The Forest (66 page)

‘Perhaps we shall see you at the meeting house, Dame Alice,’ she had said gently, as she left.

‘Yes,’ Alice had replied absently. ‘Yes, of course.’

She had gone to Boldre parish church, however, the next Sunday and for several more afterwards. With her regicide husband on the run she did not want to do anything that might cause unfavourable comment in the new royalist regime.

She was riding by a small coppice she owned about a month after this, when she noticed Stephen Pride at work on the fence. Asked what he was doing, he showed her where a section had been broken down. ‘Don’t want the deer getting in,’ he remarked. Had her steward asked him to see to this? she enquired. ‘Just noticed it as I was passing,’ he replied; and although she offered, he refused to take any payment. Gradually, in the weeks that followed, she noticed a number of similar incidents. One of the cattle was sick: it was brought in to her steward. When a tree fell across the lane that led to Albion House, Pride and three of the Oakley villagers were cutting it up and carting the wood to the house by early morning without even being asked. Her Forest friends were silently looking after her, she realized.

She continued to go to Boldre parish church. She suspected that Joan Pride understood. But after some time, when it was clear that nothing she did was going to help her husband or save his fortune, she turned up at the Lymington meeting house again one Sunday and was quietly welcomed as if she had never avoided the place. She went often thereafter.

And she might have continued to do so indefinitely, had it not been for the English Parliament.

King Charles II was a tolerant man and, unlike his father, his tolerance seemed to extend to religion. He told his councillors that he was content to allow his subjects to worship as they pleased. But his council and his Parliament were not content with that at all. The gentlemen in
Parliament wanted order. They had no wish to encourage the Puritan sects who had given so much trouble before. And besides, if people were free to worship as they pleased it might allow the Roman Catholic Church to flourish again and that was unthinkable. So the Acts of Parliament followed and the new king could not stop them. Only the Anglican prayer book with its formal services might be used in churches. Protestant sects – Dissenters as they were called – were banned from any church. Soon, it was said, a new Act would ban them from meeting within five miles of any town. Joan Pride’s congregation at Lymington was practically illegal.

‘It’s monstrous,’ Alice declared. ‘What possible harm can these people do?’ But the law was the law. She went to Boldre church, used the Anglican prayer book and held her peace. She told Joan Pride she was sorry for what had happened and the other woman made no comment. Indeed, for three months she did not even see her friend. And then one day she chanced to meet her in the lane that led south from Boldre church, and Joan Pride told her that there was a preacher, a certain Mr Whitaker, who was willing to come to Lymington. ‘But we daren’t have him in the town, Dame Alice. So we’ve nowhere for him to preach,’ she explained.

Alice had heard of this preacher, a scholarly young man with a fine reputation. ‘I should like to have heard him myself,’ she confessed. After only a few moments’ thought, and rather to her own surprise, she heard herself saying: ‘He could come to Albion House. He might stay as my guest and preach in the hall. Mightn’t you and your friends come to hear him there?’

And so it was done. Mr Robert Whitaker proved to be a splendid preacher. Before the royal Restoration he had been a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He was also very good-looking. Her daughter Margaret, especially, seemed to take an interest in him; and he, for his part, seemed to need little persuading before he promised to come and visit
them again. Alice was not sure what she thought of this new development. A young preacher, however eloquent, was not quite the match she had considered for one of her daughters.

She had hardly had time to worry about this, however, before a letter from her husband had driven all other thoughts from her mind. He had a friend who was to make a visit to Switzerland and who would be happy to convey her with his family, at no cost to herself, and bring her back again after a month. She could bring little Betty, the daughter he had never seen. They were to leave in three weeks. As John Lisle wrote:

There being no time to carry messages back and forth between us, I shall either rejoice to see you, my dearest love, and my daughter in Lausanne; or else learn with grief but understanding, that you cannot make this journey.

