‘Lieutenant,’ said Will, stoutly. ‘We follow, captain.’
So, in all seriousness, some limping a little, one with a hand clasped to a darkening eye, another mopping a bloody nose, the two armies made their way to the back entrance of the standing wing, where a couple of Mr. Churchill’s grooms took the boys to the pump in the stable yard and cleaned them up until they were fit to appear before the master.
John took his prisoner into the library. Mr. Churchill’s manservant, a faithful survivor of those distant war years when he had first served his now donnish master, had prepared the way for their arrival.
‘Master John hath won his battle again, sir, and begs leave to present his prisoner, Will Hayden, commander of the opposing forces.’
‘Bring them in, Trubb,’ Mr. Churchill ordered.
He left his desk and walking to the window looked out to where the ranks of youngsters were lined up; two parties of eight lads in each.
He did not turn when he heard Trubb usher in his son with the farmer’s boy, but spoke over his shoulder.
‘I see the two sides here have equal numbers. This was not so at the start, I believe.’
John did not hesitate.
‘No, sir. But when I found my enemy had eight, I enlisted a further two. Forced them, sir. They deserted later.’
‘But have returned now, I suppose, to enjoy the fruits of victory. You agree to this? We hanged such in my day.’
‘They do not deserve their reward, but it could encourage them in the future.’
‘Or set a bad example, an envious example to the loyal troops.’
John was silent, abashed. His father had still not turned to look at him, nor praised him as he stood proudly, with his prisoner at his side.
But Mr. Churchill had much upon his mind, much that had occupied and excited him for some weeks and that had now come to a head in a most wonderful manner. He was not indifferent to this rough game and its result. He was simply uncertain whether he could turn it to good effect for his family and the village. Excitement over-came his long held discretion. He turned at last, his eyes filled with a light his young son had not seen there before.
‘Follow me!’ he ordered and led them out on to the terrace above the lawn where the boys stood waiting. He waved John and Will towards the ranks where they took their places in front of the others.
‘Lads!’ cried Mr. Churchill in a loud voice that brought Trubb to attention, remembering. ‘Lads, you do well to practice a pretence of war, a skill whereby you set yourselves in train to defend your country. But not any longer in those factions and divisions that have done such grievous harm to the land and set one family against another, even among their own kin. Not any longer, because I have had news today that ends the strife, that promises peace throughout the land and a better life for us all.’
He glanced about him. As he had expected and as he had already arranged with his wife, the indoor staff, led by their lady, was already assembling behind him. Word had gone from the stable yard into the village and men’s heads appeared above all the ruined walls while figures strode in from the copse and the fields.
‘People of Musbery!’ Mr. Churchill cried. ‘All of you, young and old! Our King hath come back to us, to take up his heritage, to reign over this, his own native country! King Charles the Second hath landed at Dover and the people is mad with joy! God save the King!’
Then the people of Musbery and of Ashe raised their voices and shouted after him, ‘God save the King!’
Chapter Two
This news, expressed with so much excited enthusiasm, quite extinguished the youngsters’ announcement and in fact brought their intermittent campaigns to an end. But John Churchill never forgot his mastery of the event nor the comparative ease with which he achieved it.
Certainly he was surprised and disappointed at the time by his father’s speech, but Mrs. Churchill, knowing her son better than his father did, and also being cautious in accepting what seemed to her a probably false rumour, hurried the combatants away from the terrace to the kitchens, where food and drink, plain but plentiful, soon restored their dampened spirits.
The village, too, received the news of the restoration with caution. They needed more assurance than that brought by an exhausted cavalier, who had ridden his horse and himself too hard in his eagerness to forestall any backsliding in this part of the country. Mr. Churchill might jump to the stars at the man’s fulfilment of his dearest hope, repressed for so long. But the village folk were mainly indifferent, so long as armies did not occupy their fields and destroy their crops and consume their beasts. They were by no means ready for public celebrations.
