Devil Water (19 page)

Then there was the performing bear, and the jugglers, and a fine team of wrestlers who tumbled each other about in Cumberland style, and aroused Tom Forster’s interest sufficiently for him to shout out hoarse wagers, quite forgetting that he had nothing with which to pay if he lost.

When time came for the feast, the Derwentwaters, with the Forsters and Lady Mary, sat in the open under the trees and ate among the crowd at a long trestle table. They passed a loving cup from mouth to mouth until the spiced claret was all drained, then James himself filled the cup again.

Mr. Brown, the chaplain, came to join them at the feast, and sang songs with the rest of them, as Mr. Petre never would have done. That priest had refused to come north again. He had gone to stay with his Petre relations in Essex, where Mary -- James’s young sister -- was also visiting. It was a relief to be rid of Mr. Petre and his Jacobite plottings.

The sun shone all that joyful August afternoon, yet a delicious breeze off the moors cooled the air. It was comfortable in the shade of the great trees, and St, Wilfrid’s effigy peered down benignly from the huge chestnut affectionately called the “Earl’s tree.” When little Johnny’s nurse brought him back to sit on his mother’s lap and suck a marchpane sweet, James looked from his wife and child to the hundreds of affectionate faces around him, and his heart swelled. This is as near to paradise as I can get on this earth, he thought. Ann, watching him, nodded and put her hand on his. “Hark!” she said after a moment, turning her head. “I hear horses, I think. Down by the Devil Water.”

“What an odd name is Devil Water,” said Dorothy. “There could be no devil in this beautiful place.”

“It does not refer to
him,”
said Mr. Brown, always ready to enlighten, “at least they say it came from the D’eyvilstone family as Dilston does. And yet--” added the priest, “some do think the glen is haunted, perhaps Old Scrat has been there once.”

“Nonsense!” said James with such sharpness that his wife stared at him. “I wonder that you can jest about evil, sir!”

The priest was also startled by the young Earl’s vehemence. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said. “I spoke idly.”

James nodded, ashamed of and not understanding his outburst. How had it been that Dorothy’s chance reference to a name they used daily had shattered his happy mood like a discordant crash of cymbals? That he had felt a sudden chill on his scalp and along his spine, and heard the words “Devil Water” not as they applied to a lovely cascading burn but as to some mysterious substance both sinister and dangerous.

“Why ‘tis Charles coming, and another gentleman with him,” said Ann in a pleased voice, as horsemen appeared on the drive. “Glad I am there’s still food left.” She hurried to greet her brother-in-law. Like most women, Ann was fond of Charles. And I am too, the rogue, James thought, his equanimity restored.

Charles looked flushed as he dismounted, his gray eyes shone with elation. His long body had thickened and matured. The gangling uncertainty of his boyhood, and the untidiness too, had vanished. He was now a well-groomed man who carried his head high under the blond periwig and gold-edged tricorne. The jagged white scar across his tanned right cheek did not detract from his debonair good looks, and his smile as he kissed Ann’s hand and then Lady Mary’s had a pleasing assurance. The smile broadened as he saw Dorothy Forster. “Why, Mistress Dolly! What pleasure to see here the toast of Northumbria!” Dorothy blushed and lowered her lashes, wishing that she was wearing something more becoming than her shabby riding habit.

“You did not bring the new fowling piece, Charles?” asked James.

Charles shook his head. “I’ve brought you something far more important!” He turned to the silent stranger who waited a little apart. “Let me present Colonel Oxburgh, my lord!” he cried triumphantly.

James had never heard of any Colonel Oxburgh, and was at a loss to understand his brother’s excitement. Oxburgh had grave eyes, and a long-lipped Irish face. He spoke with an Irish accent as he made courteous rejoinders to the Earl’s welcome. He was not dressed like an officer, but wore sober gentleman’s clothes, though he had a sword and a pistol. He greeted the priest with particular warmth, saying, “By Saint Michael, I’m glad to see you, Father. I’m in sore need of shriving and a Mass.”

The priest smiled. “You’ve been traveling where such were unavailable, sir?”

“That I have,” said Oxburgh with grimness, “ever since I left France.”

France, James thought. So that’s what it is. His hands clenched against a violent impulse to breach every law of hospitality and bid the man leave. But Charles was saying urgently, “The Colonel must talk with you, James. At once. Shall we go in the house? You too, Tom,” he added, giving the somnolent Forster a poke in the belly. “Wake up, there’s great news!”

