Beautiful Star and Other Stories

by Andrew Swanston

  From within the inner wall, Mary Bankes had watched the arrival of Colonel Cromwell and his troop and thanked God for it. Queen Henrietta Maria had been right – honour the memory of your husband; do not give up; there is always hope.

  It did not take long for Captain Kendall to act. Suddenly, not only had the castle been provisioned and reinforced but Colonel Butler, the governor of Wareham, was held prisoner within it. It was a situation that could not be allowed to continue. He found pen and ink and sat down to draft a letter. His hand was untutored but the proposal was clear enough. In return for the governor’s release, Lady Bankes and her children would be allowed to leave the castle unmolested and would be given an escort to a place of their choosing. The castle would not be damaged and its garrison would be permitted to disperse.

  The letter was delivered by a guard at the gatehouse while Mary was dining with Robert Lawrence and James Cromwell. It was the first time she had tasted meat since before Christmas and Colonel Cromwell had even brought with him a few bottles of good claret. She took the letter and read it aloud. ‘So, our besiegers offer us a bargain. Our safety for their colonel. Do you suppose it is an honest offer?’

  Robert Lawrence stroked his chin. ‘There is risk attached to it, certainly. Once you leave the castle and Colonel Butler is released, we shall be at their mercy.’ He grinned at Colonel Cromwell. ‘And as the colonel has gulled them so splendidly, they may feel entitled to repay the favour.’

  ‘Nor do I trust them not to strip the castle bare and blow it up.’ said Mary, ‘Then all we have fought for would have been in vain.’

  Unlike his more celebrated namesake, James Cromwell was a handsome man, his black hair long and wavy, his beard neat and his eyes a bright blue. He spoke quietly but with conviction. ‘Is there not as much risk in refusing the offer? We did not bring a widow’s crucible and the provisions will not last forever. Our enemies will be desperate to release their colonel. When Fairfax hears of his capture he will order reprisals in the town and the castle attacked and attacked again until it is taken. That is the nature of the man. Would it not be wiser – less risky – to discuss the proposal further with them?’

  Robert Lawrence laid his hand upon Mary’s. ‘Whatever the outcome of the war and of this siege, your fight will never have been in vain. You have shown that you will not be cowed into submission and your loyalty to the king has been an example to all. And you have kept five hundred soldiers of the Parliamentary Army occupied while they might have been fighting elsewhere.’

  ‘Do you too suggest that I should accept this proposal, Robert, after all we have suffered together?’

  Robert Lawrence knew Mary Bankes too well to battle her head on. ‘I suggest only that you give it consideration. Colonel Cromwell and I will put our minds to possible safeguards.’

  Mary stood up. ‘Very well, gentlemen, I shall do so. We will meet again tomorrow morning at seven.’

  Elizabeth and Joan were adamant. ‘Is this not an opportunity we must take, Mother?’ asked Joan. ‘Colonel Cromwell has brought us the means to end our imprisonment. We would be foolish to ignore it.’

  ‘Imprisonment? Is that what you think, child?’ Mary’s eyes blazed.

  ‘For us all it has become such. We have supported you willingly but now surely the time has come to live our lives elsewhere.’

  Elizabeth agreed. ‘Are our sisters never to walk in the fields or pick flowers or catch a fish in the river? You have done enough, Mother. Let us leave Corfe and join our cousins in Ruislip.’

  A tear ran down Mary’s cheek. ‘I cannot bear the thought of losing our home.’

  Joan took her mother’s hand. ‘We are a family, Mother. The boys will join us and wherever we are will be our home.’

  Mary nodded and dabbed at her cheek with a handkerchief. ‘Perhaps so. Perhaps the time has come. I will think on it overnight.’

  In the library, Queen Henrietta Maria stared back at her. In those dark eyes there was still no hint of weakness. The Generalissimo, French princess of the House of Bourbon, queen consort of the king of England, Scotland and Ireland, would never act against her husband’s wishes and would not understand any wife who did so. But Sir John Bankes was dead. Should it not be his children’s wishes that came first?

