The Royal Changeling Read online

  Checking that he had some company (he wasn’t entirely careless) Oglethorpe headed up the hill. Though he was dangerous company to keep, his men admired him for his leading-from-the-front valour and a respectable number caught up to make a line. Gaps made by Covenanter musketry were mostly filled.

  Observing benignly from below, General Monmouth pondered whether it was stupidity or lust for death that made his friend act so. It was by no means the first occasion he’d had cause to wonder; nor had he ever come to a conclusion. Certainly it was a very useful quality, but such a lack of … respect for the Grim Reaper worried him. Theophilus Oglethorpe had many good things to live for, and if he stayed by Monmouth he might have many more. Yet he acted as though he had some surer hope beyond the grave, or as if he believed all that bravery and honour stuff. Most strange. The Duke could not resolve the quandary and there was no time to consider further. Oglethorpe needed rescuing again.

  Unfortunately for him, using impeccably democratic means, the Covenanter General Hamilton had organised a counter-attack. Its prospects were auspicious. Every military text advised against detachments pressing too far forward, regardless of initial success. They were equally pessimistic about the fate of horsemen facing a downhill charge. Theophilus had read most of them, but, typically bull-headed, didn’t take anything they said as gospel.

  He and his men disputed the issue all the way but they were slowly shoved and stabbed back down the hill, right the way to the bridge. If Hamilton hadn’t spent time consulting opinion and persuading comrades of his wisdom, the dragoons would have been back over the Clyde, and the English, chastened, back to square one. Happily for them, Monmouth didn’t have to first discuss what he should do.

  Sufficient elements of the Royalist’s main force squeezed over the brig in time. The oncoming Scots hit them at the gallop – but not in entire good heart. The outnumbered Dragoons were fun enough but these rock-steady regular troops spoilt the game. Here and there resolution failed and they bounced back, as though meeting a wall. In the narrow play-area superior numbers couldn’t be brought to bear. Individuals began to arrive at informed, individualistic, opinions about the likely final score. Pretty soon the Covenanters didn’t have superior numbers any more. Their ranks grew ragged as the sensible started to flee.

  Monmouth fought his way to the front and found that Oglethorpe was still alive and enjoying himself. He made no criticism of him for he knew it would do no good. Best leave the innocent in innocence of wrong-doing.

  ‘You may pursue,’ he informed him – and then curtailed the expression of glee produced, ‘in moderation only. Be back within the hour.’

  Traditionally, ‘the pursuit’ was when victors reaped the benefit of all their hard work and sacrifice. The harvest metaphor was quite apposite because that was also when they reaped the unresisting defeated as they sought safety. The habitual wild discrepancy in casualty figures between winners and losers could always be accounted for by the pursuit. For it to be artificially curtailed, as General Monmouth instructed, was an act of madness, the throwing away of four aces in a high stakes game.

  Oglethorpe was enraged – although silently so – and strived all the harder to make the most of his time.

  Fortunately, some of the stubborner Scots met him halfway and tried to make a stand. Hamilton rallied a handful on the aptly named Hamilton Heath and obligingly waited long enough for the guns to be brought up. Then, though hosed down with ‘case’ and easy target practice for the Dragoons, they were also good enough to linger on so Oglethorpe could smash them with a charge. There was adequate action for him to be content with the foreshortened banquet.

  As a gratis ‘disgestif’ on the following day, he had the pleasure of a skirmish on Cumlock Moor. One hundred and forty Covenanters sinfully put their God to the test by presenting themselves for combat. In such circumstances Monmouth could hardly deny Brigadier Oglethorpe the honour of trampling them into the turf. Theophilus thus re-met the enigmatic Preacher Cameron, and, in cleaving his head, ended both him and the rebellion.

  ‘Master Oglethorpe, I am glad to see you safely home,’ said the girl. ‘My thoughts were often with you.’

  The soldier looked down on her, somewhat puzzled.

  ‘Are you? Were they? Do I know you?’

  Some nearby courtiers sniggered. Though generally neglectful of scripture they were aware of the Biblical sense of the verb ‘to know’. Theophilus shut them up with a look.

