On Friday the thirtieth of August, I lay all day upon my bed, for to gather with the others now would be a farce, and in any case I had not the strength to do so. My cowardly soul forbade me watch the children beg and cry for their one crust of bread. Matty brewed me a cup of tea, and it seemed wrong to swallow even that. Hunger had made me listless, and, heedless of danger, I let Dick come and lie upon his mattress by my bed, while he gnawed a bone that Matty had scavenged for him. His eyes looked larger than ever in his pale face, and his black curls were lank and lusterless. It seemed to me that in his hunger he grew more like his mother, and sometimes, looking down on him, I would fancy she had stepped into his place and it was Mary Howard I fed and sheltered from the enemy, and she who licked the bones with little pointed teeth and tore at the strips of flesh with small, eager paws.
Matty herself was hollow eyed and sallow. Gone were the buxom hips and the apple cheeks. Whatever food she could purloin from her friend the scullion—and there was precious little now for the men themselves—she smuggled to Dick or to the children.
During the day, while I slipped from one racking dream into another, with Dick curled at my feet like a puppy, Matty leaned up against the window, staring at the mist that had followed now upon the rain, and hid the tents and horses from us.
The hoofbeats woke me shortly after two, and Matty, opening the window, peered down into the outer court and watched them pass under the gatehouse to the courtyard. Some dozen officers, she said, with an escort of troopers, and the leader on a great black horse wearing a dark gray cloak. She slipped from the room to watch them descend from their horses in the inner court, and came back to say that Lord Robartes had stood himself on the steps to receive them, and they had all passed into the dining chamber with sentries before the doors.
Even my tired brain seized the salient possibility—that this was the last council to be held, and that the Earl of Essex had come to it in person. I pressed my hands over my eyes to still my aching head. “Go find your scullion,” I said to Matty. “Do what you will to him, but make him talk.” She nodded, tightening her lips, and before she went she brought another bone to Dick, from some lair within her own small room, and, luring him with it like a dog to his kennel, got him to his cell beneath the buttress.
Three, four, five, and it was already murky, the evening drawing in early because of the mist and rain, when I heard the horses pass beneath the archway once again, and so out across the park. At half past five Matty returned. What she had been doing those intervening hours I never asked her from that day to this, but she told me the scullion was without, and wished to speak to me. She lit the candles, for I was in darkness, and as I raised myself upon my elbow I questioned her with my eyes, and she gave a jerk of her head towards the passage.
“If you give him money,” she whispered, “he will do anything you ask him.” I bade her fetch my purse, which she did, and then, going to the door, she beckoned him within.
He stood blinking in the dim light, a sheepish grin on his face—but that face, like ours, was lean and hungry.
I beckoned him to my bed, and he came near, with a furtive glance over his shoulder. I gave him a gold piece, which he pocketed instantly. “What news have you?” I asked.
He looked at Matty, and she nodded. He ran his tongue over his lips.
“ ’Tis only rumor,” he said, “but it’s what they’re saying in the courtyard.” He paused, and looked again towards the door.
“The retreat begins tonight,” he said. “There’ll be five thousand of them marching through darkness to the beaches. You’ll hear them, if you listen. They’ll come this way, down to Pridmouth and Polkerris. The boats will take them off when the wind eases.”
“Horses can’t embark in small boats,” I said. “What will your generals do with their two thousand horse?”
He shook his head, and glanced at Matty. I gave him another gold piece.
“I had but a word with Sir William Balfour’s groom,” he said. “There’s talk of breaking through the Royalist lines tonight, when the foot retreat. I can’t answer for the truth of it, nor could he.”
“What will happen to you and the other cooks?” I asked.
“We’ll go by sea, same as the rest,” he said.
“Not likely,” I said. “Listen to the wind.”
It was soughing through the trees in the warren, and the rain spattered against my casement.
“I can tell you what will happen to you,” I said. “The morning will come, and there won’t be any boats to take you from the beaches. You will huddle there, in the driving wind and rain with a thundering great southwest sea breaking down at Pridmouth and the country people coming down on you all from the cliffs with pitchforks in their hands. Cornish folk are not pleasant when they are hungry.”
