The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [234]
But for young Betty things could be different. Her youngest child, having lost her father, had missed the joys of early childhood she had known; but the rest would be better: a life of peace and security – the sort of life that she, Alice, had always expected to live in her house in the friendly Forest.
The very day after news of Monmouth’s arrival in the West Country Peter Albion had come to Tryphena’s house to pay his respects to his cousin Alice and her daughter. He had been pleasant company, very polite, but quietly forthright. ‘The English will not tolerate a Catholic king,’ he stated. ‘Nor do I think they should.’ He bowed to Alice as though he clearly expected she would endorse these views. ‘Let us hope Monmouth succeeds.’ He had smiled. ‘I have some friends in that camp, Cousin Alice. I expect word of success at any time. Then, I can assure you, we shall see King James sent packing.’
As he spoke, she had felt herself go cold. It was her own husband again, John Lisle. ‘Do not say such things,’ she cried. ‘This is dangerous.’
‘I should not, I assure you, Cousin Alice,’ he said quietly. ‘Except in such company as this.’
Such company as this; the phrase had terrified her. Was Betty already assumed to be a conspirator? Was Peter Albion going to drag her into that role? ‘Leave us, Sir,’ she begged, ‘and speak no more of this.’
But he had, nonetheless, seen Betty again a few days later. And although she had not liked it, it had been difficult to refuse her kinsman entry to the house. Wisely, he had never made any reference to these dangerous subjects again, but as far as she was concerned the damage was done. She had begged her daughter to have no more to do with him, to no avail. It wasn’t easy: Betty was twenty-four. And she might, that very day, have taken her back to the safety of the Forest if she had not received, this morning, a letter from John Hancock.
Do not, I urge you, return to Albion House. Rebellion has broken out at Lymington. They have sent to you for support already. For God’s sake stay in London and say nothing.
She had hastily torn up the letter and thrown it in the fire.
Say nothing. Would young Peter Albion say nothing? And Betty? She looked at her daughter desperately. ‘Dear child,’ she began softly, ‘if you are not careful we shall soon be hunted.’ She shook her head at the thought of it. ‘Like deer in the Forest.’
Stephen Pride walked slowly past Oakley pond. He was seventy-five, but he certainly didn’t feel it. Tall and lean, he still strode about – more slowly, a bit stiffly perhaps – just as he had all his long life. Common sense told him he wouldn’t live much longer, but whatever cause God had prepared to strike him down, he had no sense of it. ‘I’ve known men live to be eighty,’ he remarked contentedly. ‘Reckon I might.’
It had been one of the small joys of his long life to watch the pond by the hamlet’s green. Its fluctuations were always the same, year after year, with the seasons. By late autumn, after the rains had fallen, the pool was fairly full. In winter it often froze. Two years ago, in the coldest winter Pride could ever remember, the pond had been frozen solid from November to April. Then, when the spring showers came and the warmth of May, the pond’s whole surface would be covered with white flowers, as though the water itself had broken into blossom.
The wonder of the pond was the way it filled. There was no stream, as such, not even a rivulet. But as the rains fell on the nearby heath, somehow, as by a miracle, they drained off invisibly, tiny trickles you hardly saw that gathered by the hamlet into a small snake of water that ran across the green and spread out into the shallow depression beside