The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [237]
But now Monmouth was captured and unless he could find some way to persuade his uncle, the new King James, to pardon him, he was undoubtedly going to die.
Colonel Thomas Penruddock felt no emotion, personally. If Monmouth had succeeded that wouldn’t have worried him much either. He felt none of the emotion for the cause of James II that his father had felt for his brother Charles. Why should he? He wasn’t a Catholic. The reigning Stuarts had never done anything for his family to repay their loyalty. The colonelcy he wanted had gone to another. He had finally obtained it only four years before. No, he felt nothing for the Stuarts any more.
But he did believe in order and Monmouth, by rebelling, threatened disorder. As he’d failed, he must die.
The fact that this was exactly what had happened to his own poor father did not make Thomas Penruddock sympathetic in the least. Rather the reverse. Monmouth should have learned from the other man’s mistakes, he told himself grimly. The rebellion had been poorly organized and had come too soon. Very well, then. They killed my father, he thought. Let Monmouth suffer his turn now.
Monmouth’s capture had been a wretched business. Penruddock and his cavalry squadrons had been out on the ridges below Sarum and been unlucky to miss the fugitive, who had somehow slipped past them. But he had finally been discovered about seven miles west of Ringwood, disguised as a shepherd, half starved and hiding in a ditch. The honour of spotting him had gone to a militia man named Henry Parkin. Penruddock had ridden down to Ringwood as soon as he received word of the capture, out of curiosity as much as anything, and had not been surprised to find his cousin, who was a local magistrate, already there.
But now the door of the vicarage was opening. They were bringing him out. The crowd was watching expectantly.
He had been given some clothes to wear, but he was still a bedraggled figure. He looked dead beat. In that haggard face, with a week’s growth of beard, Penruddock found it hard to see the handsome, spoiled youth he had briefly caught sight of that day in the Forest, fifteen years ago, when he had gone to see the king.
They didn’t waste any time. They hustled him down the street, past a row of thatched Tudor cottages, to a larger house by the market place where he could be conveniently held under guard.
‘What will they do with him now?’ Penruddock asked his cousin.
‘Keep him here a day or two,’ the magistrate replied, ‘then to the Tower of London I should think.’
‘My men are still out looking for fugitives. I hear they’ve rounded up hundreds further west.’ He looked after the figure of Monmouth as he disappeared into the other house. ‘You think he has any chance?’
‘Doubt it.’ The magistrate shook his head. ‘I’m sure he’ll appeal to the king for mercy, but’ – he gave his cousin a sidelong glance – ‘with the feeling in the country the way it is, I doubt whether the king can afford to let him live.’
Colonel Thomas Penruddock nodded. Even with Monmouth dead, Catholic King James II was unlikely, in his opinion, to be secure on his throne for very long.
His cousin the magistrate, echoing his thoughts, looked down at the ground. ‘Too little, too soon,’ he murmured.
The crowd was breaking up.
‘I think I’m going,’ Colonel Penruddock remarked and was just turning his horse’s head when he noticed a man who, it occurred to him, looked uncommonly like a turnip – a rather grumpy turnip, come to that. The fellow seemed to be watching them. ‘Who’s that ugly fellow?’ he asked his cousin. ‘Any idea?’
The magistrate glanced at William Furzey and shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Looks like a turnip.’
Although William Furzey knew perfectly well who the magistrate was, and had been gazing with mild envy at the fine horses that he and the Colonel rode, his mind had not been on the Penruddocks at all.
If he was not looking his best that morning, it really wasn’t his fault. He’d only just got back from Oakley when he heard about Monmouth’s defeat and the reward. He hadn’t wasted any time. He’d seized a cudgel and