  ‘Eleanor Wall attends His Majesty’s … close friend the Duchess of Portsmouth as her Maid of Honour,’ Monmouth informed him. ‘Access to that powerful lady lies through this Hiberian lass. Her star rides accordingly high.’

  ‘Though not in the same manner as my Mistress,’ added the girl, smiling. ‘Let there be no misunderstanding.’

  ‘No indeed,’ Monmouth graciously conceded. ‘All your rides are purely equestrian and pure to boot. Even my proposals have been daintily rebuffed and yet friendship remains. I’m surprised you’ve not noted her, Theophilus; she’s absolutely your sort.’

  ‘Not a tang of scandal attaches to me,’ explained Eleanor to the embarrassed soldier. ‘And there’s precious few at Court that could be said of.’ She amiably studied Oglethorpe from head toe. ‘In fact, I suspect you are the only other such.’

  Theophilus didn’t care for slips of girls to be so in charge of converse with grown men except – maybe – in this case. Though capable of putting regiments of hardened troopers in mortal fear, and fighting duels at the drop of a careless word, self-contained seventeen-year-old lady’s maids rendered him tongue-tied.

  ‘Perhaps we should make better acquaintance?’ he said – and meant it. He hadn’t thought to find unsullied goods at Court.

  ‘We shall, sir,’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘I’m to have a position in the Palace …’

  ‘The word is as “Head Laundress and Seamstress”,’ Monmouth obligingly interrupted. ‘It’s a plum: £2000 per annum and the slaves do all the work.’

  Lely and Purcell drifted by in conversation. Blinded by linear time and the shell of flesh round genius, no one paid much heed.

  ‘I shall have a Whitehall apartment besides,’ she continued matter-of-factly. ‘Possibly beside your own …’

  ‘Though you must move swift,’ the Duke cheerfully advised her. ‘The new year sees Colonel Oglethorpe bound for Afrique and command of the Tangier garrison. It is a prodigious promotion and I just can’t conceive what might make him give it up.’

  ‘I’m not wedded to it,’ blurted Theophilus. ‘Would you like to stroll in St. James’ with me one day?’

  He was drawing on greater courage than ever required at Bothwell Brig. Leaps through transient windows of opportunity intimidated him far more than staring down death. One had to live on with the upshot of the former, whereas the latter was merely the end.

  Monmouth doubled up and laughed. He thought it so nice that a little naivety should survive in the world: a museum curio for future ages.

  Oglethorpe had no chance to protest nor Eleanor to reply. The Chamberlain emerged from the inner room and said the King would see them now.

  Mistress Wall watched them go and thus saw Oglethorpe’s fleeting backward glance. She smiled at him. Some essence of each travelled along the line of sight and met – and meshed – beyond all hope of untanglement. The door closed but did not sever the link. Henceforth material barriers could not bar keen awareness of each other’s spark of life.

  For all her youth Eleanor knew better than to wrestle overlong with fate. Her family had dipped in short order from comfort to ruin through war and Cromwellian ‘transplanting’ to the wilds of Connaught. Throughout they’d kept the faith and ate what was put before them: sometimes with relish, sometimes not, but never complaining. Revived good fortune was no cause to change their ways. One chapter closed, another began and one should just accept it.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ she thought, ‘who’d have dreamt it? A kind man in London! Kiss Tangiers goo
dbye, Theophilus. You’ll do.’

  ‘… the final tally being eight hundred traitors slain in battle, a further four hundred in subsequent pursuit and twelve hundred taken captive who await your pleasure.’

  Monmouth bowed to the King at the end of his account.

  Charles raised his eyes over the edge of the report in which he had been following the tale.

  ‘And what “pleasure”,’ the King asked, less ecstatic than he might be, ‘shall I have of twelve hundred canting Pharisees? Do I make them scullions here at Windsor, to scowl and mutter as I and my mistresses pass? Is there any shortage of hypocrites here in London that we require reinforcement? One was not aware of it.’