  Mary slept little that night and was awake before dawn when Robert Lawrence knocked on her chamber door. ‘Robert? It is not yet morning,’ she said, seeing him outside. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘The prisoner, Colonel Butler, has escaped. I know not how but the guard house is empty. I have ordered a search of the castle and the grounds but I doubt we’ll find him.’

  ‘Was he not locked in?’

  ‘He was but had no guard. He must have had help.’

  ‘Then there is a traitor in the castle.’

  ‘I fear there is. One who arrived with Colonel Cromwell, perhaps.’

  Mary sighed. ‘So now there can be no bargain. Find the traitor if you can, Robert, and let it be known that any of the servants who wish to leave may do so. Your men, of course, I leave to you. My daughters and I will remain here.’

  ‘Mary, I cannot but think that would be foolish. After the attack on Wareham, who knows what the Parliamentarians might do? Your daughters will be in grave danger, as will you. These are men who have been away from their homes and families for many months. Can I not persuade you otherwise?’

  ‘You cannot. And, Robert, ask Flavin to visit the sexton tonight.’

  Colonel Butler sat in the taproom of the Black Hound with a blackjack of ale and a plate of bread and mutton. Less than a single night in that infernal castle yet the humiliation had been great and his skin crawled at the thought of the rat-infested guard house. Thank God there had been a friend at hand to free him. Climbing down the rope from the sally-port had been simple enough and he would certainly not be climbing back up. Cheered by the ale, he chuckled at the thought. He swallowed the last of his ale and shouted for Captain Kendall.

  The captain, who had been skulking outside the inn, appeared at once. ‘More meat, Colonel, more ale?’

  ‘Shut up, Kendall, and listen carefully. This has gone on long enough. For two years five hundred men have been occupied doing nothing but sit on their backsides and wait for that woman to surrender. Well, I can tell you that, left to her own designs, she is not going to surrender.’ He belched and sat back in his chair. ‘Fortunately, however, we have a sympathiser in the castle, one who will help us remove the woman once and for all. Is that farrier still calling on the sexton’s daughter?’

  ‘He is, Colonel.’

  ‘Good. Send the sexton to me.’

  In the small hours of the following morning the farrier climbed back up the knotted rope and through the sally-port. He reported at once to Captain Lawrence.

  ‘Colonel Butler has requested a hundred men to be sent from Chichester,’ he said. ‘They are expected within a few days.’

  ‘How does the sexton know this?’ asked the captain.

  ‘His daughter has taken to serving in the Black Hound. She overheard Colonel Butler speaking with Captain Kendall.’

  ‘I see. Then we must expect a fight.’

  Captain Lawrence waited until Mary was risen and had breakfasted before giving her the news. ‘It can only mean one thing,’ he said. ‘We will come under attack by a force six or seven times the size of our own.’

  ‘I do not doubt it, Robert,’ replied Mary. ‘But still we have the castle walls around us. Even if they attack in ten places at once, they will not be able to breach them.’

  ‘Mary, there is a traitor amongst us. Perhaps more than one.’

  ‘That will make no difference. The traitor will reveal himself and will be rendered harmless.’

  ‘Your daughters…’

  ‘Will be at my side, come what may.’

  Robert Lawrence had tried every argument he could think of. And he had failed. Mary Bankes would not be moved. But he had prepared himself for this. ‘Then I propose that I slip out
of the castle and ride to Taunton. Sir Richard Grenville will surely allow me a hundred men from his besieging force. It should take no more than three days to bring them here.’

  ‘Why have you not suggested this before, Robert?’

  ‘Until now I had not thought it necessary.’

  Mary considered. ‘It will be hazardous. Much of Somerset is in the hands of our enemies.’

  ‘It is a necessary risk. I will leave tonight. If the gates are opened just long enough for me to gallop through, I will be away before they realise what has happened.’

  ‘Robert, I am unsure about this. I need you here.’

  ‘You have Colonel Cromwell and his men. And I will return swiftly. It is the best way.’

