Mary of Carisbrooke (4 page)

Edward Trattle rode part way home with her lest there should be any roughness among the crowd, and once back in the castle, her estimate of her own unimportance seemed to be only too correct. She had missed the garrison’s diligently drilled reception, which she would have been so proud to watch, and was scolded for loitering because the imposing Trattle salt cellar was only just in time for the King’s table. And far from gazing at their important guests, she spent the rest of the day obeying her aunt’s instructions and running up and down the backstairs trying to help the flustered servants. From time to time, as the dishes were being carried in, she caught the sound of men’s animated voices. And once when she paused to rearrange a dish of fruit which one of the men servants was carrying, she heard Colonel Hammond saying very politely that he trusted his Majesty would not find island hospitality too inadequate after the luxury of Hampton Court, and then, before the door shut again, that quiet voice which she now knew to be the King’s assuring him that it was a comfort indeed after the inn at Cowes where they had been obliged to spend the previous night.

The momentous November day darkened early and after attending evensong his Majesty was pleased to retire to the room which had been so carefully prepared for him. All three of his gentlemen went in, too, to undress him. To Mary, so completely ignorant of the complicated etiquette of courts, it seemed strange that one man—even a king—could need the services of three people to prepare him for bed. But perhaps, she thought, they wanted to talk among themselves without their host. She could not know how near the truth she was. All she knew was that most of the servants would have given anything to go to bed, too. But there was the royal supper table to clear as well as the ordinary tables for the household in the hall below, the fires to be damped down and the best silver to be put away. Relieved at last of his formal duties the Governor himself was standing looking uncertainly at the closed door of the King’s room when he found himself waylaid by Mistress Wheeler and the head cook wanting their orders for the morrow.

“Must we prepare for any more guests?” asked the housekeeper.

“I suppose that all the island gentry will expect to come up and pay their respects,” said the Governor, passing a hand over his high forehead. “Certainly Sir John Oglander. His Majesty had been asking for him. He seems to have expected to find him here.”

“Whether he comes or not we shall need more poultry,” announced Cheke, the cook, firmly.

“To-morrow I will see what I can do,” promised the harassed Colonel, heading for his hastily arranged quarters in the officers’ wing.

“If he would just give one word of praise for all our work!” sighed Druscilla Wheeler. At any other time she would not have demeaned herself by discussing even a Parliamentarian governor with any save her own intimate friends; but she was nearing sixty and had been on her feet since dawn.

“When Lord Portland gave a dinner party he drove us much harder,” recalled Cheke, looking disapprovingly after the tall departing figure of his present master. “But he always let us know afterwards what he thought of the sweets and the sauces, and often came down and drank a glass of wine with us afterwards.”

“The trouble with this one is that no one knows what he thinks about anything!” agreed Mistress Wheeler.

Aunt and niece began to mount the backstairs to their well-earned rest. This day, so utterly different from all others in their lives, would soon be done. But as they tiptoed past the best bedroom the door opened quietly. To their surprise, Mr. Ashburnham stood tall and solemn in the lamplit passage with something white held across his extended arms. “There will be his Majesty’s shirt to wash, madam,” he said, holding it towards the castle housekeeper as reverently as though it were the Holy Grail.

“To-night?” stammered that weary lady, taken aback.

Ashburnham’s features relaxed into a sad, propitiating smile. “Having left Hampton so hurriedly, he has no other,” he explained simply.

It was a plight they had not thought of. “Perhaps Colonel Hammond could lend—” she began; but one glance at the exquisitely stitched garment and the recollection of the Governor’s severely starched linen dried up the words. “But how could we get it laundered and aired before his Majesty rises?” she asked instead.

“And his Majesty’s collar,” insisted Ashburnham imperturbably. “We rode hard from Hampton and he has already been obliged to wear it two days.”

“The servants are at last gone to their beds,” objected Mistress Wheeler, feeling that this day she could do no more.

“It does not concern the servants. No one at Court, Madam, touches his Majesty’s linen save the royal laundress.”

For once Druscilla Wheeler was at a loss. In all her careful planning, this was a contingency which she had overlooked. There was no royal laundress at Carisbrooke. Only the giggling, clumsy laundry maids. “My niece is clever with her hands,” she said, falling back in her weariness upon a familiar phrase.

“Old Brett has not yet damped down the fire in your room. I could dry them by that,” suggested Mary, in a small tired voice.

“It will mean sitting up half the night to get them just right for pressing,” her aunt reminded her, turning away as though the matter had passed beyond her control.

