‘And what do you intend that I should conclude from all this?’ Thurloe asked bluntly.
‘Why, their overriding guilt!’ George protested. ‘Young Ogilvy is Charles Stuart’s spy. He was in Dordrecht with Stuart’s first bastard’s mother. He hath been in Oxford plotting with his old crazed great-uncle, received by my scholar father, who cares nought for England, but only for the ancient books of learning. And most recently of all with his grandfather, the Lord Aldborough –’
‘One of that “Sealed Knot” who talk together of risings, but are so firmly “Sealed” I think the “Knot” will never be cut,’ Thurloe told him.
Master Leslie flushed a dark red but said no more.
‘Look you, sir,’ Thurloe went on. ‘I value your intention, or that part of it that concerns the safety of our country. But I have no inclination or time to pursue family quarrels, nor will I allow it through my office. So I must ask you sort out well your information before you bring it here. Oxford is a sucked orange. Senile dons and young men with a thirst for natural philosophy are no danger. Scotland has risen and fallen again, thanks to General Monck. Whispers are corning from the West country now. You may go to Bristol, sir, and join your former colleagues there. But do not report to me in person again before the winter.’
He rapped on his table to call the guard at the door, turning his head away from Leslie’s furious face. When the hired spy had gone he sent for his closest colleague.
‘Master Phillips, a cloth manufacturer, late member of parliament discharged with the “Rump”. Probable business connections with the Low Countries. I would know these and also his family connections, marriages and so on, children, their ages, activities, friends. Our usual dossier.’
‘Phillips,’ the other said, thoughtfully. ‘No hothead. Absented himself – ill, perhaps – at the time of the execution. But present at the trial. Close friend of that agent you had with you just now.’
‘Friend?’
‘Sometime friend, I swear.’
‘No longer. Bitter enemy now, it seems. Discover why for me.’
The colleague wrinkled his nose.
‘Nay, I am not curious,’ Thurloe explained. ‘But Master Leslie’s hatreds impair his usefulness. I may have to dismiss him. Today he wasted my time, except for that hint about Master Phillips. We cannot have a disloyal cloth maker. Far too dangerous.’
‘You mean for the necessary trade abroad? These new light yarns – worsteds – I believe they call them. Our broadcloth is too heavy for warmer climes. This worsted makes a new very acceptable weave.’
Master Thurloe nodded. His highly skilled and disciplined army of agents abroad brought him commercial as well as political news. His net spread very wide and not solely with a defensive aim.
Alan went back to his work in Oxford after spending the inside of a week at his grandparents’ house. His surviving uncles did not come there, but Lord Aldborough still expected to hear that they were preparing to rise in the west or in Cheshire, unless they had decided to join the King in Germany. Alan was relieved to find his grandfather had no exact news. So he could give nothing away, the young man told himself with amused satisfaction. He relayed it to Sir Francis Leslie at Luscombe with less than appropriate seriousness.
Lady Leslie was inclined to scold him.
‘You speak lightly,’ she said. ‘But it is no light matter. The country has been quiet for months now. So much the more sure it becomes that this uneasy peace will be broken. Sir Francis fears it and so do I. For the Lord Protector is hated on all sides. The sects detest him, the Levellers would pull him down: they say no man should have more power or wealth than another –’
‘Only they do not include the peasant, scarcely the yeoman,’ Sir Francis interrupted. ‘They would put down, even eliminate, all lords with all the bishops. The former highest and the lowest, who always have suffered.’
‘The generals hate his lordship Cromwell,’ Alan said, nodding agreement. ‘The more so since he has turned the government upside down. He only holds his power through the army, a precarious state, surely. I only wish to continue my work. Men of healing belong to no party, and no sect. I am not disloyal to our real cause, but I bless this uneasy peace and fear its ending.’
Lady Leslie said, ‘Amen to that,’ but Sir Francis merely shook his head.
Not long afterwards Doctor Richard Ogilvy rode over to Luscombe one morning in a state of pitiful agitation, with news that struck horror into them all.