The man was silent, and passed his tongue over his lips once again.
“Why don’t you desert?” I said. “Go off tonight, before worse can happen to you. I can give you a note to a Royalist leader.”
“That’s what I told him,” said Matty. “A word from you to Sir Richard Grenvile would see him through to our lines.”
The man looked from one to the other of us, foolish, doubtful, greedy. I gave him a third gold piece. “If you break through to the King’s army,” I said, “within an hour, and tell them there what you have just told me—about the horse trying to run for it before morning—they’ll give you plenty more of these gold pieces, and a full supper into the bargain.” He scratched his head, and looked again at Matty. “If the worst comes to the worst and you’re held prisoner,” I told him, “it would be better than having the bowels torn out of you by Cornishmen.”
It was this last word that settled him. “I’ll go,” he said, “if you’ll write a word for me.”
I scribbled a few words to Richard, which were as like as not never to reach his hands (nor did they do so, as I afterward discovered), and bade the fellow find his way through the woods to Fowey if he could, and in the growing darkness get a boat to Bodinnick, which was held by the Royalists, and there give warning of the rebel plan.
It would be too late, no doubt, to do much good, but it was at least a venture worth the trying. When he had gone, with Matty to speed him on his way, I lay back on my bed and listened to the rain, and as it fell I heard in the far distance, from the high road beyond the park, the tramp of marching feet. Hour after hour they sounded, tramp, tramp, without a pause, through the long hours of the night, with the bugle crying thin and clear above the moaning of the wind. When the morning broke, misty, and wet, and gray, they were still marching there upon the high road, bedraggled, damp, and dirty, hundred upon hundred straggling in broken lines across the park and making for the beaches.
Order was gone by midday on Saturday, discipline was broken, for as a watery sun gleamed through the scurrying clouds we heard the first sounds of gunfire from Lostwithiel, as Richard’s army broke upon them from the rear. We sat at our windows, hunger at last forgotten, with the rain blowing in our weary faces, and all day long they trudged across the park, a hopeless tangle now of men and horses and wagons; voices yelling orders that were not once obeyed, men falling to the ground in weariness and refusing to move further, horses, carts, and the few cattle that remained all jammed and bogged together in the sea of mud that once had been a park. The sound of the gunfire drew nearer, and the rattle of musket shots, and one of the servants, climbing to the belfry, reported that the high ground near Castledore was black with troops and smoke and flame, while down from the fields came little running figures, first a score, then fifty, then a hundred, then a hundred more, to join the swelling throng about the lanes and in the park.
And the rain went on, and the retreat continued.
At five o’clock word went round the house that we were every one of us to descend to the gallery. Even John, from his sickbed, must obey the order. The rest had little strength to drag their feet, and I found difficulty in holding to my chair. Nothing had passed our lips now but weak herb tea for two whole days. Alice looked like a ghost, for I think she had denied herself entirely for the sake of her three little girls. Her sister Elizabeth was scarcely better, and her year-old baby in her arms was as still as a waxen doll. Before I left my chamber I saw that Dick was safe within his cell, and this time, in spite of protestations, I closed the stone that formed the entrance.
A strange band we were, huddled there together in the gallery, with wan faces; the children strangely quiet, and an ominously heavy look about their hollow eyes. It was the first time I had seen John since that morning a month ago, and he seemed most wretchedly ill, his skin a dull yellow color, and shaking still in every limb. He looked across at me as though to ask a question, and I nodded to him, summoning a smile. We sat there waiting, no one with the heart or strength to speak. A little apart from us, near the center window, sat Gartred with her daughters. They too were thinner and paler than before, and I think had not tasted chicken now for many days, but, compared to the poor Rashleigh and Courtney babies, they were not ill nourished.
I noticed that Gartred wore no jewels and was very plainly dressed, and somehow the sight of this gave me a strange foreboding. She took no notice of us, beyond a few words to Mary on her entrance, and seated beside the little table in the window she proceeded to play patience. She turned the cards with faces uppermost, considering them with great intentness. This, I thought, is the moment she has been waiting for for over thirty days.