James silently led the way into his mansion. They went to the new library, where the Earl had lovingly accumulated hundreds of books. The four men sat down in an alcove by the sunny west window; a fly buzzed against the glittering new panes. “Tell them, Oxburgh!” said Charles. “Tell them!” The Colonel drew a deep breath, and fixed his eyes intently on James. “It has begun at last, my lord,” he said solemnly. “The Earl of Mar this day landed in Newcastle from London -- as I did. Lord Mar is riding posthaste into Scotland. Soon King James will be proclaimed across the Scottish nation.”

“By God, ye don’t mean it,” said Forster sitting up straight. “Or what
do
ye mean?” He scowled, trying to clear his wits.

“I mean that our rightful king is coming to us, sir,” said the Colonel. “He’ll land in Scotland. King Louis of France has at last promised him an army at his back.”

“Isn’t it glorious!” Charles cried, amazed that his brother sat without speaking, his eyes tracing a pattern in the Turkey carpet. “King Jemmie’ll come into his own again!”

James lifted his head. “Revolution,” he said in a flat voice. “It means civil war.”

“Well, of course, there’ll be some fighting!” said Charles. “Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

James turned from his eager brother to Oxburgh. “Will you explain the situation in detail, sir. And what positive assurance is there that King James will land this time, who has so often failed?”

Henry Oxburgh hastened to speak. He was passionately dedicated to the restoration of a Catholic king in Great Britain. He was one of the Jacobites’ best secret agents, and had during the last months slipped back and forth between London and Bar-le-Duc, where James Stuart awaited his chance. Lord Bolingbroke was at Bar-le-Duc, and the Duke of Ormond too, arranging the last details of the Expeditionary Force. While in London, and in fact throughout England, the Jacobite leaders were ready. The countryside was being steadily alerted by agents, many of them Irish who posed as simple travelers. “Like me, my lord,” said Oxburgh with his quiet smile. “The rising will start in the west of England, under Sir William Wyndham, while Lord Mar is rousing Scotland. Our party at Walton-Ie-Dale will see to Lancashire, and, surely, here in the North we can count on thousands to rally for us.”

“Who are they?” said James after a moment.

Oxburgh stiffened. He had not expected such restraint from this Earl, who was not only the premier Catholic up here but cousin to King James as well. Especially as Charles Radcliffe had shown instant enthusiasm. Oxburgh reached inside his waistcoat and brought out a paper on which were listed over a hundred names. “This was confided to me in London,” he said, putting the paper in James’s hands. “These are the heads of Northern families on which we shall rely.”

James glanced down at the paper. “I see that my name tops the list,” he said after a long pause.

“F faith to be sure it does!” cried Oxburgh. “Who else? Though they think in London ‘twould be best to make Mr. Forster, here, the General -- him being Protestant. So the Whigs can’t say ‘tis only Catholics who want the rightful king. For it isn’t. We can count on all the Tories and High Churchmen too.”

“I’m to be a general?” sputtered Tom, his little eyes brightening. “Gen’ral Forster, o-ho! We must have a drink on that, m’lord! What d’ye say!”

Nobody answered him. Charles and Oxburgh were staring at James, who had turned his head and was gazing out of the window where he could see his villagers still dancing and singing on the lawns. Oxburgh followed the Earl’s glance and said, “Your people love you, my lord. You could easily raise a thousand men here yourself!”

“Probably,” said James. “Yet they are content as they are, and have no fault to find with King George. They’d follow me, but has God given me the right to wrench them from their homes and force them into war? Into revolution against the laws of their country -- into treason?”

“I
cannot
understand you, James!” Charles burst out. “Isn’t this what we’ve always prayed and hoped for? How can you be so wavering and tepid? You, who know our cousin, you who were raised with him?”

James’s lips tightened. Aye, he thought, and it is
because
I know my cousin James that I seem tepid. Because there is a heaviness about him, because his life has been passed in shadows and sour indecisions, because he is forever oppressed by the Stuart doom -- as I find I do not wish to be. “If I refuse to go out in this rebellion,” he said slowly to Oxburgh, “what then?”

The Colonel was dismayed. “Why -- I -- I’ll go to Lord Widdrington. I believe the Earl of Mar has already stopped there on his way north.”

