The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [226]
‘Well shot, Sire,’ cried one of the courtiers, while Charles, without the slightest show of disappointment, turned to his ladies for approval.
Stephen Pride, riding past an instant later, could have sworn he heard Nellie cry: ‘I hope you’re not going to hurt any of those poor little deer, Charles.’ And after a moment or two, just as they were about to begin another drive, there was a shout: ‘To Bolderwood!’ And to the utter astonishment of the Forest men, the whole party prepared to ride back to the lodge, where refreshments were awaiting them. Did all kings, Stephen wondered, get bored so quickly?
But Charles II was not bored at all. He was doing what he liked best, which was to learn how things worked, with a shrewder eye than people supposed, and to flirt with pretty women. And an hour afterwards he was quite happily doing the latter when he observed, with no great pleasure, two figures, cut, it seemed, from the same brown cloth, riding towards him. Who the devil, he murmured to the Master Keeper, were they? Alice Lisle, he was informed. The child was her daughter.
‘Shall I send them away, Sire?’ Howard enquired, as he turned to meet them.
‘No,’ came the answer, with a sigh, ‘although I wish you could make them vanish.’
She had done her best, Charles saw at once, to make herself agreeable. Her reddish hair, streaked with grey was parted in the middle: she had curled and combed it to try to give it more body. Her plain dress was long out of fashion, but the cloth was good. She had made a little concession to him by wearing a lacy cravat. She looked what she was: a Puritan gentlewoman, a widow secretly sad that she had grown a little hard – not the king’s type at all. But he felt slightly sorry for her. The small girl looked much more promising, though: fairer than her mother; eyes more blue than grey; a twinkle there, perhaps.
So when Howard returned and murmured that the widow Lisle had come to beg a favour, Charles gave her a long, cool look and then remarked: ‘You and your daughter shall join our party, Madam.’
Bolderwood was a charming spot. Situated nearly four miles west of Lyndhurst, by the edge of open heath, it consisted of a paddock, a little inclosure of trees, including an ancient yew tree, and the usual outbuildings. The main house was quite modest, a simple lodge, really, where a gentleman keeper lived. Nearby, beside a pair of fine oak trees, was the small but pleasant cottage that went with Jim Pride’s job as underkeeper. As the day was fine, the refreshments had been set out in the open under the shade of the trees.
Dishes of sweetmeats, venison pie, light Bordeaux wine: all were offered Alice and her daughter as they sat on the folding stools provided. The king and some of the ladies lounged on rolled blankets draped with heavy damasks. It was a scene typical of the Restoration, as Charles II’s reign was often called: courtly, amusing, easygoing, louche. Alice understood at once that the king meant to punish her a little by making her take part in it and she shrewdly guessed that he might deliberately steer the conversation into areas designed to shock her. For the time being, nobody took any notice of the visitors at all, however, and so she was free to listen and observe.
They represented, of course, everything that she and John Lisle had fought against. Their cavalier clothes, their immoral ways said it all. She might, she suspected, have been at the court of the Catholic King of France. The stern, moral rule that the Cromwellians at least aimed at was wholly foreign to these pleasure seekers. Yet, if she didn’t approve, she quite enjoyed their wit.
At one point the conversation turned to witchcraft. One of the ladies had heard there were witches in the Forest and asked Howard if it was true. He didn’t know.
The king shook his head. ‘Every disagreeable woman is accused of magic in our age,’ he remarked. ‘And I’m sure a great many harmless creatures are burned. Most magic