The Royal Changeling

by John Whitbourn

  Whitehall, Westminster, the Thames were gone, replaced by an equally recognisable landscape. It wasn’t a view of Glastonbury he’d seen before, not being a bird or having access to aircraft, but there was no mistaking it. Arthur creakingly turned his head to study the panorama along with Theophilus.

  ‘You see a possibility so strong,’ he said, ‘it is up and running, parallel to this time. The merest push to the fabric of reality brings it into being.’

  ‘The town is bigger,’ observed Oglethorpe, intrigued, despite all his misgivings. ‘But neat though …’ This looked better than anything the Elf-King had shown.

  ‘Humanity thrives and prospers under my rule,’ Arthur agreed. ‘Consider all the surrounding green and tranquil countryside. Ponder the modest and quiet roads. Yet this is the new capital of England, a mighty realm and seat of happiness. Note the fortifications and tokens of war.’

  Theophilus peered closer. ‘I don’t see any.’

  ‘Exactly. There are none. There is no need. In this time they are but bad memories.’

  ‘What, no war?’ Oglethorpe knew his religion decreed he ought to be pleased, but no one swallows the bitter pill of redundancy with pleasure.

  ‘This is a future time,’ the King comforted him. ‘But not far future. In reaching it there were struggles with men of ill will. You would still find employment – and fun.’

  ‘It’s not that I enjoy …’ Theophilus protested, for form’s sake. ‘Only …’

  ‘Peace is not made by milksops,’ Arthur agreed. ‘You do not have to explain.’

  He moved aside to let Oglethorpe come closer. The window showed a wider scene than human eyes would normally permit. He felt he could see all over England – and beyond – and though he looked hard, he discerned nothing to distress.

  ‘And in a few short years …’ said the King. The view changed, though very little. This capital of England was still a small market town, although grown in prosperity. If anything, the amount of green had increased. Then Theophilus noticed golden veins in the ground, tracking across the landscape and glowing – dimly at first and then in full glory. The network emanated from the Tor and spread all over the Land. He could see they were not roads or pathways, but the evidence of some marvellous energy.

  ‘Mother Earth at last recovers,’ explained Arthur. ‘Man joins in partnership with her, forgetting black dreams of dominance and rape. She smiles in return. The ley-lines awake, the old powers revive. Humankind and Nature join hand in marriage and …’

  The process reached critical mass, and Glastonbury and England and the World burst into life, bathed and suffused in wonderful light. The Earth was made anew.

  ‘Behold the new Jerusalem,’ said Arthur.

  Theophilus forgot all the sorrows he had ever had, and all the strains built into being human slipped away. Even seen remotely this age reached out to him and healed. He undid the scabbard from his belt.

  ‘I …’

  Arthur graciously understood. He held out his hand. ‘There is no need to say sorry. Your King forgives.’

  If all his vices were subdued, Oglethorpe’s virtues were enhanced by the vision. Ever-present loyalty and honour recalled oaths of allegiance to another King who had been good to him. Charles, not Arthur, was still his sovereign.

  ‘I must just check,’ he murmured, apologetic but resolved.

  Arthur realised the peril, but too late. His roar of ‘No!’ could not prevent Theophilus touching Excalibur to the window.

  The new scene mortified as much as the other pleased. Arthur’s false vision drained into the soil of the true picture. In fact there was precious little soil for it to occupy for in most places this Glastonbury was down to bedrock. Oglethorpe didn’t know what pylons and power-stations and ‘freeways’ were, but he could deplore their mastery of the landscape.

  ‘Lies!’ he spat, reversing the sword point-wards to the King. Arthur now found grounds for terror in a beloved thing and retreated before it. He said nothing, knowing there were no words to endear the blackened desolation just shown to an uncorrupted human. A foul breeze, the merest token of the storms which raged within, emerged from this future to make the room acrid.

  ‘Your own magic betrays you,’ said Theophilus, calm and deadly and powered by fury, ‘as you sought to betray me.’ Excalibur was now drawn, its sharp tip aimed at Arthur’s empty eyes.

  ‘We shall yet be friends,’ said the King evenly. ‘And that is the worst of it for you. The old Oglethorpe will be so lost and remade that you will lust after the future you now despise.’

