THE CHAINS OF FATE an utterly compelling and romantic historical saga (The Heron Quartet Book 2), page 22
Henrietta gazed at him with round, tawny eyes, and then turned to Grainne. ‘Mamma, who’s that man?’
‘That’s Jamie,’ said Jasper, who was rapidly ceasing to use ‘Master’ and ‘Mistress’ when referring to the assorted Herons. ‘And that’s Meraud, and that’s Lucy, and that’s Heppy, she’s Holly’s sister, and that’s the Widow Gooch, she’s a witch really.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ said Henrietta, already at two and three-quarters a prosaic, down-to-earth child.
‘That one’s got some sense, then,’ said the Widow, plunging a red-hot poker hissing into mugs of spiced October ale. ‘And still no flies on young Jasper, I see. Here, have a mug of this, you must be worn out.’
We sat gratefully at the big scrubbed wooden table and sipped the hot smoky drink. Lucy leaned forward, all curls and glowing eagerness. ‘And now tell us all your news. Do you know, I didn’t have one letter from you, Thomazine Heron, not one word, all the time you were gone! At least I sent you one — did you get it?’
Slightly guilty, I said that I had, and claimed mendaciously to have written two that had presumably been lost in transit. Lucy swept on. ‘Tell us — why have you come back? And where’s Francis? Is he all right? Did you find him in the end?’
It took a long time to tell. Outside, the darkness grew deeper: the Widow lit one candle, and the cheerfully glowing fire, over which our supper bubbled aromatically, provided the rest of the light. The hens, roosting on pots and pans, clucked and sighed contentedly: Henrietta climbed on to her mother’s lap and fell asleep. The story of that strange eighteen months, and the wonderful annus mirabilis of Montrose’s victories, and the final agony of his defeat at Philliphaugh, unfolded again in vivid pictures, almost visible in the air between us. When we had finished, Lucy let out a long sigh, her eyes bright with tears. ‘Oh, what a marvellous story! Like something out of a play! You … and Francis … and all those wonderful battles … oh how I wish I’d been there too, with you!’
‘We weren’t at any of the battles,’ I pointed out. Lucy dismissed this as irrelevant. ‘Well, you were almost there. You have had an exciting time, and here have we been, dull as ditchwater, immured in Oxford.’
‘You’ve no news, then?’ Grainne queried with gentle mischief. Jamie grinned. ‘Oh, she’s bursting to tell you really. The best bit, from your point of view, Thomazine, is that Dominic has achieved his just deserts.’
My heart gave a huge leap into my throat. Ashamed of myself for my hope, I said carefully, ‘What do you mean, “his just deserts”?’
Jamie laughed, cheerfully callous. ‘He was wounded at Naseby — quite seriously, so Simon says — and taken prisoner. The last we heard, he’d become a Protestant and paid his fines and made his peace with the Parliament and gone back to Yorkshire, and sent for that thinly-disguised whore of a nurse and Kit to join him. So you’ve no fear of meeting him here in the street.’
‘And good riddance,’ the Widow added briskly. ‘The only pity is that the bullet in his chest didn’t do enough damage to kill him. Probably only missed his heart because he hasn’t got one. What’s the matter, lass? Regretting you ain’t a widow like me?’
I pulled my face into a guilty smile. ‘It’s horrible to say it, but yes, I am. It would solve all my problems.’
‘I must say,’ Meraud remarked in her soft, insinuating voice, ‘I think you all forget that he is Thomazine’s husband, and that her place is properly with him.’
‘In her place,’ the Widow said acidly, ‘my only reason for going after him to Yorkshire would be to finish off what that Roundhead soldier failed to do. Then she could marry her Francis as she deserves. Where’s he? Following behind, did you say? Better not let His Lordship Simon catch him.’
My heart sank suddenly. Simon, whose jealously obsessive loathing for his brother Francis had been at the root of all the evils that had befallen my lover and me, was one person whom I shrank from meeting just yet. True, he had been most full of remorse for his appalling and unreasonable behaviour when he had thought it had led to Francis’s death, but I knew his sternly rigid moral code and doubted very much if he would be able to restrict himself to polite conversation with me after I had deserted both husband and child and run off to join my lover in what he would assume to be adultery. My mind quailed at the prospect of enduring one of his unpleasant, bigoted, forceful lectures on my lack of moral scruples: and I hoped earnestly that I would not be brought face to face with him before I had had time to gather my mental defences.
