Richard was constantly at Radford during the six months that followed. Although his main headquarters were at Buckland, and he rode frequently through both Devon and Cornwall raising new recruits to his command, a company of his men was kept at my brother’s house throughout, and his rooms always in preparation.
The reason given, that watch must be kept upon the fortresses of Mount Batten and Mount Stamford, was true enough, but I could tell from my brother’s tightened lips, and Percy and Phillipa’s determined discussion upon other matters when the General’s name was mentioned, that my presence in the house was considered to be the reason for the somewhat singular choice of residence. And when Richard with his staff arrived to spend a night or two, and I was bidden to a dinner tête-à-tête immediately upon his coming into the house, havoc at once was played with what shred of reputation might be left to me. The friendship was considered odd, unfortunate; I think, had I thrown my cap over the mills and gone to live with him at Buckland, it might have been better for the lot of us. But this I steadfastly refused to do, and even now, in retrospect, I cannot give the reason, for it will not formulate itself in words. Always, at the back of my mind, was the fear that by sharing his life with too great intimacy, I would become a burden to him, and the love we bore for one another slip to disenchantment. Here at Radford he could seek me out upon his visits, and being with me would bring him peace and relaxation, tonic and stimulation; whatever mood he would be in, weary or high spirited, I could attune myself accordingly. But had I made myself persistently available, in some corner of his house, little by little he would have felt the tug of an invisible chain, the claim that a wife brings to bear upon a husband, and the lovely freedom that there was between us would exist no more. The knowledge of my crippled state, so happily glossed over and indeed forgotten when he came to me at Radford, would have nagged me, a perpetual reproach, had I lived beneath his roof at Buckland. The sense of helplessness, of ugly inferiority, would have worked like a maggot in my mind, and even when he was most gentle and most tender I should have thought, with some devil flash of intuition: “This is not what he is wanting.”
That was my greatest fault; I lacked humility. Though sixteen years of discipline had taught me to accept crippledom and become resigned to it, I was too proud to share the stigma of it with my lover. Oh, God, what I would have given to have walked with him and ridden, to move and turn before him, to have liveliness and grace.
Even a gipsy in the hedges, a beggar woman in the gutters, had more dignity than I. He would say to me, smiling over his wine, “Next week you shall come to me at Buckland. There is a chamber, high up in the tower, looking out across the valley to the hills. This was once my grandfather’s, who fought in the Revenge, and when Drake purchased Buckland he used the chamber as his own, and hung maps upon the wall. You could lie there, Honor, dreaming of the past, and the Armada. And in the evening I would come to you, and kneel beside your bed, and we would make believe that the apple tree at Lanrest was still in bloom, and you eighteen.”
I could see the room as he described it. And the window looking to the hills. And the tents of the soldiers below. And the pennant flying from the tower, scarlet and gold. I could see too the other Honor, walking by his side upon the terrace, who might have been his lady.
And I smiled at him, and shook my head. “No, Richard,” I said, “I will not come to Buckland.”
And so the autumn passed, and a new year came upon us once again. The whole of the West Country was held firmly for the King, save Plymouth, Lyme, and Taunton, which stubbornly defied all attempts at subjugation, and the two seaports, relieved constantly by the Parliament shipping, were still in no great danger of starvation. So long as these garrisons were unsubdued the West could not be counted truly safe for His Majesty, and although the Royalist leaders were of good heart, and expressed great confidence, the people throughout the whole country were already sick and tired of war, which had brought them nothing but loss and high taxation. I believe it was the same for Parliament, and that troops deserted from the army every day. Men wanted to be home again, upon their rightful business. The quarrel was not theirs. They had no wish to fight for King or Parliament. “A plague on both your houses” was the common cry. In January Richard became Sheriff for Devon, and with this additional authority he could raise fresh troops and levies, but the way he set about it was never pleasing to the Commissioners of the county. He rode roughshod over their feelings, demanding men and money as a right, and for the smallest pretext he would have a gentleman arrested and clapped into jail, until such time as a ransom would be paid.
