There was a pause. ‘I do indeed.’
Penitence looked up into the face of Henry King, and fainted.
She came to as he carried her up the stairs. Prue was lighting the way and the soldier Muskett was bringing up the rear. This is ridiculous. She was, she knew, near exhaustion but to become so weak when she looked at him as to faint… nevertheless, the sheer luxury of being in his arms was something she wasn’t going to forgo by insisting on walking. Everything had gone out of her but the physical remembrance of him. She put her cheek against his neck and felt his throat move. And you remember me too. The air about them thrummed.
‘You’ve got fatter,’ he said.
She grinned because she hadn’t. She moved her head so that her skin brushed against the stubble of his chin. He was breathing hard, and not just from expending energy: ‘Jesus Christ.’
Prue opened the door to the bedroom and a small snowstorm of feathers rose up in the draught.
‘What the hell’s all this?’
Lust subsided as the nightmare of the situation came back. He put her down. She said: ‘Major Nevis was searching for the rebel.’
‘What did he use, cannon fire?’ He caught sight of the petticoats with their obscene holes still hanging from the tester rail. ‘I’ll kill him.’
‘Henry, I need help.’ She struggled for coherence. Muskett was standing in the doorway, Prue was lighting candles in the room. ‘I want Prue to go downstairs and bring me some food and drink. I want Muskett to go with her; it’s not safe for her to be left alone.’
Prue looked dreadful. A trickle of blood from her nose had dried on her top lip. She’d managed to tie her torn basque together enough for decency but it showed bruises on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Prue?’ Penitence asked. ‘Did they hurt you?’ Of course she’s not all right. Of course they hurt her. The girl was suffering reaction; the candleholder in her hand was shaking but she was regarding the man who’d saved her from rape with something approaching worship.
Penitence lowered her voice so that Muskett shouldn’t hear: ‘And the bandages, Prue. I left them in the courtyard. But don’t let anyone see you bring them.’
The girl nodded and left. With a glance at the viscount, Muskett followed her.
As fast as she could Penitence began heaping on the bed the things she would need in the hidden room; light, covering, water… ‘Hold this please.’ She passed the viscount a bowl and ewer.
Slowly he set them down on a table. ‘I gather from this that you lied, do I? You are hiding a rebel?’
‘Not Monmouth,’ she said. ‘It’s your son.’
She was in a hurry and desperate to recruit his help or she would never have told him like that. She’d had dreams in which she told him. Sometimes it was as retribution: This is the son you abandoned when you abandoned me. Sometimes with sorrowful bounty: See the son I have been nurturing for you. But if the son wasn’t to be dead when he discovered he had one she must move fast. She didn’t even look to see how he took the news, but tied everything except the ewer in a sheet. She just said: ‘When I knock to be let out, press Eve’s nipple,’ pressed it herself and started clambering through the hole, dragging the bundle after her.
She heard him say: ‘Won’t she mind?’ as, once in the room, she turned, took the ewer of water off the bed and shut the panel.
The cluster of holes in the wall showed that candles were lit in the hall where she could hear the great table only used for feasts being dragged to the centre of the room. There must be so many officers to be given supper that the dining-room was too small for them. I hope they’ve brought their own food. She wondered if her taper would be bright enough to cast a beam through the gargoyle’s orifices that could be seen in the hall. She had to risk it. She needed light.
Benedick lay where she’d dumped him; his breathing was irregular and he was very cold. The room smelled of urine and vomit. For a moment she dithered, undecided which of his needs to deal with first, then set to work.
After a while the panel slid back and the viscount’s long legs came over the sill followed by the rest of him. ‘Muskett’s guarding the door.’ He looked around. ‘God Almighty.’
‘Shh,’ she begged, though the noise from the hall below where army sutlers were setting the table would cover any exclamations coming from a gargoyle’s mouth. ‘Lift him up.’ As she put a folded blanket on the floor to act as a mattress under the still-unconscious Benedick, she saw the three of them in a delayed nativity: Joseph, Mary and a large baby Jesus in this taper-lit stable. It was another irreplaceable moment she had no time to savour. ‘Look at his head. How bad is it?’
