Mary of Carisbrooke (14 page)

“Mistress Wheeler told me to bring you these,” interrupted Mary hastily, setting down a basket filled with venison pasties and a piece of well-cured ham in a cloth. “And to say there’ll be more for Rudy to bring whenever he comes to see you.”

Libby gathered up the toothsome gift with satisfaction. “Her be grown a deal less hard,” she commented.

“It must be the King’s coming,” said Mary, who had more than once speculated about the same phenomenon. “We have all had to work so. We seem more dependent upon each other. Just a handful of us seem more—together.”

Libby could hear the pack-horse being brought round and her husband stamping impatiently. She picked up her bundle of possessions but hung back a moment, thoughtfully fingering the rush handle of the housekeeper’s basket. “I’d ha’ liked to be—together—with you too,” she said slowly, betraying that she was not without some inkling of what was going on. “But I be married to a Roundhead. If it han’t ha’ been for the baby he’d ha’ beaten me for havin’ any truck with the Stuart’s letter.”

“But he’s good to you?” asked Mary anxiously.

Someone was coming with firm footsteps to order the girl’s departure. With her bundle on one arm and the basket on the other, Libby, the trollop’s daughter, looked back with the authentic flame of wifely devotion in her eyes. “Though he be as crafty as they come, he do know how to fondle a girl out of her senses, and I’d as lief have him as any other man,” she averred.

Mary stood a while in the bare little cell of a room, marvelling with a smile on her lips at the goodness to be found in unexpected places. Hearing Captain Rolph’s voice outside, she knew to whom the approaching footsteps had belonged. Drawn instantly from her reverie, she listened tensely to the sound of Libby’s departure, hoping to escape as soon as he was gone. But he was in the open doorway before her. “Well, what do I get by way of thanks?” he asked, delighted at his opportunity and her discomfiture.

“Thanks for what?” asked Mary, hoping the coldness of her voice might hide the frightened beating of her heart.

He came to her, lifting her chin familiarly. “You don’t suppose I believed a word that bitch of Rudy’s said, do you?”

“Then why did you send her away?” countered Mary. He dared not shut the door. Her father would be coming at any moment for the key. But with his eyes he could enjoy every curve of her body at his leisure. “It was either her or you,” he said. “My men say the ostler fellow asked for Mary. I don’t blame him. Any man would have,” he laughed fulsomely. “Do you not suppose that I need some pleasant companionship during my exile in this clannish island?” He pulled her roughly to him. His thick shoulders shut out the daylight. “The Governor relies on me. I could have had you sent away as you deserve. Away from your precious father and that fine lady aunt who has made such a proud prude of you.”

Mary saw his hungry lascivious face come closer and shut her eyes, making a stiff unresponsiveness of her body. She felt his hot, moist mouth on hers and had to suffer it. “I protected you,” he muttered, half boastful, half self-excusing.

“Is that your idea of duty?” raged Mary, struggling like a wild cat to free herself.

“Duty? You need have no fear that Edmund Rolph will neglect any duty for the safekeeping of the Stuart!” He let her go then, so suddenly that she stumbled. His manner changed to that of bullying authority. “You will stay here and be civil to me, but don’t imagine that I will let you go down into Newport again, promising to deliver letters to please some fancy lover!”

He had evidently no suspicion that the man whom she strove to please was in the castle. Without a backward glance Mary sped across the courtyard. Her cheeks burned, her limbs were shaking and there were tears of fury in her eyes. Behind the wellhouse she ran blindly into Firebrace, coming from the keep. He steadied her gently. “Thank Heaven that drunken fool did not draw suspicion upon you!” he whispered.

“I felt sure I should be sent away!” she cried, momentarily clinging to him.

“We could not have spared you,” he told her, disengaging himself because there were several people about and their encounter must not seem anything more than an accidental contact.

“
We
!” echoed Mary, glaring at him through her tears.

“With our plans for his Majesty’s escape so nearly completed,” he explained guardedly.

“His Majesty! Oh yes, always his Majesty!” she flung back at him hysterically, feeling she hated the King they were pledged to help.