All Mary longed for was the small, hard bed in her little attic room next to the maidservant’s dormitory; but she found herself obediently stretching out her arms in unconscious imitation of the King’s confidential friend, while very carefully he laid the King’s shirt across them and placed the elaborate lace collar on top of it. “What shall I do with them when they are ready, sir?” she asked, with her usual common sense.

“Bring them to this door before the King breaks his fast, and one of us will take them.” His master’s need provided for, John Ashburnham smiled down at her like the great gentleman he was. “This is the second time I find myself indebted to you,” he added gently.

Aunt Druscilla was already halfway up the stairs. Standing there with the lamplight shining on her ruffled curls and the King of England’s garments in her arms, Mary looked very childlike and uncertain. “I pray God I will do them aright!” she murmured anxiously.

The weight of a far greater responsibility had already deepened the lines on John Ashburnham’s face. “Since it was I who persuaded the King to cross the Solent, I too have good reason this night to pray God that I have done aright,” he said, sharing her burden and drawing her unwittingly into the companionship of a cause.

When Mary woke next morning it was full daylight and Libby was standing beside her with a plate of bread and honey and a mug of milk. “The King’s shirt—” Mary stammered, struggling up in bed although still heavy with belated sleep.

“Mistress Wheeler found it where you’d set it to air and took it to them,” Libby reassured her. “She said not to waken you. That you’d done right well.”

“Did she really, Libby?” A warm feeling of happiness filled Mary at such unaccustomed praise. Eating her bread and honey she savoured the luxurious novelty of not rising at dawn and considered the prospects of an unpredictable Monday morning. “To-day will be even busier,” she prophesied. “The Governor said that Sir John Oglander and all the other gentry might be coming.”

“He’s already sent two of the men to fetch them to meet him in Newport. To ask ’em up here to dinner, I reckon. And your aunt’s invited the folk from the ‘Rose and Crown’ to see ’em arrive.”

“Then I must be getting up.”

“I reckon ’er won’t be sendin’ me away now?” Libby asked.

“I am sure she cannot spare you,” said Mary. “That is one good thing the King’s coming has done.”

The chambermaid’s dark eyes softened behind half-lowered lashes as she waited to take the plate. “All the same, you was mortal kind, Mistress Mary. And I b’aint one to forget—not if there should ever be any ways I could do ought for
you
.”

Embarrassed by the girl’s gratitude, Mary got out of bed and began washing her face at an earthenware basin. But Libby still lingered, the empty mug and platter in her work-roughened hands. “Tom Rudy b’aint come back,” she said.

“Maybe Captain Rolph left him at Cowes,” suggested Mary, sensing the anxiety behind the flatly uttered words. “I did hear my father say something yesterday about Colonel Hammond wanting the ports watched.”

“That’ll be it, I expect, because Captain Rolph b’aint back neither.”

“Now you say so I don’t remember seeing him at supper last night. But we were all so busy.”

“I should ha’ thought you would ha’ noticed.”

The girl’s quizzing glance brought the colour to Mary’s wet cheeks so that she hid them quickly with a towel. “Why should I?” she asked defensively.

Libby, so much more sex wise than she, turned on her heel and lifted the door latch. “Because of the way he looks at you.”

“What way?” asked Mary, standing in the middle of the room in her shift.

“The same as Tom used to look at me,” said Libby, opening the door with the point of her heavy shoe and letting it bang behind her.

Her words lay menacingly at the back of Mary’s mind throughout a busy morning. For some weeks she had known them to be true; and the uncomfortable knowledge had been the beginning of womanhood.

While she helped her aunt to make the King’s bed they both looked from time to time from the window to see their royal visitor walking in the herb garden or climbing the steps on to the battlements with his gentlemen. They supposed he must have slept well because he looked brisk and cheerful and seemed to be admiring the view.

“Where do you suppose his crown is?” asked Mary, glancing round the unchanged neatness of the room.

“How should I know, child?” laughed her aunt. “Surely you did not expect him to ride the best part of a hundred miles in it, or to bring it in his saddle bag?”

“He does not seem to have brought anything except his Bible.”

Even in the haste of his escape from Hampton Court he had found time and space to bring
that
. The exquisitely bound book lay upon his table. Together they stood and admired it. “He is very considerate and gentle and thanks people for quite ordinary services,” said Mistress Wheeler, her sharp-featured face softening. “This morning he sent for me and said he hoped his sudden coming had not caused us too much trouble. And he even had a word for old Brett when he came in to make up the fire.”