Chapter Twelve
He rode into the stable yard, shaking all over and grey in the face. The groom could not persuade him to dismount, so he sent the stable lads running to find Sir Francis and the mistress, one or the other or both if possible. The housekeeper, together with Alan whom she had forced to leave his books, came running.
‘For Sir Francis and my lady are from home in the carriage, though I expect them at any time now,’ she told him.
Alan gave this message to the distraught old man, still sitting his horse in the yard, the groom still trying to persuade him to dismount, while the poor beast hung its head, showing how hardly it had been ridden.
‘Uncle Ogilvy,’ Alan exclaimed. ‘Come within, sir, I do beg of you. Sir Francis and Lady Leslie are in Oxford, but expected home within the hour. Pray let me take you in to wait their corning. Yon beast is like to fall under you for thirst and exhaustion.’
Alan had struck the right note. Careless of his own condition Doctor Ogilvy had never neglected his animals or his servants. So now he allowed his great-nephew to help him to the ground and lead him to the library, where, the housekeeper had already set wine and fresh plums from the garden and was waiting for further orders.
The doctor thanked her in a weak voice and when he had seen her close the door behind her leaned from his chair towards Alan and said in an anguished voice, ‘The West hath risen! They gained somewhat from the surprise and swiftness of their action, but it cannot last. Already the overwhelming forces of the usurper are pushing them back.’
He closed his eyes and let his hand drop wearily.
‘How know you this, Uncle?’ Alan asked quickly, dreading to hear the answer he feared.
‘James has sent word. Thomas is wounded. They have been forced to hide. If they are found they will surely be lost.’
The old moan opened his eyes with such a look of terror and despair that Alan felt cold fear himself.
‘How did the message come?’
‘I am sworn not to say, but I trust in the truth of it. I think you will be the only help they may find, but I will say naught until Francis advises us.’
Fortunately the Leslies arrived home very soon after this. Doctor Ogilvy had begun to find some strength by then, so he repeated his dreadful news briefly and waited for Sir Francis to give his opinion.
‘They must be got out of the west country, that is plain,’ the latter said and waited, looking at Lucy. Because it was obvious that young Alan Ogilvy was the only relative of the doctor’s family able to help, but was he willing?
Lucy had already exchanged smiles with Alan, so she now nodded to him to offer his services without delay.
He did not speak at once, but when he did he put forward a plan that might have some chance of success or at any rate some prospect of finding the two men. In age they came between him and his father, for they were the youngest of Mistress Celia’s nine babies and by the time they were full grown the doctor and his wife had suffered many losses.
These Lady Leslie explained to Alan later that evening. Three of the eldest of the children had died of disease in childhood at the time of an epidemic that had also carried off George Leslie’s little sister Kirstie. Later a boy bad been killed by a fall from his horse and another had been drowned in the Thames. Three sons had grown to manhood, but one had been killed at Naseby.
‘The girls were a disappointment to their father,’ Lucy finished. ‘Sarah, the younger, is of feeble mind. But only a little so afflicted. Incapable of any kind of le
arning, but by nature passionate, changeable, difficult. Cynthia, the elder, should have married George, though we may be thankful now she did not. But she wanted his friend and nothing would change her mind. Celia, their mother, had been indulgent in all their upbringing and the doctor had seldom gainsaid her. I think he would have softened towards Cynthia had it not been for the wars and the bloodshed and the destruction. But the husband is of the Parliament side. To that he is totally averse. Also this Master Phillips does truly believe in that cause.’
‘But he is no soldier nor any kind of tyrant,’ Alan told her. ‘Besides, he wishes to be reconciled to his father-in-law, for he hath fallen out with his sometime friend, George Leslie, who will bring harm to him if he may. I would help Master Phillips if I could.’
‘Then do you bring those two, Thomas and James Ogilvy, safe out of the fighting in the west and Richard Ogilvy will give you anything you ask of him.’
