Mistress Wilding (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

by Rafael Sabatini

  "Aye," said Wilding, "and if you have patience enough there will be troops the Parliament will send against us. They, too, will be armed, I can assure your lordship."

  "In God's name let us keep from wrangling," the Duke besought them. "It is difficult enough to determine for the best. If the dash to Exeter were successful . . ."

  "It cannot be," Grey interrupted again.

  The liberties he took with Monmouth and which Monmouth permitted him might well be a source of wonder to all who heard them. Monmouth paused now in his interrupted speech and looked about him a trifle wearily.

  "It seems idle to insist," said Mr. Wilding; "such is the temper of Your Grace's counsellors, that we get no further than contradictions." Grey's bold eyes were upon Wilding as he spoke. "I would remind Your Grace, and I am sure that many present will agree with me, that in a desperate enterprise a sudden unexpected movement will often strike terror."

  "That is true," said Monmouth, but apparently without enthusiasm, and having approved what was urged on one side, he looked at Grey, as if waiting to hear what might be said on the other. His indecision was pitiful — tragical, indeed, in the leader of so bold an enterprise.

  "We should do better, I think," said Grey, "to deal with the facts as we know them."

  "It is what I am endeavouring to do, Your Grace," protested Wilding, a note of despair in his voice. "Perhaps some other gentleman will put forward better counsel than mine."

  "Aye! In Heaven's name let us hope so," snorted Grey; and Monmouth, catching the sudden flash of Mr. Wilding's eye, set a hand upon his lordship's arm as if to urge him to be gentler. But he continued, "When men talk of striking terror by sudden movements they build on air."

  "I had hardly thought to hear that from your lordship," said Mr. Wilding, and he permitted himself that tight-lipped smile that gave his face so wicked a look.

  "And why not?" asked Grey, stupidly unsuspicious.

  "Because I had thought you might have concluded otherwise from your own experience at Bridport this morning."

  Grey got angrily to his feet, rage and shame flushing his face, and it needed Ferguson and the Duke to restore him to some semblance of calm. Indeed, it may well be that it was to complete this that His Grace decided there and then that they should follow Grey's advice and go by way of Taunton, Bridgwater, and Bristol to Gloucester. He was, like all weak men, of conspicuous mental short-sightedness. The matter of the moment was ever of greater importance to him than any result that might attend it in the future. He insisted that Wilding and Grey should shake hands before the breaking up of that most astounding council, and as he had done last night, he now again imposed upon them his commands that they must not allow this matter to go further.

  Mr. Wilding paved the way for peace by making an apology within limitations.

  "If, in my zeal to serve Your Grace to the best of my ability, I have said that which Lord Grey thinks fit to resent, I would bid him consider my motive rather than my actual words."

  But when all had gone save Ferguson, the chaplain approached the preoccupied and distressed Duke with counsel that Mr. Wilding should be sent away from the army.

  "Else there'll be trouble 'twixt him and Grey," the plotting parson foretold. "We'll be having a repetition of the unfortunate Fletcher and Dare affair, and I think that has cost Your Grace enough already."

  "Do you suggest that I dismiss Wilding?" cried the Duke. "You know his influence, and the bad impression his removal would leave."

  Ferguson stroked his long lean jaw. "No, no," said he; "all I suggest is that you find Mr. Wilding work to do elsewhere."

  "Elsewhere?" the Duke questioned. "Where else?"

  "I have thought of that, too. Send him to London to see Danvers and to stir up your friends there. And," he added, lowering his voice, "give him discretion to see Sunderland if he thinks well."

  The proposition pleased Monmouth, and it seemed to please Mr. Wilding no less when, having sent for him, the Duke communicated it to him in Ferguson's presence.

  Upon this mission Mr. Wilding set out that very night, leaving Nick Trenchard in despair at being separated from him at a time when there seemed to be every chance that such a separation might be eternal.

