In the King's Absence Read online

  Alan skirted round Oxford, keeping to the woods as he came to them late that afternoon near Dorchester. He had abandoned his horse as his father had suggested. The colonel had carried on nearly all his possessions, leaving him only what a travelling journeyman might be expected to carry. He decided to cross through the woods and down the hill where the trees clothed the edge of the river almost to the water line. There was a hamlet at Shillingford where he could if need be cross the water; could at any rate find a meal for he had not eaten all day.

  As he moved cautiously downward he thought he heard a moan quite near him. A child, lost in the wood? It had been too low a sound for a child. An injured peasant, man or woman? He called.

  There was no response. It was as if the silence was imposed by force. Force of will? An injured person stifling his own pain? Or worse, an injured person stifled by his injurer?

  His father would creep by to continue his own planned escape, Alan thought. Much as he admired Colonel Ogilvy he knew already that his life had hardened him, that he would never have survived his upbringing had he not looked first and always to his safety and those of his men. But Alan knew that it was not in his own nature to follow his father now. He began, slowly, carefully, silently, to search.

  This was a game he and Gordon had perfected in the years of their childhood in Holland, in Germany or the United Provinces. In woods far thicker, and more complicated than these elegant sweeps beside the Thames. As he drew nearer he was guided from time to time by repeated little groans and gasps, a muttered appeal to Jesus, even to the Virgin Mary. A man, Alan felt sure, with a broken leg, a fit of the ague, not, please Heaven, the smallpox or the plague!

  Now he could see, through the screen of a bush, the broad back, a leg crumpled behind, a hand holding a long knife ready to throw, a face darkened and distorted with rage and pain.

  And the other two limbs – that distortion of torn clothing and blood and yes, metal! The other arm and leg were together between the merciless jaws of a badger trap, itself fixed into the ground. The unfortunate creature, like the man, was meant to fall between those grinding jaws, that would close on its soft body and transfix it. But in this case the victim must have stepped on the trap, perhaps stooped quickly to help his leg back but not quickly enough before the jaws were sprung, gripping him in this agonizing position, helpless, alone.

  Alan saw the poor creature was nearly mad from his sufferings. He must remove the knife first; crippled, imprisoned though he was, he was dangerous. Using another childhood’s ploy Alan picked up a couple of stones and carefully tossed them to the far side of the trap. The man’s head went round, he stared intently. Alan was upon him, had wrested the knife away and jumped back before the man could even look round.

  ‘My poor fellow!’ said Alan with great compassion. ‘Will you lie back and let me see if I can get this devilment from off you.’

  The man did indeed lie back, but Alan saw that it was because he had fainted away. So much the better, the young man decided and got to work immediately while the wretched creature’s limbs were slack and he was insensible.

  The wounds were deep in both leg and arm but had not penetrated any vital blood vessel, though at least one bone in each was broken, perhaps more. Alan bound each limb with some of the man’s own clothing as a temporary measure. Then he waited for his patient to recover, which took some little time and was slow in completing.

  At first the poor fellow thought he had died and lamented the fact, because he was free of his torment and yet not fully out of pain.

  ‘You are still of this world, friend,’ Alan said. ‘Full relief still awaits you.’

  The man began to wail again, to curse his rescuer for keeping him for hanging instead of putting him out of his misery like a dog.

  ‘Many would have done so,’ Alan told him, ‘had they been owners of this land where we both trespass. But I am as guilty as you, though I do not hunt for game.’

  Presently the man raised himself on his sound elbow and stared intently at Alan. Both had had difficulty in understanding the other’s speech. This had not surprised Alan who had managed to make out the peasant’s earthy burr, but the latter only knew that the rapid flow of clipped speech betokened a gentleman.

  The latter now got to his feet and said, ‘I think we had better be moving. Where do you live?’

  ‘In Dorchester, but I have a brother by the ford.’

  ‘Here at Shillingford? Then I must make shift to carry you there. As it is all downhill I might succeed.’

