"Oh, G.o.d," I whispered, "what are we to do?"
Matty closed the window gently. She stamped upon the embers of the fire.
"Come back to your chamber," she said. "Later tonight I will try here once again.
But we must not be found here now."
She carried me in her broad arms from the dark musty room, through the gatehouse, to the corridor beyond, and down to my own chamber in the eastern wing. She laid me on my bed, bringing water for my face and hands. We heard the troopers ride into the courtyard, and then the sound of footsteps down below. Impervious to man or situation, the clock beneath the belfry struck six, hammering its silly leaden notes with mechanical precision. Matty brushed the soot from my hair and changed my gown, and when she had finished there came a tap at the door. A servant with frightened face whispered that Mistress Harris was wanted down below. They put me in my chair and carried me downstairs. There had been four troopers, Matty said, riding across the park, but only three stood here, in the side hall, looking out across the gardens. They cast a curious glance upon me as Matty and the servant put me down inside the door of the dining hall. The fourth man stood by the fireplace, leaning upon a stick. And it was not another trooper like themselves, but my brother-in-law, Jonathan Rashleigh.
For a moment I was too stunned to speak, then relief, bewilderment, and something of utter helplessness swept over me and I began to cry. He took my hand and held it, saying nothing. In a minute or two I had recovered and, looking up at him, I saw what the years had done. Two, was it, he had been away in London? It might be twenty. He was, I believe, at that time but fifty-eight. He looked seventy. His hair was gone quite white; his shoulders, once so broad, were shrunk and drooping. His very eyes seemed sunk deep in his skull.
"What has happened?" I asked. "Why have you come back?"
"The debt is paid," he sa"d, and even his voice was an old man"s voice, slow and weary. "The debt is paid; the fine is now wiped out. I am free to come to Cornwall once again."
"You have chosen an ill moment to return," I answered.
"So they have warned me," he said slowly.
He looked at me, and I knew, I think, in that moment, that he had been, after all, a party to the plan. That all the guests who had crept like robbers to his house had come with his connivance, and that he, a prisoner in London, had risked his life because of them.
"You came by road?" I asked him.
"Nay, by ship," he answered, "my own ship, the Frances, which plies between Fowey and the Continent, you may remember."
"Yes, I remember."
"Her merchandise has helped me to pay my debt. She fetched me from Gravesend a week ago, when the County Committee gave me leave to go from London and return to Fowey. We came to harbour but a few hours since."
"Js Mary with you?"
"No. She went ash.o.r.e at Plymouth to see Joan at Maddercombe. The guards at Plymouth told us that a rising was feared in Cornwall and troops were gone in strength to quell it. I made all haste to come to Fowey, fearing for your safety."
"You knew then that John was not here? You knew I was--alone?"
"I knew you were--alone."
We both fell silent, our eyes upon the door.
"They have arrested Robin," I said softly, "and Peter also, I fear."
"Yes," he said, "so my guards tell me."
"No suspicion can fall upon yourself?"
"Not yet," he answered strangely.
I saw him look to the window, where the broad back of the sentry blocked the view.
Then slowly, from his pocket, he drew a folded paper, which when he straightened it I saw to be a poster, such as they stick upon the walls for wanted men. He read it to me.
" "Anyone who has harboured at any time, or seeks to harbour in the future, the malignant known as Richard Grenvile, shall, upon discovery, be arrested for high treason, his lands sequestered finally and forever, and his family imprisoned.""
He folded the paper once again.
"This," he said, "is posted upon every wall in every town in Cornwall."
For a moment I did not speak, and then I said: "They have searched this house already. Two hours ago. They found nothing."
"They will come again," he answered, "in the morning." He went back to the hearth and stood in deep thought, leaning on his stick. "My ship the Frances," he said slowly, "anchors in Fowey only for the night. Tomorrow, on the first tide, she sails for Holland."
"For Holland?"
"She carries a light cargo as far as Flushing. The master of the vessel is an honest man, faithful to any trust that I might lay upon him. Already in his charge is a young woman, whom I thought fit to call my kinswoman. Had matters been other than they are, she might have landed with me here in Fowey. But fate and circ.u.mstance decided otherwise. Therefore, she will proceed to Flushing also, in my ship the Frances."
