The Painter's Apprentice (35 page)

November 1688

It was the first week of November and Beth yawned as she stared out of the studio window. She’d slept badly due to a violent
storm in Chelsea, which had banged the shutters all night long. A bitter wind, heralding winter, had whistled its way through
the casements and moaned down the chimney. Sleepless, she’d huddled under the blankets, rigid with cold.

It had been two and a half months since Noah had left; two and a half long months for her to lie miserably awake each night
and to stare unseeingly at a blank canvas by day.

The botanical paintings she had finished in the brief period when she thought Noah loved her were propped up on the shelf.
Always self-critical, even she could see how confidently the paintings were rendered, each bloom so lifelike that the fragile
petals begged to be touched.

And then there was her recent work. On the table was a vase containing a magnificent hothouse lily, the double form, shaded
from saffron through ochre yellow to cinnabar, like a glorious
sunset. On her easel rested her half-finished image of it. The painted petals might have been carved from wood and she’d carelessly
smudged one of the leaves. She stared at it for an age, while the fear that she might never be able to paint again rose up
until it nearly choked her.

In sudden despair she tore the canvas off the easel and threw it to the floor. She covered her eyes with her hands, tears
of wretchedness seeping between her fingers.

Later, a sound outside made her wipe her eyes and glance out of the window again. As she watched, a man on a black horse galloped
across the quadrangle, his spurs and sword a-jingle and his cloak flying behind. Beth pressed her forehead to the glass to
see what was happening.

The horseman waved his hat in the air and shouted out the news for all to hear. ‘The Prince of Orange has landed!’

Beth pushed open the casement and hung over the sill, watching the palace household pour out of the doorways to greet the
messenger, cheering and calling out to him. They crowded around him, plying him with questions and pulling at his mud-spattered
clothes to catch his attention.

Beth ran downstairs and caught up with Bishop Compton as he hurried across the quadrangle. The Bishop smiled briefly at her.
‘News at last!’ he said.

The messenger slid down from his horse, exhaustion plain to see on his ashen face.

‘Robert Collier,’ he said. ‘I’ve ridden without stopping from Tor Bay to bring you the news.’ Collier, barely more than a
boy, swayed and closed his eyes.

‘Give the man some air!’ commanded the Bishop. ‘Fetch hot wine and refreshments to the great hall.’ He guided the lad indoors.

Beth and Judith joined the rest of the household gathered in the great hall, all eager to hear the news.

The Bishop stood on the dais with the messenger. ‘Robert Collier
here is come to give you an account of the Prince of Orange’s armada,’ he said.

Collier, his young face flushed, waited until the whispers and coughs died down. ‘It was foggy,’ he said. ‘And then the wind
blew away the mist and there were nigh on four hundred ships all crowded together.’

A cheer went up from the gardener’s apprentices.

‘I climbed to the top of the church tower in Brill to look out over Tor Bay. Storms were still sweeping down from the sea.
The smaller ships, bucking in the rough water and shaking the spray out of their sails, were nigh overwhelmed.’ Collier took
a fortifying sip of wine and continued.

‘A whole host of us ran down to the beach and saw the Prince of Orange and his guard disembark. They climbed up the hill to
the south of the beach with their flags flying and trumpets playing. The soldiers, some dripping wet and others rolling and
falling over from being so long at sea, left the ships and formed into their regiments.

‘We watched as the ships were unloaded. You’ve never seen such piles of provisions: hay for the horses, tents, artillery and
explosives! Horses, whinnying in terror, were lowered off the decks into the sea to swim ashore. The men of Brill cheered
and women waved as the soldiers marched past, accompanied by drum, flute and trumpet.’

‘And what of the King’s fleet?’ called out George London.

Collier shrugged. ‘I heard that the same west wind, the
Protestant
wind, that sent the Dutch armada to us, pinned the King’s fleet back in the estuary.’

A roar of approval reverberated around the great hall.

Bishop Compton held up his hand for silence.

‘What will happen now?’ shouted out Nicholas Tanner.

The Bishop waved a pamphlet in the air. ‘This is a copy of a Declaration issued by the Prince of Orange. It says that his
aim is to maintain the Protestant religion, install a free parliament and
investigate the legitimacy of the Prince of Wales. It is to be hoped that the King will cooperate.’

‘And the Dutch army?’

‘The Prince of Orange’s army will march to Exeter, where they hope to remain while the soldiers and the horses refresh themselves.
After that …’ Bishop Compton shrugged. ‘We will have to wait for news.’

When Beth arrived at Chelsea that evening she found Lady Arabella in a flood of tears with Sir George ineptly fluttering about
her.

‘My babies!’ Lady Arabella clasped her hand dramatically against her brow. ‘Joshua and Samuel have gone to war!’ She began
to wail, angrily brushing Sir George’s ministering hands away.

Beth stared at her.

‘Don’t gawp at me like that!’ shouted Lady Arabella. ‘They left me a note! Can you imagine that? Their own mother and they
left me a note!’ She began to roll from side to side, tearing at her hair and uttering ululating cries.

Beth turned to Sir George. ‘A measure of brandy, perhaps?’ He nodded, his perpetual smile fixed, but his glance flickered
from Beth and back to his keening wife with panic in his eyes. Beth pushed him in the direction of the decanter.

Lady Arabella had worked herself into a fine fit of hysterics and refused to be consoled. Beth tried speaking calmingly to
her, then with more authority, but her step-grandmother was far too engrossed in her troubles to listen. At last, Beth gave
a mental shrug and slapped her, hard, on the cheek.