Firebrace turned in genuine concern. “Why, Mary my sweet, what is it?” He would have gone after her, but she was already halfway towards the household entrance, her tawny head held high and her back like a ramrod. Puzzled, Firebrace went on his way to his master. Something must have upset her, he supposed. Women had odd moods. But Mary was usually so sweet-tempered…

Up in her aunt’s deserted room, Mary flung herself on the bed. “Couldn’t he have been glad for us?” she sobbed, torn by a surfeit of recent and varied emotions. “Even that brute Rolph wanted to keep me here for
himself
!”

We calculated well. It is the darkest night imaginable,” reported Mary, peering out from the window of the housekeeper’s room.

“
And
a Monday, when the Governor should sleep soundly after all those tedious hours in the Court Room,” said Mistress Wheeler.

“If only the Rolph beast sleeps soundly too!”

“Come into bed, child. I can almost hear your teeth chattering,” urged her aunt.

It was already March, and Mary’s shivering was caused more by nervous tension than by cold. Obediently, she climbed into the high bed beside her aunt. Because they had not dared to light a candle neither of them was fully undressed, and they made no pretence of settling down. Mistress Wheeler lay propped high against her pillows, while Mary sat with her knees drawn up under the bedclothes and her hands clasped tightly round them. Both of them were listening for sounds from the room below. Some evenings they were able to hear the murmur of voices, although never the actual words spoken. But now all was quiet. Harry Firebrace must have finished undressing his master, Herbert and Mildmay been dismissed, and his Majesty gone early to bed.

“To think that the night we have planned for all these weeks has come at last, and that by to-morrow morning the King will be gone!” said Mary, trying to keep a shaky, high-pitched tremor out of her voice.

“It is to-morrow morning I dare not think about,” confessed the housekeeper of Carisbrooke, shuddering momentarily as if someone had walked over her grave. “The state the Governor will be in, and what will happen to us all!”

“But the men will all be back in their beds by then, or preparing to go on duty. Brett will not be able to get in to make up the fire, and Captain Titus will pretend to be amazed and give the alarm. Harry Firebrace and Master Dowcett and Richard Osborne have covered every eventuality so exactly that the Governor won’t be able to prove a thing against them,” declared Mary.

“Four drunken guards with a flagon of strong wine apiece will take some covering. Especially if Captain Rolph goes his morning rounds early!” pointed out Mistress Wheeler, who never had liked that part of the scheme because she was afraid it might involve her brother.

“Heaven send he does not force them into telling who gave it to them,” agreed Mary, thinking of Rolph’s bullying ways and of Harry Firebrace’s danger.

They said no more until the chapel clock struck ten. “Midnight is the time fixed,” Mary whispered then, wishing that her voice would sound more ordinary.

“Try to go to sleep,” advised her aunt. “There is nothing we can do.”

“That is the worst of it.” Mary remembered how even when she had had to slip a letter into the King’s clothes chest with the Governor standing in the room she had not felt so strung up as now.

By mutual consent she and her aunt had left both window and bed-curtains undrawn; but the night was so dark that they might have been lying in a tomb. “If only I could see the smallest star!” thought Mary, feeling that its calm light might cheer and steady her. Anything, anything might happen on a night like this; and she would see nothing, be able to do nothing.

The long minutes dragged by. After a while deeper breathing beside her told her that her aunt was asleep. Soon it would be midnight. Mary’s thoughts turned to Firebrace. Perhaps even now he might have taken up his appointed place down in the courtyard. What must
his
feelings be, who was responsible for the whole dangerous enterprise? Did he realize that she was awake and not far from him, wrapping him about with her tender concern? But probably he had no time to think either of her or of his own danger, but only of the King’s. She had seen that look of devotion on his face and knew that in this matter he was capable of complete selflessness. His enthusiasms were the most lovable part of him, and she blamed herself for ever having resented them. Soon—so very soon now—he would have got the King safely away from his enemies, and would have time to relax and to think of her, and of his own life. Mary closed her eyes and prayed soundlessly. “Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O Lord, and defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.” Somehow the familiar words which she heard every Sunday evening seemed to have taken on a very real and desperate meaning.

