My first action was to leave Werrington, which I did that evening, before Sir Charles Trevanion, on Lord Hopton’s staff, came to take over for his commander. I no longer had any claim to be there, and I had no wish to embarrass Charles Trevanion, who had known my father well. I went therefore to the hostelry in Broad Street, Launceston, near to the castle, and Colonel Roscarrock, after he had installed me there, took a letter for me to the Governor, requesting an interview with Richard for the following morning. He returned at nine o’clock, with a courteous but firm refusal. No one, said the Governor, was to be permitted to see Sir Richard Grenvile, by strict order of the Prince’s Council. “We intend,” said Colonel Roscarrock to me, “sending a deputation to the Prince himself at Truro. Jack Grenvile, I know, will speak for his uncle, and many more besides. Already, since the news has gone abroad, the troops are murmuring, and have been confined to their quarters for twenty-four hours in consequence. I can tell, by what the Governor said, that rioting is feared.” There was no more I could ask him to do that day—I had trespassed too greatly on his time already—so I bade him a good night and went to bed, to pass a wretched night, wondering all the while in what dungeon they had lodged Richard, or if he had been given lodging according to his rank.
The next day, the twentieth, driving sleet came to dispel the snow, and I think, because of this, and because of my unhappiness, I have never hated any place so much as Launceston. The very name sounded like a jail. Just before noon Colonel Roscarrock called on me with the news that there were proclamations everywhere about the town that Sir Richard Grenvile had been cashiered from every regiment he had commanded, and was dismissed from His Majesty’s Army—and all without court-martial.
“It cannot be done,” he said with vehemence. “It is against every military code and tradition. There will be a mutiny in all ranks at such gross injustice. We are to hold a meeting of protest today, and I will let you know directly it is over what is decided.” Meetings and conferences—somehow I had no faith in them. Yet how I cursed my impotence, sitting in my hired room above the cobbled street in Launceston.
Matty, too, fed me with tales of optimism. “There is no other talk about the town,” she said, “but Sir Richard’s imprisonment. Those who grumbled at his severity before are now clamoring for his release. This afternoon a thousand people went before the castle and shouted for the Governor. He is bound to let him go, unless he wants the castle burned about his ears.”
“The Governor is only acting under orders,” I said. “He can do nothing. It is to Sir Edward Hyde and the Council that they should direct their appeals.”
“They say in the town,” she answered, “that the Council have gone back to Truro, so fearful they are of mutiny.”
That evening, when darkness fell, I could hear the tramping of many feet in the market square, and distant shouting, while flares and torches were tossed into the sky. Some were thrown at the windows of the Town Hall, and the landlord of my hostelry, fearing for his own, barred the shutters early, and the doors.
“They’ve put a double guard at the castle,” he told Matty, “and the troops are still confined to their quarters.”
How typical it was, I thought with bitterness, that now, in his adversity, my Richard should become so popular a figure. Fear was the whip that drove the people on. They had no faith in Lord Hopton, or any other commander. Only a Grenvile, they believed, could keep the enemy from crossing the Tamar.
When Colonel Roscarrock came at last to see me, I could tell from his weary countenance that nothing much had been accomplished. “The General has sent word to us,” he said, “that he will be no party to release by force. He asks for a court-martial, and a chance to defend himself before the Prince, and to be heard. As to us, and to his army, he bids us serve under Lord Hopton.”
Why in God’s name, I wondered, could he not do the same himself but twelve hours since?
“So there will be no mutiny?” I said. “No storming of the castle?”
“Not by the army,” said Colonel Roscarrock in dejection. “We have taken an oath to remain loyal to Lord Hopton. You have heard the latest news?”
“No?”
“Dartmouth has fallen. The Governor, Sir Hugh Pollard, and over a thousand men are taken prisoner. Fairfax has a line across Devon now, from north to south.”
This would be no time, then, to hold courts-martial.
“What orders have you,” I asked wearily, “from your new commander?”
“None as yet. He is at Stratton, you know, in the process of taking over and assembling his command. We expect to hear nothing for a day or two. Therefore I am at your disposal. And I think—forgive me—there is little purpose in your remaining here at Launceston.” Poor Colonel Roscarrock. He felt me to be a burden, and small blame to him. But the thought of leaving Richard a prisoner in Launceston Castle was more than I could bear.
