed mean to go to London?' he asked.

  'What think you, Harry?'

  'Why, I like it very well – so you let me go with you. How many more?'

  'None.'

  'None!' Wilmot thought for a moment, his fair face inscrut able. Then he gave a little laugh. 'As you please! But bethink you, my dear master, you have not been used to fare forth by yourself. How will you do?'

  'Very well, I trust. But I must be rid of these trap pings.' A little gesture indicated his Garter riband and the George of diamonds on his breast.

  As though he had heard the low-spoken words, Derby crossed the room towards him, and said: 'Sir, if your Majesty's resolve is firm to put yourself into the guise of a country-fellow, is it your will that I should send Richard Penderel in search of fitting raiment? You cannot go from here in those garments and escape remark.'

  'Yes, it is my will,' the King replied. 'But remember, I pray you, my lord, that I am a big fellow!'

  'By good fortune, so is William Penderel, a big fellow – bigger, I think, than your Majesty. I will advise with Richard when he comes.'

  He moved away and went out into the hall. The King called for more sack, if it might be had. Buck ingham came to fill his tankard from a great blackjack, walking across the room with the peculiar grace which was his. He stayed by the King's chair, looking down at him in some little trouble. The King murmured: 'What, George?'

  Buckingham gave the blackjack into Colonel Blague's hold, and went down on his knees beside the King's chair, lightly clasping one long hand in both of his. 'Sire – nay, Brother Charles, let me go with you!' he said suddenly. His handsome, rather petulant face was softened; he began to coax the King, enticement in his low-pitched voice, the allure of youth for youth in his heavy-lashed eyes. 'Were we not reared together? Did we not say we would go upon high adventures together one day? Charles, I am the man for your need. You know I would die for you, as haply my father would have died for yours. Do not bid me leave you!'

  The King drew his hand away. 'I thank you, I thank you! My mind is made up.'

  'The King is right,' Talbot said. 'His hope lies now in the common people, not in us. We can aid him best by departing from him.'

  'Ay, though we would all of us die for your Majesty,' Colonel Blague said in his deep voice. 'But our deaths cannot help you. Yet if some of us fell into Cromwell's hands –' he paused, frowning, and then said, looking straight into the King's eyes: 'Sire, do not divulge to any one amongst us where you go. Let us know only that we left you here.'

  Buckingham sprang to his feet. 'This is brave! Which one of us do you think a traitor, Tom Blague?'

  'Under torture,' Colonel Blague said deliberately, 'men may be forced to tell what they may be damned for telling.'

  No one spoke for a moment. Then Roscarrock said: 'You are well advised, sir.'

  Darcy set his tankard down slowly on the table. 'What's this?' he demanded, shocked bewilderment in his face. 'You will not go without some at least of your Gentlemen, sir?'

  The King glanced affectionately towards him. 'Yea, but I must, Duke.'

  'Sir!' The ejaculation broke from several pairs of lips at once. Armourer, May, Street, all started forward.

  The King got up out of his chair, stretching his long limbs. 'No, none of you,' he said. He looked sleepily round. 'What must I do?' he asked. 'I should be gone out of this house before day, I think.'

  Derby, who had come back into the parlour, said: 'Richard Penderel has been here. I have sent him to fetch clothes for your Majesty to wear.'

  'Is he willing to risk his life for my sake?' the King asked. 'What is he like, this wood-cutter who will dare so much for a man he has not seen?'

  'He is an honest man, in no way remarkable,' Derby said.

  'Oddsfish, I think he must be very remarkable to play at pitch-and-toss with his life for my sake!' the King said. He took off his Garter riband, and handed it to Darcy. Then he unpinned the George from his coat, and gave it to Colonel Blague, who chanced to be standing nearest to him. 'Here, Tom: keep that for me,' he said.

  Blague took it, and wrapped in it his handkerchief. 'I thank your Majesty,' he said, with a good deal of feeling in his voice.

  'I hope it may not serve to hang you!' observed the King, with a flash of humour. He pulled off the ring he wore, laid a gold spanner-string beside it on the table, and took his watch from his pocket, and stood holding it in his hand. 'Who will keep my watch for me?' he enquired.

  'That's a heavy charge, sir,' Talbot said, trying to speak gaily. 'I am sure you would have the head of the unfor tunate who lost it!'

  'Give it to me, sir!' Wilmot held out his hand.

  'You, Harry? No, that will not do, for you must go in disguise too, and my watch would sort very ill with a poor man's raiment.'

  Wilmot shook his head. 'Oh, not I, sir! I should look frightfully in a disguise, I do assure you.'