Immediately below her the man she specially prayed for had taken up his stance beneath the King’s window. Dressed in a borrowed suit of black and pressed against the wall, he would have been completely invisible even had the Governor thought it necessary to set guards in the courtyard. The darkness was like a cloak, the silence of the night almost tangible. Where, even in the most rural parts of the mainland, he wondered, could one experience such a weight of silence? When had he ever known the blood to beat so loudly in his veins? He had embarked upon this scheme with the light-heartedness of any adventurous young man, and during most of the time realization of its magnitude had been obscured by small day-by-day preparations. But suddenly, on the brink of achievement, the thought of its far-reaching results appalled him. To-morrow the whole castle would be in an uproar, then London. Then—fast as horses could gallop—the news would spread to Wales and Scotland. It was heartening to picture the joy of family reunion if the King reached France in safety; but depressingly easy, standing beneath his window at this crucial moment, to share Charles’s misgivings as to whether any court in Europe would welcome the embarrassment of his arrival.

Firebrace wished that he had not taken up his stance so early—that he had left himself less time to think. And then some trooper’s horse neighed in the stables, and was answered by a faint whinny from outside the south wall, reminding him that Worsley and Osborne were waiting too. Instantly he became his own cool-headed self again, with all his wits about him. His concern was only for the immediate present. Methodically, his mind went over every point of his plan.

Before he had left the King for the night, Dowcett had come in with the rope beneath his cloak and hidden it under the valance of the bed. Titus was on duty at the main door ready to give warning in case of any unusual stir in the house. An hour ago Edward Worsley had flashed a lantern from Whitcombe hill to let them know he was on his way from Gatcombe with the horses. Legge and Ashburnham would be waiting with more horses on the mainland, to reach the ship for France. Several times during his Majesty’s walks round the battlements, he and Titus had managed to point out the exact spot where the horses would be waiting. It had, of course, made things more difficult Mary no longer being able to visit the “Rose and Crown” regularly and leave messages for John Newland. Messages about times and tides and the chosen night. If there were any hitch about the boat they would indeed be undone. But Osborne had seen to it all in her stead. He had talked a lot about some cousins who were staying at the inn on their way from Guernsey, and then gone out quite openly to sup with them. And he had not returned. He was out there now on the other side of the moat with Edward Worsley—an efficient pair, with loaded pistols in their holsters for their sovereign’s protection during their short but perilous journey to the north shore. Firebrace’s thoughts followed the three riders almost visually to a deserted creek in the shadow of Quarr woods, where one of John Newland’s boats would be waiting. With such a fine, loyal team what
could
go wrong?

To his horror, his sharp ears distinctly caught a snatch of maudlin song from the direction of the guardroom. God send those fellows were not so drunk as to arouse Rolph in his quarters across the courtyard! If only a breeze would get up with the tide, instead of this cursed stillness which betrayed every snapped twig or voice or footfall! Dealing with the guards had been the chanciest part—that and the bars. Funny how Mary, who knew every part of the castle like her own hand and who was so full of commonsense, had immediately picked upon the difficulty of the bars!

Firebrace stepped out away from the wall and, turning, looked up towards the King’s window. Not that he could see anything; but he had studied it and measured it so often that memory served as well as sight. Five tall arched casements, the stone mullions of each now divided by a central iron bar. Only a small man could possibly squeeze himself through. Firebrace had wanted to send to London for one of those new-fangled files so that he could cut away some of the iron frame of the middle casement, but the King had, quite reasonably, been afraid that his tampering would be noticed and their whole plan aborted. “I have tried it,” he had said each time the subject was broached, “and where my head will pass my body must pass also.” And one could not argue with a king, or override that immovable obstinacy so often to be found in a gentle person like Charles Stuart.

