The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [217]
‘I shall go and see the king one day and tell him I want my daddy back,’ she said. And who knew, thought Alice, given the genial character of Charles II, it might work. But not yet. It was too soon. So she wrote to her husband and told him every detail of what they all did and how Betty grew; and he wrote long and loving letters in return; and they both prayed that with the passing of time, he might come back – one day.
In the meantime, what was there to do? She was glad at least to be in the Forest. It was the country of her childhood and her family. In Betty she could relive her own happy early days. There was comfort in that. There was always plenty to keep her occupied, from day to day. Yet how could she fill the other void in her life?
To her surprise it was religion that did so.
She had never been especially religious before her marriage. Of course, she and John had been vigorous supporters of their congregation in London; but how much of that, she wondered, had been her husband’s desire to keep close with Cromwell and his family? Her new interest had come from another source entirely and was quite unexpected.
Stephen Pride’s wife. It was unusual for a Pride to marry someone from outside the Forest, but one fine Saturday morning, when the Pride family had gone down into Lymington to the little market there, Stephen Pride had met his future wife and that was it. Her family had come from Portsmouth, some years before. She was quiet, kindly, about Alice’s age with light-brown hair and grey eyes very like Alice’s own. ‘He says he married me because I reminded him of you,’ Joan Pride once confessed to her. Alice couldn’t help being rather pleased about that.
Joan Pride was devout. All her family were. Like so many others in the small towns round England’s coasts, these honest folk had read their Bible in the days of Queen Elizabeth and found nothing there about bishops and priests and ceremonies; so they had preferred to gather in small meeting houses, choose their own leaders and preachers, and lead a simple, godly life in peace, if only they were allowed. When Charles I had found such freedom intolerable, many of these folk had emigrated to the new settlements in America; some had fought the king in Cromwell’s army. During the Civil War and under the Protector’s rule they had been able to worship as they pleased.
Every Sunday, therefore, while her husband watched with a tolerant smile, Joan Pride had set out from Oakley, sometimes taking one or two of her children, and walked the two miles into Lymington where she joined her family at the meeting house. And now and then, when she was not in London with her husband, Alice had joined the congregation at their prayers. There was no reason why not. In matters of religion these had been democratic days. Although somewhat surprised to find such an important lady in their midst, they quietly welcomed her; and for her part, she liked them. ‘I’ve heard sermons there from travelling preachers quite as good’, she had told John Lisle, ‘as ever I heard in London.’
Often on these occasions she would lead her horse beside Joan Pride and her children as far as Oakley, in pleasant conversation, before returning to Albion House. Their relationship was entirely comfortable. As was the custom, she called her tenant’s wife Goody Pride and Joan called her Dame Alice. When John Lisle had been made one of Cromwell’s Lords, properly she should have been called Lady Lisle, or My Lady, but Alice noticed with amusement that Joan Pride continued quietly to call her Dame Alice – which let Alice know what her Puritan friend thought of lordship. In this way, over the years, while they preserved the usual formality between landlord and tenant, Alice Lisle and Joan Pride became friends.
It was the week after John Lisle had fled from England that Joan Pride came to Albion House. She just happened to be passing that way, she said. She had brought some cakes