Gillian Bagwell - The King’s Mistress

AS SUMMER RIPENED, THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERATURE OF ENGLAND seemed to rise. Every day there was more ominous news. The Catholics of Lancashire had failed to rise for King Charles. Parliament ordered the raising of militias in each county. A month’s pay was provided to the militiamen who were flocking to support the Parliamentary army, and the generals Cromwell, Lambert, and Harrison were harrying the king’s forces as he moved southward. The government clamped down, ordering that all copies of the king’s proclamation were to be turned over to the authorities to be burned by the local hangmen. Public meetings were forbidden. The already stringent restrictions on travel were tightened.

“You cannot think of going to Abbots Leigh now!” Jane’s mother cried over supper on a warm evening towards the end of August. “Soldiers everywhere, and thousands of Scots among them!”

“The Scots are with the king, still far to the north,” Jane responded. “It’s the Roundheads and the militias I would run into, and in any case, my pass provides for a manservant. I’ll take one of the grooms with me.”

“That’s scarcely better. John, you must accompany your sister.”

“You know I can’t, Mother.”

“Or you, Dick.” Anne rounded on her youngest son.

“No more can I,” he said, doggedly tearing into a piece of bread. “I mean to join the king as soon as we are provisioned.”

“I’ll get a son of one of our tenant farmers to travel with Jane,” Thomas Lane intervened. “Some great strapping lad who’ll make sure no harm befalls her.”

Jane’s mother shook her head in exasperation. “That’s a step in the right direction. But, Jane, surely Ellen would understand if you cannot come?”

“I would not ask her to understand.” Jane tried to keep the irritation from her voice. “She wants my company, and I would not miss the chance to be with her for anything.”

JOHN, RICHARD, AND HENRY WERE DAILY AT WALSALL, AND THE TROOP of men and horse they would take to the king’s aid was growing as the people of the surrounding countryside took heart at the prospect of his return to the throne. Jane joined her brothers and cousin in the parlour after supper each evening to hear about the events of the day, and shook her head in disgust as she read the latest proclamation, “An Act Prohibiting Correspondence with Charles Stuart or His Party”.

“‘Whereas certain English fugitives did perfidiously and traitorously assist the enemies and invaders of this Commonwealth and did set up for their head Charles Stuart, calling him their king’!”

“The more frightened they are, the harder they strike out,” Henry said, his booted feet propped on a stool before him. John lit his pipe and blew a smoke ring, watching it dissolve into the shadows before he spoke.

“They’ve made it a capital offence to give aid to the king in any form. There will be no middle ground. If we’re defeated, the repercussions will be bloody and terrible.”

“The king has reached Worcester!” Henry crowed a few nights later. “He summons all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty to rally in the riverside meadows near the cathedral.”

Richard tilted the newly printed broadsheet towards the firelight. “He promises the Scots will return home once the war is done. Perhaps that will mollify Mother.”

A few days before the end of August, Jane heard the men return home earlier than usual, and ran down to the kitchen to hear the news. John was bathing his face with water from a bucket near the door. Henry and Richard stood nearby, their faces ashen.

“What’s happened?” she asked, her heart in her throat.

“The worst news we could have hoped for.” John shook his head, drying his face and hands. “The Earl of Derby had stayed in Lancashire to defend against Cromwell’s advance. Cromwell’s men caught up with him at Wigan. It seems he may have escaped, but more than two thousand have been taken prisoner, including the Duke of Richmond and Lord Beauchamp.”

“The enemy had word of where he was,” Henry said, sinking in despair onto a stool. “There must be spies in the ranks. Some of the Scots are abandoning the king now, and making for the border.”

“The king was already outnumbered,” Richard fretted, slamming his fist onto the big worktable. “The battle could come any day. John, we can’t wait any longer.”

“Another two days,” John said. “Mistress Hawkins has promised a dozen horses, and we’ll need every beast we can get.”

“Let me leave tomorrow,” Richard insisted. “With the men and horses we have now.”

Oh, that I could be riding with you, Jane thought.

“Very well,” John said. “Henry and I will follow the day after.”

THE NEXT EVENING AFTER SUPPER JANE SLIPPED INTO THE PARLOUR to find her brothers and cousin huddled together near the hearth, their worried looks and low urgent conversation presaging some further bad news.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Come in and shut the door,” John said. He handed her a printed broadsheet.

“‘We do hereby publish and declare Charles Stuart, son to the late tyrant, to be a rebel, traitor, and public enemy to the Commonwealth of England,’” Jane read. “‘And all his abettors, agents, and complices to be rebels, traitors, and public enemies, and do hereby command all officers civil and military in all market towns and convenient places, to cause this declaration to be proclaimed and published …’”

She let the proclamation drop to the floor, suddenly wishing that she could bar the doors of the house, locking out danger and keeping these men she loved so much safe at home.

“It’s not that I mind risking my life,” Richard said, his cheeks flushed with anger. “But if we fail and are captured, the dogs will take the house, the land, and we’ll not be here to protect Mother and Father.”

I can’t strap on a sword and a pistol and ride to Worcester with them, Jane thought. But there is something I can do.

“I’ll take care of Mother and Father,” she said. Her brothers and cousin looked at her. “And your family, too, John, if it comes to that. You must go.”

“How can you?” Richard shook his head. “Your love won’t feed them nor yet put a roof over their heads if Cromwell’s men burn the house.”

The reference to burning hung heavy in the air. An earlier Bentley Hall had been burned down seventy years ago by the mayor and members of the corporation of Walsall during a dispute over common rights, and during the wars many houses had been destroyed by troops on both sides.

“I can marry Clement Fisher,” she said.

She felt numb and then consumed by panic, as if her air were being cut off. Don’t be stupid, she told herself, swallowing back tears. If they can risk death on the battlefield or scaffold, how can I hesitate? The men were all staring at her, and she squared her shoulders and swallowed the sobs that were rising to her throat.

“If you go, we will stand firm here at home, whatever comes.”

John came to her and wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb.

“Thank you, Jane. It’s a weight off my mind to think so. But let’s pray the battle ends with the king on the throne, and it doesn’t come to such a pass.”

RICHARD AND PART OF THE NEWLY FORMED WALSALL ROYALIST REGIMENT set off to join the king on the first of September. Cromwell had arrived at Red Hill outside the city walls of Worcester, his New Model Army augmented by local militias from across England, and the battle must begin any day. On the third of September, John and Henry rode northward with another hundred men and horses. The house seemed eerily empty and quiet as the family gathered for dinner.