  Theophilus advanced crab-like warily into striking range. ‘Never!’

  The blade turned sleepily in his hand, somehow sensing a mission not to its tastes. Arthur observed that.

  ‘It knows me, human. It is me. I need fear no harm.’ The tone convinced but caution in his stance belied his words.

  Theophilus tightened his grip.

  ‘I can overman it,’ he spat, wrenching the weapon round to obey his will. ‘And you!’

  The stroke was a treat to see, abducting the extra effort required for countermanding Excalibur to add speed and force to the blow. Even so, the mutinous spirit within decreed a crucial turning aside, a mere one or two degrees. It permitted Arthur to save his head.

  ‘Soon,’ that King repeated. His cracked voice was free of doubt. ‘Soon we shall be friends. But first you shall acquire discipline. I tire of persuasion. Henceforth, each time we fruitlessly meet, I may deprive you of something you love.’

  He again raised his huge right arm, this time as though lifting an unseen weight on his palm.

  ‘Or perhaps someone you love.’ The iron gauntlet slowly squeezed shut.

  From King Charles’s bedchamber there came the sound of women’s wailing and the torn howls of men.

  King Arthur’s future vanished when he did. Theophilus could once again observe the contemporary Thames. A second later the door to the bedchamber slammed open. James, Duke of York, came out, unaware and unseeing, wrapped in a world of his own. He had no eyes or feelings save for his own pain. The lingering taint of the cancerous Glastonbury did not touch him.

  ‘My beloved brother,’ he said softly, not knowing who he was talking to, ‘is gone.’

  Theophilus Oglethorpe knelt and wept also, now sure beyond any further temptings as to where his loyalties lay.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘Long live the King!’

  Ellen Oglethorpe re-affixed her spectacles and had another go at it.

  ‘Dearest Wyfe’, the letter read (probably) – a warm and promising start. ‘I rite in haste.’ That was nothing but the baldest truth. Theophilus’s missives were always pushed by time or lack of words. ‘He sails & so we ride – to the West – tho that is secrete so do not rede that part or else forgit it.’

  It was a tall order but Ellen dutifully pretended to comply.

  ‘Yu no how our parting pains me and i never-the-least respectfully ask yu recall me kind-ly amidst this grim bisyness. Sell the orchard crop to Perrior the Mayor for he is a honest fellawe – not to Master Janaway for he is a tippler and a rogge – or else put it to scrumpy you-self.

  ‘Ever roughly considerate,’ she thought. ‘I’d been wondering about that.’

  ‘Meanwhile be arseurred that cum civil-warre, dis-comfort or the reaper, my first and last thort shall or should be of yu.

  I remain, madame, your devoted husbind’

  Theophilue Oglethorpe. Gent.

  It once again occurred to Ellen to ponder what precisely Theophilus had done during all his expensive years of education. She was equally inspired to clasp the childlike communication to her heart.

  ‘May God be between you and harm in all the empty places you tread,’ she prayed.

  ‘Amen,’ echoed Lewis, who had read alongside her.

  There was also a second, more polished, billet-doux. The Duke of Monmouth had written from the Hague.

  ‘Madame,’ it said, in some other man’s impeccable copperpl
ate, ‘my breast is fair riven when I contemplate the impression you may have gained from our last, soured, meeting, or the wicked tales that mayhap have since been imparted to you. If only Heaven would relent that I might correct and reverse any poison attributed to my name during this wicked season. And if, dearest lady, in forgiving any fault of mine, you might recall sweet friendship past and dampen the anger raging in your headstrong husband’s soul, then I would be so …’

  Ellen put the remaining pages down unread.

  ‘Assist your mama, Lewis,’ she asked her son, handing him the Duke’s bulky letter, ‘and convey this to its proper place.’

  The child obediently trotted off, and then paused to consider just where that might be.

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Fold and quarter each sheaf,’ Ellen advised him. ‘And then hang the divided sheets in the servant’s privy.’

  There at least, she felt sure, it would find a receptive audience.

  ‘He never misses his Thursday bowls,’ said Mrs Tye. ‘Not ever.’

  Mr Gregory Alford, Mayor of Lyme Regis and fellow pillar of the Town’s Bowls Club, knew that to be true but was unwilling to accept the implications.