She’d cut the boy’s hair away from the wound, showing a straight path of torn flesh.
He held the taper near the wound and peered. ‘I think he was lucky. The bullet grazed his skull, probably cauterizing it as it went. But it gave him a hell of a thump. He’ll not be compos mentis for a bit.’
‘He swallowed some sips of soup,’ she said. She took the rolled strips of cloth he’d brought and began bandaging, watching him studying Benedick’s face. Her movements made the light from the taper flicker, distorting the boy’s features. He’ll see the resemblance. It was too marked not to be noted. She saw it all the time. ‘Will he be all right?’
‘Dark room, rest, liquid food.’ He shrugged as he looked around. ‘You seem to have thought of everything. Except what they’ll do to the two of you if they find you sheltering a rebel. Have you thought of that?’
She didn’t understand him. ‘He’s my son,’ she said. ‘Our son.’
The noise from the hall coming through the air-holes was getting louder as officers gathered to eat. They heard Churchill’s voice calling for the Viscount of Severn and Thames: ‘Where’s Torrington? Still tending our hostess?’
‘Fucking the bitch more like,’ said somebody else. It was Nevis’s voice. Penitence noted that, though Churchill had reprimanded the man for his treatment of her, he hadn’t sent him away.
‘I thought he was courting the Portlannon girl,’ said somebody.
‘No marriage contract says you can’t fuck a beautiful actress.’
‘Turns my stomach just to sit down with militia.’ Nevis again. ‘If we’d left it to them, the king would’ve lost his bloody throne.’
‘Most, I grant you,’ said Churchill’s voice, ‘but if it hadn’t been for Torrington and his North Somerset men I’d have lost my life.’
By her side, the viscount grunted. ‘I must go. I’ll leave Muskett on the door. You’ll be safe enough.’
So he’s going to get married. She watched him squirm through the panel. ‘Henry.’
His face appeared in the square. ‘Yes?’
‘Is the rising all over? Has the king won?’
He nodded. ‘It’s all over.’ His eyes went to the figure on the floor. ‘Bar the killing.’
She sat staring at the square of light long after he’d gone away. He didn’t even ask Benedick’s name. If she thought about it she would weep. But she couldn’t think about it; she was too damned tired.
Gently, she laid her son’s head on its side on the pillow. He was warm and clean, at least; it was as much as she could do for now. She took up the taper and crawled through the hole with it. She put the panel back, blew out the light and fell asleep.
Hours later she woke up to the sound of horses and men moving in the courtyard below her window. There were low voices outside her door, then it opened. ‘It’s me.’
She knew it was. She brushed feathers out of her face and hair. He came and sat on the bed. ‘We’re being deployed to chase what’s left of the rebels. Monmouth’s been sighted heading for the New Forest. I’m ordered after him.’
‘You’re not leaving me here with Nevis.’
‘No. Nevis is to join the rest of the Lambs at Taunton.’ As she sighed with relief, he said: ‘Just who is it you’ve got in there?’
‘Benedick,’ she said. ‘He’s known as Benedick Hurd.’ She thanked her
God that he’d used the name by which he’d been christened rather than the Benedick Hughes which was how he’d been known at court. It was unlikely that anyone would identify the Major Hurd who had allied himself with Monmouth as Peg Hughes’s son and Rupert’s foster-son.
‘For God’s sake, Boots. Hurd’s one of Monmouth’s cavalry commanders. Half the country’s hunting for him.’
She’d had no idea. Her son still seemed a child to her. ‘What are we going to do? How can I get him away?’
‘You’re not – until he’s conscious. Then we’ll see.’
‘You’ll come back?’
‘It looks as if I’ll have to.’ He slammed his fist on the mattress, and feathers fluttered around them. ‘For Christ’s sake, Boots, there was no need of all that cock and bull to present him as my son. I wouldn’t have given you away.’