  Monmouth and Ferguson may have conceived they did a wise thing in removing a man who was instinctively spoiling for a little sword-play with my Lord Grey. It is odds that had he remained, the brewing storm between the pair would have come to a head. Had it done so, it is more than likely, from what we know of Mr. Wilding's accomplishments, that he had given Lord Grey his quietus. And had that happened, it is to be inferred from history that it is possible the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion might have had a less disastrous issue.

  CHAPTER XVI

  PLOTS AND PLOTTERS

  MR. WILDING left Monmouth's army at Lyme on Sunday, the 14th of June, and rejoined it at Bridgwater exactly three weeks later.

  In the meanwhile a good deal had happened, yet the happenings on every hand had fallen far short of the expectations aroused in Mr. Wilding's mind, now by one circumstance, now by another. In reaching London he had experienced no difficulty. Men travelling in that direction were not subjected to the scrutiny that fell to the share of those travelling from it towards the West, or, rather, to the scrutiny ordained by the Government; for Wilding had more than one opportunity of observing how very lax and indifferent were the constables and tything-men — particularly in Somerset and Wiltshire — in the performance of this duty. Wayfarers were questioned as a matter of form, but in no case did Wilding hear of any one being detained upon suspicion. This was calculated to raise his drooping hopes, pointing as it did to the general favouring of Monmouth that was toward. He grew less despondent on the score of the Duke's possible ultimate success, and he came to hope that the efforts he went to exert would not be fruitless.

  But rude were the disappointments that awaited him in town. London, like the rest of the country, was not ready. There were not wanting men who favoured Monmouth; but no rising had been organized, and the duke's partisans were not disposed to rashness.

  Wilding lodged at Covent Garden, in a house recommended to him by Colonel Danvers, and there — an outlaw himself — he threw himself with a will into his task. He heard of the burning of Monmouth's Declaration by the common hangman at the Royal Exchange, and of the bill passed by the Commons to make it treason for any to assert that Lucy Walters was married to the late King. He attended meetings at the "Bull's Head," in Bishopsgate, where he met Disney and Danvers, Payton and Lock; but though they talked and argued at prodigious length, they did naught besides. Danvers, who was their hope in town, definitely refused to have a hand in anything that was not properly organized, and in common with the others urged that they should wait until Cheshire had risen, as was reported that it must.

  Meanwhile, troops had gone west under Kirke and Churchill, and the Parliament had voted nearly half a million for the putting down of the rebellion. London was flung into a fever of excitement by the news that was reaching it. The position was not quite as Monmouth's advisers — before coming over from Holland — had represented that it would be. They had thought that out of fear of tumults about his own person, King James would have been compelled to keep near him what troops he had, sparing none to be sent against Monmouth. This, King James had not done; he had all but emptied London of soldiery, and, considering the general disaffection, no moment could haye been more favourable than this for a rising in London itself. The confusion that must have resulted from the recalling of troops would have given Monmouth not only a mighty grip of the West, but would have heartened those who — like Sunderland himself—were sitting on the wall, to declare themselves for the Protestant Champion. This Wilding saw, and almost frenziedly did he urge it upon Danvers that all London needed at the moment was a resolute leader. But the Colonel still held back; indeed, he had neither truth nor valour; he was timid, and used deceit to mask his timidity; he urged frivolous reasons for inaction, and when Wilding wa
xed impatient with him, he suggested that Wilding himself should head the rising if he were so confident of its success. And Wilding would have done it but that, being unknown in London, he had no reason to suppose that men would flock to him if he raised the Duke' banner.

  Later, when the excitement grew and rumours ran through town that Monmouth had now a following of twenty thousand men and that the King's forces were falling back before him, and discontent was rife at the commissioning of Catholic lords to levy troops, Wilding again pressed the matter upon Danvers. Surely no moment could be more propitious. But again he received the same answer, that Danvers had lacked time to organize matters sufficiently; that the Duke's coming had taken him by surprise.

