The Forest (74 page)

Yet as he lay there, a colonel surrounded by his troops,
with all the authority of the kingdom behind him, Thomas Penruddock found that he was conscious above all of his power. The evil old woman down at Moyles Court seemed in his mind’s eye no less hateful, but small and frail. Like some vicious old fox that has terrorized an area for many seasons, she was in her decline now and all nature called for her to die. He was not going to destroy the woman, he told himself; he was just going, as one goes to a guttering candle, to snuff her out.

Peter Albion had taken longer than he expected and Betty had almost given up when at last, just as it was getting dark, he arrived. He looked tired. At the suggestion that they might ride on across the Forest to Moyles Court that night he looked dismayed; and Betty was just wondering what to do when Stephen Pride arrived.

‘I thought you’d still be here,’ he said. ‘I got a message for you.’

He’d had to think hard on the way. If he told Betty the truth, that her mother was in danger, he was afraid she might go running back to Moyles Court whatever anyone said. So he’d prepared a lie – not a very good one, but he thought it would do.

‘I just sent the groom back to your mother. Met him at Boldre bridge. I told him you were here. She says to stay. She doesn’t want you riding across the Forest at night.’ The obvious relief on Peter Albion’s face told him he need say no more.

‘Thank you, Stephen.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think my cousin Peter has any desire to ride more today.’

The young man smiled too and Pride nodded his head politely. A handsome young man, he thought. Just right for Betty. It seemed to him that Betty might think so too. ‘I’ll be getting home then,’ he said as casually as he could and rode back to the lane.

A minute later he was urging his pony forward as fast as
he could, up the lane towards the quiet little ford. Soon after, he had crossed it and was making his way swiftly up the long track that led to the western heath.

There was no time to lose. Jim might be out there, ahead of him somewhere. And at Moyles Court Dame Alice had probably already received her visitors. Had the trap been sprung by now? Late at night was more likely, he thought. Such things were usually done late at night.

His heart was beating fast. He felt a little light-headed as he came out on to the edge of the western heath by Setley. It was many a year since he’d gone rushing about all day and all night like this. His physical exhaustion seemed to have evaporated, though. He was too nervous and too excited to be tired.

The stars were gleaming brightly now. He decided to cut straight up north, skirting Brockenhurst, then take the track that led out above Burley. That was the way Jim would be going. He pushed his pony along. Thank God it was a sturdy little creature. That pony could carry him all day … and all night.

He skirted Brockenhurst. Ahead of him lay a section of forest known as Rhinefield. A quarter moon was rising. Its light caught the pale sand and gravel along the path. It was like a silver trail of stardust across the heather.

On any other errand his heart would have filled with joy at such a sight – the open heath of the Forest under starlight, the Forest he loved. His heart was pounding. He took deep gasps of the warm August air. The hoofs of his pony were beating, beating upon the path.

There was something out there, ahead of him. He felt a little strange. Something pale out on the heath: cattle probably. No, the moon. The moon was on the heath. He shook his head to clear it. And then a great white flash, like lightning came with an awesome thunder into his head.

And just short of Rhinefield, Stephen Pride, having
suffered a single stroke, fell on to the gentle warmth of the Forest floor.

Alice Lisle stood at the open window and looked out.

Above the trees on the small ridge opposite the starlit sky had clouded over, as though it had been muffled with a blanket. Moyles Court was quiet in the silence before the dawn.

No one had come since the visitors had arrived that evening. She had not been surprised when Betty did not arrive back, for the simple reason that she knew exactly where Betty was. A message from Tryphena on Sunday had warned her that young Mr Albion had arrived back in London early and that, having called at the house, he was almost certainly on his way to the Forest. Betty’s suggestion that she should ride to Albion House hadn’t deceived her mother for a moment.