Suddenly there was a tramping in the hall and into the gallery came Lord Robartes, his boots splashed with mud, the rain running from his coat. His staff officers stood beside him, and one and all wore faces grim and purposeful.
“Is everybody in the household here?” he called harshly.
Some sort of murmur rose from among us, which he took to be assent.
“Very well, then,” he said, and, walking towards my sister Mary and her stepson John, he stood confronting them.
“It has come to my knowledge,” he said, “that your malignant husband, madam, and your father, sir, have concealed upon the premises large quantities of silver, which should by right belong to Parliament. The time has ended for any trifling or protestation. Pressure is being brought to bear upon our armies at this moment, forcing us to a temporary withdrawal. The Parliament needs every ounce of silver in the land, to bring this war to a successful conclusion. I ask you, madam, therefore, to tell me where the silver is concealed.”
Mary, God bless her ignorance, turned up her bewildered face to him.
“I know nothing of any silver,” she said, “except the few pieces of plate we have kept of our own, which you now possess, having my keys.”
“I talk of great quantities, madam, stored in some place of hiding, until it can be transported by your husband to the Mint.”
“My husband was Collector for Cornwall, that is true, my lord. But he has never said a word to me about concealing it at Menabilly.”
He turned from her to John.
“And you sir? No doubt your father told you all his affairs?”
“No,” said John firmly. “I know nothing of my father’s business, nor have I any knowledge of a hiding place. My father’s only confidant is his steward, Langdon, who is with him at present. No one here at Menabilly can tell you anything at all.”
For a moment Lord Robartes stared down at John, then, turning away, he called to his three officers. “Sack the house,” he said briefly. “Strip the hangings and all furnishings. Destroy everything you find. Take all jewels, clothes, and valuables. Leave nothing of Menabilly but the bare walls.”
At this poor John struggled to his feet. “You cannot do this,” he said. “What authority has Parliament given you to commit such wanton damage? I protest, my lord, in the name of common decency and humanity.” And my sister Mary, coming forward, threw herself upon her knees. “My Lord Robartes,” she said, “I swear to you by all I hold most dear that there is nothing concealed within my house. If it were so I would have known of it. I do implore you to show mercy to my home.”
Lord Robartes stared down at her, his eyes hard.
“Madam,” he said, “why should I show your house mercy, when none was shown to mine? Both victor and loser pay the penalty in civil war. Be thankful that I have heart enough to spare your lives.” And with that he turned on his heel and went from us, taking his officers with him and leaving two sentries at the door.
Once again he mounted his horse in the courtyard and rode away, back to the useless rearguard action that was being fought in the hedges and ditches up at Castledore, with the mizzle rain falling thick and fast. We heard the major he had left in charge snap forth an order to his men—and straightway they started tearing at the paneling in the dining chamber. We could hear the woodwork rip, and the glass shatter as they smashed the mullioned windows. At this first warning of destruction Mary turned to John, the tears ravaging her face. “For God’s sake,” she said, “if you know of any hiding place, tell them of it, so that we save the house. I will take full blame upon myself when your father comes.” John did not answer. He looked at me. And no one of the company there present saw the look save Gartred, who at that moment raised her head. I made no motion of my lips. I stared back at him, as hard and merciless as Lord Robartes. He waited a moment, then answered very slowly, “I know naught of any hiding place.”
I think had the rebels gone about their work with shouts and merriment, or even drunken laughter, the destruction of the house would have been less hard to bear. But because they were defeated troops, and knew it well, they had cold savage murder in their hearts, and did what they had to do in silence.
The door of the gallery was open, with the two sentries standing on guard beside it, and no voices were uplifted, no words spoken. There was only the sound of the ripping wood, the breaking of the furniture, the hacking to pieces of the great dining table, and the grunts of the men as they lifted their axes. The first thing that was thrown down to us across the hall, torn and split, was the portrait of the King, and even the muddied heel that had been ground upon the features, and the great crack across the mouth, had not distorted those melancholy eyes that stared up at us without complaint from the wrecked canvas.