This would not be hearsay from my brother, but frank admissions on the part of Richard himself. Always unscrupulous where money was concerned, now that he had an army to pay, any sense of caution flew to the winds. Again and again I would hear his justification: “The country is at war. I am a professional soldier, and I will not command men who are not paid. While I hold this appointment from His Majesty, I will undertake to feed, clothe, and arm the forces at my disposal, so that they hold themselves like men and warriors and do not roam the countryside, raping and looting and in rags, like the disorderly rabble under the so-called command of Berkeley, Goring, and the rest. To do this I must have money. And to get money I must demand it from the pockets of the merchants and the gentry of Cornwall and Devon.” I think he became more hated by them every day, but by the common people more respected. His troops won such credit for high discipline that their fame spread far abroad to the eastern counties, and it was, I believe, because of this that the first seeds of jealousy began to sow themselves in the hearts and minds of his brother commanders. None of them were professionals like himself, but men of estate and fortune, who by their rank had immediately, upon the outbreak of the war, been given high commands, and expected to lead newly raised armies into battle. They were gentlemen of leisure, of no experience, and, though many of them were gallant and courageous, warfare to them consisted of a furious charge upon blood horses, dangerous and exciting, with more speed to it than a day’s hawking, and, when the fray was over, a return to their quarters to eat, and drink, and play cards, while the men they had led could fend for themselves. Let them loot the villages, and strip the poor inhabitants—it saved the leaders a vast amount of unpleasantness, and the trouble that must come from organization. But it was irritating, I imagine, to hear how Grenvile’s men were praised, and how Grenvile’s men were paid and fed and clothed, and Sir John Berkeley, who commanded the troops at Exeter, and was forever hearing complaints from the common people about Lord Goring’s cavalry, and Lord Wentworth’s foot, was glad enough, I imagine, to report to his supreme commander, Prince Maurice, that even if Grenvile’s men were disciplined, the Commissioners of Devon and Cornwall had no good word to say of Grenvile himself, and that, in spite of all the fire-eating and hanging of rebel prisoners, Plymouth was still not taken.
In the dispatches that passed between John Berkeley and Richard, which from time to time he quoted to me with a laugh, I could read the veiled hint that Berkeley at Exeter, with nothing much to do, would think it far preferable for himself and for the royal cause if he should change commands with Richard.
“They expect me,” Richard would say, “to hurl my fellows at the defenses without any regard for their lives, and, having lost three-quarters of them in one assault, recruit another five hundred the following week. Had I command of unlimited forces, and of God’s quantity of ammunition, a bombardment of three days would reduce Plymouth to ashes. But with the little I have at my disposal I cannot hope to reduce the garrison before the spring. In the meanwhile, I can keep the swine harassed night and day, which is more than Digby ever did.”
His blockade of Plymouth was complete by land, but, the rebels having command of the Sound, provisions and relief could be brought to them by sea, and this was the real secret of their success. All that Richard as Commander of the Siege could do was to wear out the defenders by constant surprise attack upon the outward positions, in the hope that in time they would, from very weariness, surrender.
It was a hopeless, grueling task, and the only people to win glory and praise for their stout hearts were the men who were besieged within the city.
It was shortly after Christmas that Richard decided to send Dick to Normandy, with his tutor, Herbert Ashley.
“It’s no life for him at Buckland,” he said. “Ever since Jo went I’ve had a guard to watch him, day and night, and the thought of him, so close to the enemy should they try a sally, becomes a constant anxiety. He can go to Caen, or Rouen; and when the business is well over I shall send for him again.”
“Would you never,” I said with diffidence, “consider returning him to London, to his mother?”
He stared at me as though I had lost my senses.
“Let him go back to that bitch-faced hag,” he said, astounded, “and become more of a little reptile than he is already? I would sooner send him this moment to Robartes, and let him hang.”
“He loves her,” I said. “She is his mother.”
“So does a pup snuggle to the cur that suckled him,” he answered, “but soon forgets her smell, once he is weaned. I have but one son, Honor, and if he can’t be a credit to me and become the man I want, I have no use for him.”
He changed the subject abruptly, and I was reminded once again how I had chosen to be friend, not wife, companion and not mistress, and to meddle with his child was not my business. So Dick rode to Radford to bid me good-bye, and put his arms about me, and said he loved me well. “If only,” he said, “you could have come with me to Normandy.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “you will not remain there long. And, anyway, it will be fresh and new to you, and you will make friends there, and be happy.”
“My father does not wish me to make friends,” he said. “I heard him say as much to Mr. Ashley. He said that in Caen there were few English, and therefore it would be better to go there than to Rouen, and that I was to speak to no one, and go nowhere, without Mr. Ashley’s knowledge or permission. I know what it is. He is afraid that I might fall in with some person who should be friendly to my mother.”
I had no answer to this argument, for I felt it to be true. “I shall not know you,” I said, summoning a smile, “the next time that I lay eyes upon you. I know how boys grow, once they are turned fifteen. I saw it with my brother Percy. You will be a young man, with lovelocks on your shoulders, and a turn for poetry, in six months’ time.”
“Fine poetry I shall write,” he sulked, “conversing in French day by day with Mr. Ashley.”