‘Pray God then I be in time,’ Alan said, ‘for it can only be done as I have suggested. Of that I am very sure.’
He went back to Doctor Ogilvy after Sir Francis had argued with his friend and having calmed his frantic impatience, sent again for Alan to explain his plan further if he agreed to set it in motion.
As Alan explained, he had no chance whatever of finding his way through to the loyalist lines if he travelled by road from Oxford, or by drove road or open moor.
‘To leave Oxford by road and towards the west would raise questions at once,’ he said. ‘But for you, sir, to bring me a message from my father to join him across the water –’
Sir Francis nodded vigorously.
‘The boy has sense, Richard,’ he urged. ‘Take a boat well off shore, Alan, is that it? Then change to some merchant vessel and go down into Devon or Cornwall and go ashore in some fishing boat in one of those many bays or coves or rivers.’
‘That is the best way, I am sure of it,’ Alan answered. ‘If you have any directions for me, sir,’ he urged the doctor, ‘pray give them to me now.’
Doctor Ogilvy nodded. He had gathered strength since his arrival at Luscombe. He had little hope of full success, but with the promise of aid, though not of the kind he expected, he was prepared to use Alan when no other means offered themselves.
The next morning the young man went openly to Warden Wilkins to explain that his father wished to see him in Paris. This was to help the latter transport his luggage to Cologne where the rest of the family had gone from The Hague.
Master Wilkins knew that Colonel Ogilvy had been employed for many years in the armies of the Reformation countries abroad. He gave his permission, not wishing to inquire too closely into the boy’s movements. Young Ogilvy was no firebrand and he seemed to have a real wish to follow the art of healing. He felt that this should be encouraged, quietly and without too many awkward questions asked.
So he gave his permission, together with a little sensible advice. Alan went back to the doctor’s house from Luscombe, walking beside the old man’s horse. Doctor Ogilvy sent for his groom at once and told Alan to pack a bundle and be ready by the time the man appeared at the house. Which he did with a companion, who spoke with a strange country burr that Alan could barely understand. The three of them set off at dusk on foot, Alan indistinguishable from the other two in the rough clothes he had worn for his last cross-country adventure.
They had consulted together in the stables before they left the house, so they had no need to talk as they went, but plodded on silently like any small group of labourers set upon an errand in the fields. They went down the valley and presently joined the river at a sharpish bend, where the groom, stooping under the poplars on the bend, discovered a flat-bottomed boat into which he climbed first and then handed in Alan. The stranger followed.
Without need for further parley Alan saw the groom safe back to the bank, then cast off the boat, while the stranger took up the oars. When they had floated away the groom loosed his short sword in its scabbard at his hip and went cautiously up the steep bank and after a patient, silent wait at the top while the sound of the boat died away, began a roundabout walk back to the doctor’s house.
The two in the boat rowed quietly down to Shillingford beyond Dorchester. There they drew in to the bank and Alan went to find the reed-cutter. As he hoped, the man was willing to keep the boat ready waiting for him if he should come back for it in a matter of weeks.
‘Use it as if it was your own,’ Alan told him. ‘But do not tell a soul how you came by it. Nay, do not ask me either where I go now. But with God’s blessing I shall be back. Spread no news. Say no more than you must. I trust I shall be back. I go now from the farther bank.’
‘South?’ the man said.
‘East,’ Alan answered, laughing, seeing the other tried to trap him. The stream winds sharply here, I think.’
A faint answering laugh came to him but he dared not call out in case anyone was walking down to the ford with a pony or a laden donkey and might be frightened by a shout.
The stranger was waiting on the far bank, nervous and inclined to be angry. So Alan made no explanations, simply tied the boat among the rushes and picking up a strong staff from the bottom of it set off to climb the first range of hills to bring them to the drover’s road that should guide them across the Berkshire downs into the valley of the Test where they might pick up another boat to take them on to the sea.
