The Royal Changeling

by John Whitbourn

  The Eel-men were not disposed to play by Ellen’s rules or find her indomitable spirit disarming. Whereas, by rights, the gallant rush from Westbrook should have taken them aback and soon cut its way to freedom, the enemy’s refusal to cooperate spoilt the tale. The early hour had not glazed their lidless eyes, the sudden fury of the attack did not appal them. They seemed content for their gelatinous bodies to play host to a sabre if it meant delaying, even for a second, the drive to escape. The dying doggedly blocked their path, clinging to the blade that transfixed them. The fallen raised themselves up to clutch and snap at passing feet. In the space of two score paces what started as a charge became like swimming through treacle.

  Ellen had chosen the best and fleetest for this task of breaking the siege and raising the alarm. She reasoned that the remaining garrison could hold out long enough for help to be brought from Godalming. The Elf persuaded her she should stay to ensure that and reluctantly she agreed to it. Providing those selected with the choicest of their stand of arms, and reckoning on the brevity of the lawns they must cross, Ellen felt sure she was acting for the best.

  It was no part of her plan that these boys and girls be slowed to a halt amidst a sea of monsters, that they be constrained into a desperate circle, and then, falling one by one, slowly disappear from sight under a frenzied tidal wave of foes.

  Ellen watched, impotent, from the drawing-room window and felt like a murderess. If she had not needed to be strong for others she would have howled.

  The last stand was made a mere fifty yards from the house, less than a fifth of the distance to freedom. There, amidst the trampled ruin of a flower bed, the last footman and parlourmaid were dragged down and ripped to pieces. The Eel creatures set up a terrible keening of triumph, indifferent to the angry sniper fire now coming from the house.

  Ellen Oglethorpe deluded herself the ordeal was over but soon found there was worse to come. Some humans had been taken alive. As the new day dawned Westbrook watched, horrified, and Ellen made penance by witnessing, whilst they were raped and then eaten.

  ‘I know the man,’ said Theophilus. ‘So I know what he’s trying to do.’

  ‘Bristol, you say?’ said John Churchill, languid and unconcerned. He gestured to the empty chair across the table but Oglethorpe wouldn’t sit.

  ‘Bristol or I’ll eat m’blade,’ he replied, now pacing up and down like a caged tiger.

  It struck Churchill as … unnatural for someone fresh in from patrol to be so keen to head off on another. He was rather wary of Theophilus when he was in this mood and so just nodded sagely as the rant raged on.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s clever all right,’ Theophilus continued, ‘but I see where these dainty leaps are taking him. Whilst we wear out empty roads round Bath he could cross the Avon at Keynsham. One more swift dash and he’d be ‘tween us and the City. The Bridge is meant to be down but Beaufort’s just slapped it with his glove. A lady’s maid could leap it in modesty. I was there yesterday and reported it but Feversham told me “not to worry”. Not worry! It makes you want to pull your teeth out, I tell you!’

  He suddenly span out of his chosen pacing route to arrive directly opposite Churchill, slamming his gauntlets on to the table. His superior’s cider almost spilled.

  ‘He’s outwitting us and will have his prize if he’s not stopped. The Duke is Bristol-bound, I’d swear upon scripture. And I know His Majesty thinks likewise.’

  ‘And I agree with you both,’ answered Churchill, abandoning his attempts on an unforgivably tough crust to his pigeon-pie supper. He’d had enough of it and all of this; the galley-slave style food, the inns that doled it out, and fruitless riding following an enemy through towns they’d vacated days before. He was disenchanted enough to be candid.

  ‘I’d do just the same if I were King of Lyme Regis, Theophilus. Should Bristol fall then the foundations’ll begin to shake – and who can say what interesting bugs and beasties will then come out the thatch. Sadly, however, our opinions count for nought, for our esteemed new commander thinks otherwise.’

  Churchill was still sulking about his demotion from command. King James had sweetened the pill by raising him to Brigadier but was implacable about his second thoughts. Not even the sweet abilities of Arabella Churchill could sway him – though the King had a wickedly delicious night or two by dint of pretending to waver. It was not that he doubted the man’s military prowess or willingness to fight, but rather awareness of his … pragmatism – and the exotic traces that flowed in the family’s veins – that led James to act. The more predictable Frenchman, Louis Duras, Earl of Feversham, was sent West to assume control, and James rested easier in his mind for doing it.