We heard them climb the stairs and break into the south rooms, and as they tore down the door of Mary’s chamber she began to weep long and silently, and Alice took her in her arms and hushed her like a child. The rest of us did nothing, but sat like specters, inarticulate. Then Gartred looked towards me from her window. “You and I, Honor, being the only members of the company without a drop of Rashleigh blood, must pass the time somehow. Tell me, do you play piquet?”
“I haven’t played it since your brother taught me, sixteen years ago,” I answered.
“The odds are in my favor, then,” she said. “Will you risk a partie?” As she spoke she smiled, shuffling her cards, and I guessed the double meaning she would bring to it.
“Perhaps,” I said, “there is more at stake than a few pieces of silver.”
We heard them tramping overhead, and the sound of the splitting axe, while the shivering glass from the casements fell to the terrace outside.
“You are afraid to match your cards against mine?” said Gartred.
“No,” I said. “No, I am not afraid.”
I pushed my chair towards her and sat opposite her at the table. She handed the cards for me to cut and shuffle, and when I had done so, I returned them to her for the dealing, twelve apiece. There started then the strangest partie of piquet that I have ever played, before or since, for while Gartred risked a fortune I wagered for Richard’s son, and no one knew it but myself. The rest of the company, dumb and apathetic, were too weak even to wonder at us, and if they did it was with shocked distaste and shuddering dislike, that we—because we did not belong to Menabilly—could show ourselves so heartless.
“Five cards,” called Gartred.
“What do they make?” I said.
“Making nine.”
“Good.”
“Five.”
“A quart major, nine. Three knaves.”
“Not good.”
She led with the ace of hearts, to which I played the ten, and as she took the trick we heard the rebels wrenching the tapestry from the bedroom walls above. There was a dull smoldering smell, and a wisp of smoke blew past the windows of the gallery.
“They are setting fire,” said John quietly, “to the stables and the farm buildings before the house.”
“The rain will surely quench the flames,” whispered Joan.
“They cannot burn fiercely, not in the rain.”
One of the children began to wail, and I saw gruff Deborah take her on her knee and murmur to her. The smoke of the burning buildings was rank and bitter in the steady rain, and the sound of the axes overhead and the tramping of the men was as though they were felling trees in a thick forest, instead of breaking to pieces the great four-poster bed where Alice had borne her babies. They threw the glass mirror out onto the terrace, where it splintered to a thousand fragments, and with it came the broken candlesticks, the tall vases, and the tapestried chairs.
“Fifteen,” said Gartred, leading the king of diamonds, and “Eighteen,” I answered, trumping it with my ace.
Some of the rebels, with a sergeant in charge of them, came down the staircase, and they had with them all the clothing they had found in Jonathan’s and Mary’s bedroom, and her jewels too, and combs, and the fine figured arras that had hung upon the walls. This they loaded in bundles upon the packhorses that waited in the courtyard. When they were fully laden a trooper led them through the archway, and two more took their place. Through the broken windows of the wrecked dining chamber we could see the disordered rebel bands still straggling past the smoldering farm buildings towards the meadows and the beach, and as they gazed up at the house, grinning, their fellows at the house windows, warming to their work and growing reckless, shouted down to them with jeers and catcalls, throwing out the mattresses, the chairs, the tables—all they could lay hands upon which would make fodder for the flames that rose reluctantly in the slow drizzle from the blackened farm buildings.
There was one fellow making a bundle of all the clothing and the linen. Alice’s wedding gown, and the little frocks she had embroidered for her children, and all Peter’s rich apparel that she had kept with such care in her press till he should need it. The tramping ceased from overhead, and we heard them pass into the rooms beneath the belfry. Some fellow, in mockery, began to toll the bell, and the mournful clanging made a new sound in our ears, mingling with the shouting and yelling and rumble of wagon wheels that still came to us from the park, and the ever-increasing bark of cannon shot, now barely two miles distant.
