Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  He was sure.

  His face was very pale, his back straight. Samuel Shockley stood in the middle of the great hall and told them what he knew. He told them how a passer-by had seen Obadiah in the sheep house. Obadiah shrugged, as though it meant nothing. The crowd murmured. He told them how for three mornings he had waited and watched. Obadiah said nothing but began to look uneasy.

  Then he described, moment by moment, all that he had seen that morning, up to the point when Obadiah left the sheep house. And the crowd in the court fell silent.

  As he went on, Obadiah’s face grew ashen. He began to tremble, not with fear but with rage. Was yet another of his family, a new generation, to ridicule him – to destroy his hard-won reputation? He began to shake with rage. He would destroy this boy.

  His anger made him incautious.

  “’Tis a lie,” he cried. “All a lie to save his sister who is sunk in sin.”

  It was too much. Now Samuel feared neither Obadiah, nor Forest, nor the witch hunter any longer. And as he exploded, he used the Old Testament gestures and phrases which were all he knew.

  Reaching into the little bag at his side, he marched to the table and poured the contents out upon it.

  “Then what is this?” he shouted. “Poison! This is what I pulled, from the sheep’s mouth, after you left.” He turned to Forest. “Feed it to a sheep and see how it does. Search him and his house and you may find more.”

  Obadiah’s mouth had fallen open. He almost staggered back.

  “Viper!” the boy cried, raising his arm and pointing his finger at the preacher: “False witness.” His blue eyes flashed with rage. “See him grow pale, who tried to murder his sister. Abomination of desolation,” he cried, carried away with the grand Biblical words that suddenly welled up within him, “sitting in the temple where it ought not.” And then, overcome with rage at what had been done to Margaret, at how he himself had been made to doubt her, he added the words of contempt that only he, Margaret and Obadiah understood: “Biter.”

  Without waiting to be told what to do, he walked to the back of the court.

  Long before the boy had finished, Forest had seen what to do. After this, the Jew, too, might speak. He could see trouble ahead – it must all be stopped.

  He beckoned Obadiah and Hopkins to approach him.

  “Withdraw this matter.” He looked at Hopkins. “This case will not work in Sarum.”

  Hopkins nodded. He had no wish to spoil his cause. There were plenty of witches elsewhere. Obadiah said nothing and was ignored.

  “The complaint is withdrawn,” Forest calmly announced to the crowd, and moved swiftly on to other business.

  There was a happy reunion at the farm between Samuel Shockley and Margaret that afternoon.

  But to Samuel’s surprise, a week later, it was Margaret who insisted he return to the Forests.

  “Come and see me here, Samuel,” she told him. “But it is time, now, that you learned to be a scholar.”

  Aaron the Jew left Wilton for Southampton soon afterwards. As he took the road from Wilton, he met Sir Henry Forest, who looked at him cautiously.

  Aaron was wise. He looked down and did not meet Sir Henry’s eye.

  1688: DECEMBER

  Doctor Samuel Shockley stepped over the watercourse in New Street, which still stank despite the cold weather, and made his way swiftly towards the close.

  Today was a great day; today England was having a revolution and in a few hours he would meet the man who would soon be the new king.

  “Then, thank God, we shall have seen the last of these accursed Stuarts who bring us nothing but trouble,” he told his wife and family. “Better times are coming.” He was always an optimist.

  Doctor Samuel Shockley looked his most magnificent today. On his head a huge, full-bottomed wig that reached below his shoulders. It was a rich brown colour and, his wife assured him, went well with his blue eyes; it gave him the dignified aspect proper to a respected physician. Under a cloak that hung open over the shoulders, he wore an elegant, grey-pink coat with fine lace ruffs made at nearby Downtown, silk stockings, grey buckskin shoes with raised heels and tied over the instep with pink ribbon. In his hand he carried a cane with a silver head. Though he walked quickly, he was careful to keep his shoes clean from the horse droppings and variegated refuse that filled the street.

