The Royal Changeling

by John Whitbourn

  ‘But you shall,’ Theophilus was resolute. ‘Some human types are eternal.’

  Arthur’s reply was short and sharp and full of confidence. ‘I shall arrange otherwise. Meanwhile, give me the sword.’

  ‘Only in your guts, scarecrow-King.’

  ‘I have none, as you see. I require the power within the blade to grow them afresh. With it I dare to wake my Knights. When they ride forth, Monmouth’s men will gain courage to cross this little gap: together they will sweep all before them. The help he needs will keep my little “king” chastened and suggestible, and so it will begin. Its end will be a sweeping away of everything you know. Give me the sword.’

  ‘It must be willingly given …’

  ‘And so it shall be. Behold.’

  The little group in chains were suddenly much closer. Oglethorpe had already perceived the truth in his heart of hearts, but – forgivably – denied it.

  ‘Father!’ moaned Lewis.

  ‘Daddy …’ said the younger ones capable of speech.

  ‘Theo,’ beseeched Ellen, his wife, her bare arms raised towards him. She’d plainly suffered much. ‘Don’t let him have us. You can’t know what he has done to …’

  ‘He can guess,’ interjected Arthur, ‘which is far worse. Westbrook is afire and all your family seized. Why expound further? You see how far you have demeaned me, Oglethorpe? I, proponent of a … calmer way, must descend to fleshy threats. Will you have me lower myself further and specify what I might do?’

  ‘No. Don’t.’

  ‘So come forward. Give me my desire and then be slain.’

  He found himself well able to do it, free of any inner contesting voice. Love and honour alloyed together forged metal stronger than the desire for life.

  Theophilus stepped up and offered the sword. He avoided his family’s eye.

  Arthur hissed in almost erotic joy. Oglethorpe recoiled from that gale of corpse-breath and hesitated. The King noted it and was enraged. He stretched forth one hand – and over-reached himself.

  ‘Save us, Theo,’ said Ellen Oglethorpe. ‘Do anything. Die for us.’

  Theophilus flinched. His Ellen would not say that. She would not be so finally broken, whatever her ordeal. He turned to look and in that instant knew. This Ellen’s nervous gaze flicked guiltily at Arthur, her master – and loveless at her ‘children’. When caught, her eye was not backed by the unique soul of Eleanor Oglethorpe …

  ‘It is!’ protested Arthur – but he knew he spoke in vain. Panic rode alongside his soothing words.

  ‘It is not,’ answered Theophilus, deceptively, deadly, calm. ‘But you may still have the sword.’

  In that moment he knew why he was chosen – by Heaven or the Elves or both – to be the wielder of this weapon. His lifelong fault briefly became a virtue.

  Oglethorpe’s fury was like a nova, or the beginning of the Universe. Pre-existing facts vanished in its white, searing glare. Any opposing will evaporated. The blade in his hand whimpered its submission.

  And so he gave Excalibur to Arthur – in a huge, traversing blow. The razor edge bit through and briefly sang its returning home as it parted head from shoulder. A lamenting note then arose, when it comprehended the betrayal.

  ‘And down you go and fare ye well!’ said Oglethorpe.

  Still in its helm, the head bounced down, as bidden, to the ground. In an involuntary act of revulsion, Theophilus then booted the severed part into the Bussex Rhine. It was soon lost to sight beneath the black, brackish water.

  If it is possible for a mere torso to betray emotion, Arthur’s body evinced … disappointment. He could no longer speak but what remained let its feelings be known. The body remained standing, as still as all the other figures in this frozen field. A groan, from everywhere and nowhere, ruffled the air.

  Oglethorpe had put all into the strike, not knowing he possessed such strength. Whilst willing to perform miracles most days his body now demanded rest. He lent upon Excalibur.

  His ‘family’ now resembled what they really were: rough shaped dolls of wood and straw; elf-stocks empty of the half-life breathed into them. He had almost been deceived. Only knowing Ellen as he did saved him, and them – and everything. Theophilus giggled in nervous reaction. If he had been wrong … If it had been them …

  But he hadn’t, and it wasn’t. They were not here, and Arthur had failed in some way in order for him to try that desperate deception. He did not have them.

