The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [222]
‘Because, Your Majesty’ – Purkiss’s face was as solemn as a judge’s – ‘the forester who carried away the king’s body on his cart was my own ancestor. His name was Purkiss.’
There was a peal of laughter from Nellie.
King Charles bit his lip. ‘The devil he was,’ he said.
Pride stared at his friend with stupefaction. The cunning rascal, he thought. The cleverness with which the thing was done; the way Purkiss had carefully stopped and let the king draw this last, astounding piece of information from him. And the man was still standing there, without even the hint of a smirk on his face.
As for King Charles II of England who, whatever his vices or his virtues, was certainly one of the most accomplished liars who ever sat upon a throne, he gazed down at Purkiss with professional admiration. ‘Here’s another guinea, Purkiss,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if your ancestor’s name appears one day in history books.’
Which it did.
It was not often that Alice Lisle couldn’t make up her mind. Some people would have been surprised to know that such a thing ever occurred. But this morning, as she looked coldly at her family and at Mr Hancock the lawyer, she hesitated; and her hesitation was not unreasonable. ‘I wish that somebody would tell me’, she remarked in her usual businesslike manner, ‘how I am to ask a favour of a man when my husband killed his father.’
For they wanted her to ride across the Forest and see the king.
There were many who thought that Alice Lisle was hard. She didn’t really care. If I’m not strong, she had long ago concluded, who will be? If she was attacked, who would defend her? She had looked about. She didn’t see anybody.
It wasn’t as if she had a husband any more. Sometimes she would have liked one: somebody to hold her, comfort her and love her; especially during that period, just after John Lisle’s death, when she was passing sadly from her childbearing years towards the age of fifty. But there had been no one, so she had faced it all alone.
God knows there had been plenty to do. And she had managed fairly well. Her triumph had been the marriage of her stepson. With the help of family friends she had found him a handsome girl who was heiress to a rich estate near Southampton. Her late husband would have been proud of her, and grateful, for that. As far as her own daughters were concerned they had so far married godly men, but none of wealth; and this, Alice frankly admitted, was probably her own fault.
The religious meetings she had begun at Albion House had soon grown into something more. Word spread quickly among the Puritan community. Since the new restrictions upon them, men who had been living as well-beneficed ministers had to toe the line of the Anglican Church; those who refused lost their livings. So there was no shortage of respectable men who were only too glad of the hospitality of a country house from which to preach. Soon she found she was letting them stay at Moyles Court as well and people were coming to hear preachings from Ringwood, Fordingbridge and other villages up the Avon river almost as far as Sarum. Some of the preachers, inevitably, were handsome unmarried men.
Margaret, as she had foreseen, had married Whitaker. Tryphena had wed a worthy Puritan gentleman named Lloyd. But Bridget, Alice considered, had found the most distinguished man of them all, a scholarly minister named Leonard Hoar, who had been in America and studied at the new university of Harvard before returning to England as a notable preacher. There had been talk of his returning with Bridget to Puritan Massachusetts when a good position came up, perhaps at Harvard. Sometimes Alice thought there was too much nervousness in his disposition, but his brilliance was undoubted. She was sorry that she seldom saw them.
For the moment, then, Alice could consider her daughters settled, except for