Nevertheless, changes were coming and rapidly. As the Churchill children knew, their old grandfather, the lawyer John Churchill, had died a few months before. So his estate, Wootton Glanville, not far away, belonged now to their father; and if the great news was right, if Charles II did indeed now sit upon the throne, there was no longer any bar to the lawyer’s son taking up his inheritance.
A day or two after the great announcement a more persuasive messenger bearing the same news arrived at Ashe. This was Lady Drake, Mr. Churchill’s mother-in-law, the owner of the ruined manor house.
‘I see you have my tidings already!’ she exclaimed when he came out with a radiant face to take her down from her horse.
‘Our King is home again,’ he answered. ‘We were brought the news of his landing at Dover. Three days since young Hereford rode through, taking the tidings to the west. It was then a week old, he said.’
‘Then he was more than three days premature,’ she answered. ‘We had it by sea no sooner than yestereve. I come from Lyme. I sent word of my intention. Did it not reach you?’
His answer was forestalled by his wife, who ran out to greet her mother.
‘By horse?’ she exclaimed, taking Lady Drake’s arm to lead her into the house. ‘Could not those friends of yours in Lyme supply a coach for you to ride in?’
‘Indeed they offered it,’ Lady Drake answered, laughing. ‘But I refused. I am not so old I cannot still manage a quiet beast, and it is no great distance from here to Lyme – and a quieter ride on horseback than having my ancient bones shaken to bits in a coach dragged up and down these hills.’
When her mother was rested and refreshed Mrs. Churchill took her to the nurseries to see her grandchildren. As with most families at that time there were gaps in the ranks; those born very often did not survive their infancy. The eldest, Arabella, was now twelve years old, John was ten, George six, little Charles only two, but thriving. The latest child, apparently healthy at birth, had suffered a severe chest cold the winter before and now at little more than eight months old was again sickly, with a rash that had attacked many of the village infants.
‘It seems prevalent each April and May,’ Mrs. Churchill explained. ‘The others had it in their early years, but recovered from it. After her bad chest at Christmas time she seems to suffer with coughing and wheezing and vomits her food, poor lamb.’
Lady Drake nodded, but said nothing. She saw that the hand of death was upon this child, too. Her daughter knew it but would not yet acknowledge the inevitable. Well, she had herself lost children. It was the Will of God. All must submit, Papists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Quakers alike. No sect was favoured above another in the eyes of God, the Maker of all. Please God, she prayed inwardly, at the restoration now of the old order may the still warring sects at last agree to live together as one nation, sharing their joys and their more frequent griefs.
Later, sitting with her daughter below stairs again, Lady Drake said, ‘Arabella is developed well. A pity she hath a plain face and a muddy complextion.’
‘She is at an awkward age,’ Mrs. Churchill answered, ready to defend her young as mothers always will, but secretly in full agreement over the child’s looks.
Lady Churchill persisted. ‘Nevertheless she will not be a beauty and seeing there is no fortune for her—’
‘Tha
t only time will show,’ Mrs. Churchill interrupted, annoyed afresh by this implied criticism of her husband. ‘Mr. Churchill will now recover his father’s estate, will he not? I know he intends we shall move to Wootton Glanville just as soon as we may.’
‘Ah,’ said Lady Drake. ‘Now that, even more than my intention to bring you the news from London, is what hath brought me here.’
‘Had we not better wait to discuss it until Mr. Churchill himself is with us?’
Lady Drake was forced to admit that was the way matters must proceed. She recognised her daughter’s simple determination, which indeed stemmed from her own character, she thought. It had led the girl to prefer their west country acquaintance’s son to any of those young parliamentarians Sir John Drake, with his puritan background, had favoured. Lawyer Churchill had never hidden his loyalty to the royalist cause, but he had managed to survive its defeat and also Winston’s active part in the war, with only partial sequestration and fines. Elizabeth Drake had endured with great fortitude, even with cheerfulness, all the discomfort and privation that followed her marriage. Winston, equally determined for the sake of his wife and children to give persecution no chance to destroy him, had seemingly turned himself wholly from physical exploits to the writing of history and the study of heraldry. Lady Drake, when he joined the two women, decided the time had come to express some admiration of his conduct.