  Thought of that King made Oglethorpe look up. At first he thought Arthur was gone but then he saw him some way off. The headless remainder was on its hands and knees, painfully dragging itself, agonised yard by yard, back to Glastonbury and safety.

  Theophilus steeled himself to give chase to finish the job, but halted as words formed within his head.

  ‘This is no end,’ said Arthur’s voice, weakened but still crystal clear. ‘This is but adjournment.’

  The distant creeping body vanished and battle recommenced.

  Ellen now saw that the Elf had been right. It would have been better to die calmly and by their own hands than to fall to these wild beasts. Already they had torn one nursemaid from the retreating formation and ripped her limb from limb. These were not the last sights she wished her babies to take with them to Paradise. What seemed intolerable in cold blood, now looked desirable when the hotter variety was covering the floor.

  She beheld the great stairwell bay-window, wreathed in sunshine, a few yards off. No decision was necessary. Two stories up and with hard paving stone below, it should suffice. She would have crossed herself but the demands of sabre-play made that impractical. Perhaps a firm desire to do so might be acceptable.

  ‘Only a little pain,’ she told her children, ‘just a little – and then a new and better place …’

  The surviving nursemaids saw what was intended and agreed. Lewis did not need guidance but would come of his own accord.

  Swords were dropped, the children gathered up, and they turned and ran. They overcame the short resistance of glass and frame and then leapt into unknowing.

  And into Gardener Grimes’s manure cart, as it turned out.

  He and his boys had fought clear and thus being no obstacle to the main aim, were ignored. They might then have scampered into Godalming, just glad to be alive, but nobler feelings steered their proletarian feet. Other than when angry, Master Oglethorpe was a kind employer, and the Mistress was thoughtfully discreet when doling out charity. A web of loyalty had been weaved and though it had been sorely stretched it did not tear. The gardeners – and all the other servants – remained.

  Grimes’s rustic mind was corkscrew-wily. He observed the running fight move inexorably up the stairs and saw one likely end to it. Though often the subject of heated complaint, especially in summer, he kept his compost transporter close to the house. ‘There weren’t no other way,’ he always said, ‘to make Mother Nature get a move on.’ Now he was vindicated. It was soon fetched and positioned and any opposing Celts dibbered out the way.

  The leapers thus had a soft – if fragrant – landing and before they could sit up the wagon was being trundled down the drive. The enemy could not prevent it for they had committed their all to the attack. Nor one bard or druid stood between Westbrook’s garrison and escape.

  A great lamentation arose from the House.

  ‘The Bussex what?’

  Monmouth took horrid fright at Lord Grey’s crystal-clear, court-English rendition of that particular fly-in-their-ointment; the mere ditch which thwarted the rebels’ promising charge.

  His aides had looked askance at him for that, unable to understand such passion over mere pronunciation. It was not a straw to break an ant’s back, let alone a King’s.

  Then came worse, though equally invisible, bad news. Monmouth sensed that Arthur was gone – and shortly after so was he. With the battle still at its height, he rode off, with Grey and a few other trusted, worthless, friends, leaving his army to its fate.

  Between them,
the better-late-than-never artillery and the Horse broke the rebels’ gallant regiments of foot. Battered more than flesh and blood can take they finally ran.

  The Royal infantry splashed across Bussex Rhine, a much less intimidating obstacle by day than when poorly seen at night, directing pike and shot at unprotected backs. When they were then outrun, the Cavalry took over and commenced a long and bloody chase. Whilst the rebels frantically scrambled down, across and up the deep and boggy Langmoor Rhine, the pursuing horsemen paused and leisurely selected targets for their pistols, able to fire and reload at least twice. In the fields of ripening corn beyond the harvest was turned to red.

  Perhaps four hundred of Monmouth’s men died fighting upon Sedgemoor but a thousand fell thereafter. The fury of the Royalists was such, contemplating their own several hundred lost, that they buried some rebel wounded along with the slain. A chained group of crude manikins (that much puzzled the casualty enumerators) went in with them.