“Perhaps,” I said, “if I saw the Governor myself?” But he gave me little hope. The Governor, he said, was not the type of man to melt before a woman. “I will go again,” he assured me, “tomorrow morning, and ascertain at least that the General’s health is good, and that he lacks for nothing.” And with that assurance he left me, to pass another lonely night, but in the morning I woke to the sound of distant drums, and then heard the clattering of horses and troopers pass my window, and I wondered whether orders had come from Lord Hopton at Stratton during the night and if the army was on the march again. I sent Matty below for news, and the landlord told her that the troops had been on the move since before daybreak. “All the horse,” he said, “had ridden away north already.”
I had just finished breakfast when a runner brought me a hurried word, full of apology, from Colonel Roscarrock, saying that he had received orders to proceed at once to Stratton, as Lord Hopton intended marching north to Torrington, and that if I had any friend or relative in the district it would be best for me to go to them immediately. I had no friend or relative, nor would I seek them if I had, and, summoning the landlord, I told him to have me carried to Launceston Castle, for I wished to see the Governor. I set forth, therefore, well wrapped against the weather, with Matty walking by my side and four fellows bearing my litter, and when I came to the castle gate I demanded to see the captain of the guard. He came from his room, unshaven, buckling his sword, and I thought how Richard would have dealt with him.
“I would be grateful,” I said to him, “if you could give a message from me to the Governor.”
“The Governor sees no one,” he said at once, “without a written appointment.”
“I have a letter here, in my hand,” I said. “Perhaps it could be given to him.”
He turned it over, looking doubtful, and then looked at me again. “What exactly, madam, is your business?” he asked.
He looked not unkindly, for all his blotched appearance, and I took a chance. “I have come,” I said, “to inquire after Sir Richard Grenvile.” At this he handed back my letter.
“I regret, madam,” he said, “but you have come on a useless errand. Sir Richard is no longer here.”
Panic seized me on the instant, and I pictured a sudden, secret execution. “What do you mean?” I asked. “No longer here?”
“He left this morning under escort for St. Michael’s Mount,” replied the captain of the guard. “Some of his men broke from their quarters last night and demonstrated here before the castle. The Governor judged it best to remove him from Launceston.” At once the captain of the guard, the castle walls, the frowning battlements, lost all significance. Richard was no more imprisoned there. “Thank you,” I said. “Good day,” and I saw the officer stare after me, and then return to his room beneath the gate.
St. Michael’s Mount. Some seventy miles away, in the western toe of Cornwall. At least he was far removed from Fairfax, but how in the world was I to reach him there? I returned to the hostelry with only one thought in my head now, and that to get from Launceston as soon as possible.
As I entered the door the landlord came to meet me, and said that an officer had called to inquire for me, and was even now waiting my return. I thought it must be Colonel Roscarrock, and went at once to see—and found instead my brother Robin. “Thank God,” he said, “I have sight of you at last. As soon as I had news of Sir Richard’s arrest, Sir John gave me leave of absence to ride to Werrington. They told me at the house you had been gone two days.”
I was not sure whether I was glad to see him. It seemed to me, at this moment, that no man was my friend unless he was friend to Richard also. “Why have you come?” I said coolly. “What is your purpose?”
“To take you back to Mary,” he said. “You cannot possibly stay here.”
“Perhaps,” I answered, “I have no wish to go.”
“That is neither here nor there,” he said stubbornly. “The entire army is in process of reorganizing, and you cannot remain in Launceston without protection. I myself have orders to join Sir John Digby at Truro, where he has gone with a force to protect the Prince in the event of invasion. My idea is to leave you at Menabilly on my way thither.”
I thought rapidly. Truro was the headquarters of the Council, and if I went to the town there was a chance, faint yet not impossible, that I could have an audience with the Prince himself.
“Very well,” I said to Robin, shrugging my shoulders, “I will come with you, but on one condition. And that is that you do not leave me at Menabilly, but let me come with you all the way to Truro.”
He looked at me doubtfully. “What,” he said, “is to be gained by that?”
“Nothing gained, nor lost,” I answered; “only, for old time’s sake, do what I demand.”
At that he came and took my hand, and held it a minute.
“Honor,” he said, his blue eyes full upon my face, “I want you to believe me when I say that no action of mine had any bearing on his arrest. The whole army is appalled. Sir John himself, who had many a bitter dispute with him, has written to the Council, appealing for his swift release. He is needed, at this moment, more than any other man in Cornwall.”