  ‘Very well. I can hardly prevent you if your mind is made up. Go tonight and tell no-one lest the traitor hears of it.’

  The captain took her hand. ‘It is for the best.’

  Two days later, the gatehouse guards reported that a troop of infantrymen had arrived from Chichester. They estimated its strength at one hundred. In the castle library, Mary consulted with James Cromwell.

  ‘They will not find it easy,’ he said. ‘The towers are our greatest advantage so they will attack those first. I will double the number of men at each one. The remainder I will hold in reserve until we see where the attacks are made. Let us hope Captain Lawrence returns before it starts and can force his way through the town. We will need every man he brings.’

  That night Mary was woken by what she thought must be an attack under cover of darkness. She dressed hurriedly and hastened down to the gates, from where the sounds of a disturbance were coming. There she found the gates open and a troop of perhaps one hundred and fifty men filing through into the castle grounds. At their head was Robert Lawrence. He saw her and shouted to her to return to her chamber. Thinking that an enemy attack was imminent, she did so.

  With most of his men inside the gates, Captain Lawrence gave an order which was passed on through the ranks. Each man stripped off his coat, turned it inside out and put it back on again. Suddenly, blue-coated Royalists had become grey-coated Parliamentarians.

  Taking six men with him, Captain Lawrence ran into the keep and up to Mary’s chamber. He hammered on her door and entered without being bidden, to find Mary standing by her bed, her daughters in their night attire around her. The commotion had woken them all. The youngest, Arabella, was crying. Holding the child to her breast, Mary stared at Robert, at the jackets of his men, and again at Robert. She spoke quietly. ‘Et tu, Brute?’

  ‘It was necessary, Mary,’ he said, ‘to save you and your family. These men will stand guard and ensure that you are unharmed.’ With that he turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

  The turncoats spread out and quickly took the King’s Keep and four of the towers. Outside, Colonel Butler’s infantry, who had been awaiting their opportunity, charged the gates and forced their way in. The defenders, taken entirely by surprise, put up little resistance. Even Colonel Cromwell’s men, billeted in the keep and the towers and dazed from sleep, laid down their arms. In short order, at the cost of one man killed and six lightly injured, the Parliamentarians had control of the castle to which they had laid siege for three years. Just two of its defenders were killed.

  Not wishing them to witness what would inevitably follow the capture of the castle, Robert Lawrence had arranged for immediate safe passage for the Bankes family to travel under guard to London and thence to Ruislip, taking with them what could be carried in two coaches. Most of their clothes, jewellery and personal possessions were left behind. So too the furniture, books and paintings with which Sir John had filled their home. Mary was permitted to take with her only Van Dyck’s portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria.

  In June the army of parliament took Oxford, King Charles surrendered to the Scottish Covenanters, and the bloody fighting that had rent the country from Montrose to Cornwall and from London to Bristol at last ended. Parliament ordered Corfe Castle destroyed.

  A year later, Mary Bankes successfully petitioned for the return of the family’s possessions and her son Ralph attempted to trace the whereabouts of the most valuable items. He met with little success.

  Her life, however, and the lives of her children were spared. In recognition of her bravery she was permitted to keep the keys and seals of the castle and was able in due course to buy back her estates. She lived to see her son Ralph knighted for his loyal service to the crown and King Charles II returned to the throne. She died in Blandford a few days before his coronation in Westminster Abbey on St George’s Day 1661.

  A WITCH AND A BITCH

  1730

  It was a miserable day for it. A vicious east wind whipped across the fields, bending the elms to its whim; dead leaves danced over the graves and lowering black clouds threatened freezing rain. But for the pathetic burial party, the graveyard was deserted. Ancient, moss-covered gravestones, long illegible, marked the resting places of nameless men, women and children of the parish. The two mourners made an odd pair – old Earl Cowper, bent and shivering under his cloak and, from time to time, wiping his rheumy eyes with a white pocket handkerchief, and me.