“I doubt,” said James quietly, “that Widdrington will be much more eager than I am.”

“By God, m’lord,” cried Tom Forster, lumbering to his feet, “I’m with Charles. I canna fathom this shilly-shally. Why, I’ll be in action at once. I’ll get men together, put ‘em under arms. I’ll rally ‘em to the cause wi’ never a backward thought.” He thumped his chest, glaring down at the Earl, whose gray eyes were masked as he contemplated the fat county squire who had frittered away all his patrimony.
“You
have nothing to lose, Tom,” he said. “As for me, I can make no decision now, I must pray on it.”

Later on Charles could never remember the happenings of the next few weeks, so clouded were they by uncertainty and bewildered disappointment in his brother. Colonel Oxburgh had had to leave Dilston without securing James’s promise of support. Oxburgh rode off into Northumberland to alert other known Jacobites, but he went gloomily, knowing that without Derwentwater’s leadership many would refuse to join.

During those weeks James plunged into one of the melancholies which had long been foreign to him. Sometimes he disappeared for hours, and once Ann found him in the dungeon below the old wing tapping with a chisel. At other times he had the chest of Radcliffe papers brought to him and kept it in his apartments, locking his door even against Ann. Pale and distraught, she slipped about the castle and tried to avoid the furious questions Lady Mary bombarded her with.

On September 15 Charles rode over to Corbridge seeking, as he had when a boy, some amusement. And in the taproom of the Angel, he heard news so cataclysmic that he rushed back to Dilston, and straight to his brother.

James was sitting at a desk in the morning room glancing over his bailiff’s accountings of the harvest, which had been excellent. He had other papers underneath the accounts, and these papers he hid from Ann. She sat near him embroidering a baby cap, and casting anxious glances at her husband. He looked haggard and he kept his hand to his head as though it ached.

When Charles burst in, James looked up with a frown. “What is it? I thought your London years had taught you quieter manners.”

“They’ve raised the standard in Scotland!” Charles cried. “Our King has been proclaimed at Braemar, at Aberdeen and Inverness, everywhere!”

Ann drew a sharp breath, and turned her dark eyes hopefully to James, but he only compressed his lips, and said, “Well, it’s what we’ve been expecting, isn’t it? Has the King landed, then?”

“They say not yet,” said Charles reluctantly. “There’s been a blow to his plans. King Louis of France is dead.”

There was a silence. James picked up his goose quill, and made with it small meaningless marks on the top papers.

“That’s not all,” said Charles on a quieter note. “Will Shaftoe was at the Angel. He’s had a letter from his brother in London, who says there may be some warrant out against
you.”

James’s head jerked up. “Against me? I don’t believe it. If there’s any such rumor Mr. Bacon will know of it -- excellent Whig magistrate that he is!” James got up and pulled the bell rope.

“What are you going to do, dear?” Ann whispered. The baby cap slipped from her fingers to the floor.

“I’m going to Mr. Bacon to find out what, if any, charges there may be against me. Saddle some nag, bring my hat and cloak,” he added to the servant who answered the bell pull.

“James!” cried Charles in despair.
“Why
do you do this?”

“Because England is my country and I wish to obey its laws.”

“But don’t you understand that Scotland’s won over!” Charles shouted. “That England soon will be.
King James
will now make the laws!”

“That will be difficult unless he is here to make them.” The gray eyes flashed with sudden anger. “You young fool! Don’t you realize what King Louis’s death means? Do you think that France will
now
give the Jacobites her backing?” James turned on his heel and stalked out the door, leaving Charles aghast.

“ ‘The Jacobites’!” he said to Ann. “My God, he speaks as though he wasn’t one of us. What’s happened to him? Holy Blessed Virgin, I don’t understand him at all.”

“Leave him alone,” said Ann, her eyes full of tears. “He has been wrestling with his conscience. He’s had headaches and monstrous dreams. I believe he’s had a warning from one of the ‘presences’ Busby says do show themselves to Radcliffes. James will not speak of it, but as we left the nurseries t’other night he went down the tower stairs ahead of me, and I heard him cry out as though in horror.”

“But he should fight!” cried Charles scarcely listening. “How can he stand by like this, while the Rising we always hoped for has started! I must leave him and join. God forfend there should be bad blood between us, yet -- ”