  Lastly came the news that Monmouth had been crowned at Taunton amid the wildest enthusiasm, and that there were now in England two men each of whom called himself King James the Second. This was the excuse that Danvers needed to be rid of a business he had not the courage to transact to a finish. He swore that he washed his hands of Monmouth's affairs; that the latter had broken faith with him and the promise he had made him in having himself proclaimed King. He protested that Monmouth had done ill, and prophesied that his act would alienate from him the numerous republicans who, like Danvers, had hitherto looked to him for the country's salvation. Wilding himself was appalled at the news — for Monmouth was indeed going further than men had been given to understand. Nevertheless, for his own sake, in very self-defence now, if out of no motives of loyalty to the Duke, he must urge forward the fortunes of this man. He had high words with Danvers, and the two might have quarrelled before long but for the sudden arrest of Disney, which threw Danvers into such a panic that he fled incontinently, abandoning in body, as he already appeared to have abandoned in spirit, the Monmouth Cause.

  The arrest of Disney struck a chill into Wilding. From his lodging at Covent Garden he had communicated cautiously with Sunderland a few days after his arrival, building upon certain information he had received from the Duke at parting as to Sunderland's attachment to the Cause. He had carefully chosen his moment for making this communication, having a certain innate mistrust of a man who so obviously as Sunderland was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He had sent a letter to the Secretary of State when London was agog with the Axminster affair, and the tale — of which Sir Edward Phelips wrote to Colonel Berkeley as "the shamefullest story that you ever heard" — of how Albemarle's forces and the Somerset militia had run before Monmouth in spite of their own overwhelming numbers. This promised ill for James, particularly when it was perceived — as perceived it was — that this running away was not all cowardice, not all "the shamefullest story" that Phelips accounted it. It was an expression of goodwill towards Monmouth on the part of the militia of the West, and it was confidently expected that the next news would be that these men who had decamped before him would presently be found to have ranged themselves under his banner.

  Sunderland had given no sign that he had received Wilding's communication. And Wilding drew his own contemptuous conclusions of the Secretary of State's cautious policy. It was a fortnight later — when London was settling down again from the diversion of excitement created by the news of Argyle's defeat in Scotland — before Mr. Wilding attempted to approach Sunderland again. He awaited a favourable opportunity, and this he had when London was thrown into consternation by the alarming news of the Duke of Somerset's urgent demand for reinforcements. Unless he had them, he declared, the whole country was lost, as he could not get the militia to stand, whilst Lord Stawell's regiment were all fled and mostly gone over to the rebels at Bridgwater.

  This was grave news, but it was followed in a few days by graver. The affair at Philips Norton was exaggerated by report into a wholesale defeat of the loyal army, and it was reported — on, apparently, such good authority that it received credence in quarters that might have waited for official news — that the Duke of Albemarle had been slain by the militia which had mutinied and deserted to Monmouth.

  It was while this news was going round that Sunderland — in a moment of panic — at last vouchsafed an answer to Mr. Wilding's letters, and he vouchsafed it in person, just as Wilding — particularly since Disney's arrest — was beginning to lose all hope. He came one evening to Mr. Wilding's lodgings in Covent Garden, unattended and closely muffled, and he remained closeted with the Duke's ambassador for nigh upon an hour, at the end of which he entrusted Mr. Wilding with a letter for the Duke, very brief but entirely to the point, which expressed him Monmouth's most devoted servant.

  "You may well judge, sir," he had said at parting, "that this is not such a letter as I should entrust to any man."

  Mr. Wilding had bowed gravely, and gravely he had expressed himself sensible of the exceptional honour his lordship did him by such a trust.

  "And I depend upon you, sir, as you are a man of honour, to take such measures as will ensure against its falling into any but the hands for which it is intended."

  "As I am a man of honour, you may depend upon me," Mr. Wilding solemnly promised. "Will your lordship give me three lines above your signature that will save me from molestation; thus you will facilitate the preservation of this letter."

  "I had already thought of that," was Sunderland's answer, and he placed before Mr. Wilding three lines of writing signed and sealed which enjoined all, straitly, in the King's name to suffer the bearer to pass and repass and to offer him no hindrance.

