The wind had died as night drew on. But the tide was rising, so with the long sweeps out they were able to make slow progress. It was while the two strangers helped in this punishing work that a rough voice hailed them from the water, and a long, wide rowing boat carrying six armed men, four rowers and a leader of some sort came alongside.
‘Take my rope, fellow!’ cried the one in the stem, turning his musket towards the drifter’s skipper.
‘Who be you, then?’ asked the latter. But he caught the rope as a matter of habit.
‘In the name of –’ began the other, then gave a slow wink and went on –’our Lord Protector, God save him!’ Putting his weapon down on the thwart beside him, he stood up, with his hands over the gunwhale of the fishing boat. The skipper, staring down at him intently, advanced his own hands close to where those of the other rested.
‘Nought but fish, I take it, master?’
‘Nought else.’
‘Pass, then.’
Stooping, the man drew a cross in red chalk on the bows of the vessel, the skipper called to Alan and Silas, who bent to the sweeps again and the boat moved on upstream, past the little harbour with its wharves and sheds to the wide spreading lake-like bend of the river at Dittisham and on to another smaller lake near Totnes.
As they dropped anchor there and before the vessel had properly settled, a man came from the bushes on the Totnes side, beckoning.
‘Go on with Silas, Alan,’ the skipper said. ‘I think he must have good news, that man, or we should not see him. But I will wait here till morning.’
Silas was now in full charge, on home ground, Alan discovered. It turned out that he was gamekeeper to the owner of Fillingham Hall, a big estate near Totnes, only about half a mile from the river, with an ancient building rather like Dartington, but not so high nor so isolated among housing of a later date. Silas had been in his present employment for several years, since his career as a fisherman had ended with his near-fatal experience on the other side of Lyme Bay. Alan took this fresh instalment of the man’s career with reservations. He had found the language of these western parts almost impossible to understand, and though Silas spoke more intelligibly than most, he was not yet so used to his speech that he felt sure of all he heard.
On arriving at the Hall, Silas led the way to a side door in a high wall. It opened easily and they passed through, first into an outhouse and through this down steps to a cellar, from the far side of which they climbed more steps into a great, deserted kitchen.
‘The two gentlemen from Oxford joined my master last spring,’ Silas explained. ‘Expecting we should rise first, to be the signal for all about the country.’
‘My grandfather has much the same hope,’ Alan said bitterly,
‘It will take more than one dig and hunt to loosen this fox,’ Silas said. ‘No cub now. Full grown and heavy. I was to stay here in Fillingham, but render aid of any kind when needed.’
‘And that sent you to me in Oxford?’
‘My master had disappeared, but young Captain Ogilvy, the elder of the two and stronger, came back walking with Captain Thomas before him on the remaining horse.’
‘Like that? In the open?’
Silas gave his silent laugh.
‘The moor was covered with them. Still and dead or heaved up on ponies, held there by their friends. To die in the ditches if they did not discover shelter. As this pair would seem to have done even before we came.’
He touched his shirt inside which he had pushed the note the skipper had given him.
‘Let me have it again,’ Alan said: The note had given directions where the Ogilvy’s were hidden and finished, ‘When read, burn.’ It was time they did this, but Silas wanted to keep moving. Also he seemed to be following the directions carefully; they should reach the hiding place within the next few minutes. Even though the kitchen hearth was quite cold. Somewhere in this large, empty house the fugitives had gone to ground. Were they still here in safety or had they already been discovered and a trap set for anyone who sought to join them?
Some extra wish for caution held Alan back when in the end Silas decided to go forward to the room where he expected to find the brothers. It was at the rear of the house, at the side of the big kitchen, where a number of small storerooms housed winter goods in peace time. Since the Civil Wars they had housed bulky clothes, livery and light body armour and had been kept locked, though Silas as well as two indoor upper servants had also been allowed to have keys.
As Alan shrank back into the deep dorway of a larder next to the main kitchen and Silas stepped forward, a voice cried ‘Halt!’ and one of Cromwell’s soldiers appeared in the passage, his heavy pistol raised. He was looking beyond Alan and did not see him. He moved again out of sight
Alan did nothing. He heard Silas answer, give his name, explain his position in the household; he heard the soldier advance, a key turn in a lock, a door open –
Well, they had moved, that was plain, at any rate. Alan, still undiscovered, still crouched in his doorway, still wondered what he must do next.
But not for long. Cautiously looking out into the passage he saw Silas reappear at the corner round which the soldier had passed. The gamekeeper beckoned, putting a hand before his mouth to warn Alan not to speak. Inside the room there were three men; two in stained, partly torn clothes, whom Alan took to be his cousins and one, in the uniform of the New Army, stretched upon a bed, seemingly unconscious.
Chapter Thirteen
There was something wrong in this scene. Alan felt it at once. Where was his gravely wounded cousin? Neither of the two strongly built and active men could be he. And why was the Parliament soldier lying stretched on the bed, senseless, breathing heavily?
Breathing it would seem far too heavily. Alan glanced at him, then at the pair facing him.
