Frenchmans Creek - Daphne du Maurier

"I'll cut out gambling too," he said. "I'll never touch another card, and I'll sell the town house, and we'll go and live in Hampshire, Dona, near your old home, where we first met. I'll live the life of a country gentleman at last, with you and the children, and I'll teach young James to ride and to hawk. How would you like that, eh?"

Still she did not answer, but went on staring in front of her.

"There's always been something baleful about Navron," he said, "I remember thinking so as a boy. I never felt well here: the, air is too soft. It doesn't suit me. It doesn't suit you, either. We'll go away as soon as this business is over and done with. If only we could lay our hands on that damned spy of a servant, and hang 'em both at the same time. God, when I think of the danger you were in, you know, trusting that fellow." And he began to blow his nose again, shaking his head. One of the spaniels came fawning up to her, licking her hands, and suddenly she remembered the furious barking of the night, the yapping, the excitement, and in a flash her darkened mind became alive again, awake and horribly aware. Her heart beat loudly, for no reason, and the house, and the trees, and the figure of Harry sitting beside her took shape and form. He was talking, and she knew now that every word he uttered might be of importance, and that she must miss nothing, for there were plans to make, and time itself was now of desperate value.

"Poor Rock must have outwitted the servant from the first," he was saying. "There were signs of the struggle in his room, you know, and a trail of blood leading along the passage, and then it stopped suddenly, and we found no trace of the fellow. Somehow he must have got away, and perhaps have joined those other rascals on the ship, though I think it doubtful. They must have used some part of the river time and again as a sneak-hole. By thunder, Dona, if we'd only known."

He smote his fist in the palm of his hand, and then, remembering that Navron had been a house of death and that to talk loudly, or to swear, was to show irreverence towards the dead, he lowered his voice, and sighed, and said, "Poor Rock. I hardly know how we shall do without him, you know."

She spoke at last, her voice sounding strange to her own ears, because her words were careful, like a lesson learnt by heart.

"How was he caught?" she said, and the dog was licking her hand again, but she did not feel it.

"You mean that damned Frenchman?" said Harry, "well, we - we rather hoped you could tell us a bit about it, the first part, because you were with him, weren't you, in the salon there. But I don't know, Dona, you seemed so stunned and strange when I asked you. I said to Eustick and the others, 'Hell, no, she's been through too much,' and if you'd rather not tell me about it, well, that's all there is to it, you know."

She folded her hands on her lap and she said, "He gave me back my earrings and then he went."

"Oh, well," said Harry, "if that was all. But then he must have come back, you know, and tried to follow you upstairs. Perhaps you don't remember fainting there, on the passage by your room. Anyway, Rock must have been there by then, and guessing what the scoundrel was after, threw himself on the fellow, and in the fight that followed - for your safety Dona, you must always remember that - he lost his life, dear staunch friend that he was."

Dona waited a moment, watching Harry's hand as he stroked the dog.

"And then?" she said, looking away from him, across the lawn.

"Ah, the rest we owe to Rock too. It was his plan, from the first. He suggested it to Eustick and George Godolphin when we met them at Helston. 'Have your men posted on the beaches,' he said, 'and boats in readiness, and if there is a vessel hiding up the river, you'll get her as she comes down by night, on the top of the tide.' But instead of getting the ship, we got the leader instead."

And he laughed, pulling at the dog's ears, and tickling his back.

"Yes, Duchess, we got the leader, and he'll hang for piracy and murder, won't he? And the people will sleep easy in their beds once more."

Dona heard herself saying sharply in a clear cold voice, "Was he wounded at all? I don't understand."

"Wounded? God bless me, no. He'll hang without a scratch on him, and he'll know what it feels like. The devilry up here had delayed him, you see, and those three other scoundrels, and they were making for a point below Helford to join their vessel in mid-river. He must have told the rest of his crew to get the ship under way when he was up at the house. God knows how they managed it, but they did. When Eustick and the others got down to the point agreed upon, there was the ship in mid-stream, and the fellows swimming out to her, all but their leader, and he was standing on the beach, as cool as a blade of steel, fighting two of our people at once, while his men got away. He kept shouting over his shoulder to them in his damned lingo as they swam to the ship, and though the boats were launched from the beaches, as we arranged, they were too late to catch the scoundrels or the ship. She sailed out of Helford with a roaring tide under her, and a fair wind on her quarter, and the Frenchman watched her go, and God damn it, he was laughing, Eustick said."

As Harry spoke it seemed to Dona that she could see the river where it broadened, and met the sea, and she could hear the wind in the rigging of La Mouette as she had heard it once, and the escape would be a repetition of all the escapes that had gone before, but this time they sailed without their captain, this time they went alone. Pierre Blanc, Edmond Vacquier, and the rest, they had left him there on the beach because he had bid them do so, and she guessed what his words must have been, as he stood there, facing his enemies, while they swam to the ship. He had saved his crew, and he had saved his ship, and even now, in whatever prison he found himself, that calm unfettered brain of his would be working and planning some new method of escape, and she realised now that she was stunned and afraid no longer, for the manner of his capture had killed all fear within her.