‘But he is your son.’ She heard her voice, ineffective and whispering, a snake’s hiss, the echo of women down the ages foisting somebody else’s child on to the innocent, trusting, helpless male.
And he said, the viscount said, Henry King said: ‘How could you possibly tell?’
She looked at the line of his head and shoulders against the glow from the window. Twenty years had taught him nothing. His distrust of her was so great that the attraction he felt for her must be regarded as an aberration. He’d spent all his years in Louis XIV’s prison – and probably most of them since – fighting the memory of the whore he’d been ungentlemanly enough to fornicate with, yet unable to forget her.
I knew who you were the moment I saw you. How could you not know me? There was no act she could perform, no display of virtue that he would ever believe, because he wanted to believe her and the very wanting damned him in his own eyes and society’s as a fool.
When he’d looked at Benedick he’d looked in a mirror that had reflected his own face made youthful again. But he must not believe his own eyes because he’d found the mother in a brothel. Therefore she’d been a whore. Therefore her child was anybody’s.
She was suffocating; the misery of Newgate, the toil, the responsibility, the nights spent pacing the floor during measles, the croup, teething, all the fight to keep his son alive and he asked how she could possibly tell.
Anger lit twenty years of suppressed resentment and became a bonfire. ‘You stupid b-bba-b—’ It wouldn’t say itself. She was hitting her cheeks so that the word would come out, she was drumming her heels, she clawed at him. ‘You b-bbaa—’
‘Bastard,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake breathe.’ He caught her hands to hold them away.
Their faces were close, the heat of each body reflecting back on to the other’s. His body and hers. His breath on her mouth blowing the fury higher until it was transmuted into an intolerable passion.
‘Oh Christ, Boots,’ he said. And that was that.
How nice it was. How lovely men were, thick, inflexible branches sheathed in silk. She remembered from twenty years. The bedhead was creaking rhythmically, somebody was trying to get in. In… ‘They’ll hear,’ she said.
‘Let ’em,’ he said.
She couldn’t bear for it to finish, she couldn’t stop it finishing. Cartwheeling, vortexing, whirlpooling, panting, she came back to a ruined bedroom in an occupied house and a man who thought she was a whore. And I’ve just proved it. Respectable women weren’t as abandoned as that. Poor respectable women.
As she watched him begin to dress, she was returned to the Rookery. ‘Last time you apologized and never came back,’ she said.
He was pulling on his boots. ‘You remember.’
‘Oh for God’s sake. Of course I do.’ Think what you like. Think anything. Only don’t leave me again.
‘It’s only Monmouth this time, not Louis. I’ll be back.’ He arched over her, leaning on his hands so that he could look at her. ‘I’ll leave you Muskett. You can trust Muskett. But for Christ’s sake be careful or you’ll be hanging from your own gatehouse like that poor sod earlier.’ He kissed her hard. ‘And do something about this bloody bed. I’m covered in feathers.’
She snuggled into it as he went out, picking down off his shoulders. When she heard his step in the courtyard, she had to pull a sheet round her shoulders and rush to the window. He was still brushing feathers off his uniform. Churchill and some of the other officers were joshing him about her. He shrugged them off and waved his hat at her as he rode away with the others.
She stayed where she was, trying to glimpse him coming out of the gatehouse before he disappeared down the drive. The doxy bidding the night’s soldier goodbye from her window. Nearly the oldest scene in the world. She didn’t care.
A hoof stamped below her and she looked down. There was one horse left in the courtyard. Its rider came out from the doorway immediately below her window. Nevis. He swung into the saddle, looking round at the house, an owner checking that everywhere was secure, as his horse clattered towards the tunnel gatehouse. She saw that the Paschal Lamb colours had been taken down.
Just before he entered the tunnel, he reined in and turned his horse round. Instantly she drew back. NO.
Nevis smiled, took off his hat and waved it – exactly as the viscount had done. Then he went.
Chapter 4
The decisive factor of Monmouth’s rising was that the gentry did not join him. Tories were satisfied with James II, and few Whig landowners at this stage were prepared to go against the legitimate successor to the throne, even if he was a Catholic, in the cause of a bastard, however Protestant.