  Churchill buckled under, as a subject should, but he wasn’t happy and now cruised along in mental half-speed. ‘My Lord Feversham has sole command here,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘so that I know nothing but what it is his pleasure to tell me. I see plainly that the trouble is mine, and that the honour will be another’s.’ He also plainly saw what Monmouth was up to, just the same as clever soldier-James did; but if Feversham thought he knew better, it was not his business to correct him. Innocent of the full facts, Churchill thought he could make an accommodation with whatever regime emerged.

  ‘What?’

  Oglethorpe was still chuntering on as Churchill daydreamed about this fork in the road of his brilliant career.

  ‘I said,’ repeated Theophilus, well aware he was being humoured, ‘that if we swept south of Bristol in halfway decent strength, we could find the Duke and pin him down and thus convince Feversham of his true intentions.’

  Churchill frowned and pursed his thin lips. ‘Not so keen on the “we” bit, Theophilus. The Earl’s issued no such instructions. I dare say it could be done – but then you’d have as much trouble locating our commander. My latest information is that he’s moving to a position astride the London Road at Phillips Norton. All the reinforcements, every man-jack: the extra cavalry and dragoons, the Foot Guards and the Coldstreamers and the Royal Scots and the artillery, are ordered to join him there.’

  ‘Phillip who? Never heard of him.’

  ‘Place not person, dear boy: charming village; near Bath. I see you’ve not given that portion of the map your closest attention, so firm are your convictions. Take my word, if our ex-friend were to press for the Capital – which he won’t – he’d have to pass that way. Our commander can’t be shifted from it.’

  ‘Then someone else must shift him.’

  Churchill drew in breath through his teeth. He seemed to be thinking aloud.

  ‘But who? Couldn’t be me: too much of a courageous – politically speaking – thing to do. I suppose that someone less … ambitious, someone rather reckless, might attempt it. They’d be taking a lot on themselves, it’s true. Dissipating our scanty forces on a wild goose chase could land them in a lot of trouble: vistas of disfavour and the governorship of Orkney and all that. But turn the whore around though and there’s a better prospect. If what we think is proven by … someone, they’d make poor Fevers look a bit of a paper chamberpot, mightn’t they?’

  ‘And also save the day!’ added Theophilus.

  ‘Well, yes,’ conceded Churchill, ‘that too.’

  And so, in due course, Brigadier Churchill arranged to be elsewhere when, in contravention of his express orders, Theophilus Oglethorpe stormed off with most of the ‘Blues’.

  ‘Damn his eyes! May all his future shits be hedgehogs!’

  The rebel Colonels didn’t care for that kind of sinful talk from their supposedly Godly commander. Besides, the rage seemed disproportionate. It was just another Papist patrol, one of dozens encountered since they moved out of Lyme. They were no great danger, merely hanging round to pick off stragglers and justify their wages. A simple ‘Boo!’ in their direction was always enough to scatter them. Granted, these annoying gadflies had been shaken off the last few days but their return was hardly a disaster.

  ‘King Monmouth’ didn’t agree. ‘We’re r
umbled!’ he lamented. ‘Now they know!’ His perspective-glass was lowered and brandished like he wished to shove it up someone.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ asked Wade, genuinely puzzled and irrepressibly positive as ever. ‘Even if they have guessed, what of it? We’re over now.’

  They were indeed. Captain Tiley of Taunton-Coronation fame had pressed ahead with a troop of horse and seized the bridge at Keynsham. A group of militia cavalry set to guard it did their usual trick and fled at Epsom Races speed at first sight. To Tiley’s delight a few stout planks were all that were required to repair the crossing and the work went ahead without tiresome interruption. Word was sent back and the army moved up, ready to cross to the Gloucestershire side and take the prostrate City. Only an absolute opening of the skies prevented an assault then and there but, since they seemed almost unopposed, a timely breather was decreed. The drowned-rat army gratefully took shelter under Keynsham roofs to rest for the victory to come.