If I were in truth his stepmother, I thought, I could prevent this; and if I were in truth his stepmother, he would have hated me. So whichever way I looked upon the matter, there was no solution to Dick’s problem. He had to face the future, like his father. And so Dick and the timid, unconvincing Herbert Ashley set sail for Normandy, the last day of December, taking with them a bill in exchange for twenty pounds, which was all that the General in the West could spare them, Dick taking besides my love and blessing, which would not help at all. And while they rocked upon the Channel between Falmouth and St. Malo, Richard launched an attack upon Plymouth which this time, so he promised, would not fail. I can see him now, in his room in that north block at Radford, poring over his map of the Plymouth defenses. When I asked to look at it he tossed it to me with a laugh, saying no woman could make head or tail of his marks and crosses.
And he was right, for never had I seen a chart more scribbled upon with dots and scratches. But even my unpracticed eye could note that the network of defenses was formidable indeed, for before the town and the garrison could be attacked a chain of outer forts, or “works” as he termed them, had first to be breached. He came and stood beside me, and with his pen pointed to the scarlet crosses on the map.
“There are four works here to the north, in line abreast,” he said, “the Pennycomequick, the Maudlyn, the Holiwell, and the Lipson forts. I propose to seize them all. Once established there, we shall turn the guns against the garrison itself. My main strength will fall upon the Maudlyn works, the others being more in the nature of a feint to draw their fire.” He was in high spirits, as always before a big engagement, and, suddenly, folding his map, he said to me: “You have never seen my fellows, have you, in their full war paint, prior to a battle? Would you like to do so?”
I smiled. “Do you propose to make me your aide-de-camp?”
“No, I am going to take you round the posts.”
It was three o’clock, a cold fine afternoon in January. One of the wagons was fitted as a litter for my person, and, with Richard riding at my side, we set forth to view his army.
It was a sight that even now, when all is over and done with and the siege of Plymouth a forgotten thing except for the official records in the archives of the town, I can call before me with wonder and with pride. The main body of his army was drawn up in the fields behind the little parish of Egg Buckland (not to be confused with the Buckland Monachorum, where Richard had his headquarters) and since there had been no warning of our coming, the men were not summoned to parade, but were going about their business in preparation for the attack ahead.
The first signal that the General had come in person was a springing to attention of the guards before the camp, and straightway there came a roll upon the drums from within, followed by a second more distant, and then a third, and then a fourth, so that in the space of a few moments, so it seemed to me, the air around me rang with a tattoo, as the drums of every company sounded the alert. And swiftly, unfolding in the crisp cold air, the scarlet pennant broke from the pole head, with the golden rests staring from the center.
Two officers approached and, saluting with their swords, stood before us. This Richard acknowledged with a half gesture of his hand, and then my chair was lifted from the wagon, and, with a stalwart young corporal to propel me, we proceeded round the camp.
I can smell now the wood smoke from the fires as the blue rings rose into the air, and I can see the men, bending over their washtubs, or kneeling before the cooking pots, straightening themselves with a jerk as we approached, and standing to attention like steel rods. The foot were quartered separately from the horse, and these we inspected first, great brawny fellows of five foot ten or more, for Richard had disdain for little men and would not recruit them. They had a bronzed, clean look about them, the result, so Richard said, of living in the open. “No billeting in cottages among the village folk for Grenvile troops,” he said. “The result is always the same—slackness and loss of discipline.”
I had fresh in my mind a picture of the rebel regiment who had taken Menabilly. Although they had worn a formidable air upon first sight, with their close helmets and uniform jerkins, they had soon lost their sheen, and as the weeks wore on they became dirty looking and rough, and with the threat of defeat had one and all reverted to a London mob in panic.
Richard’s men had another stamp upon them, and, though they were drawn mostly from the farms and moors of Cornwall and of Devon, rustic in speech and origin, they had become knit, in the few months of his command, into a professional body of soldiers, quick of thought and swift of limb, with an admiration for their leader that showed at once in the upward tilt of their heads as he addressed them and the flash of pride in their eyes. A strange review. I in my chair, a hooded cloak about my shoulders, and Richard walking by my side; the campfires burning, the white frost gleaming on the clipped turf, the drums beating their tattoo as we approached each different company.
The horse were drawn up on the further field, and we watched them being groomed and watered for the night, fine sleek animals—many of them seized from rebel estates, as I was fully aware—and they stamped on the hard ground, the harness jingling, their breath rising in the cold air like the smoke from the fires.
The sun was setting, fiery red, beyond the Tamar into Cornwall, and as it sank beyond the hills it threw a last dull sullen glow upon the forts of Plymouth to the south of us.
