The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [247]
But it was at this moment that she also realized her terrible mistake. If the troops entered the house, was there really any chance they wouldn’t find the three men? If they had been sleeping innocently, it might not look so bad, but the fact that she was trying to hide them suggested guilt. What could she do? A panic seized her; she saw that her hand, holding the candle, had started to shake. She fought to master herself. Perhaps she could bluff. It was her only hope now. ‘By what warrant do you dare to invade my house, Sir?’ She stared at him haughtily.
‘My warrant is the king’s name, Madam.’
‘Produce your warrant, Sir,’ she cried furiously, although she hadn’t the least idea if a warrant were needed or not, ‘or be gone.’ Did he hesitate? She wasn’t sure. ‘So,’ she cried again, ‘I see you have none. You are nothing but common trespassers, then.’ And she started to close the door.
Penruddock’s boot was in the way. A moment later the two troopers had pushed rudely past her. Then two more, out of the shadows, came blundering in.
‘Lights,’ voices were calling. ‘Bring lights.’
It did not take long to find them. Beyond the kitchen lay a large, barn-like room known as the malt-house. Hicks the minister, who was a large, corpulent man, and Dunne the baker had tried to bury themselves under a pile of refuse in there and were dragged out, looking foolish. Hicks’s companion Nelthorpe, a tall, thin fellow, had tried to hide in the kitchen chimney.
Penruddock addressed them briefly. ‘Richard Nelthorpe, you have already been outlawed as a rebel; John Hicks, you also are known to have been with Monmouth; James Dunne, you are their willing accomplice. You are all arrested. Alice Lisle,’ he added crossly, ‘you are harbouring traitors.’
‘I am giving shelter to a respectable minister,’ she retorted scornfully.
‘To traitors fleeing, Madam, from Monmouth’s rebellion.’
‘I know nothing of that, Sir,’ she replied.
‘A judge and jury will decide that. You are under arrest.’
‘I?’ She glanced down at her nightdress. ‘And what sort of soldier are you, Sir,’ she said with contempt, ‘who comes to arrest women in the night?’ She defied him; she despised him openly in front of his own troops.
How strange it was, he thought. He had expected to find an evil old witch; instead he found that same haughty, forceful woman who even now was ready to stare him down. Just as they had once before, the years seemed to fall away and he was looking at the terrible figure of vengeance who, if he were still alive, would strike his poor father down again. As she stared at him with those cold grey eyes, he could almost have trembled. And, taken by surprise, he suddenly felt, like a blow to the stomach, all the old pain of the loss of the father he had so loved. To his utter astonishment he found he had to turn away.
It was not so much with anger as with pain that, striding out into the darkness, he called back: ‘Arrest them all.’
It took some minutes before they were brought out. He did not bother to interfere. When they came he saw that Alice was still dressed only in her nightclothes. He also observed that one of the troopers had obviously appropriated a silver candlestick and some linen. He did not care.
‘Where are we going?’ cried Dunne.
‘To Salisbury gaol,’ he answered bleakly. And off they went, with Dame Alice incongruously made to ride pillion behind one of the troopers.
He shouldn’t have allowed it, Thomas Penruddock thought, but he truly didn’t care.
On 24 August in the Year of Our Lord 1685 there arrived near the city of Winchester a large cavalcade. Five judges, a flock of lawyers, Jack Ketch, the official and highly incompetent executioner, marshals, clerks, servants and outriders – the whole panoply of justice needed, in the reign of His Majesty King James II of England, to hang, decapitate, burn, whip or transport to the colonies the more than twelve hundred men unlucky enough to be caught after marching with Monmouth. At the head of this