  ‘Maybe the Frenchies’ hospitality is good,’ he replied unconvincingly. ‘Mr Tye likes a cup of wine …’

  Mrs Tye snorted her disbelief, and the little group on the Cobb stared once again at the three ships anchored off Lyme Harbour. Their silent anonymity made them seem sinister. Long hours had passed since Tye, Customs ‘Surveyor’ for the Port of Lyme, rowed out to enquire their business.

  ‘If they’re French – or Dutch,’ (this being the other clutched-straw suggestion) ‘then I’m a mussulman,’ said the tigerish Deputy ‘Searcher of the Customs’, Samuel Dassell. ‘Which I’m not. If they’re furriners or up to any good, why don’t they show a flag?’

  There was no answer to that, though the Mayor tried to construct one. He’d been seeking an innocent explanation for the visitors since they were first spotted at daybreak. The strong offshore wind made their plying inwards slow and laborious, giving him ample time to cast around for a likely happy ending to this June day. Sadly, the frigate and its companions, a pink and a dogger, had not cooperated. It wasn’t so long ago that Barbary Corsairs had plied these waters, in competition with the sea-scum of all Europe, on the sniff for easy pickings. The English Navy had put pay to them, more or less, making it safe to live on the Isle of Wight or venture forth to fish, but right now Mayor Alford would have almost welcomed such an uncomplicated explanation. In the darker cupboards of his mind a more monstrous proposition was knocking to come out.

  ‘Their gun ports are closed,’ he offered hopefully, knowing full well how weak-kneed he sounded. ‘There is that …’

  ‘Well then,’ barked Dassell, apparently coming to his own decision, ‘let’s test their Christian passivity! Break out the gunpowder and bark a hello.’

  Mayor Alford shook his head firmly. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’m taking charge here,’ replied the Customsman, drawing himself to his full five feet and adjusting his periwig. ‘So what’s to stop me? The Town cannon works, don’t it?’

  Alford had no way of knowing but plumped for a positive response.

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘So where’s the powder then?’

  The Mayor smiled in what he thought a placatory fashion.

  ‘There ain’t none. That’s what I meant.’

  ‘What?

  ‘It went bad: a long time ago – under a previous mayor. Have you any idea just how expensive the stuff is to buy? Besides, it’s dangerous …’

  Dassell wrenched his wig from his head and danced a swift jig on it. The spectators quietly observed, recollecting the scene for future generations.

  ‘Well, call me a catamite,’ he said, when he’d done, ‘but I thought that was the idea of the stuff. Do you mean to say …’

  ‘There might be some on the Saucy Sue,’ interrupted the Mayor hurriedly, before the reproach got too memorable. ‘It’s just in from Barbados and they carry a brace of cannon. I’m sure the Captain …’

  ‘And call out the militia!’ ordered Dassell, already on his way to the Sue.

  Alford was glad of the man’s abruptness. Leisure might have permitted realisation that muskets need powder just as much as their larger brethren.

  The Mail coach from London generally rolled into Lyme around five-ish on Thursday. This week it brought official warning that the Duke of Monmouth had set sail from Holland with a posse of rebels borne in three ships. Their presumed destination was a south coast port.

  The revelation supplied the key that let Mr Alford’s darkest suspicions free and out to play. It unhappily coincided with the customs-house boat’s return, along with three others, crammed to sinking point with strangers bearing arms. The Mayor took that as permission to get on his horse and ride.

  The armed forces of Lyme Regis had all heard the call but most declined to answer. They sensibly saw little use in pointing empty, rusting, firearms at a cause many could only commend. When the invaders landed only one militia red-coat, John Holloway, tobacconist of Lyme, barred the way. Monmouth’s army of eighty fanatics decently paused to allow the lone defender time for fresh considerations. A few seconds later the Duke had his first mainland recruit.

  As decisions go, it was reasonable enough at the time, but ultimately fatal. Like the simple Charmouth fisherman who’d earlier came aboard the frigate Helderenberg to sell herring, Mr Holloway had started a walk that would end on the gallows.