  The man protested, said he could manage if he rested, said Alan could fetch his brother to him.

  ‘And show to anyone interested where you may be sold or destroyed? What good would that be to your brother or your wife and children if you have them?’

  The fellow began to blubber at that and to explain it was to feed them he had come to these woods to seek game or a lowly rabbit if nought else.

  ‘Save your breath!’ Alan told him harshly to stop the wailing. ‘We shall need all we have, I’m thinking, to get you down to that brother of yours by the ford.’

  Chapter Five

  Alan’s success in his compassionate act was both his immediate salvation and later renewed his danger. He brought the injured man to Shillingford to his brother’s riverside cottage. There his injuries were unwrapped and inspected and after bathing away the blood the skin of the ankle was found to be torn and the ligaments strained,, but no bones broken. The arm, however, was cracked above the wrist in both bones and displaced with loss of feeling in some fingers of the hand.

  A messenger was sent to the local bone-setter who found the injury within his competence so he set about treating it without delay.

  Alan could have slipped out of the cottage very easily during this time without anyone noticing he had gone. In fact, at this time, he had no wish to help in medical matters, being rather squeamish than otherwise. But night was coming on, he had nowhere to go for shelter and though he knew he must not delay too long, he hoped to be offered a meal and a bed as a reward for saving the unfortunate poacher’s life.

  So he stayed outside the busy circle about the patient, working out a story to cover his last two days’ travel and suggest how he hoped to proceed on his way to London. He did not want to rouse curiosity among these village folk, but it was clear the story of his rescue action would soon spread. It would not do to be a mystery. Already there had been a few who stared to hear his speech. They would suspect an Oxford scholar, so near as this to the university town. It occurred to him to add a Dutch foreign accent which, since he had lived abroad off and on for most of his life, he knew well how to manage. It was entirely successful.

  The injured man called to him faintly when at last the surgery was over, the ankle bound up, the broken arm fastened to a wooden splint.

  ‘Go to him,’ the woman of the house said, taking him by the hand. ‘He would give you his thanks as would we all.’

  ‘I understand,’ Alan said thickly, ‘but it was nothing. A chance, a luck, you would call it.’

  He heard murmurs begin, ‘a foreigner’, ‘a stranger’; faces closing, stiffening.

  ‘I am a seaman,’ he said carefully. ‘I come from London on a barge, but it go back without me. I look for another.’

  It was a chance, but a lucky one. There had indeed been barges on the river of late, the roads being considered less safe by reason of the general lawlessness. A strong young man who had already proved his strength should be welcome on any boat passing down to Reading and beyond.

  ‘I work my way,’ Alan suggested, smiling.

  That persuaded them. They wanted to give him food that night, for what he had done, but they could not afford to keep him beyond the next morning. Their poverty was real, becoming desperate, since some of their crops had been ruined by the wars, the actual battles or the conscription of the men. So messengers went but that evening and in the early morning a long narrow boat appeared out of the mist on the river, demanded to see the
‘foreign lad’ and engaged Alan to keep the boat off the bank with a long pole while another youth of about his own age led a stout horse attached to a towing rope from the bows.

  In this fashion the narrow boat was conducted to Reading. Alan was given food in reasonable quantities but had to sleep on deck. He expected no better and was content to exchange very few words with his master. The man’s wife stayed below for the whole voyage, handing Alan’s plate up the hatch to him at mealtimes. The youth with the horse was her son; he was invited below to the table, but he joined Alan on deck at night and the horse was led across there too, over a plank, while the vessel was stood off the bank by means of three sunk barrels to which it was secured. Clearly the people suspected thieves or attackers of some sort.

  At Reading Alan helped with the unloading of the cargo and managed to be taken on by a larger craft under sail and oar, proceeding towards London. He was asked no questions but he kept his slightly foreign accent and knew from scraps of conversation he overheard that he was still taken for a young Dutchman.