  True to form, Wade fought his way out, rallying a hundred or so of his Red Regiment to make an orderly retreat. The pursuers left such prickly targets alone in favour of easier sport. He made it to Bridgwater and then the coast, commandeering a ship to escape. Forced back to shore by a Royal warship, he was finally taken, though not without a fire-fight which left him hovering at the door of death. He survived and turned King’s Evidence, though careful to incriminate only those he knew had died. ‘All your friends seem to be dead men, Mr Wade,’ King James laconically remarked when he read Wade’s racy account.

  Such spirits are a shame to waste and next year he accompanied James back on a tour of the field of battle. He died, full of honours and Town Clerk of Bristol, more than thirty years later in 1718.

  Holmes was less lucky and got shot again after giving Theophilus’s regiment a hard time. The only man in Monmouth’s army to make it over the Bussex Rhine, he was found, dazed and delirious, wandering the Royal camp and when Churchill asked him ‘who art thou?’ he could only reply, ‘I am in no condition to tell…’

  In due course he was repaired sufficiently to meet the true King James and ‘regretted rien’ Having lost son, arm and all, he was then perhaps glad to forego mercy and leave the world, hung, drawn and quartered on Lyme Regis beach, at the very spot he’d landed, full of hope, three months before.

  Anton Buyse the gunner made his peace with the victors, as professionals do, though riding far enough to avoid their initial, justified, wrath. When he re-met his father and other artillery-men ancestors, years later, they confirmed they were indeed proud of him.

  The Reverend Toogood made it back to Axminster to pray and repent, and finally went to Heaven – only to find it not entirely to his tastes.

  Piercy Kirke rampaged through the Western Counties, gaining an infamy that survives to this day. His is not a happy name to drop whilst on holiday in Devon, Dorset or Somerset, and still able of its own to spoil the usual welcome.

  He got to be very friendly with various young ladies, on the promise of sparing their fathers or brothers – and then drew back the curtain the next morning to reveal their hanging corpse. Innocence was trampled underfoot, every experience sampled in full and a new army drumroll composed to match the dance of hanging men’s feet. In short, he thoroughly enjoyed himself and brought a taste of Tangiers to England, before James got to hear and put his lead back on.

  Brigadier John Churchill went on to much greater things – as did all his Elf-tinged progeny.

  Lord Grey was taken just before Monmouth but in similar fashion: skulking in a ditch in deep countryside. They were both in pitiful condition and the Duke’s pockets were found to contain the raw peas that were all he’d had to eat since Sedgemoor. Monmouth wept when he was found. Grey had betrayed his location and much else. In return he had his pardon.

  No such indulgence could be granted the primary conspirator. He was moved under guard via Winchester (Old Patch’s hospitality), Farnham and Guildford, to London and the Tower. His spirit broken, Monmouth begged for life, in abject terms and letters embarrassing to read, but James could not grant it. The Stuart King, alone among his counsellors, knew the real nature of the Duke and the true project he’d attempted. Fear of its repetition obligated stern certainty in prevention. James kindly permitted him an interview to explain the whys and wherefores of what must be, but things did not turn out well. His hands bound by a silken cord, Monmouth hurled himself at the Royal feet, tearfully soaking James’ velvet slippers. It was all very distressing.

  Parliament’s bill of attainder meant there was no need for a trial. Fortified by brandy and much badgered by canting Bishops to repent, he went to Tower Hill on Wednesday the fifteenth of July 1685, reasonably composed. That lasted until he approached the axeman, to tip him as per custom and beseech him to strike true.

  Then words and all composure fled as he looked into the executioner’s hood and observed … a pair of golden eyes.

  The job was botched and the Duke took many, grievous, blows to die.

  The legends started almost directly. They were widespread both in London and the West, just weeks after it required a butcher’s knife to finally part Monmouth from life and his shoulders.

  At Lyme Regis there were arrests made because of ale-house claims that the Duke was not dead, ‘an old man with a beard’ having ‘plainly’ taking his place on the scaffold. Throughout Dorset it was said ‘the real King hath not been taken and would come again’. Within six months it was proclaimed from Bolton Market Cross that ‘the real King of England is alive’. Within a year two men were charged and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn for separately impersonating the dead Duke.