  Before the prince arrived, he had two duties to perform: one to see the bishop; and the second . . . he frowned. He was going to have to be very firm with the Forest boy.

  He entered the close – a pleasant place now. On his left, close by the gate, was the long brick building of the College of Matrons, founded by the bishop five years before for the widows of clergymen. He liked the solid, quiet house with its little cupola in the centre and its gardens behind and had several elderly patients there. He came by the choristers’ green. Just here, he remembered with a smile, in August 1665, he had been presented to King Charles II, who had stayed two months in Salisbury with his court while the Great Plague was raging in London.

  Of Salisbury, with its river and water courses down the streets that witty and cynical monarch had afterwards remarked:

  “’Tis a good place for breeding ducks and drowning children.” But he had done the clothiers of Salisbury a good turn after his visit by often wearing their medley cloth, and for this royal patronage they were duly grateful.

  When Samuel Shockley looked back he had much to be grateful for. There was the farm, the home from home, where his dear sister Margaret had lived alone but contented until just three years before. He had visited her every week except while he was away at Oxford. Sir Henry Forest had honoured his bargain and given him an excellent education. He had been happily married ever since the year of the Great Fire of London and he had three children he adored.

  He was not without malice. At the Restoration of Charles II he had been frankly delighted when Obadiah, along with two thousand other Presbyterians, had lost his living; and he had not pretended to be sorry when the preacher had been killed a year afterwards in an Edinburgh street brawl.

  He looked round the close with satisfaction. Thank God that ever since the days of Obadiah, it had returned to normal: bishop, dean, canons and choristers, were all back with their benefices restored; the cathedral cared for; the Book of Common Prayer and the ceremonies he loved – the morning and evening service, the marriage service – all in use again: Anglican normality. It meant the communion service, even if it was only three times a year in the smaller parishes – a sacred rite. It meant, once a year, the perambulation, led by the vicar with the village boys, of the parish boundaries. He and Margaret had always joined that.

  It had also meant, in Sarum, some fine men as bishops: Henchman, who had helped Charles escape after Worcester, Hyde, of the numerous Wiltshire family; and now his own dear Seth Ward, getting old, but always a delight. How many hours had he spent with the great man, cheerfully discussing Hobbes’s philosophy, Donne’s poetry, or Mr Newton’s new telescope?

  Only one thing annoyed him as his eye travelled round the close. This was the house of Doctor Tuberville.

  Tuberville. It never ceased to anger him that, while his own sound medicine was respected, that cunning quack Tuberville, with his random blood-lettings, his potions – why, he had even told a short-sighted man to smoke – Tuberville, that necromancer, had made a fortune.

  But he soon smiled again when he glanced up at the cathedral spire – another reason why he loved the bishop. For it was Bishop Ward who had called in his friend Christopher Wren to survey the cathedral and repair the spire. He had liked Wren. His father had been rector at the Wiltshire village of East Knoyle. He was a good commonsense Wiltshireman like himself. And the great architect of St Paul’s had done this work superbly.

  “I found the old iron bands up there still in good working order,” he told Shockley. “Those ancient masons knew what they were about. I only hope we do our work so well.”

  There were two reasons for his
visit to the bishop that morning. One was usual: the other concerned young Forest. He entered the bishop’s palace.

  “Ah, Samuel, dear friend.” Seth Ward – his big broad face, heavy-lidded, clever eyes, big hooked nose. He was sunk in a chair; he was in one of his moods. “I fear I am unwell.”

  Fellow of the Royal Society, friend of Wren, Pepys, Newton, fine administrator, brilliant mind, when not worried into fits by the dean, scholar, who had built up at Salisbury one of the finest medical and scientific libraries in the country – and raging hypochondriac.

  “There is only one thing worse than your imagined illnesses,” Shockley told him cheerfully, “and that is your invented cures.” For Ward would even invent potions when he had been through all those the doctors could dream up. “I suppose you’ve been consulting that rogue Tuberville again.”