‘I must beg your pardon, gentlemen, for not knowing how I should address you. For I believe you be my great-uncle Richard Ogilvy’s sons, but which is Thomas and which James I am ignorant, for I think I never met either of you when I was a child. I was out of England all those years.’
The shorter of the men hesitated and turned away. The other said, ‘I am James Ogilvy. This is my friend – but he would not be known. We forestall the troops – at least –’
‘Silas!’ Alan cried, springing back to the wall, whipping out his sword as he did so. ‘This is the enemy that would trap us! That man on the bed is no more senseless than we are!’
‘I have his pistol, master!’ cried Silas, at which the soldier who had begun to raise himself, flopped back and lay stiller than ever, while Silas and Alan shot out of the room, bolting the door after them. They left the house by the first outside door they could discover.
Alan was furious. One of his cousins, at least, was a traitor. Perhaps he had been so all along or perhaps he had been bought by the enemy since he moved into the county. At any rate he had betrayed himself very quickly. But to what purpose?
‘To save the property, sir. But those two were neither of them Captain Ogilvy, sir. Cavaliers, may be, come to save Fillingham. These be peaceable parts. We doan’t go for to burn nor destroy in these parts. Master Penruddock from Cornwall – that’s different. I’d say there’s few put theirselves forward that didn’t regret it by nightfall that same day.’
‘How shall I find my wounded cousin?’ Alan pleaded, ‘or his dead body?’
Silas, who had guided Alan from the gardens to a coppice and now to the edge of it, disclosed that they were on the edge of the river again at a point where they were high above the water and could scramble down one of the number of steep gulleys to a muddy beach.
‘I think if you would go on board again, sir, while I make inquiries, that promises our best chance. I am well known all about here. If my master still lives – even if he does not – it will be natural for me to go about seeking for him and his friends.’
Alan agreed. He was growing more anxious hourly because he had no proof that the tall man in the house wa
s or was not James Ogilvy or had ever had any connection with Doctor Richard Ogilvy. Silas said no, and Silas knew the brothers. But was he to be trusted entirely? Certainly he must finish his mission within the next twelve hours for the parliament soldier’s tale of invasion and disturbance, of search and threat, would loose a whole battalion upon the place. There would be every effort made to destroy a highway of escape by sea for fugitives from Penruddock’s rising.
He fretted in the smelly shelter of the fishing boat until evening when Silas came back, rowing upstream in another borrowed pram. But he had news. At any rate here he was back. Alan wondered if the whole point of the exercise was to bring him into peril, if not to arrest, as a rebel in his turn.
But Silas had news of the Ogilvy brothers at last. The men they had seen were impostors and clumsy at that. They had gone into the house with the soldier as guard. They had gone to take possession.
‘For my master, poor gentleman, is dead!’ lamented Silas. ‘He was taken prisoner, sadly wounded, three days since and died at Exeter. His men that were with him took him into the town to find a surgeon, otherwise he would not have been taken. Now they too are prisoners and folk say the Parliament major-general is so savage at the rebellion he is like to hang them all.’
‘And my cousins?’ Alan asked, giving way to his impatience.
‘They had travelled on towards this place in haste to find shelter and rest for the wounded one. Rumour has it they are hid by the Diggers along the coast west of the river’s mouth.’
‘Diggers? You have Diggers here also?’
Alan had heard of this strange sect in the rural heart of England, groups of primitive Christian believers, who tried to live together, sharing all things and growing their food, building their huts, supporting themselves wholly. He wondered how they could manage here upon a rocky coast among a population that lived by fishing, in hilly country rising inland I almost at once to bare moors, where small cattle ran sparsely.
‘They came,’ Silas answered. They chose this way and no one sees any need to interfere. If they cannot succeed, they’ll go and we shall not have driven them off.’
A hard decision, Alan thought, but he had already decided that these west country people were hard and determined. They lived near the edge of the great ocean: they spent much of their life on it. Visitors must learn their ways or go.
The skipper of the fishing boat gave Silas and Alan a share of his ship’s evening meal, after which he pulled up his anchor and began the journey back down river. He would put them off before they reached the town and then drop farther down still to the second bend below the town wharves. If Alan had found his cousins and they were able to travel he would take them on board there to clear the river mouth. But they must transfer to another ship before midday the following morning.
With Silas still in charge Alan was helpless. He had eaten very little during the last five days and except for the night in the cove near Lulworth had hardly slept. He was confused, half asleep on his feet. He began to feel the whole expedition was a fantasy, totally unreal. At any time now Silas would explain there were no Ogilvys in Devon or they were already in their graves. George Leslie was behind this whole extra ordinary puppet show. It was not a dream perhaps but it was grossly unreal. George Leslie had made this phantom show. It was intended to destroy him and all his family. The plan would suddenly be made plain, when there would be no escape. But he must go through with it to the end. There was no other choice.
When they left the fishing boat Silas led through narrow country lanes that brought them past the tall cliff at the western side of the river’s mouth, where the two small castles stood on either side of the water. Formerly a chain could be hung between them. There was no chain now, but Silas told Alan there was talk of getting one up again. Only the new government did not want to discourage the fishing activities of the port, nor have to rely wholly upon the Torbay fishing fleets between Brixham and Salcombe, farther west.