“Why,” I said bitterly, “did you not think of it before? Why did you refuse to obey his orders about the bridge?”
Robin looked startled for a moment, and then discomforted.
“I lost my temper,” he admitted. “We were all rankled that day, and Sir John, the best of men, had given me my orders. You don’t understand, Honor, what it has meant to me, and Jo, and all your family, to have your name a byword in the county. Ever since you left Radford last spring to go to Exeter people have hinted, and whispered, and even dared to say aloud the foulest things.”
“Is it so foul,” I said, “to love a man, and go to him when he lies wounded?”
“Why are you not married to him, then?” said Robin. “If you had been, in God’s conscience, you would have earned the right now to share in his disgrace. But to follow from camp to camp, like a loose woman… I tell you what they say, Honor, in Devon. That he well earns his name of Skellum to trifle thus with a woman who is crippled.”
Yes, I thought, they would say that in Devon…
“If I am not Lady Grenvile,” I said, “it is because I do not choose to be so.”
“You have no pride, then, no feeling for your name?”
“My name is Honor, and I do not hold it tarnished,” I answered him.
“This is the finish. You know that?” he said, after a moment’s pause. “In spite of a petition, signed by all our names, I hardly think the Council will agree to his release. Not unless they receive some counterorder from His Majesty.”
“And His Majesty,” I said, “has other fish to fry. Yes, Robin, I understand. And what will be the outcome?”
“Imprisonment at His Majesty’s pleasure, with a pardon, possibly, at the end of the war.”
“And what if the war does not go the way we wish, but the rebels gain Cornwall for the Parliament?”
Robin hesitated, so I gave the answer for him.
“Sir Richard Grenvile is handed over, a prisoner, to General Fairfax,” I said, “and sentenced to death as a criminal of war.” I pleaded fatigue, then, and went to my room, and slept easily for the first time for many nights, for no other reason but because I was bound for Truro, which was some thirty miles distant from St. Michael’s Mount. The snow of the preceding days had wrought havoc on the road, and we were obliged to go a longer route, by the coast, for the moors were now impassable. Thus, with many halts and delays, it was well over a week before we came to Truro, only to discover that the Council was now removed to Pendennis Castle, at the mouth of the Fal, and Sir John Digby and his forces were now also within the garrison.
Robin found me and Matty a lodging at Penryn, and went at once to wait on his commander, bearing a letter from me to Jack Grenvile, whom I believed to be in close attendance on the Prince. The following day Jack rode to see me—and I felt as though years had passed since I had last set eyes upon a Grenvile. Yet it was barely three weeks since he, and Richard, and young Bunny, had ridden all three to Menabilly. I nearly wept when he came into the room.
“Have no fear,” he said at once. “My uncle is in good heart, and sturdy health. I have received messages from him from the Mount, and he bade me write you not to be anxious for him. It is rather he who is likely to be anxious on your part, for he believes you with your sister, Mrs. Rashleigh.”
I determined then to take young Jack into my confidence.
“Tell me first,” I said, “what is the opinion on the war?”
He made a face, and shrugged his shoulders. “You see we are at Pendennis,” he said quietly. “That, in itself, is ominous. There is a frigate at anchor in the roads, fully manned and provisioned, with orders to set sail for the Scillies when the word is given. The Prince himself will never give the word—he is all for fighting to the last—but the Council lacks his courage. Sir Edward Hyde will have the last word, not the Prince of Wales.”
“How long, then, have we till the word be given?”
“Hopton and the army have marched to Torrington,” answered Jack, “and there is a hope—but I fear a faint one—that by attacking first Hopton will take the initiative, and force a decision. He is a brave fellow, but lacks my uncle’s power, and the troops care nothing for him. If he fails at Torrington, and Fairfax wins the day—then you may expect that frigate to set sail.”
“And your uncle?”
“He will remain, I fear, at the Mount. He has no other choice. But Fairfax is a soldier, and a gentleman. He will receive fair treatment.” This was no answer for me. However much a soldier and a gentleman Fairfax himself might be, his duty was to Parliament, and Parliament had decreed in ’43 that Richard Grenvile was a traitor.
“Jack,” I said, “would you do something for me, for your uncle’s sake?”
“Anything in the world,” he answered, “for the pair of you.”
Ah, bless you, I thought, true son of Bevil…
“Get me an audience with the Prince of Wales,” I said to him.
He whistled, and scratched his cheek, a very Grenvile gesture.