"Where have they taken him then?" she asked, rising now, throwing on the ground the wrap that Harry had put round her shoulders. He told her, "George Godolphin has him in the keep, strongly guarded, and they're for moving him up to Exeter or Bristol when an escort comes down for him in forty-eight hours."

"And what then?"

"Why, they'll hang him, Dona, unless George and Eustick and the rest of us save His Majesty's servants the trouble of doing so, and hang him on Saturday midday, as a treat to the people."

They entered the house, and she stood now on the spot where he had bidden her farewell, and she said, "Would that be within the law?" "No, perhaps not," said Harry, "but I don't think His Majesty would trouble us for a reason."

So there was little time to lose, she thought, and much to be done. She remembered the words he had spoken: how the most hazardous performance was often the most successful. That was a piece of advice she would repeat to herself continually during the next hours, for if any situation appeared beyond all saving and all hope, the saving of him did so at this moment.

"You are all right again, are you not?" said Harry anxiously, putting an arm about her. "It was the shock of poor Rock's death I believe that made you so strange these two days. That was it, wasn't it?"

"Perhaps," she said. "I don't know. It does not matter. But I am well again now. There is no need for you to be anxious."

"I want to see you well," he repeated. "That's all I are about, damn it, to see you well and happy." And he stared down at her, his blue eyes humble with adoration, and he reached clumsily for her hand.

"We'll go to Hampshire, then, shall we?" he said. "Yes," she answered, "yes, Harry, we'll go to Hampshire." And she sat down on the low seat before the fireplace where no fire burnt because it was midsummer, and she stared at the place where the flames should have been while Harry, forgetting that Navron had been a house of death called, "Hi, Duke… Hi, Duchess, your mistress says she'll come with us to Hampshire. Find it, then, go seek."

It was imperative of course that she should see Godolphin, and talk to him, and persuade him into granting her an interview alone with his prisoner. That part of it should be easy, because Godolphin was a fool. She would flatter him, and during the interview she could pass weapons, a knife or a pistol if she could procure one, and so far, so good, because the actual method of escape could not be of her choosing. They supped quietly, she and Harry, in the salon before the open window, and soon afterwards Dona went up to her room, pleading weariness, and he had the intuition to say nothing, and to let her go alone.

When she was undressed, and lying in her bed, her mind full of her visit to Godolphin, and how she should achieve it, she heard a gentle tapping at her door. "Surely," she thought, her heart sinking, "it is not Harry, in this new wistful penitent mood, not tonight." But when she did not answer, hoping he would think her asleep, the tapping came again. Then the latch lifted, and it was Prue standing there in her nightgown, a candle in her hand, and Dona saw that her eyes were red and swollen with crying.

"What is it?" said Dona, sitting up at once. "Is it James?"

"No, my lady," whispered Prue, "the children are asleep. It's only - it's only that I have something to tell you, my lady." And she began weeping again, rubbing her eyes with her hand.

"Come in, and shut the door," said Dona. "What is the matter, then, why are you crying? Have you broken something? I shall not scold you."

The girl continued to weep, and glancing about her, as though afraid that Harry himself might be there, and would hear her, she whispered between her tears, "It's about William, my lady, I have done something very wicked."

"Oh heaven," thought Dona, she has been seduced by William while I was away in La Mouette, and now because he has gone, she is afraid and ashamed, and thinks she will have a baby, and that I will send her away, and "Don't be afraid, Prue," she said softly, "I won't be angry. What is it about William? You can tell me, you know. I shall understand."

"He was always very good to me," said Prue, "and most attentive to me and the children, when you were ill, my lady. He could not do too much for us. And after the children were asleep, he used to come and sit with me, while I did my sewing, and he used to tell me about the countries he had visited, and I found it very pleasant."

"I expect you did," said Dona, "I should have found it pleasant too."

"I never thought," said the girl, sobbing afresh, "that he had anything to do with foreigners, or with these terrible pirates we had heard about. He was not rough in his ways at all, with me."

"No," said Dona, "I hardly suppose he was."

"And I know it was very wrong of me, my lady, not to have told Sir Harry and the other gentlemen that night, when there was all that terrible to-do, and they came bursting out of their rooms, and poor Lord Rockingham was killed, but I had not the heart to give him up, my lady. So faint he was with loss of blood, and as white as a ghost, I just could not do it. If it's found out I shall be beaten and sent to prison, but he said I must tell you, whatever happened."

And she stood there, twisting her hands, with the tears running down her cheeks.

"Prue," said Dona, swiftly, "what are you trying to tell me?"

"Only that I hid William in the nursery that night, my lady, when I found him lying in the passage, with a cut on his arm, and another on the back of his head. And he told me then that Sir Harry and the other gentlemen would kill him if he was found, that the French pirate was his master, and there had been fighting at Navron that night. So, instead of giving him up, my lady, I bathed and dressed his wounds, and I made him up a bed on the floor beside the children, and after breakfast, when the gentlemen were all away searching for him and the other pirates, I let him out, my lady, by the side-door, and no one knows anything about it but you and me."