For as it had seemed to Alan that their surest way to reach the west country was by water and he knew that Cromwell had a firm grasp upon the great ports of the English Channel, he should slip away, if he could, from one of those small harbours lying round about Poole or Swanage or from one of the sheltered coves beyond St Alban’s head.
It was now that Alan’s silent companion came alive at last. He listened to Alan’s plan and then offered one of his own. A small fishing settlement where he had once, some years before, floated in on a spar after his boat had broken up in the great race off Portland. He had lived in that bay nearly a year.
So now the story began to emerge. Confident of his wide ranging knowledge, his companions in Penruddock’s tragic rising had laid it upon him to set up a rescue of the Oxford regiment of loyalists. So he had brought the message east, but he could give it only to an old man, to one old man, the father of the badly wounded one –
‘This you did not say to him,’ Alan cut in, horrified.
‘What good would that ha’ done? To zay there be no ’elp for the poor young feller? Most likely dead afore now?’
‘And they not a third of the way yet. Alan, exhausted, hungry, decided the whole attempt was hopeless, but he had made too many plans during that night and suffered too much in unwanted physical labour and interrupted studies for him to be able to give up yet. And soon after this they found a small encampment by the river they would now cross but not use in their further progress. Two long boats with horses to draw them were stationed at the bank, the families and crews settling to their breakfasts. Beyond them the river wound through water meadows where bullocks grazed and far away a tall spire showed where Salisbury cathedral guided travellers to the town.
The boatmen gave them welcome and food and fresh directions that sent them on their way with new strength and courage. By the evening they had taken the ferry to the Isle of Purbeck and found the Devon man’s friends.
At this stage in their journey two things happened. There was talk of the fighting in the west country, but not excited talk, just interested, a piece of foreign news. And Alan’s companion disclosed his name. But indirectly.
Hitherto the man had called him master, or young master. But now the people in the small hut by the sandy beach at the back of the cove were calling him Silas. So without explanation or delay Alan used the name as well, explaining that he was Alan and they should call him that, without title of any kind. They were simple folk and saw no reason why they should not do as he asked, though he grinned shyly when he used it himself.
However, they rested only one night in that place a
nd the following day, after Silas had made a visit to Lulworth, a fishing boat from that village left the cove with two men, its owners, working the gear and the sails. But when they turned westwards after they were clear of the great race at Portland, there were the four of them to fish and sail and keep a look out for undesirable, inquisitive ships on watch for the Lord Protector’s enemies.
Alan had not discussed their plans with Silas since the night before, when he had put himself wholly in his guide’s hands. He could do no less when it came to finding the boat to take him farther. As the Devon coast came up before them in the late afternoon he moved to Silas and said plainly, ‘What now, my friend?’
The man laughed silently. He had a habit of so distorting his face and showing his ragged teeth without any sound of mirth. It had alarmed and then irritated Alan at first. But now he was used to it. The sounds of wind and wave were enough to discourage loud laughter, but to one so used to them as Silas could not destroy his amusement. So now Silas both enjoyed and admired Alan’s patient endurance of the last three days, ending in his present understanding of the nearness of enemy country and their need of a good plan to help them to invade it. The young gentleman’s eagerness made Silas laugh.
‘They sojers has their camp near Brixham,’ he explained. ‘So we go not into Tor Bay, nor so near Berry Head, neether. Rather into the Dart, is what we aim for.’
‘But surely we can’t sail into the Dart without catch? They’d know us for foreigners!’ Alan protested.
‘Who zaid as we’d sail in aboard this vessel? We aim to find Dartmouth boats around sundown.’
‘And transfer?’
‘Zurelye.’
And so it fell out. The sea along those coasts was full of bobbing vessels around sundown. Depending upon the times of the tides they left the rivers and harbours in a regular rhythm and returned again at the end of the day’s work. Silas and Alan, without attracting special attention, managed to transfer to a Dartmouth drifter and having sent their heartfelt thanks to the Purbeck families, kept out of sight while Silas’s home friends took him and Alan into the river and on to the fish quay.
In the King's Absence Page 12