  England’s defences thus swept away, and it being plain there’d be no undignified scuffle, Monmouth came ashore. He was dressed in purple, livened only by the splendid star of the Garter on his breast. A tall slender figure, he looked every inch the saviour of Faith and Nation. Behind him, confirming the point for the slow of understanding, was carried a great banner of green and gold, bearing the motto ‘Fear Nothing but God’. It amused the Duke to delude the yokels with a flag in the Elven colours, openly proclaiming a hidden truth. If they knew but a fraction of what he did about the Null, that great ‘Nothing’, they would indeed fear it.

  A quarter-century back, King Charles, his father, had landed at Dover on the way to reclaim his throne and Land. The Duke had consulted eye-witness accounts of the scene and rehearsed its imitation during the ten days at sea. Falling to his knees on the beach to pray, he implored in ringing tones, the Almighty’s blessing on this sacred undertaking. Then, peeking through his fingertips, he saw the Lymians were lapping it up.

  His devotions were heard out in silence but when he rose and drew his sword, the greeting crowd could contain themselves no more. Planted agents supplied the actual chorus but it was taken up with glee.

  ‘A Monmouth! A Monmouth! The Protestant Religion!’

  A cloud of well-wishers accompanied him into the Town, the more forward rushing up to kiss his elegant hands. By the time they got to the Cobb many had joined the cause. Customsman Dassell, who’d been occupied rolling powder barrels from out of the Saucy Sue, noted that and decided he could make better use of his time. By then Mayor Alford was well on the way to Honiton and the Militia forces gathered there.

  The Duke’s in-joke standard was set up by Church Cliff. Men jostled around it to enlist. Monmouth laughed and reproved them, urging the mob to patience.

  ‘Restrain your elbows, lads,’ he advised. ‘Be you twenty or thirty thousand men, I’ve got arms enough for all!’

  In fact, that was the one scorpion-in-the-privy. He only wished it were true. The Null, or its current King Arthur manifestation, had rather let him down. Their promised funding, in the form of ancient buried gold and bullion, had failed to arrive. It had taken the pawning of all he owned, and Lady Henrietta Wentworth’s jewellery as well, to get this far. Just hiring the Helderenberg, a mere thirty-two gunner, had cost £5000. Putting fifteen hundred muskets, pikes and breastplates, plus four small cannon and an expert to work them, in the two smaller ships h
ad cleared him out of everything. Suggestions that Lady Henrietta went to work on her back to raise further sums hadn’t met with much welcome. She’d countered that he should come to a similar arrangement with William of Orange – and the subject was allowed to drop. It was a shame though. She was so … mettlesome and inventive that, given enough warning, they could have darkened the sea with their fleet and arrived here with an armada clad in gold. Still, it was not to be.

  The way things were going they might not notice the lack of cash. All of the Town ventured out to hear the Duke’s proclamation but even before that his army had doubled in size. The ‘Independent Lyme Regiment’, eighty strong and growing, was born without so much as being asked.

  Robert ‘The Plotter’ Ferguson, preacher and wildman, had written the ringing declaration, but couldn’t be trusted to deliver it. Whilst a master of the rabble-rousing phrase, the Scot was prone to pistol-waving and profanity to emphasise his argument. His volcanic delivery would terrify rather than convince. A calmer, more comely, youth was deputised and stood up in the marketplace to read the Duke’s claim.

  ‘Hear ye, hear ye,’ he called. ‘Attend the declaration of James, Duke of Monmouth, and the Noblemen, Gentlemen, and others now in arms for the defence and vindication of the Protestant Religion, and the Laws, Rights, and Privileges of England, from the invasion made upon them; and for delivering the Kingdom from the usurpation and tyranny of James Duke of York …’

  It was extraordinarily effective, Old Testament cadences meeting and mating with ruffian slang, to provide something incendiary for everyone. Those who thought themselves ‘of the better sort’ heard and approved of the call for constitutional democracy: free elections, annual parliaments and Habeas Corpus. The more normal relished the charges against ‘King James’: that he poisoned his brother, started the Great Fire of London and was on at least ‘how do you do?’ terms with Satan.

  Even the Papists themselves, had there been any dense enough to stick around, were nodded at. Amidst the obligatory references to ‘Romish idolatries’ the wisely absent Catholics were assured of survival, providing they ‘withdrew from the tents of our enemies’. It was very reasonable, considering.