Frenchmans Creek - Daphne du Maurier

She followed the jailer down the narrow stair, her heart heavy, her body suddenly tired with all the weariness of anti-climax. The jailer, grinning at her, put the tray under the steps, and said, "Cold-blooded, isn't he, for a man about to die? They say these Frenchmen have no feelings."

She summoned a smile, and held out her hand. "You are a good fellow, Zachariah," she said, "and may you drink many glasses of ale in the future, and some of them tonight. I won't forget to tell the physician to call upon you. A little man, remember, with a mouth like a button.".

"But a throat like a well," laughed the jailer. "Very good, your ladyship, I will look out for him, and he shall quench his thirst. Not a word to his lordship, though."

"Not a word, Zachariah," said Dona solemnly, and she went out of the dark keep into the sunshine, and there was Godolphin himself coming down the drive to meet her.

"You were wrong, madam," he said, wiping his forehead, "the carriage has not moved, and the physician is still with my wife. He has decided after all that he will remain for the present, as poor Lucy is in some distress. Your ears must have played you false."

"And I sent you back to the house, all to no purpose," said Dona. "So very stupid of me, dear Lord Godolphin, but then women, you know, are very stupid creatures. Here is the picture of a sea-gull. Do you think it will please His Majesty?"

"You are a better judge of his taste than I, madam," said Godolphin, "or so I presume. Well, did you find the pirate as ruthless as you expected?"

"Prison has softened him, my lord, or perhaps it is not prison, but the realisation that in your keeping, escape is impossible. It seemed to me that when he looked at you he knew that he had at last met a better, and a more cunning brain than his own."

"Ah, he gave you that impression, did he? Strange, I have sometimes thought the opposite. But these foreigners are half women, you know. You never know what they are thinking."

"Very true, my lord." They stood before the steps of the house, and there was the physician's carriage, and the servant still holding Dona's cob. "You will take some refreshment, madam, before you go?" enquired Godolphin, and "No," she answered, "no, I have stayed too long as it is, for I have much to do tonight before my journey in the morning. My respects to your wife, when she is in a state to receive them, and I hope that before the evening is out, she will have presented you with a replica of yourself, dear Lord Godolphin."

"That, madam," he said gravely, "is in the hands of the Almighty."

"But very soon," she said, mounting her horse, "in the equally capable hands of the physician. Goodbye." She waved her hand to him, and was gone, striking the cob into a startled canter with her whip, and as she drew rein past the keep and looked up at the slit in the tower she whistled a bar of the song that Pierre Blanc played on his lute, and slowly, like a snow-flake, a feather drifted down in the air towards her, a feather torn from the quill of a pen. She caught it, caring not a whit if Godolphin saw her from the steps of his house, and she waved her hand again, and rode out onto the highroad laughing, with the feather in her hat.

CHAPTER XXIII

Dona leaned from the casement of her bedroom at Navron, and as she looked up into the sky she saw, for the first time, the little gold crescent of the new moon high above the dark trees.

"That is for luck," she thought, and she waited a moment, watching the shadows in the still garden, and breathing the heavy sweet scent of the magnolia tree that climbed the wall beneath her. These things must be stored and remembered in her heart with all the other beauty that had gone, for she would never look upon them again.

Already the room itself wore the appearance of desertion, like the rest of the house, and her boxes were strapped upon the floor, her clothes folded and packed by the maid-servant, according to instruction. When she had returned, late in the afternoon, hot and dusty from her ride, and the groom had taken the cob from her in the courtyard, the ostler from the Inn at Helston was waiting to speak to her.

"Sir Harry left word with us, your ladyship," he said, "that you would be hiring a chaise tomorrow, to follow him to Okehampton."

"Yes," she said.

"And the landlord sent me to tell you, your ladyship, that the chaise will be available, and will be here for you at noon tomorrow."

"Thank you," she had said, staring away from him towards the trees in the avenue, and the woods that led to the creek, for everything he said to her lacked reality, the future was something with which she had, no concern. As she left him and went into the house he looked after her, puzzled, scratching his head, for she seemed to him like a sleepwalker,.and he did not believe she had fully understood what he had told her. She wandered then to the nursery, and stared down at the stripped beds, and the bare boards, for the carpets had been taken up. The curtains were drawn too, and the air was already hot and unused. Beneath one of the beds lay the arm of a stuffed rabbit that James had sucked, and then torn from the rabbit's body in a tantrum.

She picked it up and held it, turning it over in her hands. There was something forlorn about it, like a relic of bygone days. She could not leave it lying there on the floor, so she opened the great wardrobe in the corner, and threw it inside, and shut the door upon it, then left the room and did not go into it again.

At seven her supper was brought to her on a tray, and she ate little of it, not being hungry. Then she gave orders to the servant not to disturb her again during the evening, for she was tired, and not to call her in the morning, for she would sleep late in all probability, before the tedium of the journey.