“They will be in the gatehouse now,” said Joan. “All your books and your possessions, Honor, they will not spare them any more than ours.” There was reproach in her voice, and disillusion, that her favorite aunt and godmother should show no sign of grief. “My cousin Jonathan would never have permitted this,” said Will Sparke, his voice high with hysteria. “Had there been plate concealed about the premises he would have given it, and willingly, rather than have his whole house robbed, and we, his relatives, lose everything.” Still the bell tolled and the ceilings shook with heavy, murderous feet, and down into the inner court now they threw the debris from the west part of the building, portraits, and benches, rugs and hangings, all piled on top of one another in hideous confusion, while those below discarded the less valuable, and fed them to the flames.
We started upon the third hand of the partie. “A tierce to a king,” called Gartred, and “Good,” I replied, following her lead of spades. And all the while I knew that the rebels had now come to the last room of the house, and were tearing down the arras before the buttress. I saw Mary raise her grief-stricken face and look toward us. “If you would say one word to the officer,” she said to Gartred, “he might prevent the men from further damage. You are a friend of Lord Robartes, and have some sway with him. Is there nothing you can do?”
“I could do much,” said Gartred, “if I were permitted. But Honor tells me it is better for the house to fall about our ears. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. My trick, I fancy.”
She wrote her score on the tablets by her side.
“Honor,” said Mary, “you know that it will break Jonathan’s heart to see his home laid desolate. All that he has toiled and lived for, and his father before him, for nearly fifty years. If Gartred can in some way save us, and you are trying to prevent her, I can never forgive you, nor will Jonathan, when he knows of it.”
“Gartred can save no one, unless she likes to save herself,” I answered, and began to deal for the fourth hand.
“Five cards,” called Gartred.
“Equal,” I answered.
“A quart to a king.”
“A quart to a knave.”
We were in our fifth and last game, each winning two apiece, when we heard them tramping down the stairs, with the major in the lead. The terrace and the courtyard were heaped high with wreckage, the loved possessions and treasures of nearly fifty years, even as Mary had said, and what had not been packed upon the horses was left now to destroy. They set fire to the remainder, and watched it burn, the men leaning upon their axes and breathing hard now that the work was over. When the pile was well alight the major turned his back upon it, and coming into the gallery clicked his heels and bowed derisively to John.
“The orders given me by Lord Robartes have been carried out with implicit fidelity,” he announced. “There is nothing left within Menabilly House but yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and the bare walls.”
“And you found no silver hidden?” asked Mary.
“None, madam, but your own—now happily in our possession.”
“Then this wanton damage, this wicked destruction, has been for nothing?”
“A brave blow has been struck for Parliament, madam, and that is all that we, her soldiers and her servants, need consider.”
He bowed and left us, and in a moment we heard him call further orders, and horses were brought, and he mounted and rode away even as Lord Robartes had done an hour before. The flames licked the rubble in the courtyard, and save for their dull hissing, and the patter of the rain, there was suddenly no other sound. A strange silence had fallen upon the place. Even the sentries stood no longer by the door. Will Sparke crept to the hall.
“They’ve gone,” he said. “They’ve all ridden away. The house is bare, deserted.”
I looked up at Gartred, and this time it was I who smiled, and I who spread my cards upon the table.
“Discard for carte blanche,” I said softly, and, adding ten thus to my score, I led her for the first time, and with my next hand drew three aces to her one, and gained the partie.
She rose then from the table without a word, save for one mock curtsy to me, and calling her daughters to her, went upstairs. I sat alone, shuffling the cards as she had done, while out into the hall faltered the poor weak members of our company to gaze about them, stricken at the sight that met their eyes.
The panels ripped, the floors torn open, the windows shattered from their frames, and all the while the driving rain, that had neither doors nor windows now to bar it, blew in upon their faces, soft and silent, with great flakes of charred timber and dull soot from the burning rubble in the courtyard. The last rebels had retreated to the beaches, save for the few who still made the stand at Castledore, and there was no trace of them left now at Menabilly but the devastation they had wrought, and the black, churning slough that once was road and park. As I sat there, listening, still shuffling the cards in my hands, I heard, for the first time, a new note above the cannon and the musket shot and the steady pattering rain. Not clamoring or insistent, like the bugle that had haunted me so long, but quick, triumphant, coming ever nearer, the sharp, brisk tattoo of the Royalist drums.