‘You will do me the honour of supping with me and my friend here?’ he was saying, a hand on the arm of the one he had first encountered, a coarse leer on his face, an insult in his voice.
The girl drew back, so suddenly and sharply that she stepped on John’s foot as he approached and would have fallen had he not caught and steadied her.
She did not cry out as he expected, which made him sure she was no City wench, but came from Whitehall. When she turned her head to thank him he was sure of it. He had seen her somewhere before. At St. James’s, was it? Among the Duchess’s ladies? And the second girl now clinging to her friend. He remembered both faces.
Mr. Brouncker pushed them roughly aside to get at John, his friend following. He found two youths where he had expected one, for Hugh had closed with his friend in like manner.
‘How dare you!’ Brouncker cried. ‘Laying your filthy hands on a lady! Get out of my sight, you puppy!’
The second lady gave a little whimpering cry and dropped her tray of oranges. They rolled about the pavement and the narrow street, making passers-by stumble or swerve. John, with the girl’s appealing hand in his, stepped back, Hugh closing in on her friend’s far side. The ill-intentioned pair lunged forward, Brouncker trod hard on an orange which spurted juice into his lowered face and stung his eyes so that he swore loudly. His friend protested.
‘It was to be a party of pleasure, Harry. You promised such. This pair, whoever they be, are unwilling. I’m for easier game.’
He began to turn away, but Brouncker swung him back. He was in a furious rage, trembling, unsteady on his feet, mopping at his still streaming eyes with a large, lace-bordered handkerchief. He was clearly more than a little drunk.
‘You shall not go!’ he yelled fiercely. ‘They were ours till these young swine appeared. You teach them a lesson, George! I can’t see! The witch spat poison in my eyes!’
‘Orange juice,’ corrected John. He and Hugh had put the girls behind them with a whispered order to run away.
Brouncker fumbled for his sword hilt. His friend said firmly, ‘No. They have done nothing. Come away!’
He turned to go away, but Brouncker had found his weapon. He drew, with a grating sound that brought his friend swinging round, his own weapon ready, but still crying, ‘There is no quarrel you fool! Put up! Put up!’
Hugh and John whipped out their swords and watched, astonished, but alert. The challenge had been so sudden, with none of the correct formalities, the supporters, the chosen weapons, places and time. It was a mere vulgar brawl, between so-called friends, too.
The battle was brief, clumsy, vicious. It ended with Brouncker staggering away, his naked sword still in his hand and his friend lying on the ground, blood pouring from a wound in his upper arm.
John with Hugh’s help did what he could. They bandaged the arm with the broad sash taken from the victim’s waist. They found one of the new sedan chairs and engaged it to take him to his home where he could call a doctor to be brought to him.
‘I recognised Mr. Brouncker, sir,’ John told him. ‘But you have the advantage of me.’
‘Paul Hayward,’ the other answered faintly, lying back in the chair. ‘Harry and my lord his brother are my closest friends.’
He stopped speaking and John thought he had fainted. The men carrying the chair hurried away with him.
‘Please God they deliver him alive,’ Hugh said, watch-in the chair as it settled to a steady pace moving into the distance.
‘And do not abandon him on the way for fear they be accused of his death,’ John added.
They turned, only to find the two girls terrified, clinging together, too shocked to remove themselves from the spot. Once more John took charge of the situation, this time to find a coach into which all four of them mounted.
At first the girls protested, perhaps afraid they had escaped one peril only to fall into another. But John introduced himself and Hugh as officers in the King’s troop of Guards, which Hugh amended to declare his true regiment, at which one of the ladies smiled and the other nodded and both looked relieved.
‘And you, madam,’ John said to the one he thought he recognised most clearly. ‘Am I in error in believing you serve the Duchess of York? I speak as a one-time page in his Highness’s household.’
‘I am indeed maid of honour to her Highness,’ she answered. ‘Frances Jennings at your service,’ she added, with a sparkle in her eye that defied him to misinterpret the formal phrase.
‘And this lady likewise?’ Hugh asked, for of the two he found the weaker one, drooping and wilting from her fright, the more attractive.
‘Miss Price is my friend and colleague,’ Miss Jennings answered for her.
So the quartette travelled on in peace, exchanging trivial conversation as they went. By the time they reached the palace of St. James’s, the girls had quite recovered their composure and the good spirits which had led them into their rash adventure. They thanked their rescuers most prettily as they were handed out of the coach. To John’s surprise his usually shy friend expressed an ardent wish that they might renew their acquaintanceship, which compliment Miss Price accepted with enthusiasm and Miss Jennings with a meaning glance at John.
The young men delivered their charges to the care of their governess who hurried out to greet them and heard their account of their adventure with marked displeasure, after which with scanty thanks to their rescuers she swept them away.
The hackney coach meanwhile, having been paid off by John while Hugh helped the ladies to alight, had driven away.
‘And now,’ John said, turning a laughing face to his friend, ‘What further joys for this strange evening? You would sample cards? A concert of music? I fear there is no larger entertainment to offer you.’
‘I want nothing more,’ Hugh said. His mind was still full of the sweet sad face of Miss Price, the way she had clung to him at the height of her terror when Brouncker and Hayward made their brutal advances.