  On that they shook hands and parted, Sunderland to return to Whitehall and his obedience to the King James whom he was ready to betray as soon as he saw profit for himself in the act, Mr. Wilding to return to Somerset to the King James in whom his faith was scant, indeed, but with whom his fortunes were irrevocably bound up.

  Meanwhile, Monmouth was back in Bridgwater, his second occupation of which town was not being looked upon with unmixed favour. The inhabitants had suffered enough already from his first visit; his return there, after the Philips Norton affair — of which such grossly exaggerated reports had reached London, and which, in point of fact, had been little better than a drawn battle — had been looked upon with dread by some, with disfavour by others, and with dismay by not a few who viewed in this an augury of failure.

  Now Sir Rowland Blake, who since his pursuit of Mr. Wilding and Trenchard on the occasion of their flight from Taunton had — in spite of his failure on that occasion — been more or less in the service of Albemarle and the loyal army, saw in this indisposition towards Monmouth of so many of Bridgwater's inhabitants great possibilities of profit to himself.

  He was at Lupton House, the guest of his friend Richard Westmacott, and the open suitor of Ruth, entirely ignoring the circumstance that she was nominally the wife of Mr. Wilding — this to the infinite chagrin of Miss Horton, who saw all her scheming likely to go for nothing.

  In his heart of hearts it was a matter of not the slightest consequence to Sir Rowland whether James Stuart or James Scott occupied the throne of England. His own affairs gave him more than enough to think of, and these disturbances in the West were very welcome to him, since they rendered difficult any attempt to trace him on the part of his London creditors. It happens, however, very commonly that enmity to an individual will lead to enmity to the cause which that individual espouses. Thus may it have been with Sir Rowland. His hatred of Wilding and his keen desire to see Wilding destroyed had made him a zealous partisan of the loyal cause. Richard Westmacott, easily swayed and overborne by the town rake, whose vices made him seem to Richard the embodiment of all that is splendid and enviable in man, had become practically the baronet's tool, now that he had abandoned Monmouth's Cause. Sir Rowland had not considered it beneath the dignity of his name and station to discharge in Bridgwater certain functions that made him more or less a spy. And so reliable had been the information he had sent Feversham and Albemarle during Monmouth's first occupation of the town, that he had won by now their complete confidence.

  The second occupation and its unpopula
rity with many of those who earlier — if lukewarm — had been partisans of the Duke, swelled the number of loyally inclined people in Bridgwater, and suddenly inspired Sir Rowland with a scheme by which at a blow he might snuff out the rebellion.

  This scheme involved the capture of the Duke, and the reward of success should mean far more to Blake than the five thousand pounds at which the value of the Duke's head had already been fixed by Parliament. He needed a tool for this, and he even thought of Westmacott and Lupton House, but afterwards preferred a Mr. Newlington, who was in better case to assist him. This Newlington, an exceedingly prosperous merchant and one of the richest men perhaps in the whole West of England, looked with extreme disfavour upon Monmouth, whose advent had paralyzed his industries to an extent that was costing him a fine round sum of money weekly.

  He was now in alarm lest the town of Bridgwater should be made to pay dearly for having harboured the Protestant Duke — he had no faith whatever in the Protestant Duke's ultimate prevailing — and that he, as one of the town's most prominent and prosperous citizens, might be amongst the heaviest sufferers in spite of his neutrality. This neutrality he observed because it was hardly safe in that disaffected town for a man to proclaim himself a loyalist.

  To him Sir Rowland expounded his audacious plan. He sought out the merchant in his handsome mansion on the night of that Friday which had witnessed Monmouth's return, and the merchant, honoured by the visit of this gallant — ignorant as he was of the gentleman's fame in town — placed himself entirely and instantly at his disposal, though the hour was late. Sounding him carefully, and finding the fellow most amenable to any scheme that should achieve the salvation of his purse and industries, Blake boldly laid his plan before him. Startled at first, Mr. Newlington upon considering it became so enthusiastic that he hailed Sir Rowland as his deliverer, and heartily promised his coöperation. Indeed, it was Mr. Newlington who was, himself, to take the first step.