  Monmouth now cursed himself for being dissuaded. He suspected this freak weather. They should have pressed on regardless.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he told Wade. ‘I’ve seen who’s commanding them. I know him – and he’s got his sword with him!’

  The Colonels looked from one to another. Actually, they rather expected soldiers to carry arms, those being the tools of the trade. So what was the big deal?

  ‘We’ve got one or two swords of our own,’ said Colonel Holmes of the Green Regiment, in an attempt to comfort. It didn’t succeed. Monmouth continued to glower at the handful of blue-coated cavalry lurking around at the edge of cannon-shot.

  ‘With him there, we’ll need them,’ answered their King, bluntly. ‘And whatever the weather blows, we attack tonight.’

  ‘You must be joking!’ Military law didn’t exist yet and relations between the ranks were free and easy, reliant on personal force for discipline. In the present situation it was sufficient. Captain John Parker looked at the Lieutenant Colonel and then wished he hadn’t. ‘No, you’re not joking, are you?’

  Theophilus’s face seemed leaner and thinner and his eyes were afire. Captain Parker hadn’t long had the privilege of serving under Mr Oglethorpe and was unfamiliar with his fighting madness. It was like peering on tip-toe into the heart of a volcano.

  ‘As I was saying, Master Parker, sirrah, you will take two hundred and fifty men and charge into Keynsham and do such execution as you are able. I will abide here to deal with whatsoever emerges from the village. Should I perceive your outnumbered venture to be imperilled I will charge in to assist – probably.’

  Parker nodded slowly, the ostrich plume atop his hat mimicking the action a second in arrears. ‘So it shall be, sir – though as you say, one will be a trifle outnumbered …’

  ‘As was Gideon against the Midianites, Parker, and the greater the task the greater the glory. Let us speak straight: do you have a problem?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Would you like one?’

  The Captain thought about it and decided he’d take his chances in Keynsham, two-hundred-odd against seven thousand, rather than the other option. He bowed in the saddle and rode off.

  ‘Up to it?’ Theophilus asked his other lieutenant, the rather sinister Irishman, Patrick Sarsfield. He enjoyed battle as much if not more than Oglethorpe, though for less wholesome reasons. Theophilus trusted the man’s opinion, if not the man.

  ‘Just being natural,’ he opined, looking darkly after the departing Captain. Parker’ll fight as well as any. This should be good.’

  Theophilus agreed. ‘I have high hopes of it,’ he said, cheerily.

  They’d come upon the rebel army in Pensford; not two days’ march distant as Feversham imagined, but a mere ten miles off – and five miles from Bristol. Wishing to conceal his true numbers, Oglethorpe put forward mere tens and twenties of men: enough to keep in contact but too few to alarm. Realising he could not deny them Keynsham bridge, he’d sent word to Feversham, sat, as much use as a glass hammer, far away at Bath. Word got to him at midnight and – when he was finally aroused – he and the Royal cavalry set off on a forced night march. The Earl was hardly grateful to have his mistake thus publicised, but neither were there harsh words about Theophilus’s truancy.

  At least there were now proper troops before the City, albeit tired and wet ones, and the King of Lyme Regis could no longer just stroll in. Even so, it was still a close-called thing: the infantry and guns were all left behind whereas Monmouth had a balanced army of sorts. Theophilus put the odds at fifty-fifty for the concluding struggle and was content.

  Then Feversham proceeded to oblige the enemy by methodically screwing up again. A blatant feint by rebel horse deceived the Earl, as Monmouth had hoped but hardly expected. Duly believing the attack would come from the south, Feversham moved his forces round to face the non-existent threat. Once again Bristol lay juicily open to ravishment.

  Monmouth’s agents in the avowedly Protestant City grew more confident and spoke of a day of reckoning to the occupying militia. Lord Beaufort’s coach had dead cats and other, more adhesive, substances slung at it. In the port a great ship, The Abraham & Mary was set alight by arsonists, and seeing the glow in the sky far off, the rebels took it for a welcoming beacon.