‘I am still curious to know if our wounded man succeeded in reaching his home,’ John said. ‘Also I would retrieve my sash.’
‘Your sash? Did you not use his own?’
‘To bind about the arm, yes. But I made a sling for that member with my own. I must at all cost get it back before it can be produced at any public enquiry into the instant duel.’
‘But we took no part in it.’
‘Have we any witness to that? It would not be my first duel – which is known of me, I fear.’
‘Do you know where to find this Hayward?’
‘I heard where he directed his chair to take him.’
It was not yet midnight, so there were lights in many of the houses in Westminster and though there were still bare gaps or burned ruins about Charing Cross and along the Strand there were plenty of people walking in pairs or groups, some with their own servants carrying lanterns, some lighted by hired link boys. John and Hugh managed without help and arrived on the right doorstep, where many lights behind drawn curtains in both downstairs and upstairs rooms suggested there was unusual activity within.
This proved to be the case. A very young footman answered their knock, a distracted housekeeper allowed them in, chiefly to avoid long explanations in the street. The master was very ill, she declared shrilly; he had lost a great quantity of blood on his way home. If it had not been the kind services of a young stranger—’
‘I am he,’ John said firmly. ‘And I am come hither to inquire after Mr. Hayward’s health and—’
Here the housekeeper cried out, indignantly, ‘And a reward, I suppose? He is too ill! The surgeons are with him. You must come again but go now! Go at once!’
‘Madam,’ John said impatiently. ‘I want nothing save my sash, that I fastened about your master’s arm after I had used his own to bandage it.’
‘Go, my good woman,’ Hugh added, amazed that his friend’s motive should be questioned. ‘The sash, bloodstained or torn, it does not matter.’
The housekeeper showed affront at bein
g so spoken to by yet another young spark. There had been far too many of these worthless hangers-on of the Court swarming about her door for the last couple of hours. Up to no good, that was certain! Brouncker men for the most part, seeking news that would send him fleeing abroad before early dawn or merely to his country home in the Midlands.
Nevertheless she did go away to inquire into the truth of John’s request, leaving the pair in the charge of the young footman, who clearly had no intention of interfering with anything the two strangers chose to do in that house. They had swords by their sides, they were gentlemen. He stood against the wall, well clear of the door through which he hoped they would soon choose to pass.
The housekeeper came back presently with John’s sash bundled up in a ragged but clean napkin. Mr. Hayward sent his best thanks for their timely aid, assured them he had no intention of bringing them into this unfortunate affair, which he hoped he might survive, God willing.
‘He gave all of this message?’ John asked, surprised.
‘He mends a little,’ answered the housekeeper. ‘The surgeon is better pleased now.’
In fact the wounded man did survive and in due course was well enough to accept Brouncker’s apology and his offer of a renewal of their friendship. Mr. Hayward accepted the apology but ignored the rest. He retired into the country, where his lecherous habits met with rougher but less dangerous hazards from the peasantry than at the royal Courts in London.
As for Brouncker, this typical example of his vicious, brutal behaviour did finally bring about his dismissal by the King, who ordered him to retire from his post with the Duke of York and to leave the capital for good.
None too soon, for he might well have been accused of a worse crime than an uncalled for attack upon a close friend. Rumour had spread since the early days of the first Dutch war and had never been countered that he had given an order while serving in the warship ‘Royal Charles’, purporting to come from his master, the Duke, to call off the action of pursuit. The Dutch, in defeat, were fleeing for home. If they had been followed at speed more of their ships might have been taken or destroyed. The Duke of York denied he had given the order; Brouncker swore he had merely transmitted it, assuming it came from his Highness. Neither the captain of the ship nor the officers of the fighting men on board confessed to inventing an order; on the contrary, they were highly disappointed, having hoped to secure a valuable prize.
And so the matter had rested for a time until Parliament showed signs of taking it up, whereupon Brouncker fled the country and remained in exile.
Chapter Ten
John and his friends followed the outcome of the duel with interest. Their discreet questions roused no suspicion in any mind. After all, duels, many of them with fatal results for at least one member of either side, took place with dismal frequency in the close-knit, unnatural and under-employed community of the royal Courts. Duels were against the law but no law could control bad temper, unprincipled ambition or spite. Besides, violence, wounding and sudden death were not confined to the upper layers of society; they were common to all. And the suffering involved was greatly exceeded in many dreadful diseases for which there was no cure and no relief but death.
Just such a death came to the Duchess of York very soon after the Brouncker affair had finally ceased to have any interest whatever at the Court of St. James. She had suffered long from a cancer of the breast with all the attendant horrors of crude medical treatment adding to her misery. If she found any relief, any courage to endure, it may be put down to the constant spiritual help she received from the Catholic priests in attendance upon her.
For a year or more she had been a devoted convert to the Church of Rome and openly known to be such. The Duke was of the same persuasion, but still tried to hide it publicly because he was the only male heir to the throne. Of all Anne’s eight children, her four sons had died in infancy or early childhood. Only the Princesses Mary and Anne were now growing up into adolescence.