‘But Simon was overjoyed to find that Francis wasn’t dead after all!’ Lucy was protesting indignantly. The Widow gave a vigorous flick to the stir-spoon in the broth. ‘Resurrections are all very well in the abstract. Oil and water those two are, and together in the flesh don’t mix. Good thing he’s in Newark with the Prince.’
‘That was terrible,’ Lucy said. ‘Did you hear about Bristol? Prince Rupert had sworn to hold it but once Fairfax laid siege he could see he had no hope. So rather than lose his army in futile resistance, he surrendered it.’
‘And the King was a trifle annoyed,’ added Jamie, with the kind of ironic understatement that Francis often employed. ‘He cancelled the Prince’s commission, told him to leave the country, and dismissed the Governor here, Will Legge, who’s a friend of his.’
‘But what made it so suspicious,’ Meraud put in gravely, ‘was that while the Prince and Fairfax were negotiating terms, his brother the Elector Palatine was being voted large sums by the Parliament. So you can understand why the King had doubts about Prince Rupert’s loyalty.’
‘If he’d had the sense he was born with, His Majesty would never have entertained any such thoughts,’ said the Widow: and added irreverently, ‘but then, if he’d had the sense he was born with, there’d never have been no war. Prince Henry now, his elder brother that died, now there was a young man after everyone’s heart! But this one, gracious gentleman though he may be, was never cut out for a kingdom: trusts all the wrong people and mistrusts his true friends. Listening to that angelic little rat Digby, and then trying to arrest the Prince — who, if he’d given him the rope, would’ve tied up the kingdom for him a year ago.’
‘Why is the Prince at Newark?’ I asked. ‘Is he a prisoner, then?’
‘Not as far as we know,’ said Lucy. ‘The King is there, you see, and Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice set out there a few days ago to try and put their case. They took about a hundred loyal horse with them, including Simon. We’ve heard nothing yet about what’s happened.’
‘Nor likely to: the country’s crawling with this New Noddle Army the Parliament have raised,’ said the Widow. ‘News ain’t going to come through in a hurry. Poor Mistress Nan is fretting her heart out over in her lodgings — oh, she left the little Princess Henrietta months ago and came back here when she was expecting her second baby, and now she’s lost that one too, never thought she was good breeding stock that one, too narrow in the hips. We’d have her here with us save that the attics are full of soldiers.’
‘But they’ve gone out on guard duty,’ said Jamie. ‘Captain Webber didn’t expect they’d be back till tomorrow morning, so you’ll have a quiet first night at least.’
‘Probably the only one you’ll get,’ the Widow warned. ‘If I’d any say I’d throw the lot of ’em on the street tomorrow, but these days you’ve no choice who you have foisted on you.’
‘Captain Webber is nice enough,’ said Lucy, ‘though he drinks like a fish — his nose is like a beacon, Thomazine, I’d swear it glows in the dark — but Lieutenant Stevenson is the one I don’t like, he, well, looks at you as if he can see right through your clothes, and he’s like Dominic, he thinks that all women should fall swooning with pleasure into his arms.’
‘Or bed,’ the Widow added. She chuckled. ‘Lucy won’t tell you, but I will. He sneaked into her chamber one night, oh, last March it was, while she was getting ready for the night, and tried to seduce her.’
Lucy grinned. ‘I was no heroine. I just couldn’t believe anyone could have such effrontery. When he started pawing me I cracked him over the head with the warming-pan.’
‘Then he tried to do the same thing to me the next week,’ Meraud added, ‘though you’d have thought a broken head would have taught him his lesson. He came upon me in the parlour. I knew it was no use screaming, for everyone was either in the garden or out at market. Nor was there anything handy to use as a weapon. Fortunately, though, I had a queasy stomach from eating stale meat, and I, uh …’
‘What she means,’ said the Widow, ‘is that she was sick all down his nice white military coat. Worked better than the warming-pan that did, he’s never so much as eyed either of ’em again.’