We could see the tiny figures of the rebel sentries, like black dots, upon the outer defenses, and I wondered how many of the Grenvile men about me would make themselves a sacrifice to the spitting thunder of the rebel guns. Lastly, as evening fell, we visited the forward posts, and here there was no more cleaning of equipment, no grooming of horses, but men stripped bare for battle, silent, motionless, and we talked in whispers, for we were scarce two hundred yards from the enemy defenses.
The silence was grim, uncanny. The assault force seemed dim figures in the gathering darkness, for they had blackened their faces to make themselves less visible, and I could make out nothing of them but white eyes, gleaming, and the show of teeth when they smiled.
Their breastplates were discarded for a night attack, and in their hands they carried pikes, steely sharp. I felt the edge of one of them and shuddered.
At the last post we visited the men were not so prompt to challenge us as hitherto, and I heard Richard administer a sharp reproof to the young officer in charge. The colonel of the regiment of foot, in command of the post, came forth to excuse himself, and I saw that it was my old suitor of the past, Jo’s brother-in-law, Edward Champernowne. He bowed to me, somewhat stiffly, and then turning to Richard, I heard him stammer several attempts at explanation, and the two withdrew to a little distance. On his return Richard was silent, and we straightway turned back towards my wagon and the escort, and I knew that the review was finished.
“You must return alone to Radford,” he said. “I will send the escort with you. There will be no danger.”
“And the coming battle?” I asked. “Are you confident, and pleased?”
He paused a moment before replying. “Yes,” he answered, “yes, I am hopeful. The plan is sound, and there is nothing wanting in the men. If only my seconds were more dependable.” He jerked his head toward the post from which we had just lately come. “Your old lover, Edward Champernowne,” he said. “I sometimes think he would do better to command a squad of ducks. He has a flickering reason when his long nose is glued upon a map, ten miles from the enemy, but give him a piece of work to do upon the field a hundred yards away, and he is lost.”
“Can you not replace him with some other?” I questioned.
“Not at this juncture,” he said. “I have to risk him now.”
He kissed my hand and smiled, and it was not until he had turned his back on me and vanished that I remembered I had never asked him whether the reason for his not returning with me to Radford was because he proposed to lead the assault in person.
I jogged back in the wagon to my brother’s house, my spirits sinking. Shortly before daybreak, next morning, the attack began. The first we heard of it at Radford was the echo of the guns across the Cattwater—whether from within the garrison or from the outer defenses, we could not tell—but by midday we had the news that three of the Works had been seized and held by the Royalist troops, and the most formidable of the forts, the Maudlyn, stormed by the commanding General in person. The guns were turned, and the men of Plymouth felt for the first time their own fire fall upon the walls of the city. I could see nothing from my window but a pall of smoke hanging like a curtain in the sky, and now and again, the wind being northerly, I thought I heard the sound of distant shouting from the besieged within the garrison.
At three o’clock, with barely three hours of daylight left, the news was not so good. The rebels had counterattacked, and two of the forts had been recaptured. The fate of Plymouth now depended upon the rebels gaining back the ground they had lost and driving the Royalists from their foothold all along the line, and most especially from the Maudlyn works. I watched the setting sun, as I had done the day before, and I thought of all those, both rebel men and Royalist, whose lives had been held forfeit within these past four-and-twenty hours. We dined in the hall at half past five, with my brother Jo seated at the head of his table, as was his custom, and Phillipa at his right hand and his little motherless son, young John, upon his left. We ate in silence, none of us having much heart for conversation, while the battle only a few miles away hung thus in the balance. We were nearly finished when my brother Percy, who had ridden down to Plymouth to get news, came bursting in upon us.
“The rebels have gained the day,” he said grimly, “and driven off Grenvile with the loss of three hundred men. They stormed the fort on all sides, and finally recaptured it, barely an hour ago. It seems that Grenvile’s covering troops, who should have come to his support and turned the scale to success, failed to reach him. A tremendous blunder on the part of someone.”
“No doubt the fault of the General himself,” said Jo drily, “in having too much confidence.”
“They say, down in Plymstock, that the officer responsible has been shot by Grenvile for contravention of orders,” said Percy, “and is lying now in his tent with a bullet through his head. Who it is they could not tell me, but we shall hear anon.”
I could think of nothing but those three hundred men who were lying now upon their faces under the stars, and I was filled with a great war-sickness, a loathing for guns and pikes and blood and battle cries. The brave fellows who had smiled at me the night before, so strong, so young and confident, were now carrion for the seagulls who swooped and dived in Plymouth Sound, and it was Richard, my Richard, who had led them to their death. I could not blame him. He had only, by attacking, done his duty. He was a soldier…
As I turned away to call a servant for my chair, a young secretary, employed by my elder brother on the Devon Commission, came into the room, much agitated, with a request to speak to him.