"I don"t see," I said after a moment"s hesitation, "what this young woman has to do with me. Let her go to Holland, by all means."
"She would be easier in mind," said Jonathan Rashleigh, "if she had her father with her."
I was still too blind to understand his meaning, until he felt in his breast pocket for a note, which he handed to me.
I opened it and read the few words scribbled in an unformed youthful hand. "If you still need a daughter in your declining years," ran the message, "she waits for you on board the good ship Frances. Holland, they say, is healthier than England. Will you try the climate with me? My mother christened me Elizabeth, but I prefer to sign myself your daughter, Bess."
I said nothing for a little while, but held the note there in my hands. I could have asked a hundred questions, had I the time or inclination. Woman"s questions, such as my sister Mary might have answered, and perhaps understood. Was she pretty? Was she kind? Had she his eyes, his mouth, his auburn hair? Would she have comprehension of his lonely moods? Would she laugh with him when his moods were gay? But none of them mattered or were appropriate to the moment. Since I should never see her, it was not my affair.
"You have given me this note," I said to Jonathan, "in the hope that I can pa.s.s it to her father?"
"Yes," he answered.
Once again he looked at the broad back of the sentry at the window.
"I have told you that the Frances leaves Fowey on the early tide," he said. "A boat will put off to Pridmouth, as they go from harbour, to lift lobster pots dropped between the sh.o.r.e and the Cannis Rock. It would be a simple matter to pick up a pa.s.senger in the half-light of morning."
"A simple matter," I answered, "if the pa.s.senger is there."
"It is your business," he said, "to see then that he is."
He guessed then that Richard was concealed within the b.u.t.tress; so much I could tell from his eyes and the look he fastened now upon me.
"The sentries," I said, "keep watch upon the causeway."
"At this end only," he said softly, "not the other."
"The risk is very great," I said, "even by night, even by early morning."
"I know that," he answered, "but I think the person of whom we speak will dare that risk." Once again he drew the poster from his pocket. "If you should deliver the note," he said quietly, "you could give him this as well."
I took the poster in silence and placed it in my gown.
"There is one other thing that I would have you do," he said to me.
"What is that?"
"Destroy all trace of what has been. The men who will come tomorrow have keener noses than the troops who came today. They are scent hounds, trained to the business."
"They can find nothing from within," I answered, "you know that. Your father had the cunning of all time when he built his b.u.t.tress."
"But from without," he said, "the secret is less sure. I give you leave to finish the work begun by the Parliament in "44. I shall not seek to use the summerhouse again."
I guessed his meaning as he stood there watching me, leaning on his stick.
"Timber burns fiercely in dry weather," he said to me, "and rubble makes a pile, and the nettles and the thistles grow apace in midsummer. There will be no need to clear those nettles in my lifetime, nor in John"s either."
"Why do you not stay," I whispered, "and do this work yourself?"
But even as I spoke the door of the dining hall was opened, and the leader of the three troopers waiting in the hall entered the room.
"I am sorry, sir," he said, "but you have already had fifteen minutes of the ten allotted to you. I cannot go against my orders. Will you please make your farewell now and return with me to Fowey?"
I stared at him blankly, my heart sinking in my "I thought Mr. Rashleigh was a free agent once breast again, again?"
"The times being troublesome, my dear Honor," said Jonathan quietly, "the gentlemen in authority deem it best that I should remain at present under surveillance, u not exactly custody. I am to spend the night, therefore, in my town house at Fowey.
I regret if I did not make myself more clear. " He turned to the trooper. "I am grateful to you," he said, "for allowing me this interview with my sister-in-law. She suffers from poor health, and we have all been anxious for her."
And without another word he went from me, and I was left there, with the note in ^y hand and the poster in my gown, and the lives not only of Richard and his son, but those of the whole family of Rashleigh, depending upon my wits and my sagacity.
I waited for Matty, but she did not come to me, and, impatient at last, I rang the bell beside the hearth, and the startled servant who came running at the sound told me that Matty was not to be found; he had sought for her in the kitchen, in her bedroom, but she had not answered.
"No matter," I said, and made a pretence of taking up a book and turning the pages.
"Will you dine now, madam?" he said to me. "It is nearly seven. Long past your usual hour."