Mary touched the worn leather cover of the Bible with reverent fingers. “Perhaps he is one who really lives by it instead of just quoting it at other people,” she said, remembering how fiercely the new Puritan preacher had hurled texts at her and Frances for dancing with some of the young men at the Michaelmas Fair.

Now that the King was really with them and making none of the difficult demands which they had expected, the Castle household became less flustered. And after all the Governor did not invite any of the island gentry to dine. He had told them quite frankly that the coming of the royal party had caught him unawares and that the Castle larder was already sadly depleted, and most of them had promised to send poultry and game from their own estates. And after dining with them in Newport he brought them back with him to be presented to the King, which gave nobody any trouble at all. From the window of the housekeeper’s room Frances and Mary, with Mistress Trattle, watched them arrive, led by kind, portly Sir John Oglander. Most of them were only squires of small country manors, but to the two island girls they seemed to make a brave show.

“Here comes young Mr. Worsley riding through the gateway now!” whispered Frances, squeezing Mary’s arm. “How handsome he is! Do you suppose he will look up?”

“I like the look of Barnabas Leigh,” whispered back Mary. “And look, there is your Captain Burley. I am so glad for him that he was able to come.”

“They all look so solemn and nervous one would think they were going to an execution!” giggled Frances, all unaware how swiftly jesting can sharpen into reality.

They all disappeared into the Governor’s lodgings to kiss the King’s hand and afterwards Floyd, who was on duty, told the women how gracious his Majesty had been and how quickly he had set them all at ease. And when they left, the King himself came out and walked across the courtyard with Sir John Oglander and stood talking apart with him by the gateway.

“His Majesty has arranged to go and visit the Oglanders at Nunwell next Thursday,” Silas Floyd told the little company in his sister’s room, as soon as he was free to join them.

“I warrant he wishes Sir John were still Deputy Governor,” said Mistress Wheeler.

“If you ask me I think none of them from Hampton Court realized how thoroughly Parliament had clipped his wings,” said Floyd.

“You mean that had they known they would not have come?” asked Agnes Trattle.

Sergeant Floyd went and stood by the window, running a playful hand through his daughter’s curls. “I would not say that,” he answered thoughtfully. “This Ashburnham seems to have high hopes of Colonel Hammond’s help, and no one can say but what he has acted very properly. He told the militia captains to hold their companies ready in case of any trouble, and gave orders that any large groups of people are to be dispersed. And he has set guards at Cowes and Yarmouth and Ryde to keep all suspicious strangers out.”

“Then he means to keep the King safe from another wicked attempt upon his life,” concluded Agnes Trattle with relief.

“He certainly means to keep him
safe
,” agreed Floyd, more grimly. “But it may have occurred to his Majesty by now that the same guards could keep him in.”

“Perhaps that is why he is so anxious to visit Sir John privately,” suggested Druscilla Wheeler.

The Governor showed his unwanted guest every possible civility. He accompanied him about the island, visiting at Gatcombe and Billingham, and going hunting with him in Parkhurst forest. In fact, it looked at times as if he did not want to let him out of his sight. But when the day came for the Nunwell visit Hammond was obviously a very worried man. Sir John had not invited him and there was nothing he could do about it. And the King’s pleasure, as he mounted his horse and rode away, could not be hidden.

Hammond saw him off, standing respectfully hat in hand. Sergeant Floyd rapped out an order and the men of the garrison sprang to attention. The household watched discreetly from open windows. But the moment King Charles and his handful of friends had ridden out beneath the barbican the Governor strode back to his apartments and bolted the door, Floyd dismissed his men, casements were clapped shut and after the strain and excitement of the last five days everyone in the castle sagged almost visibly with relief.

“How long will he say at Nunwell?”

“Will he come back?”

“Will he try to join the Queen in France?”

In hall and guardroom and kitchen there was time now to ask such questions. But no one asked them half so earnestly as the Governor himself. “I could not forbid him to go. He is still the King,” he defended himself, pacing up and down the room where his mother sat.

“And your father was his favourite chaplain,” the old lady reminded him from her high-backed chair beside the fire.

“It would be easier for me were that not so. If I had not been brought up with this feeling that the person of a king is sacred.”

Her pretty, faded blue eyes searched his face. “You would not betray him, Robert?”

“I am the servant of Parliament.” The words, which had been held so steadfastly in his mind during the past week, fell heavily into the quietness of the room. “It is they who gave me this appointment.”