What should she do? I must go, she concluded. ‘You are going to see your father,’ she told the little girl. She began to prepare and pack.

So it came as a particularly painful blow when, five days before she was to leave, a messenger arrived with news that John Lisle had been murdered in Lausanne. It was not certain who was behind it. Certainly not the king himself. At no time did Charles II ever indulge in acts of vengeance of this kind. But there were other royalists who were certainly capable of such a deed. It was said that his French mother, the widow of the executed king, might have been responsible. Alice thought so.

Anyway, she had no husband now and Betty had no father. By chance young Whitaker came calling not long after.

Zephyr was blowing his gentlest breeze through the green glades as King Charles II of England went forth in his New Forest, that warm August day, to hunt.

He had been there before. Five years back, when the terrible plague was raging in London, the king and his court had come down to the safety of Sarum; and while there he had made a small tour of the villages round about. ‘When I was running away from Cromwell, after I hid in the oak tree, I came through Sarum.’ This had included a ride into the Forest. ‘I slept rough in the New Forest two nights,’ he genially told his courtiers, ‘and not even the charcoal burners knew I was there.’

And now he had decided to visit the Forest again, with a party of courtiers, for his royal pleasure.

Stephen Pride looked at his friend Purkiss and Purkiss looked at Puckle. Furzey should have been there too, but he had said he wasn’t coming, not for any king. So it was the three of them and Pride’s son Jim, who were waiting on their ponies by the gate of the King’s House at Lyndhurst, where they had been told to report, as the king and his party emerged.

Then Stephen Pride looked at King Charles II of England and King Charles II looked at Stephen Pride.

The royal visitor was certainly a memorable figure. Tall, swarthy, with that mass of curling brown hair that fell to his chest so thickly that you might have thought it was a wig, Charles II exhibited both sides of his ancestry very clearly. His fine brown eyes and the long line of his mouth were those of the Celtic Stuart family, but to these features were added the heavy nose and the sensual, cynical power of his French mother’s Bourbon ancestors. He glanced now at Pride with exactly the same cheerful cynicism he would have shown if he were addressing a pretty young serving
wench or his royal cousin King Louis XIV of France.

Stephen Pride stared, but it wasn’t so much the king whom Pride was looking at. It was the women.

There were several of them. They were dressed in hunting clothes just like the men, with jaunty hunting caps. The queen was not among them that day, but there was a vivacious, dark-haired young woman who whispered something in the king’s ear that made him laugh. This, Pride guessed, must be the comic actress, Nell Gwynn, whom all England knew to be the king’s latest mistress. He noticed an elegant young Frenchwoman and several others. Were these all royal mistresses too? He didn’t know. But as the independent New Forest smallholder looked at the French and Celtic prince he wondered, with a touch of secret envy, how the devil the handsome rogue got away with it all.

There were nine in the royal party including the king and four ladies. Pride did not know who the other men were, but one – a strikingly handsome youth, a delicate version of the king, really – he assumed must be Monmouth, the monarch’s bastard son. In attendance was Sir Robert Howard, an aristocrat whose official title of Master Keeper meant he was nominally in charge of the deer in the bailiwick in which they were to hunt; there were also several local gentlemen keepers. The party was to hunt from Bolderwood lodge and, as Jim Pride was underkeeper there, he had recruited his father and Puckle to act as extra riders. There were usually some tips to be had on these occasions. Furzey had been asked too, but as he’d refused they’d taken Stephen Pride’s friend Purkiss from Brockenhurst. He had a reputation for being no fool, so they reckoned they were probably better off with him than with Furzey anyway.

They were all ready. Stephen Pride was sixty years old, but he had to admit he was quite excited. He’d been a happily faithful husband for over thirty years, but to his own amusement he found himself stealing glances at the
king’s pretty lady friends. Life in the old dog yet, he thought cheerfully, and was glad he was fit enough to participate with his son in what, he supposed, would be a tiring day.

