The Royal Changeling
Page 2
‘Dream well,’ thought the Reverend, ‘enjoy your last sinful conjectures before awakening to death!’
It felt … blessed, he had to admit, to have sword and pistol at hand: to at last stand openly in the field against the foes of God. No more covert meetings and mutterings, no more impotent gnashing of teeth at the servants of Beelzebub. Also, Pastor Toogood had his own personal grievances to join to the indictment of the Lord. He’d watched Mayor Timewell of Taunton and his helpers dance, bottles brandished, round a bonfire in the market-place, burning all the pews and pulpits and galleries of the conventicles they’d raided. Toogood’s little church had been amongst them. In total there were ten cartloads and it took them till three in the morning to finish their revels. They were very merry about it and the Anglican church bells rang all the while in glee. That was five years back but the heat on his face that night, from the fire and from within, was still with him. After that he and his flock took to the hills, like the last generation before the judgement, to skulk in churches under the ground, up in the wilds beyond Axminster. Out there, in the forlorn places of the world, in vast ditches covered by bracken, he held services by night, preaching on texts like Revelations 12: ‘And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God’.
He did no harm but Babylon would not let him be. The Devon militia raided his home and one captain placed his hand up the placket of his wife’s gown, saying ‘she has a fine bum indeed; good enough for fame in London’.
The Reverend Toogood forgave but could not forget. Monmouth’s call to insurrection fell on fertile ground and the Reverend’s flock joined with him, in war as in prayer, marching along as one unit. It was against all hope, and certain proof of Divine favour, that there should arise a true Protestant paladin to lead them on crusade. It would have been a sin indeed not to respond with fervour. Now, this very day they would work the Lord’s will and quench their own anger meanwhile.
The password of the hour was ‘So-ho!’ – the traditional cry of the chase – and, by chance, the site of the Duke’s London residence. Toogood had never been a hunting man but tonight he yearned to yell Soho! like any blood-crazed squire. His hand moved to the fine pistol at his side. It had done good work in Cromwell’s time, smiting the Amalekites hip and brow, and would do so again.
Out in the darkness, where Lord Grey’s rebel cavalry and Wade’s Red Regiment were presumed to be, a single shot rang out.
Anton Buyse, ‘the Brandenburger’, did not have any great hopes of the day. This present commission with the Duke represented something of a dip in career terms. He who had the honour of directing artillery for the Kings of Christendom (and certain mussulman Lords, although that section of his c.v. was less advertised) was now reduced to trundling three childrens’ toys through the night. He sought distraction from present discomforts by thinking of what he would really like to have, given free choice, for the coming battle.
This was, of course, only a minor ale-house punch-up by civilised European standards so Buyse moderated his shopping list accordingly. It would be nice to have a brace of demi-cannon for a preliminary, long-range duel with the opposing artillery. Pitting one’s skill, one to one, guns against guns, against the other Master of the Ordnance, raised mere combat to the art form it ought to be. Sadly, their night-march to surprise the enemy precluded such sophisticated pleasures. Similarly, a restrained number of culverins would have supplied the sheer … punch essential for the drama of tearing spaces in serried ranks of infantry. Again, ‘King’ Monmouth’s purse did not run to what any petty Rhineland princeling would regard as essentials.
Buyse looked at the reality being hauled in front of him by these enthusiastic but amateur English. So much for fond wishes! A year back, if anyone told him he’d be commanding the grand total of three drakes, (there’d been four but one had a squeaky wheel and was, needs must, left behind tonight), he would have laughed in their face – or maybe killed them. They were mere five-pounders, the sort of thing you gave apprentices to tinker at; something they could do no harm with.
Anton sighed. He was glad his Dad wasn’t around to see this come-down. He never thought he’d say such a thing, but it was a good job that fluke-ish Croat saker took his head off when it did. ‘Never get involved in a job’, that’s what he’s always said. ‘Ideals are good servants but bad masters’. The old boy had been right. It wasn’t as though he cared about ‘Protestantism’, whatever that might be. No, he might as well admit it, Monmouth had charmed him and he’d let himself be charmed. So that was that. Anton Buyse had accepted a contract and no Buyse ever bowed out of a job: there was the good name of the family business to consider.