The thousands of artisans and poorer men who flocked to Monmouth’s banner had done well in the battle of Sedgemoor, executing a difficult night advance and fighting bravely when the action began, but without modern weapons and training they could not hope to stand up for long against disciplined troops, especially those under that rising commander of men, John Churchill.
Once their lines broke, panic took over and they ran. The death toll was large. The churchwardens at Weston Zoyland in charge of clearing the battlefield alone listed 1,384 corpses which were buried in mass pits in the marshes. Many bodies lay unrecovered.
Monmouth was discovered three days after the battle, hiding in a ditch where he’d been gnawing on a handful of peas. He was taken to the Tower of London and executed.
A lucky few of his officers managed to escape to the Netherlands, some 1,300 men were taken prisoner, the rest – about a third – were hunted across the moors and hills of Somerset like deer. Militia officers who had not distinguished themselves when Monmouth was a force to be reckoned with became enthusiastic hounds of human quarry, offering their troopers five shillings per rebel taken – or their victim’s goods if he were propertied.
But as in war so in rounding up fugitives the militia proved amateur in comparison with Kirk’s Lambs. Corpses hanging from shop-signs became synonymous with the Tangier regimental colours and spread such terror that people who gave shelter to fugitives were frequently betrayed by their neighbours to avoid reprisals.
The gaols of Hampshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon became overcrowded as they waited for the Lord Chief Justice, Sir George Jeffreys, and four other judges to deliver them of their rebels in what was to go down in history as the Bloody Assize.
* * *
At the end of every market day those merchants and squires who owned land in and around the Levels gathered at the White Hart in Taunton to drink cider together before they went home. It was an unofficial gathering but time-honoured; womenfolk were rarely present. It had surprised Penitence, while in Taunton on her own business, to receive an invitation. And also, on attending, to receive news of the latest arrest. ‘Lady Alice!’
‘’Tis so, I tell ee.’ Sir Ostyn was irritated.
‘But… Lady Alice. How could you do it?’
He stamped so that the floor of the inn’s upstairs room shook. ‘Dang it, tid’n nothing to do with me. ’Tis martial law. The preacher were up her chimbley and into prison she do go, magistrate or no magistrate, neighbour or no
neighbour.’ He poured Penitence and the others a beaker of cider. ‘Yere, sup that.’
‘’Tis a cruel shock, I know, Peg. But she shouldn’t a-been a-hiding of rebels,’ Sir Roger Pascoe pointed out reasonably. There was a general nod of agreement.
‘She’s old. She gets confused. Who found this preacher up her chimney? Nevis, I suppose?’
There was silence. The major’s sixth sense had made him the Black Shuck of the Levels and the islands round about. Villagers evoked his name to frighten their children and told stories of how he had turned his horse aside from the causeway and directed his men to where a rebel hid in Middlezoy Ditch a mile away. ‘Could’n’ve known, he could’n. Must have sniffed un, like a dog.’ Infected with fear of him as she was, Penitence tried to be rational and had pooh-poohed Prue’s hysterical accounts of seeing the man watching the house at nights – until she herself saw a horseman wearing a hat with a high feather standing on the moat bridge in the July moonlight making no attempt to hide.
‘I don’t like un, I admit,’ said an innkeeper from Middlezoy. ‘Nearly a month now and he won’t have they corpses taken down from my sign, making it unsalubrious for trade. But he’s keen for the king and I admire that in a man.’
‘God bless the king, God love un,’ said Sir Ostyn. There was a general: ‘God bless King James.’ Penitence blew out her cheeks but added a slavish ‘Amen’. Royal devotion was the order of the day
‘Let’s get on with ut,’ said Mayor Cranbourn. ‘Oh, the burden the Assize do lay on us loyal burgesses you would’n believe.’ He handed her a well-thumbed letter. ‘You know Sir George’s mind, Peg. See here. Would you say he means a gallows to be erected in every market square? Or only the greater markets? Or cattle markets? Or poultry markets? Or which markets?’
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