Read Online Mary of Carisbrooke by Margaret Campbell Barnes - Free Book Online Page A

boyhood, Hammond clutched firmly at the safeguard of common sense. “A good thing for Cromwell that you and I, Rolph, are not susceptible to it,” he commented, with his thin smile. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs more comfortably under the table. “Life here is going to be very different,” he went on. “Carisbrooke will become a miniature Hampton Court. I see that Parliament has very generously voted five thousand a year for the upkeep of his Majesty’s household.”
    “Five thousand! Why, a hundred poor families could live on that!”
    “Too true. But it is to be expected that his Majesty will keep up something of his accustomed state.”
    Edmund Rolph muttered something about his Majesty being cheaper dead.
    “Thirty of his attendants from Hampton are being sent here,” added Hammond, consulting the Speaker’s letter.
    “And the attendants’ servants, no doubt,” sneered Rolph. “How do they expect you to house them all?”
    “God knows!” sighed the harassed Governor. “You had better send Mistress Wheeler to me when you go.”
    For a moment or two they sat in silence, each considering his particular part of a mutual problem. “Everything has gone well in the guardroom while I have been gone?” asked the garrison Captain, rousing himself.
    “Floyd has done excellently.”
    “A fine sergeant. Has the confidence of his men,” allowed Rolph. “A pity he isn’t twenty years younger with some knowledge of New Model Army methods!”
    Hammond looked round the old stone walls of his room, and with his mind’s eye saw the much older keep and fortifications outside. “Imagine this great place being held for years by a mere score of men!” he said.
    “Most of them nearly as old as their muskets!” grinned Rolph.
    “All the same, in a tough place I would not mind being with them. There is something about these people of the Wight,” mused their new Governor. “They are trustworthy and ingenious. I suppose they need to be, since every man among them is half-sailor, half-farmer. And they have a natural courtesy.” His glance flickered with momentary distaste over the thick-set figure facing him. “They quarrel among themselves, no doubt. But to you or me no islander would ever give another away. At a word from this Sir John Oglander, because he is one of them, they would slaughter their best cattle or launch a boat when the sea around their treacherous coast is like a cauldron. But I sometimes wonder if a lifetime of just ruling would be enough for an overner like me to be accepted by them.”
    “You have been here but a bare two months, sir,” Rolph reminded him. “And, anyhow, why should you care?”
    “Except that at times it makes one feel like an exile,” smiled Hammond, marvelling at his own loneliness. Perhaps if he were to unbend to people more or give them more encouragement. “I appreciate the speed and secrecy with which you carried out this important mission. I trust that Parliament—er—appreciated it too,” he began, embarrassed at seeming to pry into the private affairs of a subordinate.
    “To the tune of five hundred pounds!” Rolph told him, without any embarrassment at all. And as his boastful frankness elicited no response he gave rein to his curiosity, unconscious of offence, “I hope they have treated you as generously, sir.”
    “With the future of the country pushed into my hands I shall have much added responsibility,” Hammond said stiffly. He had been even more overcome by the generosity of Parliament than his messenger, but he preferred to think of the thousand pounds and the annuity they had promised him as an increase in salary rather as a reward for betrayal. Receiving it had started the old argument in his conscientious mind. “The King put himself voluntarily into my hands,” he thought, “or rather he sent Ashburnham and Berkeley to sound me and I said I would do what I could, and I forced his hand by insisting upon going back