“What is the matter?” said Jo tersely. “There is no one but my family present.”
“Colonel Champernowne lies at Egg Buckland, mortally wounded,” said the secretary. “He was not hurt in battle, but pistoled by the General himself on returning to headquarters.”
There was a moment of great silence. Jo rose slowly from his chair, very white and tense, and I saw him turn round and look at me, as did my brother Percy. In a moment of perception I knew what they were thinking. Jo’s brother-in-law, Edward Champernowne, had been my suitor seventeen years before, and they both saw, in this sudden terrible dispute after the heat of battle, no military cause, but some private jealous wrangle, the settling of a feud.
“This,” said my elder brother slowly, “is the beginning of the end for Richard Grenvile.”
His words fell upon my ear cold as steel, and, calling softly to the servant, I bade him take me to my room.
The next day I left for Mothercombe, to my sister Cecilia, for to remain under my brother’s roof one moment longer would have been impossible. The vendetta had begun.
My eldest brother, with the vast family of Champernowne behind him, and supported by the leading families in the county of Devon, most of them members of the Commission, pressed for the removal of Sir Richard Grenvile from his position as Sheriff and commander of the King’s forces in the West. Richard retaliated by turning my brother out of Radford and using the house and estate as a jumping ground for a fresh assault upon Plymouth.
Snowed-up in Mothercombe with the Pollexefens, I knew little of what was happening, and Cecilia, with consummate tact and delicacy, avoided the subject. I myself had had no word from Richard since the night I had bidden him good-bye before the battle, and now that he was engaged in a struggle with foe and former friends as well, I thought it best to keep silent. He knew my whereabouts, for I had sent word of it, and should he want me he would come to me.
The thaw burst at the end of March, and we had the first tidings of the outside world for many weeks.
The peace moves between King and Parliament had come to nothing, for the Treaty of Uxbridge had failed, and the war, it seemed, was to be carried on more ruthlessly than ever.
The Parliament, we heard, was forming a New Model Army, likely to sweep all before it, in the opinion of the judges, while His Majesty had sent forth an edict to his enemies saying that unless the rebels repented, their end must be damnation, ruin, and infamy. The young Prince of Wales, it seemed, was now to bear the title of supreme commander of all the forces in the West, and was gone to Bristol, but since he was a lad of only fifteen years or so, the real authority would be vested in his Advisory Council, at the head of whom was Hyde, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I remember John Pollexefen shaking his head as he heard the news. “There will be nothing but wrangles now between the Prince’s Council and the generals,” he said. “Each will countermand the orders of the other. Lawyers and soldiers never agree. And while they wrangle the King’s cause will suffer. I do not like it.”
I thought of Richard and how he had once vouchsafed the same opinion. “What is happening at Plymouth?” asked my sister. “Stalemate,” said her husband. “A token force of less than a thousand men left to blockade the garrison, and Grenvile with the remainder gone to join Goring in Somerset and lay siege to Taunton. The spring campaign has started.”
Soon a year would have come and gone since I had left Lanrest for Menabilly. The snow melted down in the Devon valley where Cecilia had her home, and the crocus and daffodil appeared. I made no plans. I sat and waited. Someone brought a rumor that there was great disaffection in the High Command, and that Grenvile, Goring, and Berkeley were all at loggerheads.
March turned to April. The golden gorse was in full bloom. And on Easter Day a horseman came riding down the valley, wearing the Grenvile badge. He asked at once for Mistress Harris, and, saluting gravely, handed me a letter.
“What is it?” I asked before I broke the seal. “Has something happened?” My throat felt dry and strange, and my hands trembled. “The General has been gravely wounded,” replied the soldier, “in a battle before Wellington House at Taunton. They fear for his life.” I tore open the letter, and read Richard’s shaky scrawl.
“Dear Heart,” he said, “this is the very devil. I am like to lose my leg, if not my life, with a great gaping hole in my thigh, below the groin. I know now what you suffer. Come teach me patience. I love you.”
I folded the letter, and, turning to the messenger, asked him where the General lay.
“They were bringing him from Taunton down to Exeter when I left,” he answered. “His Majesty had dispatched his own chirurgeon to attend upon Sir Richard. He was very weak, and bade me ride without delay to bring you this.”
I looked at Cecilia, who was standing by the window. “Would you summon Matty to pack my clothes,” I said, “and ask John if he would arrange for a litter, and for horses? I am going to Exeter.”