The chapel clock struck twelve. All was quiet again in the guardroom. Firebrace went swiftly across the courtyard and up the ramp to the battlements, looking along them in either direction to make sure that no one was about. The darkness beyond the walls was impenetrable. He groped along the ground for a pebble or two and slipped them into his pocket. And as he went softly back towards the Governor’s house the thought came to him, “Next time I walk here—in a matter of minutes now—it will be done. The King will have escaped.”

Carefully judging his distance he tossed up a pebble, which was the agreed signal to let the King know the coast was clear. In his tensed state he thought the faint tinkle it made against the glass sounded loud as the crack of doom. He wondered if Mary had heard it from the room above, and whether she was thinking of him. And presently came the creak of one of the King’s casements being pushed cautiously open. Something struck with a soft flop against the stone wall a foot or two above his head. He reached up a hand and found it to be the knotted end of a rope. Once more he took a swift look round. There was no sign of light or stir anywhere about the castle. So far all was going well. He had only to wait until the King climbed out. He waited for what seemed a long time. He remembered that Charles was unaccustomed to doing manual tasks for himself. In the darkness it might take him some time to make sure the other end of the rope was securely fastened to a bedpost. But surely not so long as all this. He should be out of the window by now. Firebrace jerked gently at the rope to assure him that he was there, waiting to guide him to the ground. But there was no answering jerk and after what seemed an eternity he heard a groaning. The suppressed but continued groaning of a man in desperate pain or difficulty.

Sweat broke out upon Firebrace’s forehead. “He is stuck fast!” he thought in panic. “I was right about the bars being too narrow, and now he can neither come out nor pull himself back again.”

His first instinct was to get back into the house and tell Dowcett or Titus so that they might go to the King’s aid. But of what use, since the State Room door was locked from the inside? He dared not call up and question the King himself. There was nothing he could do to help. He could only stand still, listening to that laboured groaning until it suddenly ceased and all was silence. Desperate with anxiety, he decided to climb up from the outside and see what was wrong, though his weight on the rope might make matters worse. He reached up for the end of it, but even as he did so it was jerked from his grasp. So at least the King must be sufficiently recovered to see the necessity of hauling it in and hiding it. Relief and dismay strove almost ludicrously in Firebrace. Conscious only that he had grown very cold waiting in the night without any kind of cloak, he stood there not knowing what to do.

Presently a light glowed above him as a candle was lighted and set in the wide window. By the light of it he could see that each of the casements was now fast closed, and knew it to be a sign to him that all further attempt at escape was impossible. He stared upwards, still hoping against hope; and when after a few minutes the light was put out, it was as if all his high hopes were put out with it. He guessed that his master had undressed and gone to bed.

Involuntarily, Harry Firebrace’s mind skimmed over all the hastily exchanged scraps of information, the difficulties overcome, the excitement and the comradeship of the past three months; and suddenly he felt very tired.

His thoughts went to Osborne and Worsley, sound Royalists who would be as disappointed as himself. Slowly, without any excitement at all, he retraced his steps to the south battlements. Helplessly he stood at the appointed place. The cord by which he had hoped to lower the King was wound about his waist, but without some trusty friend to hold it he could not lower himself down sheer wall and escarpment. Although Osborne and Worsley would be on the alert for the slightest sound, he dared not call to them. He stood there, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the midnight cold. And as his mind groped for some means of communicating with them his right hand encountered the remaining pebbles in his pocket. How often as a boy had he not skimmed stones across some lake? Using his thumb as a catapult he skimmed one now, through the air across the moat. And then another and another. And at last to his relief an answering stone struck the masonry of the gun embrasure behind him. He hooted softly, mournfully, in what he hoped was a fair imitation of an owl. And presently the long, whirring call of a nightjar answered from the direction of the trees. Three times in succession the reassuring realistic call came until he was certain that its originator must be Edward Worsley, who was familiar with the call of every bird on the island.

Soon he heard the chink of a bridle farther away towards the road to Gatcombe. They had understood. They were moving off. There was nothing more to stay for. Harry Firebrace let himself into the house by the window which Mary had left unlatched for him. He tiptoed upstairs and threw himself fully dressed across his bed.

“So it is all to do again!” he yawned, being young and optimistic.