He tightened his grip on his quadrant, a Buyse heirloom handed down to him. Supposedly it had seen service when Constantinople fell and the first Buyse set match to touch-hole. Since then it was like a talisman to them. Father handed it to son when their eyes grew too dim (or practised) to need it.
‘Sorry Dad,’ said the Brandenburger in silent prayer. ‘I’ll make amends by a really good job. I’ve brought along some of that hail-shot you designed.’
He wasn’t worried about the day to come. Cannons returned the love his family gave and they never called any member home until his time was done.
Alongside, Anton heard his assistant, John Rose, whispering the artilleryman’s litany, touchingly desperate that he should acquit himself well on his first outing. Buyse, who’d learnt the words in his cradle, smiled and joined in:
‘Put back your piece, order your piece to load, search your piece, sponge your piece, fill your ladle, put in your powder, empty your ladle, put home your powder, thrust home your wad, regard your shot, put home your shot gently, thrust home your last wad with three strokes, gauge your piece, discharge your piece … put back your piece …’
It warmed Anton’s heart to hear those childhood words and observe another introduced to the joys of ordnance. He thought of the son he’d not yet had and the Buyses going ever on and on to better days and bigger guns.
‘It applies to wenches too,’ he softly confided to his pupil. Somewhere ahead a musket was fired.
Piercy Kirke, late-Governor of the Tangier garrison, now Colonel of the Queen Dowager’s Regiment, slammed his fist upon the table.
‘Well, God damn me, but you’re poor entertainment! If Monmouth’s rabble refuse to turn and fight us then I demand to be amused. What d’ye think I woke you up for? Take the poker out your arse and answer a soldier of the Crown. Come on, it’s a plain enough question!’
The Reverend Thomas Peratt, Vicar of St. Mary’s, Westonzoyland, ignored the table-top earthquake and continued his unwanted supper as best he could. It seemed a strange and perverse world where the forces of order were as much to be feared as rebels.
‘It is not a subject on which I venture to have an opinion – nor wish discussed in my house,’ he said quietly. ‘And whilst you are billeted here I would ask that you abide by …’
‘“No opinion”?’ roared the Colonel. ‘Don’t give me that. You’re a man made of flesh the same as me. So do tell: what’s your favourite: pure-and-simple or arsey-versey?’
Peratt flushed as pink as the mutton he ate.
‘Colonel, kindly consider my wife and daughters who are also under this roof …’
The deeply-tanned soldier was momentarily thrown and set aside his clay churchwarden pipe. ‘God’s teeth and bowels, man!’ he exclaimed, puzzlement distorting an already weathered brow. ‘Who else d’ye think made me ponder such matters?’
An alternative use for his cutlery occurred to the Reverend, until he recalled the sixth commandment – and the royal soldiers posted outside his vicarage. Meanwhile, Colonel Kirke rampaged on.
‘I will have a response of you, God-botherer. Doesn’t your big black book tell you what to say?’
Exasperation gave Peratt the courage to lift his gaze. He realised that he’d never seen anything as capable of … anything as this red-coated demon.
Kirke downed an enormous draught of the Vicar’s cider and wiped his thin lips on the scarlet and gold of his cuff.
‘Cut the cant,’ he said angrily. ‘I care as little for your text as your company. Chapter two of the equally “Holy” Koran, which the Shareef of Fez was gracious enough to show me, says “women are your fields: go, then, into your fields as you please”. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
From outside there was a torrent of inventive invective and the sound of blows. The door opened with a crash and the Bishop of Winchester entered.
‘Kirke,’ he barked, ‘your soldiers are as soft as shit and twice as nasty. “Don’t interrupt our Colonel at his dinner” indeed! Tell ’em to keep out of my way.’