  Best of all was the story, widely believed, that a brotherhood of five had been prepared for such a day, men of like appearance to the Duke, provided with identical costume and prepared to swop their lives for his. With such a wealth of substitutes credulity was unstrained to think one of these sacrificial lambs went to the slaughter at Tower Hill ‘ … the Duke of Monmouth is not really dead’ wrote one believer, ‘but only withdrawn until the harvest is over, and then his friends shall see him again in a much better condition than they ever did yet …’

  So now there was another sleeping King, biding his time before coming back to save his people.

  The day after Sedgemoor, as the Army fanned out to occupy the West and to have fun and retribution, Feversham marched with three battalions of the Guards and the undisgraced Wiltshire Militia to Glastonbury. There was no strict military need to it but he felt obscurely … drawn to do so. The Frenchman sat long outside the White Hart, staring at the Tor, and wondering why he felt so angry.

  Before he left they hanged six rebels from the sign-board of the inn. When the great Earl had departed, the militia stripped the corpses and left them to dangle naked. There was profit to be made, even in dead-men’s clothes.

  Away in Taunton, Miss Mary Blake the schoolmistress heard the news and cried. As yet unsuspected in her womb, Monmouth’s golden-eyed embryonic son, felt his mother’s sorrow within the flow of nutrients. She would die of smallpox in due course, imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol; but not before admitting the Duke’s little legacy to the world.

  And across the sea in the Low Countries, King Arthur was whispering to William of Orange. It was a shadowy, injured, more conciliatory Arthur – but Arthur nevertheless.

  The Bussex Rhine was a freshwater drainage ditch and had served its humble purpose to the satisfaction of untold generations. Then, a century or so after the Battle which improbably made it famous, the agricultural improvers of the age thought they could do better. The Bussex and its sister, Longmoor, Rhines were filled in, extended or diverted to create the great King’s Sedgemoor Drain.

  In so doing a lot of soil was shifted here and there and the children of the engineers and navvies played ‘princes and rebels’ up and down the mini-mountains created. One particular youth, a draughtsman’s son, discovered a weathered skull peeping from a heap and was much taken with the macabre find. He w
as learned enough to guess it came from the battle that had happened there – though the rusty iron helm still attached suggested a much earlier era.

  He kept it – secretly at first, and then more openly as he grew to manly independence. Research in books taught him that many of the rebels perforce used antique arms and gear, and thus the helmet paradox was solved. The fleshless head was now stored in a sturdy box, the focus and totem of his lifelong interest in Monmouth’s rebellion. He wrote a monograph on same and was blessed with favourable reviews. The man’s one abiding regret was that his career prevented him from settling in the West: in Bridgwater or Glastonbury, for example. He did not know why he should wish that, for his line were all London born-and-bred – he just felt drawn to it.

  He died and the head passed on down the line and is treasured by the family still. The younger members are well known for never missing a single Glastonbury Festival. They now aspire to moving there – lock, stock, skull and barrel.

  Theophilus was excused from the post-Sedgemoor butchery and the harrowing of the West Country that was to come. Earl Feversham, who could on occasion be wise, knew the Lieutenant Colonel would be lax in such work. Moreover, since some officers wished to talk with Oglethorpe about his tardy arrival on the field, it was desirable to forestall a round of duels and the decimation of his staff.

  Thus, directly the battle was no longer in doubt, Theophilus was accorded the honour of taking the good tidings to King James. His own wish was to hasten to Westbrook and ensure the safety of his family but Arthur’s desperate resort to deception effectively proclaimed that anyway. Duty took narrow precedence. Still stained with Sedgemoor mud Oglethorpe hammered up the roads to London.

  The exhausted soldier finally came upon James in the early hours and at a delicate moment. His Majesty chanced to be in the Queen’s bedchamber but announced, through the door, that he would receive this particular visitor – ‘if they gave him but a moment’. Theophilus dozed, his weary head resting on the door and oblivious to the muffled noises beyond, until its opening obliged him to awake. He had never seen a naked king before and hazily wondered why it should seem strange that they were just as other men.