  'It would be safer,' said Talbot.

  'Oh, do you think so?' Wilmot said, taking the watch out of the King's hand, and bestowing it in his own pocket. 'I am sure the countryside will so throng with distressed Cavaliers that I shall occasion not the least remark. Besides, I should not know how to play the part of a hind.'

  'You think perhaps that the rôle will come easily to his Majesty?' drawled Buckingham.

  The King called Darcy to him to help him out of his coat, and said with a chuckle: 'Harry, don't spare me! Say that I have a damned ugly face, fit for a low fellow.'

  'Are you serious, my lord?' demanded Blague. 'Do you mean to accompany his Majesty in such shape as must instantly betray your condition?'

  'Oh, let be!' said the King. 'I am going alone. My Lord Wilmot is to keep in touch with me, no more.' He shook his purse out on to the table, and began to pile the gold pieces into little heaps. 'I must not carry gold on me. My Gentlemen shall inherit all this wealth. There! Never say you had never any money from me, Duke!'

  There was a laugh from those who knew him best; Derby interrupted to say earnestly: 'Sir, you must make haste. I had word from Penderel that there is a troop of rebels quartered only three miles away, at Cotsall. Such a company as ours must not be seen in this neighbour hood.'

  'Ay, that's well thought of,' Lauderdale said, setting his tankard down with a crash on the table. 'It's time that most of us were away.' He went to the door, and encountered there Mrs Andrews, who was coming to inform the King that William and Richard Penderel were both in the hall.

  Derby hurried out after him. The King, standing on one side of the table in his shirt and grey cloth breeches, leaning his hands on it, was conferring in an undertone with Wilmot. After a few moments, Derby came back into the parlour, followed by two men, both dressed in country habits, and clutching their hats in their hands. As the group by the door parted to make way for them, Derby flung out a hand towards the King, and said: 'This is the King. You must have a care of him, and preserve him as you did me.'

  The King turned his head and looked first at William, a giant of a man, with a long, rather severe counte nance; and then at Richard, who looked back at him frankly, a little awe in his face, and some curiosity.

  For a moment they measured one another in silence, the King seeing a stockily built man, with straight brown hair, and a tanned face not unlike that of a questing dog; the wood-cutter, a tall graceful figure in a white shirt, leaning forward a little with his hands on the table, a mass of black curls falling about a sallow face with great melancholy dark eyes, a jutting nose, and deep lines running down to a large curling mouth.

  'Richard Penderel, will you take me in charge?' the King said at last.

  Richard did not reply except by a nod. He had discovered that the melancholy eyes could smile, and as he watched them, a slow answering smile crept over his whole face, until he stood broadly grinning and nodding at the King.

  Charles Giffard's hand on his arm compelled his atten tion. He listened to Giffard's instructions, with a look of good-humoured tolerance, merely remarking at the end: 'I brought Will's breeches.' He turned back to the King, with the effect of ignoring every other man in the room, and said: 'Will and me have been a-talking, my liege, and seeing as there's a troop of rebels quartered hard-by, we say you'd best lie up in the wood yonder till night-fall.'

  The King glanced beyond him to the elder Penderel, who, encountering that enquiring gaze, responded in a deep bass: 'Ay.'

  'And, if it please your honour, we'd like well you should bustle,' added Richard. He pulled a bundle from under his arm, and dumped it upon the table. 'And here be the clothes,' he said.

  'I thank you both.' The King stood upright. 'Leave me now, all but my Lord Wilmot.' He held out his hand as he spoke, and one after the other the lords and gentlemen attending him came up to kiss it, and to take their leave of him. The Penderels watched in stolid, yet attentive silence. Buckingham, the King embraced on the cheek, saying: 'Take good care of yourself, George!' Tears stood in the Lord Talbot's eyes; he said: 'God bless your Majesty, and deliver you from your enemies!' The King's personal attendants frankly wept as they kissed his hand. When all had gone, some to safety, Derby to his death, Lauderdale to long imprisonment, Buckingham to adven tures as fantastic as his own puckish humour; and only Wilmot, Charles Giffard, and the Penderels were left, the King stood for an instant looking towards the closed door with that in his face which made Wilmot catch his hand, and hold it to his lips for a moment.

  The King gave a start, and looked down at Wilmot's bent head. 'Now what's to be done with you, Harry?' he enquired. 'Where shall you go?'

  'I will go with you, sir.'

  'No, that I swear you shall not!' the King said.

  Charles Giffard interposed: 'Sir, my kinsman and I have spoken of this, and if my Lord Wilmot pleases, John Penderel will escort him to some place of safety in the neighbourhood.'