Both Colonel Piercy and the Vicar stood and bowed to the Right Reverend Dr Peter Mews, who growled at the greeting and crossed over to the dining table. Liberating a mutton chop from the heaped platter, he lowered his bulk on to a convenient stool.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said, in-between savaging the meat and serving himself from the cider flagon. ‘Too excited. What were you talking about? The battle to come?’
The Bishop had never really ceased to be a soldier after his lively time in the late Civil War, suffering thirty wounds in the service of Charles, King and Martyr. He carried tokens of his pains in the form of spectacular scars over the left hemisphere of his face. The black silk covering for same in turn bestowed on him his universal nickname: ‘Old Patch’.
For a while, amidst the harrowing of England, he’d been the very epitome of death-on-legs. Then, fortunately for his immortal soul, capture (whilst unconscious, naturally) at Naseby field gave pause for reflection. Upon release, and to general amazement, he entered the Church. The leopard changed its spots – if not its diet … Monmouth’s invasion had drawn him west, under the pretence of safeguarding nearby Episcopal estates, like a shark to a spray of blood.
With the arrival of such powerful reinforcements, and in Kirke’s present abashment, Peratt saw the opportunity for revenge.
‘Actually,’ he said sweetly, ‘the Colonel was expounding on his great attraction to the Koran and the Mussulman religion …’
The old Bishop turned his brick-red face on the soldier, the watery eyes therein looking very uncharitable. He’d already had a day of it. At dinner with General Feversham some braggart cavalier – Oggyton … Oglethorne or something – had contested his spiritual authority, admitting Winchester’s rule over some place called Godalming but claiming ancient exception for his manor there, and thus allegiance to the Deans of Salisbury instead. Down here it was uncheckable: possibly true but a bloody cheek nevertheless.
‘You don’t say?’ he rumbled, crunching the chop bone between his teeth. ‘I wonder in that case he doesn’t convert. It’s been a while since we’ve burnt an apostate.’
Colonel Kirke was shameless.
‘Tis possible,’ he said. ‘Religion plays but a small part in my life. However, the King of Morocco had my promise that should I ever change faith, I would embrace Islam. The oath at least saves me from King James’s constant promptings to Popery.’
Old Patch’s drinking noises turned to bubbling as he misswallowed.
‘In fact,’ Kirke continued, smooth and sharp as a viper, ‘your arrival forestalled a most interesting conversation. Assuming the Vicar, of all people, should know, I’d asked him what this life business is about – and do you know, he couldn’t tell me!’
The Reverend moved to protest but the Bishop waved him to silence.
Old Patch had a special tone of voice, well known to those under the regime of fear at his Farnham Castle seat, which sounded like sweet reason but betokened an eruption to come. He sometimes employed it in sermons and thereby caused many a hardened sinner’s knees to knock.
‘Well,’ he said, smiling and showing off his brown peg teeth, ‘pray let me enlighten you. The sole purpose of this fleeting life is the worship of its Creator.’
Colonel Kirke looked into the middle distance – about three yards in the context of Westonzoyland Vicarage.
‘Worship, you say? Well, I’ll give it a whirl. Let me see … Almighty God, I worship you; I give you thanks, I adore you, I prostrate myself before your invisible feet, I sing your praises, You are Almighty …’
A heavily pregnant – say about nine and a half months – pause hung in the smoky air.
‘No,’ said the Colonel conclusively. ‘Thanks all the same. It doesn’t do much for me.’
The Bishop levered himself up, toppling the stool backwards. In youth he’d fought for the blessed Charles, King and Martyr – or anyone else who’d have him – and even now, in autumn years, a relish for combat remained. A be-ringed Episcopal finger was levelled inches from Kirke’s smiling face.
Old Patch’s Armageddon of abuse was postponed by the sound of musketry from Zog.
Louis Duras, naturalised Frenchman, nephew of the great Marshal Turenne and now Earl of Feversham, Commander of his Majesty’s forces in the West, had some black looks for Lieutenant Colonel Oglethorpe when the Blues thundered back into camp at three-thirty. By then light shone in the east and – though far from resolved – battle was well under way. The surprised redcoat line was being luxuriantly bathed in the warm attentions of Monmouth’s guns. Being nearest, Dumbarton’s regiment of Scotsmen, once the Duke’s own, were in particular benefiting from Anton Buyse’s expertise and falling in neat swathes. Theophilus was painfully aware that at a quarter to one that morning – shortly before to him but long hours ago to everyone else – he had sent word that all was quiet. The Earl, wig askew and compelled to breakfast on horseback, was not pleased.