‘I should think we’ll be taking a lot of deer today,’ he remarked to one of the gentlemen keepers, who gave him an old-fashioned look.

‘Don’t count on it, Stephen,’ he murmured. ‘I know the king.’

And to Pride’s astonishment they had not gone a quarter-mile before he saw the Master Keeper’s hand shoot up and the king’s voice rang out. ‘Nellie wants to see the Rufus tree.’

‘The Rufus tree!’ his courtiers cried out.

So off they all went, instead, to the Rufus tree.

‘It will be like this’ – the gentleman smiled at Pride – ‘the whole day.’

And indeed, they had only gone another quarter-mile when suddenly there was a further change of plan. Before seeing the Rufus tree the king wished to inspect his new plantation. This meant a couple of miles’ extra riding and the party obediently swung round to go off there instead.

Pride looked at his companions. They were not very pleased.

‘Doesn’t look as if we’re going to get much out of this,’ Puckle remarked with reproach to Jim Pride. Money and the odd haunch of venison tended to come when numbers of deer were killed. The gentlemen keepers were usually pretty good at making sure the riders like Puckle were looked after. But if they were just going to wander about like this all day, the prospects weren’t so promising.

‘It isn’t Jim’s fault,’ Pride defended his son.

‘It’s early yet,’ said Jim hopefully.

Pride glanced across at Purkiss. He felt bad about him because he had asked the Brockenhurst man himself.

Purkiss was a tall man with a long face and a quiet,
intelligent manner. The Purkisses were an ancient Forest family, respected for their good sense. ‘They go quietly,’ Pride would say, ‘but they’re always thinking. No one ever makes a fool of a Purkiss.’ If he felt guilty about wasting Purkiss’s time, however, Purkiss himself looked content enough. He seemed to be meditating to himself.

The king’s plantation, it had to be said, was a fine affair. So much timber had been lost during the lax administration and confusion of the last seven decades that everyone agreed something needed to be done. As so often with Charles II, behind his sensual indulgence, the king’s keen intelligence was at work. Just as, after the city of London had suffered its great fire, he had studied every detail and firmly supported the huge rebuilding programme of Sir Christopher Wren, so now the royal patron of the arts and sciences had devised a practical and far-seeing project in his royal forest. On his personal orders three large areas – three hundred acres in all – were to be fenced off like coppices and sown with acorns and beech mast. Thousands of fine timber trees would result for eventual harvesting. ‘Future generations, at least, will bless me,’ he had reasonably remarked.

The party arrived at the big inclosure. The seedlings stretched away in lines like an army. The party dutifully looked and expressed their admiration. But the king, Pride noticed, although genial, was also surveying the scene with a sharp eye and, taking two companions, he cantered away round the perimeter to inspect the fence.

Having returned satisfied, he gave the order: ‘Now for that Rufus tree.’

So back they went again. The four Forest men bringing up the rear of the cheerful cavalcade said little now. Jim was looking glum, Puckle bored. But Purkiss still seemed quite happy and, when Stephen Pride remarked that he was sorry to have brought him on a fool’s errand, the Brockenhurst man just shook his head and smiled. ‘It’s not every day I get
the chance to ride with the king, Stephen,’ he said calmly. ‘Besides, a man may learn much and profit from such an occasion.’

‘I can’t see much profit myself,’ Pride answered, ‘but I’m glad if you can.’

If the Rufus tree had been old at the time of the Armada, eighty years later its long life was clearly nearing its end. The ancient oak was decrepit. Most of its branches had died back. A great rent in the side showed where a large limb had broken off. Ivy grew on the trunk. Only a little crown of leaves grew from its topmost branch. As a mark of respect it had been enclosed behind a stake fence.

The two acorns which had tumbled down and taken root after the Armada storms stood not far off, noble oak trees now. One was shorter and broader because it had been pollarded; the other, untouched, grew high.

They all surveyed the hoary old hulk with reverence. Several of the party dismounted.