When she was alone, she undid the bundle that William had given her on her return from Lord Godolphin. Smiling to herself she drew out the rough stockings, the worn breeches, and the patched though gaily coloured shirt. She remembered his look of embarrassment as he had given them to her, and his words: "These are the best Grace can do for you, my lady, they belong to her brother." "They are perfect, William," she had replied, "and Pierre Blanc himself could have done no better." For she must play the boy again, for the last time, and escape from her woman's clothes for this night at least. "I will be able to run better without petticoats," she said to William, "and I can ride astride my horse, as I used to as a child." He had procured the horses, as he had promised, and was to meet her with them on the road from Navron to Gweek just after nine o'clock.

"You must not forget, my William," she said, "that you are a physician, and that I am your groom, and it were better that you should drop 'my lady' and call me Tom."

He looked away from her in embarrassment. "My lady," he said, "my lips could not frame the word, it would be too distressing." She had laughed, and told him that physicians must never be embarrassed, especially when they had just brought sons and heirs into the world. And now she was dressing herself in the lad's clothes, and they fitted her well, even the shoes, unlike the clumsy clogs belonging to Pierre Blanc; there was a handkerchief too, which she wound about her head, and a leather strap for her waist. She looked at herself in the mirror, her dark curls concealed, her skin a gypsy brown, and "I am a cabin-boy again," she thought, "and Dona St. Columb is asleep and dreaming."

She listened at her door, and all was still; the servants were safe in their own quarters. She braced herself for the ordeal of descending the stairway to the dining-hall, for this was what she dreaded most, in the darkness, with the candles unlit, and flooding her mind with sharp intensity was the memory of Rockingham crouching there, his knife in his hands. It was better, she thought, to shut her eyes, and feel her way along the landing to the stairs, for then she would not see the great shield on the wall, nor the outline of the stairs themselves. So she went down, her hands before her and her eyes tight shut, and all the while her heart was beating, and it seemed to her that Rockingham still waited for her in the darkest corner of the hall. With a sudden panic she flung herself upon the door, wrenching back the bolts, and ran out into the gathering dusk to the safety and stillness of the avenue. Once she was free of the house she was no longer afraid, the air was soft and warm, and the gravel crunched under her feet, while high in the pale sky the new moon gleamed like a sickle.

She walked swiftly, for there was freedom in her boy's clothes, and her spirits rose, and once again she fell to whistling Pierre Blanc's song, and she thought of him too, with his merry monkey face and his white teeth, waiting now on the deck of La Mouette somewhere in mid-channel, for the master he had left behind.

She saw a shadow move towards her, round the bend of the road, and there was William with the horses, and there was a lad with him, Grace's brother she presumed, and the owner of the clothes she wore.

William left the boy with the horses, and came towards her, and she saw, the laughter rising within her, that he had borrowed a black suit of clothes, and white stockings, and he wore a dark curled wig.

"Was it a son or a daughter, Doctor Williams?" she asked, and he looked at her with confusion, not entirely happy at the part he had to play: for that he should be the gentleman and she the groom seemed to him shocking, who was shocked at nothing else.

"How much does he know?" she whispered, pointing to the lad.

"Nothing, my lady," he whispered, "only that I am a friend of Grace's, and am in hiding, and that you are a companion who would help me to escape."

"Then Tom I will be," she insisted, "and Tom I will remain." And she went on whistling Pierre Blanc's song, to discomfort William, and going to one of the horses she swung herself up into the saddle, and smiled at the lad, and digging her heels into the side of the horse, she clattered ahead of them along the road, laughing at them over her shoulder. When they came to the wall of Godolphin's estate they dismounted, and left the lad there with the horses, under cover of the trees. She and William went on foot the half-mile to the park-gates, for so they had arranged earlier in the evening.

It was dark now, with the first stars in the sky, and they said nothing to one another as they walked, for all had been planned and put in readiness. They felt like actors who must appear upon the boards for the first time, with an audience who might be hostile. The gates were shut, and they turned aside, and climbed the wall into the park, and crept towards the drive under shadow of the trees. In the distance they could see the outline of the house, and there was a light still in the line of windows above the door.

"The son and heir still tarries," whispered Dona. She went on ahead of William to the house, and there, at the entrance to the stables, she could see the physician's carriage drawn up on the cobbled stones, and the coachman was seated with one of Godolphin's grooms on an upturned seat beneath a lantern, thumbing a pack of cards. She could hear the low murmur of the voices, and their laughter. She turned back again, and went to William. He was standing beside the drive, his small white face dwarfed by his borrowed wig and his hat. She could see the butt of his pistol beneath his coat, and his mouth was set in a firm thin line.

"Are you ready?" she said, and he nodded, his eyes fixed upon her, and he followed her along the drive to the keep. She had a moment of misgiving, for she realised suddenly that perhaps, like other actors, he lacked confidence in his part, and would stumble over his words, and the game would be lost because William, upon whom so much depended, had no skill. As they stood before the closed door of the keep she looked at him, and tapped him on the shoulder, and for the first time that evening he smiled, his small eyes twinkling in his round face, and her faith in him returned, for he would not fail.