“I’ll do my best, I swear it,” he said, “but it may take time and patience, and I cannot promise you success. He is so hemmed about with members of the Council, and dares do nothing but what he is told to do by Sir Edward Hyde. I tell you, Honor, he’s led a dog’s life until now. First his mother, and now the Chancellor. When he does come of age and can act for himself, I’ll wager he’ll set the stars on fire.”
“Make up some story,” I urged. “You are his age, and a close companion. You know what would move him. I give you full license.”
He smiled—his father’s smile. “As to that,” he said, “he has only to hear your story, and how you followed my uncle to Exeter, to be on tenterhooks to look at you. Nothing pleases him better than a love affair. But Sir Edward Hyde—he’s the danger.”
He left me, with an earnest promise to do all he could, and with that I was forced to be content. Then came a period of waiting that seemed like centuries, but was, in all reality, little longer than a fortnight. During this time Robin came several times to visit me, imploring me to leave Penryn and return to Menabilly. Jonathan Rashleigh, he said, would come himself to fetch me, would I but say the word.
“I must warn you, in confidence,” he said, “that the Council have little expectation of Hopton’s withstanding Fairfax. The Prince, with his personal household, will sail for Scilly. The rest of us within the garrison will hold Pendennis until we are burned out of it. Let the whole rebel army come. We will not surrender.”
Dear Robin. As you said that, with your blue eyes blazing and your jaw set, I forgave you for your enmity for Richard, and the silly, useless harm you did in disobeying him.
Death or glory, I reflected. That was the way my Richard might have chosen. And here was I, plotting one thing only, that he should steal away like a thief in the night.
“I will go back to Menabilly,” I said slowly, “when the Prince of Wales sets sail for the Scillies.”
“By then,” said Robin, “I shall not be able to assist you. I shall be inside the garrison, at Pendennis, with our guns turned east upon Penryn.”
“Your guns will not frighten me,” I said, “any more than Fairfax’s horse, thundering across the moors from the Tamar. It will look well, in after years, in the annals of the Harris family, to say that Honor died in the last stand in ’46.”
Brave words, spoken in hardihood, ringing so little true…
On the fourteenth of February, the feast of St. Valentine, that patron saint of lovers, I had a message from Jack Grenvile. The wording was vague, and purposely omitted names.
“The snake is gone to Truro,” he said, “and my friend and I will be able to receive you, for a brief space, this afternoon. I will send an escort for you. Say nothing of the matter to your brother.”
I went alone, without Matty, deeming in a matter of such delicacy it were better to have no confidante at all.
True to his word, the escort came, and Jack himself awaited me at the entrance to the castle. No haggling this time with a captain of the guard. But a swift word to the sentry, and we were through the arch and within the precincts of the garrison before a single soul, save the sentry, was a whit the wiser.
The thought occurred to me that this perhaps was not the first time Jack Grenvile had smuggled a woman into the fortress. Such swift handling came possibly from long experience. Two servants in the Prince’s livery came to carry me, and after passing up some stairs (which I told myself were back ones, and suitable to my person), I was brought to a small room within a tower, and placed upon a couch. I would have relished the experience were not the matter upon which I sought an audience so deadly serious. There was wine and fruit at my elbow, and a posy of fresh flowers, and His Highness, I thought, for all his mother, has gained something by inheriting French blood.
I was left for a few moments to refresh myself, and then the door opened again and Jack stood aside, to let a youngster of about his own age pass before him. He was far from handsome, more like a gipsy than a prince, with his black locks and swarthy skin, but the instant he smiled I loved him better than all the famous portraits of his father that my generation had known for thirty years. “Have my servants looked after you,” he said at once, “and given you all you want? This is garrison fare, you know—you must excuse it.” And as he spoke I felt his bold eyes look me up and down in cool, appraising fashion, as though I were a maid and not fifteen years his senior. “Come, Jack,” he said, “present me to your kinswoman,” and I wondered what the devil of a story Jack had spun.
We ate and drank, and all the while he talked he stared, and I wondered if his boy’s imagination was running riot on the thought of his notorious and rebellious general making love to me, a cripple. “I have no claim to trespass on your time, sir,” I said at length, “but Sir Richard, Jack’s uncle, is my dear friend, and has been so now over a span of years. His faults are many, and I have not come to dispute them. But his loyalty to yourself has never, I believe, been the issue in question.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said the Prince, “but you know how it was. He got up against the Council, and Sir Edward is particular. I like him immensely myself, but personal feeling cannot count in these matters. There was no choice but to sign that warrant for his arrest.”