  Feversham meanwhile cleared fields of fire to the south, whilst Churchill obeyed and smirked. Lieutenant Colonel Oglethorpe watched in disbelief and rent more hair from his increasingly threadbare wig. Still he refused, despite all incitements, to despair. Trusting again to mutiny and taking his detached command of the Blues (unrescinded by another over-sight of Feversham’s), Theophilus had broken camp.

  ‘That’ll be Parker, I suppose.’

  Sarsfield cocked his head, the better to take in the distant thunder of horse-hoofs and pistol fire. He smiled lovingly.

  ‘So ‘tis. Music to me ears …’

  Oglethorpe couldn’t go all the way with him in that. To his mind, children’s laughter and a pleasured wife were at least equally agreeable sounds, but it was not an occasion to dispute in minor things. Each to their own and so on. The two men trotted forward into view of the village, the reserve of one hundred arrayed behind them. The rain obligingly died down.

  He was well aware they’d been spotted earlier in the day. Theophilus had led a dozen men perilously close for that very purpose. Knowing they were detected might deter the rebels from any rash – and dangerous – moves, thus buying time for Feversham to redeploy. Likewise, concealment of their true strength might delude Monmouth as to his intentions. Small patrols led by rational men, no more convinced of an afterlife than they ought to be, just didn’t attack whole armies.

  Theophilus approved of what he saw. Assisted by surprise, Parker and companions had got in amongst the narrow lanes of the village and were doing creditable execution. The rebels had been dozy, preparing for the lively night ahead, and the guards unprepared for the onset of a quarter-thousand enemies. It would be a while yet before sufficient rebels bestirred themselves out of shock to make life impossible for the invaders.

  Whilst patiently waiting for that stage to arrive, Oglethorpe surveyed the excellent cavalry country around Keynsham. It was flat and open and almost perfect for his purpose. He’d chosen well, both in time and place.

  As if on cue, a body of rebel horse drew out of Keynsham, to rally and detach themselves from the confusion. Theophilus calmly pointed them out.

  ‘If you please, Mr Sarsfield …’

  Sarsfield needed no urging and, as arranged, half the remaining Blues accompanied him. For a brief time there was a drumming upon the turf and the blare of trumpets, and then the two formations of men and beasts collided. Theophilus fastidiously averted his attention. For all it was his chosen profession and he’d gotten used to it, he rather deplored the actual sound of combat; that cacophony of souls evicted from home and metal versus meat. It seemed, on reflection, such a waste of good horseflesh and parental time and love.

  Fortunately there was distract
ion in Parker starting to get into trouble. The more enterprising rebels were now scaling the rooftops and sniping at the horsemen below. Through the medium of his perspective-glass, Oglethorpe even observed one or two Blues hooked from their steeds with the poles used to claw down burning thatch. Once unhorsed into the swirling scrum in the streets they didn’t rise again.

  Theophilus turned to address those select few entrusted with a mission within a mission.

  ‘Wolrich; you other two, whatever your names are, are you still agreeable?’

  The troopers signalled they were.

  ‘Good men. You shall have your reward, in the world or the next.’

  Then, though no papist himself, he remembered to cross himself in the manner Ellen strictly instructed he should before entering a fray.

  ‘In we go then.’

  They hit Keynsham at the gallop and went through the nearest streets like brandy through a Quaker. Slowly gaining the upper hand with present opponents, Monmouth’s men had not expected to be struck by a trinity of attackers. The first rebels met were trodden underhoof without requirement of shot or sword. No more Taunton weaving and West-Country harvests for them.

  Oglethorpe led from the front as he was brought up to. The first face he had any space to consider belonged to a straw-headed ploughboy too young to be waving a rusty sword at his elders and betters. Theophilus showed him mercy, merely booting his face, busting his snub nose and crashing him back into the hovel from which he came. Two sturdier types that followed merited a pistol apiece and then he used Excalibur to clear the way. It seemed to be growing fond of him, shifting weight to assist each sweep, and biting deeper than he, unaided, could ever do. Pretty soon people were scaling walls rather than face him. It was like being young and invincible again and, for all the present distractions, Theophilus recognised how corrupting that was. But for his need and fear of alternative owners, he would have flung the blade away.

  And then he was through to Parker’s force. They had had a steamy time of it, he knew. Theophilus forgave them for the joy with which he was greeted.