"Bring me," said the King, "a little wine."
Lord Digby, without calling a servant, served the King himself.
The winter twilight was falling; the sea fog drifting over the island thickened the sad atmosphere that filled the room in which the King sat. A private house at Newport had been for some weeks now his residence, and carried with it less state, but more semblance of freedom, than Carisbrooke Castle.
The King wore grey. Since his own servants had been taken from him he had grown more and more neglectful of his attire; there was nothing either fine or splendid in his garments, and he wore no jewels. His face showed a more cheerful expression than had been of late usual to him, and when he had drunk the alicant, a faint colour came into his cheeks and a sparkle to his eyes.
"Digby," he said, "I think I shall yet be able to undo these rogues, these traitors, these villains—but come, I must write to my Lord Ormonde, for I have had to publicly give orders that he is to do nothing in Ireland, and he may be misled."
To most these words, the first he had spoken since he had assured Sir Harry Vane of his sincerity, would have appeared indeed startling and ironical, but Lord Digby knew the whole of his master's tortuous intrigues. He was aware that from the moment the negotiations with the Parliament began, Charles had been planning to escape from the Isle of Wight, and join that portion of the navy which was now under the command of Rupert and the Prince of Wales, and thus make a descent on Ireland, where the incredible exertions of the Marquess of Ormonde kept alive a royalist party, and from there attempt another such invasion of England as had just ended so fatally at Preston Rout.
Such was the wild, vague, and desperate scheme which the King nursed in preference to returning triumphantly to London as the ally of the Parliament, and from there dealing with the army, now his open enemies.
But this, though it might seem the surest proof of his levity and falsity, was in reality the uttermost testimony he could give of his constancy to principles which he accounted Divine.
The price the Parliament asked was the sacrifice of Episcopacy, and that was what Charles would never consent to. Far preferable was the wild hazard, the desperate risk, the almost certain danger of trusting to Rupert and his lawless little fleet, or Ormonde and his inadequate forces, or Ireland and her uncertain loyalty, than keeping the pact with the Presbyterian, who refused the Divine form of Church government.
Now, almost before the commissioners had entered their coaches, he was hurriedly writing to Ormonde and to the Queen.