‘And if he ever does,’ Jamie added, looking hawkish, ‘I’ll have his blood for it!’
The Widow ladled out bowlfuls of thick lumpy broth. ‘We still eat quite well, but ready money’s scarce and those parasite soldiers contribute little or nothing. Simon ain’t been paid in months, and Mistress Nan’s had to sell some of her jewellery. Make no mistake, the end’s near now. Won’t be long afore Fairfax or Cromwell come knocking at our gates, and there’s no heart left to resist. The only heart left was in Rupert and his friends, and the King’s snuffed that out with a vengeance. And with that Scots friend of yours, that Montrose, being defeated, it don’t take two good eyes to see the King’s cause is doomed. I give it six months, at the outside, afore there’s no resistance to the Parliament anywhere in the kingdom.’
‘And what will become of us then?’ Lucy demanded. ‘You know what Simon is. Dominic may have paid their fines and made his peace, but Simon, never! What will he and Nan do? Go into exile? What will we do? Go back to Goldhayes where Richard Trevelyan rules the roost?’ She stopped, her eyes shooting to Meraud, whose uncle he was. The blonde girl said impassively. ‘You forget, Lucy, he is only a trustee, looking after the estate till Simon can return. And he is not the only one, there’s Master Blagge, and Master Sewell, and Sir Thomas Jermyn, and Lady Heron too.’
‘My mother is not Lady Heron any more,’ said Lucy, bleakness woven into her voice. ‘Oh, Meraud, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply … but you must admit it will be strange at Goldhayes, to have him for my stepfather, and a new baby half-brother.’
‘Now if I was you I’d leave off worrying about what can’t be altered and have some of this afore it gets cold,’ said the Widow. ‘Then you can go where you’ve been longing to go this past hour, young Jasper — bed.’
But later, I was able to snatch a few moment’s conversation alone with Lucy and Jamie, while Meraud and Heppy were in the rear parlour making a bed up out of a mattress and assorted bedding for Grainne and her children: so cramped for space was the house now with all the soldiers within it. In a few moments we would have to go up to the chamber where the three of us, Lucy, Meraud and myself, would have to share a bed, and I was anxious to get my facts correct. ‘What exactly is happening at Goldhayes?’
Jamie frowned, but Lucy said urgently, ‘That’s just it, no one knows for sure. I know Simon is very worried. He didn’t mind Mother marrying again, but now he’s altered, he was very shocked and horrified to hear about the baby, somehow it seemed to make it much worse for him. Now he’s talking about sending us back soon, not only because sooner or later Oxford will be besieged, unless some miracle happens, but because he wants someone to keep an eye on Goldhayes. You know what Mother’s like, she’d agree with Beelzebub if she thought it’d make her life easier, and I think Simon fears that the baby may be intended to supplant the Herons in some way. John Sewell wrote a letter that made him very concerned … by the way, did you know Tom was a prisoner? Yes, in London, he was taken after Naseby and hasn’t been able to buy his release like Dominic, though John’s been trying to get Richard Trevelyan to use his influence.’
‘To hear you talk, Lucy,’ said Jamie, unable any longer to keep silence, ‘you’d think Richard had some dastardly plot afoot. Of course he isn’t going to supplant us, that’s ridiculous, he married Mother because he liked her.’
‘Not even you can use the word love,’ said Lucy hotly. ‘I’ll wager love never entered into it. He wanted Goldhayes and she wanted a warm bed, and that’s all there was to it, and the reason you’re so biased towards Richard Trevelyan is because you’re in love with Meraud.’
Jamie went a hot and guilty red. I took pity on him. ‘Come on, our first night back is no time for arguments, and I for one want to go to bed. Are you two coming or not?’
Glowering at each other, the brother and sister followed me upstairs and effected some sort of truce on the landing. Then, suddenly weary to the bone, I almost fell into the crowded bed: and did not for once mind sharing my dreams with Meraud.