  Monmouth didn’t appear upset. The explosions of welcome which had greeted him in Edinburgh and down into England advised him of the true value of his achievement. Even Charles’s faint praise was mostly feigned. His son had only to do anything half-right for the Royal heart to swell with pride.

  ‘Besides, four hundred isn’t much for a pursuit. Lagging back were you, Oglethorpe, eh?’

  Theophilus, ever easy to reel in, would have given his eyebrows to be able to reply and defend himself. To his credit he didn’t even look to Monmouth for vindication. To Monmouth’s credit he didn’t need to.

  ‘Oglethorpe excelled himself, as always,’ said the Duke, well aware of the winding up. ‘It was I who reined him in.’

  The King nodded, signalling with a look that Theophilus’s stock remained high.

  ‘So one hears. The same informants state you had your own surgeon minister to the wounded on both sides. Can this be true?’

  ‘It is,’ answered Monmouth, boldly.

  Charles favoured him with one of his long, investigative looks.

  ‘Most Christian,’ he said dryly, in long postponed due course. ‘Most commendable.’

  The Duke chose, on the basis of negligible evidence, to take the compliment at face value.

  ‘Thank you, father. I perceived that they were all your subjects and charges under God, however misguided.’

  Charles made a ‘hmmmmm’ sound, which could have been agreement – or something else. The King had his own opinion of the Northern Kingdom, born of the humiliations it had inflicted on him whilst in exile there. As the price of military aid, the Covenanters had made him confess his iniquity on a daily basis and expound, in writing, on his father’s ‘wickedness’. Then, for all that, Cromwell had scattered them like chaff at Worcester. Despite their bloodthirsty boasts, Charles well recalled leading the crucial charge and looking back to find only English courtiers following. Prisoners and surgeons was it …

  ‘My brother and heir, the Duke of York and Prince of Wales, thinks that you acted kindly out of self-interest, in the hope of reconciliation and gratitude; in expectation of a Caledonian Monmouth faction …’

  ‘Psalm 140, verse 3,’ quoted Monmouth, ‘“They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent: adders’ poison is under their lips.”’

  ‘Then perhaps your little court of Celts influenced you to mercy …’

  ‘The Scots are not Celts, father, as you should know. Likewise, the scholars whose company I keep are incapable of deflecting me from my proper duty, as you also know – or your spies have told you. If it were not so you would have long since dispersed ’em.’

  ‘If I had been there,’ grumbled Charles, running out of good arguments, ‘I would not have had the trouble of prisoners.’

  This last feeble shot glanced off Monmouth’s self-assurance like all the others.

  ‘In your service, Father,’ he said graciously, ‘nothing is too much trouble. Also take note: I cannot kill men in cold blood. That’s work only for butchers.’

  At last the King had him. He leaned back in his chair and smiled sadly.

  ‘Then downgrade your ambitions, dear son. To be and remain a King one must learn the jolly butcher’s trade. This last month alone, I’ve signed the warrants for eight old priests hounded out of hiding, who are innocent of anything I know of – and I assure you I’m on nodding terms with most sins. Because of the conspiracies excreted from Oates’s brain they must hang and be cut down before dead, to have their guts extracted and burnt before them. That is just part of the price I pay for Parliament to accede to its dissolution. They must have their blood sacrifice or civil war.’

  ‘Or else sit on,’ interrupted Monmouth, unimpressed, ‘and pass an exclusion bill denying your papist brother the throne. On such a day, I’d be Prince of Wales. For such a prize eight old pimps of Babylon are a bargain price I’d say.’

  For the first time Charles looked at his son the same way he did all other humans – which was a very bad sign.

  ‘Maybe I erred,’ he said, as though tired of every last thing – and released of a burden thereby. ‘Maybe you are Kingly material. I wish I didn’t love you.’

  THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1683

  ‘And where do you think you’re going, matey?’

  Lieutenant Colonel Oglethorpe halted comically in mid tread on his way to the door. He’d thought his wife occupied elsewhere with her embroidery or intrigues.

  ‘Just a tour of the estate, my dear: nothing untoward.’

  Eleanor, ‘Ellen’, Oglethorpe, nee Wall, descended the stairs like an oncoming regiment of Turks. Two years of marriage and a child to bless each one had not lessened her frightening charms.