“Sir Richard did very wrong not to serve under Lord Hopton,” I said. “His worst fault is his temper, and much, I think, had gone wrong that day to kindle it. Given reflection, he would have acted otherwise.”
“He made no attempt, you know, sir,” cut in Jack, “to resist arrest. The whole staff would have gone to his aid, had he given them the word. That I have on good authority. But he told all of them he wished to abide by your Highness’s command.”
The Prince rose to his feet and paced up and down the room.
“It’s a wretched affair all round,” he said. “Grenvile is the one fellow who might have saved Cornwall, and all the while Hopton fights a hopeless battle up in Torrington. I can’t do anything about it, you know—that’s the devil of it. I shall be whisked away myself before I know what is happening.”
“There is one thing you can do, sir, if you will forgive my saying so,” I said.
“What then?”
“Send word to the Mount that when you and the Council sail for the Scillies Sir Richard Grenvile shall be permitted to escape at the same time, and commandeer a fishing boat for France.”
The Prince of Wales stared at me a moment, and then that same smile I had remarked upon his face before lit his whole ugly countenance. “Sir Richard Grenvile is most fortunate,” he said, “to have so fidèle an ally as yourself. If I am ever in his shoes, and find myself a fugitive, I hope I can rely on half so good a friend.”
He glanced across at Jack. “You can arrange that, can’t you?” he said. “I will write a letter to Sir Arthur Bassett at the Mount, and you can take it there, and see your uncle at the same time. I don’t suggest we ask for his company in the frigate when we sail, because I hardly think the ship would bear his weight, alongside Sir Edward Hyde.” The two lads laughed, for all the world like a pair of schoolboys caught in mischief. Then the Prince turned, and, coming to the couch, bent low and kissed my hand.
“Have no fear,” he said. “I will arrange it. Sir Richard shall be free the instant we sail for the Scillies. And when I return—for I shall return, you know, one day—I shall hope to see you, and him also, at Whitehall.” He bowed, and went, forgetting me, I daresay, for evermore, but leaving with me an impression of black eyes and gipsy features that I have not forgotten to this day…
Jack escorted me to the castle entrance once again. “He will remember his promise,” he said. “That I swear to you. I have never known him go back on his word. Tomorrow I shall ride with that letter to the Mount.”
I returned to Penryn, worn out and utterly exhausted now that my mission was fulfilled. I wanted nothing but my bed, and silence. Matty received me with sour looks and the grim, pursed mouth that spelled disapproval. “You have wanted to be ill for weeks,” she said. “Now that we are here, in a strange lodging, with no comforts, you decide to do so. Very well. I’ll not answer for the consequences.”
“No one asks you to,” I said, turning my face to the wall. “For God’s sake, if I want to, let me sleep, or die.”
Two days later Lord Hopton was defeated outside Torrington, and the whole western army in full retreat across the Tamar. It concerned me little, lying in that lodging at Penryn with a high fever. On the twenty-fifth of February Fairfax had marched and taken Launceston, and on the second of March had crossed the moors to Bodmin.
That night the Prince of Wales, with his Council, set sail in the frigate Phoenix—and the war in the West was over…
The day Lord Hopton signed the treaty in Truro with General Fairfax, my brother-in-law, Jonathan Rashleigh, by permission of the Parliament, came down to Penryn to fetch me back to Menabilly. The streets were lined with soldiers, not ours, but theirs, and the whole route from Truro to St. Austell bore signs of surrender and defeat. I sat, with stony face, looking out of the curtains of my litter, while Jonathan Rashleigh rode by my side, his shoulders bowed, his face set in deep, grim lines.
We did not converse. We had no words to say. We crossed St. Blazey’s bridge and Jonathan handed his pass to the rebel sentry at the post, who stared at us with insolence and then jerked his head and let us pass. They were everywhere. In the road, in the cottage doors at Tywardreath, at the barrier, at the foot of Polmear Hill. This was our future then, for evermore, to ask, in deep humility, if we might travel our own roads. That it should be so worried me no longer, for my days of journeying were over. I was returning to Menabilly, to be no longer a camp follower, no longer a lady of the drum, but plain Honor Harris, a cripple on her back. And it did not matter to me, I did not care.
For Richard Grenvile had escaped to France.