*
I had foolishly expected life in Oxford to be exactly the same as when I had left it, more than two years ago. The first week after our return soon disillusioned me. Within the house, of course, there were the six soldiers, noisy, out at all hours, returning drunk from tippling-houses and brothels long after curfew and disturbing the whole street, lounging about the house with too little to do. Part of Dutton’s Whitecoats, a regiment of foot who had been garrisoned in Oxford since the beginning of the war, they suffered from a lack of action; it was the garrison cavalry, on flying raids to Thame and Basing and other enemy strongholds or sieges nearby, who saw most of the fighting. The presence of Captain Webber, like a Puritan caricature of a Cavalier, and whose nose was even more luminous than Lucy had implied, with his comrades meant that the house was no longer our own, there was no privacy, no peace either from them or from each other save in the evening, and that was only a respite before their drunken return at midnight or later. The little house that had seemed so spacious and neat with ten or so of us living there in 1642 was now, with seventeen, cramped and overcrowded, the maids and the Widow sleeping on pallets in the kitchen and the rest of us packed in the rear parlour and in the six chambers upstairs. Now, too, money was short — the rents from Ashcott which had kept us supplied earlier in the war were much reduced, and anyway not truly ours, since Ashcott had passed to Dominic on my marriage. Simon had ensured that a trickle still flowed into Pennyfarthing Street when Dominic had returned to Yorkshire, but it was not enough. The soldiers paid for board and lodging for the most part with worthless promissory notes, and many of the more valuable items in the house — musical instruments, the lantern clock in the rear parlour, silver candlesticks, books and paintings and tapestries — had been sold to provide money for the basic necessities of life. No one went hungry, but for the first time in their lives, my cousins had been faced with the necessity of counting the pennies. The Widow Gooch eked out the sums by doing illicit brewing and baking for sale to friends and neighbours without the knowledge of the guilds, but life was not easy.
There were changes in Oxford, too: more soldiers, less food in the markets, leaner, gloomier looks on the faces of the people in the street, a general air of hopelessness, demoralization, depression. Even the irrepressible newspaper Mercurius Aulicus no longer exuded the old impudent, racy, defiant air. Defeat for the King was in the wind, and the Royalists in Oxford knew it. As autumn advanced, bleak and chilly and windswept, the town took on a dreary, disenchanted look that I found miserably dispiriting. Bad news came in: Basing House had been stormed and taken, with some brutality, by Cromwell’s Ironsides. Prince Rupert had failed to put his case to the King, and in his grief and anger had begun a mutiny amongst the Horse at Newark that had further split the King’s remaining army: and Lord Digby had, with his usual over-confident nonchalance, managed to lose the King’s entire Northern Horse in farcical confusion in Yorkshire.
And there was no sign of Francis. At first I did not worry: then unease began to gnaw at my mind. By the time the King returned from Newark on the fifth of November we had been in Oxford for three weeks, and I was beginning to be seriously alarmed. Then, Mistress Mander, the landlady of the Blue Boar round the corner in Fish Street, brought a letter for us which had been left with her for passing on. Brought by a succession of carriers and travellers all the way from Carlisle, it had taken a month to reach us, and was a brief and, at first, cryptic note in Great-Aunt Elizabeth’s writing.
My dear Thomazine, Regarding that baggage which was to follow you on your journey, I regret very much that it has not proved possible for me to send it on as quickly as I would have wished, it proving alas unfit for travel and needing to be packed and made ready afresh. Also, since several rogues have expressed interest in its whereabouts, I have had to keep it close from prying eyes. However, all is still well and you may expect to see your possessions within a month or two, God willing. I trust your journey was a pleasant one, and without incident, and that you are now safe at your destination. Please excuse the brevity of this letter, for there are many calls on the time of your affectionate Aunt, Elizabeth Graham.
The meaning was clear. Francis had not made as speedy a recovery as had been optimistically forecast, and would not be with me for some time: and although the Covenant men had obviously been seeking him, he had been successfully hidden so far. I was bitterly disappointed, but at least now I had less cause for anxiety. He could not possibly be expected in Oxford before Christmas, and I would have to swallow my impatience and endure the necessary wait. At least he, and Malise and Montrose, had escaped the dreadful fate of the prisoners of Philliphaugh — the Irish infantry slaughtered out of hand in cold blood, to the hand-rubbing insistence and approval of the Ministers; and the other prisoners, whether boys or men, wounded or whole, ruthlessly hanged as traitors.