  ‘Why,’ she said archly, ‘and to think I judged, from your purposeful tread, you were about something more sinister …’

  She had never let him forget his slipping away to fight a duel at St. Martins-in-the-Fields. At the time he didn’t see it was any business of a wife to be informed of such appointments but the ensuing marital tempest convinced him otherwise. The pain of all the might-have-beens lent her strength. Theophilus’s military career and fighting hand-to-hand with the best of France, Holland and Scotland, proved no preparation for a melee with the fiery, crockery wielding girl from Tipperary. After that, the legal consequences of placing a blade in the navel of John Richardson esq. were easily endured. When the man died the next day in Covent Garden, Theophilus was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter. Before the wheels of justice could grind on, he’d claimed ‘benefit of clergy’, asking for a Bible and proving he could read from it. Sentence was accordingly passed under more moderate statutes and he’d stoically endured branding on the face – with a stone-cold branding iron. He was fortunate to have the sympathy of the Court with him. Onlookers mistakenly thought Mr Richardson had acquitted himself well in combat – for Theophilus was visibly marked with wounds inflicted by Ellen.

  Ever after, the loving wife kept a beady eye on her husband’s wanderings, particularly on early mornings after a night in company, putting pay to his duelling-fancy as she had the Tangiers appointment. She appreciated that death would come to part them soon enough, without Theophilus chasing after the Grim Reaper and tugging his gown. Ellen was prepared to take infinite trouble to hang on to something of infinite worth.

  ‘Well then,’ she said sweetly, brushing his lace ruff and simultaneously relieving him of his sword, ‘you won’t be needing this then, will you?’

  Theophilus didn’t dare resist: for she was now armed and he wasn’t. Futile protests were however permitted.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, raising his hands in supplication. ‘I cannot wander abroad with an empty scabbard. Wits will ask if I’m searching for Excalibur …’

  Ellen was unmoved, tucking the foil under one silken sleeve. ‘Then take it off,’ she riposted. ‘Or appease your temper by giving them a boot. You do not need a sword hereabouts, Theophilus, and that is the end of it. What is it you fear? Is the Surrey puma prowling? Do you anticipate a mussulman invasion of Godalming this morning? If so hadn’t you better rouse the militia rather than deal with it yourself?’

  For all her confidence, Ellen knew better than to stir the sleeping beast. She could calculate the boundaries of safe sarcasm to perfection.

  ‘Go disarmed,’ she
asked him nicely. ‘For me. So can I rest easy.’

  Put like that he could hardly refuse. Kissing her hand like the secret romantic he was, Theophilus swept his feathered hat over his periwig and ventured out into the world.

  There were caches of spare swords all over the house and grounds for just such eventualities. He collected them like he did stray or injured cats and dogs, the prisoner of ingrained compulsions. One swift detour to the hollow oak by the summer house and he was re-equipped and free to march down the short avenue from Westbrook Manor, out of sight of its plentiful windows. It was not that there was anything nefarious about his outing: merely the fact that a lack of arms felt unnatural. Without the reassuring tug of a blade by his side, Theophilus was always conscious of the lack – something akin to an amputated limb, or so he was told.

  He gave up trying to remember what Richardson had done to offend and turned his thoughts to more friendly matters. Dear Ellen was right about the absurdity of martial readiness in such circumstances. Looking back on his stately property, he could detect no cause for alarm. He was glad to have lashed out and bought the place. For two generations the Oglethorpes had been a mobile-column, pitching temporary camp where events threw them. The hurricane years of Civil War, the crippling fines and exiles, had allowed little option. Now however, coming into their just reward and with the benevolent face of the King shining upon them, they dared to sink some roots. Buying Westbrook had nigh cleared him out of cash, and that had called for nerve in a man happiest when ready to ship out, bag and baggage, the minute fate turned ugly. In the end it was marriage and the arrival of children that had provided the anchoring force – that and confidence of ongoing favour. So long as he faithfully served the Lord above and his Royal representative below, surely the good times would continue.