The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [239]
By that night they were already at an inn twenty miles down the road.
‘We should be in Winchester by tomorrow night,’ Alice said cheerfully.
Jim Pride was surprised, two days later, to see a carriage containing Alice and Betty Lisle passing through Lyndhurst. At the same moment he saw them, Alice Lisle caught sight of him and waved for him to come over.
Betty, he noticed, was looking a bit subdued, but Alice greeted him warmly, asked after his father and mother, and demanded to know all the news.
The Forest, as it happened, had been quiet for a week, until today. A rumour from somewhere had caused the authorities to think there might be fugitives about to embark from Lymington. There had been a house-to-house search there that morning, but nothing had been found.
‘I reckon it’ll all be quiet after this,’ Jim said.
Alice, however, had looked thoughtful. ‘I think, all the same, we won’t go to Albion House just yet,’ she said. ‘It’s too close to Lymington.’ She smiled at Pride. ‘Tell the coachman we’ll go to Moyles Court instead,’ she requested. ‘We’ve still time to get there before dark.’ Moyles Court, right across in the Avon valley, seemed a safer bet altogether.
William Furzey had just finished work for the day and he was walking up the Avon to a spot where he intended to do a little unobserved fishing, when he came upon the man on the horse. The horse was not impressive. The man was a rather frail-looking fellow, with grey hair and mild, watery blue eyes. He seemed to be lost. ‘Could you tell me’,’ he enquired, ‘the way to Moyles Court?’
William eyed him. A townsman by the look of him, a small trader or craftsman, perhaps. Didn’t sound local. William Furzey wasn’t stupid; he knew an opportunity when he saw it. The fish could wait. ‘’T’ain’t easy to find,’ he said. The house was, in fact, less than a mile off by a straight lane. The stranger looked tired. ‘I could take you there,’ William offered, ‘but it’d be out of my way.’
‘Would sixpence repay your kindness?’ A day labourer’s wage was eight pence. Sixpence from an ordinary townsman like this, therefore, was handsome. He must want to find the place badly. Furzey nodded.
He took a circuitous route. Moyles Court lay in a clearing just below the ridge that led up from the Avon valley to the heathland of the Forest. This part of the valley was quite wooded, so it wasn’t difficult for Furzey to stretch the journey to two miles, taking paths that sometimes doubled back on themselves. Since the stranger made no remark, Furzey concluded that his sense of direction wasn’t strong. It also gave him the chance to find out more about him. Had he come from far? The man was evasive. What was his occupation?
‘I am a baker,’ his companion admitted.
A baker, from a long way off, prepared to pay sixpence to find Moyles Court. This man was almost certainly a dissenter, then, looking for that damned Lisle woman. Furzey bided his time before speaking. ‘You seek a godly lady,’ he ventured in a pious voice, at the next wrong turn he made.
‘You think so?’
‘I do. If it is Dame Alice you seek.’
‘Ah.’ The baker looked pleased. His watery blue eyes brightened hopefully.
Furzey wasn’t quite sure where this conversation would lead, but one thing was certain: the more he could learn from this man, the more chance he had of using it for profit. And the beginning of an idea was starting to form in his mind. ‘There are many good folk she has helped,’ Furzey continued. He thought of the hated Prides and mentioned the names of some of their Lymington relations. ‘But I must be careful what I say,’ he added, ‘not knowing who you may be.’
And now the poor fool smiled gladly. ‘You may know me, friend,’ he cried. ‘My name is Dunne and I come all the way from Warminster. I have a message to deliver to Dame Alice.’
Warminster: west of Sarum by twenty miles. A long way for a dissenting baker to be carrying a message. His first suspicions began to grow. This fellow might be useful indeed.
‘By what name