  He did not linger long over Ward’s health, but came straight to the point.

  “I need your help with young Forest.” And he outlined the disgraceful case, and his own plan for solving it. Ward laughed.

  “I feel better. I will support you.”

  “Thank you. Then I must be gone.”

  As he left, Ward held him back for a moment.

  “Prince William will be here shortly. You think this revolution is for the best?”

  “Undoubtedly.” He smiled. “But then you know, unlike you, I am a Whig.”

  In his opinion, the Stuarts had finally destroyed themselves.

  For when, after Cromwell had died, the English Parliament had finally invited Charles II to return to his kingdom, it was with a clear understanding.

  The English had killed a king: tried a Commonwealth, and not liked it. Now the gentry in Parliament had decided to return to normal.

  Which meant their rule – gentry in the shire, gentry as justices, lords lieutenant; local men, in charge of local militia, not paid armies; gentry administering old English common law, gentry supporting the Church of England; and gentry in Parliament in control of taxes. It was conservative; it was not what the Presbyterians and Radicals had fought a civil war for; but it was at least familiar and certainly no military tyranny. It was safe. The Clarendon Code and the Test Act that the gentry passed through Parliament barred all except Church of England men from public office: that kept out dangerous Radicals and, above all, papists. There was also to be no foreign interference. That was the understanding. Shockley, for one, liked it.

  But for twenty-five years the obstinate Stuarts had done everything they could to thwart it.

  Charles II secretly plotted with his cousin Louis XIV of France to invade, and declared himself a papist on his death-bed.

  His brother James was even worse: he did not even trouble to hide his intentions.

  “He’ll turn us Catholic and use French or Irish armies to do it,” Shockley told Seth Ward. “That’s why I’m a Whig.”

  For the programme of the new party who had been given this curious name, was to exclude Catholic James from the succession. The king and his court Tories had fought back.

  They had removed from office most of those who opposed them. Good men – Hungerford, Thynne of Longleat, Mompesson, and many more – Deputy Lieutenants and Justices had all been removed. All seven Wiltshire boroughs, including Salisbury, had lost their charters. Charles bribed, bullied and packed every borough and shire to get a parliament to support his brother.

  Charles had manipulated and won. James had succeeded peacefully. But not for long.

  “And by God, sir,” Shockley now remarked to Ward, “he has given us Whigs our ammunition.”

  Sarum might have liked the new king for he was married first to the daughter of the great lawyer Hyde, made Earl of Clarendon – a good local man whose cousin was bishop, and a loyal Anglican too. That marriage produced two Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne. But now the king had married again, a Catholic princess, and the people of Sarum did not like that at all. They had soon seen enough of the new rule.

  Parliament had been dismissed. Arundel of Wardour, as great a Catholic as any in the land, was in high office; the king was clamouring for the Test Act to be repealed, and even his two Hyde brothers-in-law were dismissed for not supporting these moves towards Rome. The brief rebellion of Monmouth against these changes had taken place south west of Sarum; but the terrible trials of Judge Jeffreys that followed its collapse with their massive executions (and the Bloody Judge tried five hundred men a day) had filled even the king’s local supporters with disgust, just as the news of Louis XIV’s recent persecution of Protestants filled them with fear. At Salisbury, the mayor and five councillors were dismissed by the king.

  “He has made sure that he offends every class in England. Even Tories are turning Whig. And now he has a son . . .”

  This had been the final straw. Until then, James’s heirs had been his Protestant daughters. But with the birth of a Prince of Wales to his new Catholic wife, there seemed no hope for the Protestant island.

  The succession had to change, and who more natural than Mary and her husband, that upstanding Protestant Dutchman, declared foe of the Catholic King of France, William, Prince of Orange?

  The revolution was quick and easy. Doctor Shockley liked to say he had even played a small part in it himself. For when James and his forces camped in Salisbury the month before, and the townspeople had subserviently welcomed them, Samuel Shockley had not.