  As they neared the capital he began to overhear news of more general interest than the river trade. The great Fairfax had left the military scene and Oliver Cromwell had taken the supreme command. This had not pleased all his rivals, Lambert particularly resenting his rise. The Parliament were said to fear the generals. The Presbyterians wanted to impose their religion upon the whole country, but the Levellers and half a dozen extreme sects were still standing out against them.

  If matters go this way, Alan thought, the King will find his throne again when his followers are ready to rise. But he thought of Lord Aldborough and wondered how and when this could be. It was something his father might be able to tell him. No good asking questions. Best to keep quiet and listen to the opinions of those about him.

  Apathy, he decided, was the rule. The people had suffered in many ways, without understanding anything that had happened to them, except the terrible death of Charles the First, the Royal Martyr. The shock of that naked exercise of ultimate power had been great indeed. Numb obedience was the result, the lasting effect of that earthquake at the seat of government. They had not been asked to take sides, though the men had been offered places in the fighting armies and being men had seen a possible advantage to be won in action. That was all. They were not asked to resolve the present confusion. Only the fanatics proclaimed their presence; the rest were too confused.

  It took Alan nearly a month to reach London. He managed to stay on the river working in various positions on a wide variety of craft until he found himself in the Pool below London Bridge. Then, without a word, he went ashore, having completed his work, and did not go back to the water until he left the country on a merchant vessel bound for Dunkirk.

  He walked up from Blackfriars Stairs to Paternoster Row, near by Saint Paul’s great gothic church. He had been here several times before, since the small neat Tudor house with its pretty garden behind belonged now to Colonel Ogilvy. It had been left to him by that other Colonel, Arthur Ogilvy, Alan’s own grandfather as he had been taught to call him.

  He knew he would be welcome in Paternoster Row, for the admirable housekeeper was Mistress Leslie, widow of the Alderman Angus Leslie, whose daughter was the lady of Luscombe.

  ‘I would scarce have recognized you, Alan,’ Mistress Leslie told him when he was led, somewhat reluctantly, by an elderly maid into her little upstairs parlour, Hannah had followed her mistress from Gracious Street when the alderman’s death brought about the selling of the merchant’s big house there. ‘But I do know you and you need not stare at him, Hannah, as if you thought he meant to cut our throats! Take him away and find him hot water and a piece of soap while I look out some of the colonel’s clothes that he keeps here for use on his visits. Off with you both now and we will dine together, sir, when you be presentable and you shall tell me all your news.’

  Most of it he did tell her, for he knew her discretion was absolute and her long life, spent safely in the background of tremendous events, had rendered her by now impervious to their dangers. The alderman had been a shrewd Scot, making the most of all the rapid developments of late Elizabethan times, including the founding of the colonies in Virginia and Delaware and later farther north about Cape Cod. He had been able to increase his trade in salted fish from a competence of supplies caught off the old-established Newfoundland Banks to a great wealth of prime cod from the mainland coasts. Piracy had increased with European competition from the French and the Dutch, though the Spanish kept mostly to the Caribbean and the Portuguese even farther south in their eager search for more glamorous treasure. With these wide horizons before her eyes Mistress Leslie was scarcely shaken by the internal political strife until the violent death of the King shocked her out of her calm ways.

  But then only as the consequences affected her life in Paternoster Row.

  ‘I praise God that He took my dear husband before that grievous day,’ she said, when Alan paused in his account of his visit to Oxford with his father. ‘Doctor Richard was here and sat all day in the library, not eating, his head in his hands. Praying for the most part. We was too far from Whitehall to hear the large groan that went up from the crowd, but the people came back to their homes in silence and shut their doors and the soldiers went to and fro in the streets, perplexed there was no rejoicings.’

  ‘He still grieves all the time, poor old man.’ Alan said.

  ‘And lives in his great house with little or no attention so I am told by our regular messenger.’ Mistress Leslie answered. ‘I tried to persuade him to stay here where I could see to his comfort, but he said the air of London was poisoned by the guilt of our present masters.