‘Your patience, my son, looks to have its reward,’ she said, with an unusual show of feeling.
The evening meal had now been taken, the children had all retired to bed and the couple with their guest were sitting round a meagre and very smoky fire in Winston’s small library.
Lady Drake got up to move about before the shelves, taking out a book now and then.
‘Do you still know which of these volumes be yours and which from that strange medley my people flung out on the grass to save from the fire?’ she asked, pausing with a book in her hand. ‘Sir John had much your interest in coats of arms and crests and such like.’
‘I know them all, my lady,’ Mr. Churchill told her, ‘because I had few of my own when you allowed me to set up house here with Bet. Later my father made me presents of such books of his as he knew I coveted.’
‘And such as you needed when you began the children’s education,’ Elizabeth reminded him.
‘That too, I have scarcely the ability of a trained tutor, but with Dr. Offord’s help we have done our best for Arabella, John and young George. They read and write and John has a smattering of Latin and Greek. Please God the schools may soon be open again and Anglican scholars like our poor priest may be restored to their cures in our towns and villages.’
‘It will take time,’ Lady Drake said, drily. ‘You will not very easily destroy the Presbyterian dream of a Puritan England.’
He did not answer at once. Instead he got up from his chair to join her at the shelves. She handed him the book she was holding, afraid she had gone too far, seeing clearly there was already a new climate in the land. Or was it merely an old one, restored? Mr.
Churchill’s words as he took the book from her and led her back to her seat beside the smoky fire, confirmed this.
‘There hath never been a Presbyterian England,’ he said, standing over her sternly. ‘Sects abounding in the confusion of the so-called Commonwealth; a suspicion and so a hatred of the Roman persuasion, stemming from the Spanish perils in the great Queen Elizabeth’s day. Yes, all that, I grant you. But under repression and beside the chaos of belief, a deep longing for freedom to worship God in natural happy simplicity, unfettered by Pope or Calvin.’
‘Charles Stuart gives himself out as a practising and believing Anglican,’ Mrs. Churchill added. ‘Let us pray he shows tolerance to all people who strive to lead a Christian life.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Lady Drake.
She knew her feelings were mixed and always had been. She had married into a parliamentarian family, had loved her husband and adopted his views. But she was born a Villiers, sister of the Duke of Buckingham and so very closely connected with the royalist cause, though she had never hitherto allowed herself to associate with it. This was not surprising, since it was the cavaliers who had destroyed Ashe. She knew she must restrain her continuing feeling of resentment. Her present visit to her daughter and son-in-law was intended to herald her final return to her own property.
Among the children upstairs the news grew in importance as they listened to the servants discussing it among themselves. John, George and little Charles shared a small room. Arabella lay with a nursemaid in another, the ailing infant was attended by the chief nurse, a middle-aged woman of experience whose wide knowledge of the terrors and tragedies of infancy had written deep lines of suffering about her firm mouth and jaw.
When the three boys were in bed, their candles blown out, their door shut, John said, ‘So there is to be a king again. Trubb says he is to be brought from Holland by General Monk and placed on the throne.’
‘General Monk is a parliament man, a Cromwell’s army man!’ George argued. ‘Is it a trap to catch the King?’
‘Will they cut off his head as they did to the Martyr?’ little Charles asked in an awed voice.
‘Both wrong,’ John said. ‘All the men are saying the Lord Cromwell ruled his army while he lived but his son could not do so. General Monk hath overruled all the other generals and the King will rule Monk when he comes.’
‘Will there be fighting?’ George asked nervously. He had never enjoyed the war games at Ashe. The thought of a repetition on a grown-up scale terrified him.