  Mr Ford, the parson, had little to say. He had never met my grandmother and confined himself to a few words about a long and difficult life on earth to be followed by eternal peace somewhere else. We said the Lord’s Prayer and each threw a handful of earth on to the coffin – plain pine, iron handles, no inscription – and left the rest to the parson and the sexton. The whole affair was over within fifteen minutes. We shook hands, nodded and smiled, and went our separate ways.

  The grave would be unmarked but I knew where it was. In the north corner of Hertingfordbury churchyard beside an old yew tree, we had buried Jane Wenham, the Witch of Walkern.

  I first met my grandmother on my seventh birthday, which was in the year 1707. At about five o’clock in the afternoon while my mother was preparing our supper, I answered a knock on our cottage door. Even then, although she was less than sixty, the woman outside looked terribly old, with a bent back and a face so pinched and wrinkled that I could barely see her eyes. Her hair was matted, she was dirty and she smelt like a midden. She wore an ancient shawl over her rags and she was barefoot.

  Seeing this old woman at the door and taking her for one of the gypsies who were camped in a field outside the village, and to whom I had been told never to speak, I stepped back and made to shut the door.

  ‘Emily?’ she croaked, before I could close the door. I nodded. ‘This is for your birthday.’ And she handed me a small cake wrapped in a chestnut leaf. Then she was gone. I took the cake into the kitchen.

  ‘Who was at the door?’ asked my mother.

  ‘An old woman. She gave me this.’

  Mother looked up sharply from her cooking. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a cake.’

  ‘Give it to me at once, Emily. It must be burnt.’

  ‘Why must it be burnt?’

  ‘Never mind why. Give it to me.’

  I handed her the cake. ‘Was she a gypsy woman?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘But she knew it’s my birthday. How did she know that?’

  Mother shook her head. ‘The gypsies are strange people. They know things. Some of them cast spells to lure children from their homes. Keep away from them. And don’t tell your father. He’d be furious if he knew you’d taken a cake from a gypsy.’

  Mother turned her back and bent over the cooking pot. There was to be no more discussion, although it did seem odd – a dirty old gypsy woman bringing me a piece of cake on my birthday.

  In our cottage sounds had an odd way of travelling around and in my bedroom, with the door open, I could hear my parents talking in the parlour. Later that evening I heard them talking about the old woman.

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ said Mother, ‘but from what Emily said, it must have been her.’

  ‘Why did she come?’ asked Father.

  ‘She brou
ght a piece of cake for Emily’s birthday. I burnt it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She’s an evil old woman and Emily must have nothing to do with her. And where did she get the money for cake? It must have been stolen. She’s a thief as well as everything else.’

  ‘That she is.’

  The next morning I plucked up the courage to ask my mother again about the old woman.

  ‘She’s a poor woman who lives in Walkern. She begs and steals. We want nothing to do with her.’

  ‘Not a gypsy then?’

  ‘No, not a gypsy.’

  ‘But you said she was.’

  ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘Why did she bring me cake on my birthday?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, child. It’s best you forget about her.’

  I gave up. But I knew now that an old woman who lived in the next village knew the day of my birthday. Perhaps she would visit me again.

  At that time our village, Ardeley, was a small place with no more than two hundred inhabitants. It was unremarkable except for the church which was more than four hundred years old. We lived in one of the thatched cottages that surrounded the village green and duck pond. The cottage had two bedrooms upstairs and a parlour and kitchen downstairs. We had a fire in the parlour in front of which we each took a weekly bath in a big iron tub.

  My father had been born in the village. He was a man of few words, a ploughman and farrier who, like the fathers of most of my friends, worked on one of the farms outside the village. My mother took in washing and mending. As I was their only child, we lived comfortably enough. I attended the village school, we went each Sunday to church, and Father went on Tuesday and Friday evenings to the Ardeley Arms.

  We also went occasionally to Walkern. Until I was old enough to walk the three miles there and back, Father carried me on his shoulders. Walkern was a larger village, with perhaps twice as many inhabitants, and businesses making bricks and hats. We went there when Mother wanted a new bonnet or Father needed new tools.