"Why, yes," I said, "if you care to bring it," feigning intensity upon my book, yet all the while counting the hours to darkness and wondering with an anxious, heavy heart what had become of Matty.
I ate my meat and drank my wine, tasting them not at all, and as I sat there in the dark-panelled dining hall with the portrait of old John Rashleigh and his wife frowning down upon me, I watched the shadows lengthen and the murky evening creep and the great banked clouds of evening steal across the sky.
It was close on nine o"clock when I heard the door open with a creak and, turning in my chair, I saw Matty standing there, her gown stained green and brown with earth.
She put her finger to her lips, and I said nothing. She came across the room and closed the shutters. As she folded the last one into place she spoke softly over her shoulder.
"He is not ill-looking, the sentry on the causeway."
"No?"
"He knows my cousin"s wife at Liskeard."
"Introductions have been made on less than that."
She fastened the hasp of the shutter and drew the heavy curtains.
"It was somewhat damp in the thistle park," she said.
"So I perceive," I answered.
"But he found a sheltered place beneath a bush, where we could talk about my cousin"s wife.... While he was looking for it I waited in the summerhouse."
"That," I said, "was understandable."
The curtains were now all drawn before the shutters and the dining hall in darkness.
Matty came and stood beside my chair.
"I lifted the flagstone," she said. "I left a letter on the steps. I said, if the rope be still in place upon the hinge, would they open the stone entrance in the b.u.t.tress tonight at twelve o"clock? We would be waiting for them."
I felt her strong comforting hand and held it between mine.
"I pray they find it," she said slowly. "There must have been a fall of earth since the tunnel last was used. The place smelt of the tomb."
We clung to each other in the darkness, and as I listened I could hear the steady thumping of her heart.
36.
I lay upon my bed upstairs from half-past nine until a quarter before twelve. When Matty came to rouse me the house was deadly still. The servants had gone to their beds in the attics, and the sentries were at their posts about the grounds. I could hear one of them pacing the walk beneath my window. The treacherous moon, never an, ally to a fugitive, rose slowly above the trees in the thistle park. We lit no candles, Matty crept to the door and listened. Then she lifted me in her arms, and we trod the long twisting corridor to the empty gatehouse. How bare were the rooms, how silent and accusing, and there was no moonlight here on the western side to throw a beam of light upon the floor. Inside the room that was our destination the ashes of our poor fire, kindled thatj afternoon, flickered feebly still, and the smoke hung in clouds about the ceiling. We sat down beside the wall in the far corner and we waited.... It was uncanny still. The stillness of a place that has not known a footstep or a voice for many years. The King"s General quietude of a long-forgotten prison where no sunlight ever penetrates, where all seasons seem alike.
Winter, summer, spring, and autumn would all come and go, but never here, never in this room. Here was eternal night. And I thought, sitting there beside the cold wall of the b.u.t.tress, that this must be the darkness that so frightened the poor idiot Uncle John when he lay here, long ago, in the first building of the house. Perhaps he lay upon this very spot on which I sat, his hands feeling the air, his wide eyes searching....
Then I felt Matty touch me on the shoulder, and as she did so the stone behind me moved.... There came, upon my back, the current of cold air I well remembered, and now, turning, I could see the yawning gulf and the narrow flight of steps behind, and I could hear the creaking of the rope upon its rusty hinge.
Although it was the sound I wanted most in all the world to hear, it struck a note of horror, like a summons from a grave. Now Matty lit her candle, and when she threw the beam onto the steps I saw him standing there, earth upon his face, his hands, his shoulders, giving him, in that weird, unnatural, ghostly light, the features of a corpse new-risen from his grave. He smiled, and the smile had in it something grim and terrible.
"I feared," he said, "you would not come. A few hours more and it would be too late."
"What do you mean? I asked.
"No air," he said. "There is only room here from the tunnel for a dog to crawl. I have no great opinion of your Rashleigh builder."
I leant forward, peering down the steps, and there was d.i.c.k, huddled at the bottom, his face as ghostly as his father"s.
"It was not thus," I said, "four years ago."
"Come," said Richard, "I will show you. A jailer should have some knowledge of the cell where she puts her prisoners."