‘You have not listened, fool,’ John told him scornfully. ‘It is to stop fighting and uprising that Monk is bringing in the King.’
‘But they will not cut off his head,’ Charles concluded, which made his brothers laugh and tell him to go to sleep in peace. No heads would fall and they would all soon go to live in their own house on their own land at Wootton Glanville.
And so it fell out. The young King met his welcome with great dignity and a very mature wariness. He had known both poverty and disillusion during his exile in France and the Low Countries. He was determined never to suffer so again. He showed his people a serious simplicity of manner they had not expected. But it was genuine; no deception, no cunning. There were many sides to his complex nature, which had endured much and had learned to manage a great variety of circumstances, surmount deadly perils, extract enjoyment where many would have gleaned only bitterness. In spite of a reputation for license that had been fostered by Cromwell’s men, the people were not at first made aware of it. His cold intelligence, that was always to lift him clear of disaster however great his folly, did so now to very good effect. The general talk was not of a brothel queen but of a future Queen of England.
So Charles came to his own and with the help and advice of his faithful Chancellor Hyde, now Earl of Clarendon, his Secretary of State, and others, including General Monk, created Earl of Albermarle, no sooner had he reached London than he called for the election of a new parliament to replace the old Rump. Government was to be by the people, elected in the boroughs, to form the House of Commons. The House of Lords was already again in being; only the Catholics were banned from both Houses. And so England sighed with relief and for the most part abandoned politics most thankfully.
Having moved back with his family into the house at Wootton Glanville Mr. Churchill found himself nominated for and presently voted into, the parliamentary seat for Weymouth. He took all this with admirable calmness, though the rest of his establishment was wild with excitement. Such an honour after so much neglect! Such publicity, such open praise after all those years of self-effacement! Mrs. Churchill made sure the news was well spread to her grander relations, notably the Duke of Buckingham, her uncle.
Lady Drake, too, was gratified by her son-in-law’s return to public life. She hoped for further advancement for him. Back in London, still holding fast to the sequestered royalist’s house she had been granted by the usu
rping power, she heard the Court gossip as early as any not immediately in the King’s circle. She knew as soon as anyone who the King had noticed, had at once favoured and now pursued the beautiful Mrs. Palmer, who had been before her marriage Barbara Villiers, a cousin of her own through her distinguished brother.
So it was not altogether with surprise that she heard Winston Churchill was summoned to Whitehall to receive from the King the thanks and favours due to him for his many years of devoted service to the Crown.
Mr. Churchill received the message in London where he had gone to attend the House of Commons at Westminster. He was staying with Lady Drake and had brought his wife to town with him, but the children stayed at Wootton Glanville on this occasion. Partly this was an act of caution. The plague had surged into the City in a renewal of terror and death more devastating than for many years. It had delayed the King’s coronation, it had driven many away from the capital. As the first years of the new reign passed it was to rage ever more terribly, until the Court took almost permanent refuge at Hampton Court with visits as far afield as Salisbury.
Mr. Churchill felt, as he dressed himself in his modest suit of black with a short black cloak lined with scarlet silk, and a flat black beaver hat, that this was the greatest moment of his life. Mrs. Churchill had not on this occasion been invited to the audience, but Lady Drake was able to take her to the Palace of Whitehall to mingle with the lower ranks of visitors to the Court.
They travelled to the Palace in a coach from the City and on arrival the two ladies were directed where to go and left to their own devices while a gentleman in waiting, whose name Mr. Churchill was given but in his excitement never remembered, took him in another direction, through corridors and galleries lined with pictures to an audience chamber in the royal apartments.
For a moment Mr. Churchill felt disappointed. He had expected to see the King in all his glory at the end of a great chamber, raised up on a dais, surrounded by a brilliant throng. Instead, he and his escort moved into a smallish ante-chamber and there stayed, exchanging casual and pointless remarks for some fifteen minutes, in company with similar couples similarly employed.
A Question of Loyalties Page 2