“Not from any favouritism because you married John Hampden’s daughter, and are related to Oliver Cromwell. You earned it as a soldier. Cromwell and General Fairfax both think highly of you.”

Robert Hammond picked up one of the frail hands lying in her lap and kissed it absently, a smile for her swift maternal pride momentarily relieving the anxiety on his face. “It is a good appointment. Or
was
—until the King came. I am a plain soldier and was only too glad to get away from all the bickering on the mainland.” He took a turn or two about the room, then added. “I have sometimes wondered why they got rid of the last Governor so suddenly and gave it to me. Now I think I know.”

Mistress Hammond patted the settle invitingly and her son sat down beside her. Because of his position there was no one else on the island whom he could speak to unguardedly. Leaning forward, his fine strong hands clasped between his knees, he stared into the fire. “Suppose Cromwell
meant
him to escape from Hampton Court? Meant him to come here?” he suggested.

“Why should you think that?”

“Because they got away so easily. It is true that his Majesty is a good horseman and they had a good start, but no one seems to have pursued them. I know what well-trained Parliamentarian troops could do in a few hours if Cromwell
really
wanted to catch anyone so important. I believe that they made me the Governor of the Wight hoping that the King might come here.”

“But why should they want him to, Robert?”

“Of that I cannot be sure. If there really was some plot on his life Cromwell may have wanted to save him; or the rumour may even have been spread in order to drive him here. It seems to me that having gotten himself all the power he needs, cousin Oliver would be spared much embarrassment if he could get the King out of the country. And how much better for him if his Majesty went voluntarily!”

“You mean that from here he might get right away to France?”

“The nights are dark. Even now while he is at Nunwell he may persuade this Oglander to get him a ship.”

“It would make the poor Queen very happy,” murmured Mistress Hammond, who had known her at Whitehall.

Hammond kicked at a fallen log. “Who wants to make the Queen happy? Has not the accursed Frenchwoman made enough trouble for us all? It is now only a question which party loathes her most—Parliament, the Army or the Royalists themselves.”

“Yet she has been a loyal and courageous wife.”

“A Papist meddler!” He got up restlessly, his mind back on his own immediate problem. “If only I knew Cromwell’s mind in this! Whether he would have me play host or gaoler. I would rather let the King escape, but if not I must be given the necessary authority to hold him fast. God knows I did not want the responsibility!”

“Most men would be thinking of it as an unlooked for chance of preferment.”

“It can also be my undoing if I let him slip through my fingers when such is not their wish!”

With a deep sigh Mistress Hammond rose and faced him across the table. “It is strange to think that while we have been so occupied in receiving his Majesty here, all England must be wondering where he is,” she said. She was watching him and his very stillness betrayed him. “Or do they already know?”

She saw her son turn to her impulsively as though it would be a relief to confide in her, much as he had been wont to do as a youth when uncertain of the uprightness of his actions. But divergence of political opinions had come between them, driving him in upon himself. “I sent Rolph and one of his men to London,” he told her after a surly pause.

Tears rose to her gentle eyes. “Oh, Robert, did you have to tell them—so soon?”

“I am the servant of Parliament,” he repeated.

“But your father—”

“He will understand that a man cannot cheat the hand that feeds him.” There was an obstinate look in his eyes and he was going towards the door. His mother put out a hand to detain him. “Do Mr. Ashburnham and the others know?” she asked, thinking that if they did they would surely try to get away to France.

Hammond shook his head. “I made up my mind on the boat and sent Rolph the moment we landed on the mainland. So now, until his return, I must go on playing the pleasant host—like Judas,” he said bitterly, and strode from the room to make his daily inspection of the battlements. But for once his mind seemed to be less upon flintlocks and culverins than upon the weathervane and the view. He stood for a long time on the northern wall of the castle facing Southampton, searching the water for a ship coming into Cowes.

That evening when the lamps were lit and Mary was coming from supper, Libby ran towards her from the kitchen. Her eyes and cheeks were bright. “Oh, Mistress Mary, Tom Rudy has come back!” she announced.

“And Captain Rolph with him?” asked Mary involuntarily.

Libby nodded but was too full of her own news to tease anyone. “Tom says he will marry me” she announced breathlessly.

Mary turned immediately and kissed her, thinking that the self-confident overner could not be so bad after all. “Oh, Libby, I am so glad for you! Come into a quiet corner of the hall and tell me about it.”