  When James was afflicted with a nosebleed and the messenger came running to the doctor’s house, Shockley refused to attend him.

  “Send Tuberville to His Majesty,” he suggested, and muttered, “Perhaps the quack will cut his head off.”

  “This will be remembered,” the flunkey warned him.

  “Good.”

  James had soon gone. Now William was about to enter the city. Clarendon himself, so recently a minister of James, had arrived in the town with other Wiltshire Hydes to greet him.

  It was as he walked away from the bishop’s palace that Samuel Shockley noted a curious sight. Two white birds had risen from the lawns beside Ward’s home and circled the roof before flying silently away towards the river.

  He knew the local tale, which spoke of white birds appearing when a bishop is about to die, and for a second felt a pang about the heart. Then he put the thought from him: he was a scientist, a man of reason.

  This was a day of celebration.

  But first, young Forest. He had summoned him to his house. The young man was waiting there: dark-haired, quiet, polite. He had the same superficial charm as his father, the same coldness beneath, which was no doubt why, although they had been educated and gone to Oxford together, Shockley and his father had never become real friends.

  Young George Forest was twenty.

  Shockley did not waste time.

  “No, Doctor Shockley.” He was lying of course.

  “I have a patient – Susan Mason. Does that help you?”

  George Forest said nothing. He waited.

  How tedious duplicity was. Shockley sighed.

  “She is with child, young Forest.”

  Still he said nothing.

  “You are surely not going to deny that you are the father, sir?”

  It was the usual story. The young man had seen her at the inn, visited her as a light diversion, no doubt charmed her. It had taken him three weeks to persuade her even to confide in him who her lover had been. She was a pleasant, simple girl, with large grey eyes – attractive in a way – and only sixteen.

  “Do you intend to marry her?”

  George Forest stared at him in amazement. The heir to a baronetcy, a Forest, marry an inn-keeper’s daughter?

  “I see. Are you aware that her father has discovered her condition sir, and turned her out? She is quite defenceless.”

  It was a miserable business. Mason the innkeeper, a short, choleric man, with a large red and angry face, had simply thrown her out of the house.

  “I don’t care who the father is,” he stormed. “You were not forced. You adm
it it. I have three other children to look after. You dishonour me. Leave my house.”

  Shockley had been to see him twice; but Mason was adamant. There was no help from that quarter.

  The boy blanched. That at least was something. But still he said nothing. His cautious eyes gave nothing away. Why was it, Shockley wondered, that a vicious boy was even more unpleasant than a vicious man?

  George Forest had not known. He had not known because he had studiously avoided her. When she had tried to speak to him once in the street, he had quickly turned away.

  “Who knows what lovers she may have had,” he finally suggested.

  Shockley exploded.

  “Nonsense, sir, and you know it.” The boy was even worse than he thought. “I’ve seen the girl. I’ve been a doctor nearly thirty years. I know. It’s yours.”

  At least Forest had the sense not to try to answer him back. He paused, surveying him coldly.

  “You may be grateful I have not spoken to your father. You shall do that for yourself. But you will make the girl an allowance.”

  George Forest looked doubtful.

  “Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “thirty pounds would take care of the child.”

  Shockley snorted.

  “Fifty a year.”

  It was a handsome sum, but he meant to get it for the girl.

  George Forest looked at him straight in the eye.

  “My father would never agree to such a thing.”

  That, Shockley knew, was perfectly true.

  Which was why, that morning, he had taken a certain precaution.

  “If you do not, then you will be brought before the bishop’s court,” he said calmly. “He has the power to fine and excommunicate you. I do not think your father would like that.”

  It was one of the benefits of the Restoration, Shockley thought, that, at least in theory, the Anglican bishops had gained these rights to try moral offences of various kinds, including, as it happened, bastardy. He smiled at young Forest blandly. The disgrace would be tremendous.

  The boy was white as a sheet. But he was thinking.