There was a deathly silence during which Beth took the opportunity to thrust Sir George’s glass of brandy to Lady Arabella’s
lips before she could react.

Lady Arabella took a deep breath and then sank the brandy in one.

‘The Prince of Orange has landed,’ said Sir George. ‘Joshua and Samuel have gone to aid His Majesty’s cause.’

‘The twins are no more suited to being soldiers than …’ Beth struggled to find the words, ‘than a bumble bee!’

‘Ah!’ said Sir George, the smile back on his face again. ‘But collect a swarm of bumble-bees together and you need to be very
careful of their stings.’

Beth had no answer to that.

Beth wasn’t entirely surprised when Joshua and Samuel turned up in Lady Arabella’s drawing room again one day at the end of
November.

‘You can have no idea of how hard a camp bed can be,’ complained Joshua.

‘Or how cold,’ added Samuel, as his mother cried tears of joy and pressed him to her bosom.

‘Please tell me you haven’t deserted?’ begged Sir George in a dangerously quiet voice.

‘Of course not!’ Joshua raised his eyebrows. ‘Why ever would you think such a dreadful thing of us? We’ve merely slipped away
for a night or two in order to bring you the news.’

‘Won’t you be missed?’ asked Beth.

‘There’s such confusion on Salisbury Plain that no one will notice,’ said Samuel.

Sir George covered his eyes with his hand. ‘And what news is so important that it causes you to abscond, albeit only for a
night or two?’

‘At least
we
didn’t creep off in the dead of night to join the Dutch! But the Earl of Clarendon’s son, Viscount Cornbury, did.’

‘That was very ill of him,’ said Sir George. ‘He shall be sorry for it when the Prince of Orange runs home with his tail between
his legs.’

Lady Arabella coughed and nodded meaningfully at Sir George, sending a glance at Beth. ‘Beth, fetch my cream wool shawl, will
you? It’s turned a little chilly.’

Reluctantly, Beth rose to her feet.

‘And ask Cook to send in a tray for the twins immediately. The chicken pie and the cold mutton will do.’

Beth hurried to the kitchens, seething that Arabella was sending her away when there was such interesting news to be heard.

‘We was going to have that pie for our dinner,’ grumbled Cook as she foraged in the larder.

Leaving her to it, Beth raced up the stairs two at a time in a way Lady Arabella would not have approved of and snatched the
shawl from her lady’s maid before running downstairs again. The drawing-room door was ajar so she had no qualms about peering
through the narrow opening to listen to the conversation.

‘The Prince of Orange has gained an additional twelve thousand recruits since he landed so His Majesty came to stiffen the
troops by his presence …’ Samuel poured a glass of wine. ‘But King James is taken very poorly. He has continual nosebleeds,
great gushing fountains of blood, in spite of an ice-cold gate key placed down the back of his neck.’

‘Everything is ice cold in the camp,’ added Joshua. ‘The royal physicians say it’s a sickness of the spirit that the King
suffers.’

‘Are there other desertions?’ asked Sir George.

Beth listened intently, hoping for news she could impart to Bishop Compton.

‘You haven’t heard the half of it!’ Joshua drained his entire glass of wine in one gulp. ‘There was Thomas Langston who was
with the Duke of Alban’s cavalry …’

‘And the Duke of Grafton and Colonel Berkeley,’ said Samuel, tucking into a monstrous great slice of chicken pie.

Sir George’s smile wavered.

‘Morale is very low amongst the men,’ said Joshua, through a
mouthful of boiled mutton. ‘No one knows if his commanding officer or the man standing next to him is friend or traitor.’

‘And we can all hear the King’s lamentations coming from his tent. It’s most unnerving.’ Samuel put down his bread, as if
he’d suddenly lost his appetite.

Joshua took up the story. ‘And then, in the early hours of this morning, Lord Churchill went to join the Prince of Orange
and his men at Axminster.’

‘Closely followed by Prince George of Denmark.’

There was silence.

Then Sir George, not smiling at all and his face bone white, said, ‘So now both the King’s daughters and their husbands have
abandoned him?’

Joshua shrugged, his cheek bulging with bread. ‘His Majesty is expected to return to London in the next day or two but meanwhile
he’s given orders that both Princess Anne and Lady Sarah Churchill are to be arrested.’

Beth gasped. If the King thought that Princess Anne had betrayed him what dreadful fate might befall her?

‘When?’ asked Lady Arabella.

‘Tonight. At the latest, tomorrow morning,’ said Joshua. ‘They will merely be kept under house arrest at first but Lady Sarah,
at the least, will be sent to the Tower.’

‘They must be prevented at all costs from joining their husbands!’ said Sir George. ‘How will it look for the King if both
his daughters and the wife of his most important brigadier-general are supporting the Prince of Orange?’

An icy chill of fear gripped hold of Beth. Members of the royal family were not excluded from charges of treason. The Princess
and Lady Sarah were in terrible danger.

‘My dear,’ said Sir George to his wife, ‘I fear the tide may have turned against us.’ He was unable to conceal the tremor
in his voice. ‘Go straight away to your maid and bid her pack. Tell the
housekeeper to close up the house. We will leave for Windsor this very afternoon.’

Lady Arabella remained motionless for a moment. ‘But if the Princess of Denmark and Sarah Churchill are restrained we have
little to fear.’

‘Quite so but nevertheless …’ he drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Nevertheless, I believe we will withdraw and remain at
Windsor until matters become clear.’

Lady Arabella scraped back her chair and Beth shrank back behind the door as she hurried from the room without another word.