  ‘And that he could not bear to be near his daughter that married a Parliament man.’

  ‘Whom he had admired for his good brains and fine ideas of progress in government,’ Mistress Leslie protested. ‘Which was the reason for him preferring that marriage to the one presumed to be settled in the family.’

  Alan smiled. The love affairs of his father’s cousin seemed as remote, as amusing, as those of his more colourful, more excitingly wicked old grandmother.

  ‘You need not find mirth in that story,’ Mistress Leslie told him sharply. ‘They may be old or middle-aged now, but they had the hot blood of youth at the time. Cynthia took her cousin George for granted. They were friends because they had been children together and while Kate neglected the boy, the girl’s mother believed in using less formality of manner than was usual, then as now.’

  ‘I crave pardon. Madam,’ Alan said, accepting the rebuke, as was proper, but privately agreeing with his father’s aunt.

  After a suitable pause he said, ‘My half-uncle George hath never forgiven Mistress – Phillips, is it not?’

  ‘Hugh Phillips, elected member of the Parliament that tried the King, but not one of those that convicted him with their signature.’

  ‘But not forgiven by Doctor Richard, never forgiven, never to be spoken of, nor his children, either.’

  ‘You know them, madam? You meet with them?’

  Mistress Leslie drew herself up.

  ‘I do so, seeing no reason I should not. They have not given up their religion. He is a London man, a merchant in the cloth trade dealing in the new worsteds and serges, an honest man, a good master to his servants and apprentices.’

  ‘But he serves Cromwell.’

  ‘I have never let matters of state into my life,’ Mistress Leslie said. ‘They are not for women and we be well rid of such passionate fantasies.’

  Alan was impressed by the old lady’s truly passionate refusal to hold political opinions. But he remembered George, so he told her a little more about his adventures after leaving Lord Aldborough’s home and parting from his father.

  ‘In Oxford we were convinced and Sir Francis Leslie also that George Leslie hath great animosity not only against his cousin Cynthia, Mistress Phillips, and all her family, but against his father and Lady Leslie, your daughter.’
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br />   Mistress Leslie sighed.

  ‘Yet Lucy showed him always great kindness when he was a child.’

  ‘But also showed him he would do well to find a wife outside both the Leslie and the Ogilvy families.’

  ‘As my father did,’ Alan said boldly, conscious that his own natural grandfather had been a great favourite with the old lady when he was working for the alderman.

  ‘George may well be a Commonwealth spy,’ she said, ignoring this last remark of his. ‘I think he can do no harm to Colonel Ogilvy who hath always been employed abroad. But with Master Phillips it is a different matter. And with you too, young man. What do they suspect you of? Why pursue you? An Oxford student? Or have you given that up? How comes it you are here in London in filthy clothing, off a river barge, instead of at your books?’

  Alan laughed aloud. The sudden spate of questions plied vigorously, struck him as very funny, coming from one who had rejected and renounced any interest in politics, theoretical or practical. But he was determined not to disclose the part, minor as it was, he had played in the escape of Charles the Second from the country.

  ‘I think George Leslie be more than a little crazy,’ he said. ‘But he will not discover anything to my disadvantage.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Mistress Leslie told him. ‘You must not delay to make arrangements for your return to France. Or is it to be Holland? Or have you made them? I can recommend –’

  She broke off as Hannah came in to tell them the meal was ready below.

  Alan spent the next two days in discovering a suitable vessel to convey him abroad again. This proved to be less easy than he had hoped, for Cromwell’s admirals were showing as much energy, enthusiasm and skill in their trade as were his generals in theirs. At this time the French were not openly hostile, nor were the Dutch. But neither, since the execution of the King and the failure of his nephew, Prince Rupert, to overthrow the usurpers, were willing to become open allies of the successor, Charles the Second. The Dutch soon realized that they must defend their trade against the growing Commonwealth power at sea. And so there were markedly fewer foreign ships in the Pool, Alan found, and of these but two willing to offer him a passage.