She hadn’t tried to stop her. If young Peter Albion was as determined as that, and if her twenty-four-year-old daughter had deceived her in order to meet him, it was clear that there was nothing more she could do. Albion House, quite likely, would return to the Albions. It was fate. Whatever her reservations, young Peter was actually a better match than any of her other daughters had found: better placed to succeed, more gently born. Perhaps it was the result of being back in the familiar surroundings of the Forest, but it seemed to her now that if this was what Betty chose it was useless to fight it any more.

But now, suddenly, there was shouting in the dark. Men were moving outside. There was a bang at the door. She heard a voice.

‘Open! In the name of the king.’

More bangs. Alice ran to the next chamber. Dunne and Hicks were in there. ‘Wake up!’ she cried. ‘Quickly. You must hide.’ The other man, Nelthorpe, was in the next room. She found him roused already, pulling on his boots.

They ran down the oak staircase, all four of them, in the darkness, the men clumping so loudly in their boots that it was hard to believe they wouldn’t be heard at Ringwood.

‘The back,’ she hissed, leading the way to the kitchens. But even as they got there they could see shadows outside the window there. ‘Hide as best you can,’ she told them and hurried to the stairs. Running up, her heart beating wildly, she found two of the servants already standing on the landing, looking pale and frightened. ‘Close the beds,’ she whispered, indicating the two rooms where the men had been. ‘Leave no sign. Quickly.’ The hammering on the doors, both front and back, was growing louder. Another minute and they might start to break them down. Again she raced downstairs, seized a candle from a table where she had left it the night before, lit it from the glowing embers of the fire and went to the door. Taking a deep breath she began to turn the heavy key and slip the big iron bolt. The last thing she thought, before she opened the door, was that she must not show fear.

Thomas Penruddock looked down at the woman before him.

She was in her nightdress, a shawl covering her shoulders. Her hair, mostly grey, was hanging loose. Even in the candlelight she looked pale. She stared at him. ‘What is the meaning of this, Sir?’

‘In the king’s name, Madam, we are to search your house.’

‘Search my house, Sir? In the middle of the night?’

‘Yes, Madam. And you will let us in.’

There were two large troopers behind the colonel Alice now realized. They looked as if they were about to push past her. She tried to appear calm.

But it was at this moment that she also realized her terrible mistake. If the troops entered the house, was there really any chance they wouldn’t find the three men? If they
had been sleeping innocently, it might not look so bad, but the fact that she was trying to hide them suggested guilt. What could she do? A panic seized her; she saw that her hand, holding the candle, had started to shake. She fought to master herself. Perhaps she could bluff. It was her only hope now. ‘By what warrant do you dare to invade my house, Sir?’ She stared at him haughtily.

‘My warrant is the king’s name, Madam.’

‘Produce your warrant, Sir,’ she cried furiously, although she hadn’t the least idea if a warrant were needed or not, ‘or be gone.’ Did he hesitate? She wasn’t sure. ‘So,’ she cried again, ‘I see you have none. You are nothing but common trespassers, then.’ And she started to close the door.

Penruddock’s boot was in the way. A moment later the two troopers had pushed rudely past her. Then two more, out of the shadows, came blundering in.

‘Lights,’ voices were calling. ‘Bring lights.’

It did not take long to find them. Beyond the kitchen lay a large, barn-like room known as the malt-house. Hicks the minister, who was a large, corpulent man, and Dunne the baker had tried to bury themselves under a pile of refuse in there and were dragged out, looking foolish. Hicks’s companion Nelthorpe, a tall, thin fellow, had tried to hide in the kitchen chimney.

Penruddock addressed them briefly. ‘Richard Nelthorpe, you have already been outlawed as a rebel; John Hicks, you also are known to have been with Monmouth; James Dunne, you are their willing accomplice. You are all arrested. Alice Lisle,’ he added crossly, ‘you are harbouring traitors.’

‘I am giving shelter to a respectable minister,’ she retorted scornfully.

‘To traitors fleeing, Madam, from Monmouth’s rebellion.’

‘I know nothing of that, Sir,’ she replied.

‘A judge and jury will decide that. You are under arrest.’