Seven years back, whilst blasting fire-gaps in Temple Lane, London, to contain yet another major conflagration, his then-commander, the Duke of Monmouth, got over-generous with the powder. A flying beam so stove Feversham’s head in that his life was despaired of. However, to the surprise of all and the delight of some, he not only survived the ‘remedy’ of trepanning, but did so with faculties intact. Rising like Lazarus, he was found to be complete – except in one tiny respect. Ever after he was the very devil to rouse from sleep. Awed by the overall miracle, no one had been churlish enough to complain of the defect to date. On this particular day though, in the early stages of unexpected battle, it was a trifle … inconvenient.
In the end (sic) a bold aide-de-camp applied a plug-bayonet to resolve the matter: that and some refreshing cold water. Accordingly, albeit grumpy and sore and late, the Earl was up and about and, broadly speaking, in control.
Being a gentleman, the Huguenot General did not express his displeasure. He desisted long enough from a chicken drumstick a la français to bid Oglethorpe good morning, and graciously indicated with his ebony baton that some little assistance on the right flank would be appreciated. Theophilus hastened to comply.
Kirke, standing with his Tangier Lambs under the musket storm from across the Bussex Rhine, noted the Lieutenant Colonel’s passing and was less restrained. Even had Colonel Piercy led a blameless life up to that point he would still have been damned for the blasphemies he unleashed. Oglethorpe tipped his feathered hat in return, answering: ‘and your mother …’
It was not merely that Theophilus wished to atone for his apparent sins of omission, or that he knew the universe was balanced in his gauntleted hand. He also recognised that the fighting madness was coming upon him and for once it was welcome. Today it would not end in some … pointless duel or undignified rage; today it could be harnessed and ridden, and put to good use. Oglethorpe drew the great sword of destiny from an army-issue scabbard and let forth a roar. The following troopers answered in kind.
He was the first across the upper plungeon, heedless of the fire that took away two nearby companions. Fortune – or something – decr
eed the narrow way was not thereby blocked. These soldiers, foredoomed men from his earlier patrol, fell with a splash into the black waters of the Rhine and sank, bubbling, out of sight. Luckier types came up in support and then they were free on the expanse of Sedgemoor field. The Blues fanned out with Theophilus at their head.
First to be met were some elements of the traitorous Lord Grey’s rebel horse. As throughout, they were timorous and unenterprising, and Oglethorpe cleared the way, barely noticing their fleeting presence. In passing Excalibur was blooded for the second time in the campaign.
The enemy horsemen having evaporated, just like the false mist that had concealed their night march, Theophilus sought fresh opponents. He hadn’t far to look. Just across the morass there sat, sullen, given pause for thought but still defiant, a bristling clump of pike and shot. This was Monmouth’s Green Regiment although Oglethorpe wasn’t to know it, for they had scant uniforms to proclaim the fact. The Lieutenant Colonel cared as little for their name as for their welfare. ‘For God, for England and St. George – and the old ways!’ he cried, whilst crossing himself – and, then charged headlong in.
History judges him rash in so doing. The Green Regiment had been rearwards in the column of march and were still crossing Sedgemoor when the alarm went up. The Taunton weavers and men of London therein had not yet been engaged, their ammunition and fervour were undepleted. Moreover, they were amongst the best of Duke Monmouth’s Foot: they had form. In the hedgerow to hedgerow, hand to hand stuff at the Philips Norton fight, they’d mauled the King’s men into retreat and shot the Duke of Grafton’s horse from under him. Their colonel, the old Cromwellian Abraham Holmes, had lost a son there – and an arm besides. He’d amputated the shattered limb himself, field-surgery with a cleaver, and marched on regardless to have his revenge.