‘The Duke must marry again,’ Sidney remarked to John as they walked in the Park a few days after the funeral of the Duchess. ‘He is still capable of getting England an heir, whereas the King, I think, will never find an excuse to divorce the Queen. He is too fond of her.’
‘They say he may seek to make Monmouth legitimate.’
‘Never! He dotes upon him and his young Duchess but he knows him too well. And for all he hath such close feelings for the French he knows his countrymen too well. They have known Monmouth from childhood to be a bastard. Charles could not bring himself to alter that opinion by falsely pretending otherwise …’
‘God be thanked for that!’ John said fervently. ‘I trust Charles always to be prudent. Moreover my suit to his Majesty for service overseas may prosper shortly, if he wishes to give real military aid to his cousin, Louis.’
‘Because there will be war again with the Dutch? What have you heard?’
‘Nothing directly. But the Duke’s household seem to believe his Highness prepares to go to sea against the Dutch ships that have come out from their harbours. And this time he will not stand for his orders going astray, nor leave his ships to be mishandled by that bungler, Prince Rupert, nor the sometime general, Albemarle.’
‘Not so loud!’ Sidney urged him. ‘Greater men than you have lost their heads for such treasonable speech!’
‘No treason,’ John grumbled. ‘The plain truth of the matter.’
But he looked about him all the same, relieved to find that no one was walking so near he could have overheard this outburst.
Within the next few weeks young Churchill met with a certain qualified success. His efforts for employment were rewarded. He found himself promoted to captain, a double remove, in a foot regiment of six thousand men under the command of the Duke of Monmouth. To serve in Flanders. They were to assemble at once for a short spell of training before being drafted abroad to join the French army under Marshall Turenne.
John took the news to the Duchess of Cleveland. He had continued his intrigue with her when they had both recovered from their fright when Charles arrived all unexpectedly at her door. Her Grace had found the incident stimulating, the young man’s courage and persistence very flattering and the pleasure of his love-making considerable.
She greeted his news with congratulations, ready to tease him gaily for deserting her.
‘You would not have me neglect my career altogether?’ he answered. ‘Mope around with my heart on my sleeve?’
‘Of course I would,’ she told him. ‘Anything less diminishes me, insults my beauty, my charms—’
‘They cannot be diminished. They are as indestructible as those of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. I go to prove myself worthy of you, my love. Oh, my love!’
‘Liar!’ she whispered, but did not continue her raillery.
When he left her, promising to come once more unless his orders to embark prevented it, Barbara made him a present that astonished him. He tried to reject it, but reluctantly. She continued to press him, amused by his clearly half-hearted protests.
‘You must present yourself and maintain yourself in dignity with those rich French officers, so ready to despise us and all our ways. The French live in the past, they always have and always will. They remember Charles as a poverty-stricken exile. They know that their king helps him still. They expect his army to come with their wages owing and their uniforms in rags.’
In the face of this eloquence John allowed his reluctance to vanish and replaced it with very sincere gratitude. Before he left for France he invested a substantial sum with Lord Halifax, who dealt at that time in the newly invented provision of life insurance and annuities.
‘I play,’ he explained to any of his friends who came to hear of it. ‘I play prudently, but I never gamble. I often win.’
They could not deny this statement, though in their experience John Churchill had never appeared to win very much at cards or any other game of skill.
King Louis of France had opened his attack upo
n the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Holland that year, having secured England as an open ally. The former peace between Charles and the Dutch Republic was over, broken according to the English by the emergence once more of the Dutch warships in aggressive order of battle. The Duke of York, still Lord High Admiral, sailed with the home fleet in person, achieving a notable victory off the enemy coast.
So when the Duke of Monmouth took his English troops, including Captain Churchill, across the Channel, the move was popular in the country, supported by the Court party in the House of Lords and not opposed by the House of Commons. All they knew, all they had been told was that the visit a few years earlier by the King’s favourite sister, his beloved ‘Minette’, wife of Louis’s younger brother, had been a family affair. Not a secret treaty, signed at the happy reunion in Dover, whereby the army had been handed over to the all-powerful Sun King for a considerable sum of money and the promise of much more.
In the campaigns of conquest abroad young Churchill was able to develop his talents and enlarge his experience. Though as part of the English forces he was under the command of the Duke of Monmouth, their overall strategy was directed by the famous French general, Turenne himself. Churchill’s innate military genius recognised, approved of and rejoiced in that leader’s planned disposal of the troops. He understood what he and his soldiers were intended to achieve. When it came to his own personal involvement he went into battle with all the necessary enthusiasm and self-confidence, the full determination to succeed.
The French general had in earlier campaigns admired a contingent of Irishmen who had fought for him when they had failed to support Charles I in his effort to save his throne. He had admired those English troops who had for many years now taken service under the Princes of Orange. He expected a certain flair for close fighting, a certain doggedness in resisting the superior power of the Emperor, when Spain and Austria had ruled Europe with a heavy hand. But in John Churchill he recognised more than these admirable qualities. He noticed a quick, cool, military mind at work and did not hesitate to remark upon it.
A Question of Loyalties Page 10