‘I?’ She glanced down at her nightdress. ‘And what sort of soldier are you, Sir,’ she said with contempt, ‘who comes to arrest women in the night?’ She defied him; she despised him openly in front of his own troops.

How strange it was, he thought. He had expected to find an evil old witch; instead he found that same haughty, forceful woman who even now was ready to stare him down. Just as they had once before, the years seemed to fall away and he was looking at the terrible figure of vengeance who, if he were still alive, would strike his poor father down again. As she stared at him with those cold grey eyes, he could almost have trembled. And, taken by surprise, he suddenly felt, like a blow to the stomach, all the old pain of the loss of the father he had so loved. To his utter astonishment he found he had to turn away.

It was not so much with anger as with pain that, striding out into the darkness, he called back: ‘Arrest them all.’

It took some minutes before they were brought out. He did not bother to interfere. When they came he saw that Alice was still dressed only in her nightclothes. He also observed that one of the troopers had obviously appropriated a silver candlestick and some linen. He did not care.

‘Where are we going?’ cried Dunne.

‘To Salisbury gaol,’ he answered bleakly. And off they went, with Dame Alice incongruously made to ride pillion behind one of the troopers.

He shouldn’t have allowed it, Thomas Penruddock thought, but he truly didn’t care.

On 24 August in the Year of Our Lord 1685 there arrived near the city of Winchester a large cavalcade. Five judges, a flock of lawyers, Jack Ketch, the official and highly incompetent executioner, marshals, clerks, servants and outriders – the whole panoply of justice needed, in the reign of His Majesty King James II of England, to hang, decapitate,
burn, whip or transport to the colonies the more than twelve hundred men unlucky enough to be caught after marching with Monmouth. At the head of this great legal deputation, as promised, was no less a personage than the Right Honourable George, Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys.

The assize which was to be held down in the West Country, after executing three hundred and thirty and sending eight hundred and fifty to the American plantations, would be known as the Bloody Assize; the presiding judge would go down in English history as Bloody Jeffreys. But before that great business began an introduction was to be held in the great hall of Winchester Castle: the trial of Alice Lisle.

As she looked around the great stone hall of the Norman and Plantagenet kings, Betty could not help being impressed by the ancient majesty of the setting. A soft afternoon light filtered into the church-like space through the pointed windows. On the dais sat the five judges in their scarlet robes and long white wigs; below them the lawyers and clerks like so many black old birds; before them a crowd of people. And alone, dressed in grey, sitting quietly in an oak chair on a raised platform, was her mother.

In a place of such solemnity, thought Betty, before such reverend and learned men, justice would surely be done and her mother – as Peter had explained the law to her – should undoubtedly go free. She glanced at Tryphena, who was sitting beside her and gave her an encouraging smile. On her other side Peter squeezed her hand.

The case to answer was straightforward. Her mother had taken in three men for the night. One, poor Dunne, was a comparative nonentity; Hicks the preacher was accused, but not yet convicted of treason; the third, Nelthorpe, had been outlawed.

‘The case is dangerous,’ Peter had explained, ‘because it’s treason. If you help a felon who’s running away you are an
accessory after the fact; but you are not held to be guilty of the felon’s crime. With high treason, however, the case is different. If you give any aid to a known traitor you, too, are guilty of treason. That’s your mother’s danger. However,’ he had continued, ‘the prosecutor will have to show that she
knew
these men were part of Monmouth’s rebellion. Nelthorpe she’d never seen before and she knew nothing about him. Furthermore, he was brought by a man known to be a reputable minister, namely Hicks. So,’ he expounded, ‘she takes in a respectable dissenter and a friend for the night – the sort of thing she’s often done before. Does she know they’re traitors? No. Unless someone can prove she had knowledge, most juries would give her the benefit of the doubt.’ He smiled. ‘I say she has committed no crime.’

‘As soon as she is acquitted, Peter,’ Betty had said, ‘I think we should celebrate.’