The Diggers were settled on the flat land between Dartmouth and Start Point. They had been there for just over two years, ten couples and the resulting increase of that time, with the seven or eight children they had brought with them. They had not improved the rough wooden huts they had built to shelter themselves in the autumn of their arrival. But they had taken to the sea rather than the land for their survival. A fleet of small boats lay on the shore above the tide line, constantly attended and worked by the menfolk of the community. Farther inland the pitiful crops of peas and beans showed how little success the women had with a garden, while two goats on tether seemed more of a liability than an asset.
At sight of Silas, with Alan beside him, a group of men came up from the beach, showing a more marked friendliness than any of the cottagers they had passed on the way from Fillingham Hall.
‘He lives and improves,’ the foremost said to Silas, then waited, staring at Alan.
‘Come,’ said another and without waiting for introductions the whole group swept the two arrivals to one of the huts and through the open doorway to the hot, dark, smoke-filled interior.
And now Alan did at last find his cousins, barely distinguishable from those who sheltered them, but even the wounded Thomas in better shape than he had dared to hope for. The cannon ball that had killed his horse under him had been followed by a volley of musket fire from the advancing infantry and a shot from this had split his left shoulder as he lay stunned beside the animal.
‘James got Silas to heave me up in front of him and he rode off with me,’ Thomas said. ‘I see we are even more greatly beholden to him.’
The gamekeeper’s part in the whole affair now became plain. He had thought his master’s friends would make their way clear of the field of battle and find help at the Hall, for at that time Penruddock’s force had secured the success of surprise. It was not until the battle was over by the next day that the result declared itself. Defeat with the master of Fillingham dead and nothing known of the fate of the Ogjlvys or any of his other followers.
‘I searched at the Hall before the servants went,’ Silas told them. ‘They wanted no part in the rising, those that were left there. My poor master had begged me to send the gentlemen home and told me where I might find their father.’
‘It was a miracle you found me to go with you,’ Alan said. ‘But once in your own country I think you have good friends.’
He turned away towards Thomas.
‘Have you a surgeon among the folk here, that you seem so strong? Or was the wound –?’
‘Less than we feared? Aye,’ Thomas answered. ‘Also these people washed it with sea water and slaked my thirst with their country wines when I had nearly bled to death.’
Alan was about to suggest he should change the dressing when three of the older men of the group came to the hut. They had serious news, just brought to them from Dartmouth village by some boys that had gone there to exchange fresh caught fish for flour.
The New Army was sweeping across the county, wrecking and burning. Fillingham Hall was on fire. Two thieves and a looting soldier they had captured there had been hanged. Search was continuing in every direction for other men seen leaving the Hall. The fishing fleet was putting to sea at once to avoid being stopped.
‘Will they not be stopped by the soldiers who came to us as we went up river?’ Alan asked quickly.
‘Nay, they were in charge of a friend,’ Silas said. ‘There has been peace and quiet here for months. The locals have been set over the port. They will all go to ground now. We will have to find some other way to leave.’
‘You have done enough,’ James Ogilvy said. ‘We must look to ourselves.’
Since it was obvious they could do nothing in this respect and that their presence in the commune, if discovered, would mean its total destruction, the only way to escape became clear enough. The fishing fleet from Dartmouth would soon be at sea, therefore their own little inshore boats had better get out there too and if possible transfer the three Ogilvys to some larg
er craft and so bring them farther off shore to greater safety.
They had no choice, nor was there much time if they were to find any of the fishing boats still within reach as the tide ran out. There was an unnatural silence over the sea and a great darkness where oil lamps usually bobbed and sails rustled as the off-shore wind came over the high cliffs to fill them.
Crouched with three of the young men, one in each of the coracles, the Ogilvys set off from the shore. Alan and James rowed, guided by their boat’s owners, while Thomas guided his own rower who kept between his two partners. In this fashion they drew away from the land and moving up the coast towards the river mouth began to see the group of jagged rocks rear up at the edge of the cliff and hear the waves splash over them.
It was a hazardous voyage for the six of them and had it not been for Silas they might never have found the vessel they sought. But once more that resourceful man of many skills resolved men difficulty. As soon as he heard their basic plan and realized that the drifter would leave her anchorage when her skipper heard the army was beginning its punitive sweep of the county, he hurried away, found him about to cast off, but persuaded him to take him aboard.
‘I made no mention of you or your cousins,’ Silas told Alan later that afternoon as they proceeded, fishing as they went, towards a likely rendezvous south of Portland. ‘Not until we was outside the river and tide slack on the ebb. Then I told him you would be waiting for the help he could give an he would. So he called me an old rogue, a proper fox and I deserved to be hanged. Which I would be for sure, I told him, if he took me back in to land.’
‘Come you with us, then?’ Alan asked. ‘We plan for France. At least –’
‘I understand you, master. So be it. The Hall’s burned, my master’s dead, his friends, if they live, will be in hiding from now on. I dare not hazard the good people by Lulworth again so soon, nor are we likely to meet them. Our skipper hath some knowledge he keeps to himself and we must needs trust him.’
In the King's Absence Page 13
