The King's Mistress (20 page)

In Jane’s absence the family had learned that her brother Richard had been arrested and imprisoned after Worcester. He was likely at Chester Castle, but they did not know what his fate would be.

Bentley was not the only local household left reeling after the battle. Many men had been injured or killed or captured, or had managed to escape arrest but had since fled across the sea.

Jane strolled with John in the orchard one morning, eager to be able to speak privately. The early fruit had been harvested, and only the apple trees were still heavy with their red and gold bounty. A cool breeze rustled through the trees, and russet leaves drifted in the wind.

“Charles Giffard says that Colonel Carlis was at Boscobel when the king was there,” John said, stopping to examine the entrance to a badger sett, the burrowed tunnel leading towards the roots of an apricot tree. “Giffard was under Carlis’s command at Worcester, and they were in the thick of the fighting at Sidbury Gate and High Street. Carlis just got out of the city with his life, and now is gone to the Low Countries.” He dusted his hands on the knees of his breeches, and they resumed their walk. “Giffard was taken with the Earl of Derby, but managed to escape. He fears he may be taken yet, and thinks of going to France.”

“Any word of the king?” Jane whispered.

John shook his head. “In Walsall the other day I heard tales of his being gone to the United Provinces or Scotland. But it’s all rumour. Cromwell’s men are still searching round here, and in Worcestershire.”

“Thank God,” Jane breathed. “He should be in France by now. Will you take me to town next time you go? Perhaps there will be news. And as glad as I was to be home, now I am restless to be out and doing.”

John smiled. “Your journeys have given you a taste for novelty and bustle.”

He had given no indication that he knew what had passed between her and Charles, so Henry must have thought better of his threat to tell him, Jane thought with relief. She could not bear the thought of her adored older brother regarding her with scorn and disapproval as Henry had.

“Maybe so,” she agreed. “All I know is that I feel like a bird in a cage, and long to stretch my wings.”

A
LITTLE MORE THAN A WEEK AFTER
J
ANE AND
H
ENRY HAD RETURNED
home, Jane accompanied John to market day at Wolverhampton. There had still been no news of Charles, and each day’s passing increased her agitation. If all had gone as he expected, he should be in France, and word should have reached England by now. She was glad of the opportunity to distract herself with such mundane business as matching a colour of embroidery thread for her mother and gazing with admiration at the fine horses for sale. She tried to ignore the troops everywhere throughout the town.

A new book would be a good thing to occupy her mind, Jane thought, and she made for the bookseller’s stall where she and John had agreed to meet. Before she could begin to examine the books, however, her eye was caught by stacks of a broadsheet headed “Last News of the King of Scotland”.

Her eyes raced over the words. The king had fled into Scotland to Lord Belcarris, it said, and Cromwell’s men were in pursuit. Surely it was not possible, Jane thought. He would hardly have left Trent, so close to the southern coast, and ridden north, back into danger.

She bought a copy of the Parliamentary newsbook
Mercurius Politicus
, but found no comfort there. The Earl of Derby, who had been captured shortly after leaving Charles at Whiteladies in the hours after the battle, had been tried, despite having been given quarter when he was taken, and had been found guilty of treason for aiding the king. Jane thought of Charles gazing out the bedroom window at Trent, staggered with the thought of Derby’s apprehension and what it would mean.

“Jane.”

She turned at the sound of John’s voice, and held the newsbook and the broadsheet up noiselessly.

“I know,” he said. He took her arm and led her away from the bookseller’s stall, glancing over his shoulder to see who might be watching them, and spoke in a low voice. “Francis Yates, who guided the king from Worcester to Whiteladies, was arrested. He’s been—questioned—but refused to tell where he left the king or where His Majesty is like to have gone.”

John’s face was grim, and Jane could imagine the likely brutality of the interrogation.

“Yates will be hanged here next market day.”

Jane’s eyes went to the gibbet at the centre of the marketplace and a cold knot of fear gripped her stomach. Yates had done far less to help the king than she had, and he would die there in a week’s time. She clamped a hand to her mouth, suddenly faint and nauseated, and John steadied her, his hands on her upper arms, his eyes clouded with worry.

“Here, sit.”

He led her to a stump and sat her down, took his little flask of brandy from his pocket, and handed it to her. Jane grimaced at the smell of the spirits but took a drink, feeling the fire of it warming and calming her belly.

“Jane, I must be here when he dies.”

“Why?” she cried in horror.

“He must have the comfort of friendly faces in the crowd. He served under Carlis at Worcester, but Carlis is gone abroad, as is Giffard and many others who were his comrades. He’s married to a sister of the Penderels, but they would put themselves in grave danger to be there. I would not have him die without knowing that what he did and its consequences are valued and will be remembered.”

How awful it would be to die alone in the midst of a hostile crowd, Jane thought. She shivered at the thought of watching Yates hang, but met John’s eyes.

“Then I shall come with you.”

John looked away from her, his gaze following a knot of red-coated soldiers.

“There’s another reason, too. He’ll need a friend to pull on his legs and hasten his death. A broken neck is better than strangling at a rope’s end for a quarter of an hour.”

Jane felt herself sway on the stump and dropped her head into her arms.

“Take me home, John. Please, get me out of here now.”

T
HE NEXT MARKET DAY
J
ANE STOOD WITH
J
OHN
, H
ENRY, AND HER
father at the front of the crowd that had come to Wolverhampton to see Francis Yates die. Despite the danger, the Penderel brothers were all there, their weathered faces lined with grief and anger. Many others in the crowd were also there in support of Yates, to let him know that he would not be forgotten. But there was a hostile element, and they were emboldened by the presence of so many Parliamentary soldiers. As the cart carrying Yates approached, a group of boys followed along, shouting derisively and throwing refuse and stones.

Yates’s hands were bound behind his back, and he sat in the cart without looking to either side, as if his enemies were not present. The cart drew up under the gibbet, where a platoon of soldiers stood in ranks. They parted to let the cart pass, and then ranged themselves in a square around the gibbet, their muskets pointed out towards the crowd, bayonets fixed. The boys who had dogged the cart pushed to the front of the crowd.

“You’ll be in hell before dinnertime, Yates,” one redheaded young ruffian sang out.

“Sooner than that, Neddy,” one of his friends shouted. “You’ll meet the devil while the shit’s still running down your legs, you traitor!”

“No traitor he, but a braver man than thou wilt ever be!” roared one of the Penderel brothers, shoving the second boy so that he fell to the ground.

The boy jumped to his feet, and his friends closed around him as Yates’s family and friends rushed forward to stand on either side of the farmer. Shoves were exchanged, the crowd surged forward towards the gibbet. The soldiers swung their bayonets at the advancing mob and their captain shouted for order above the babble of angry voices. Henry pulled Jane behind him to protect her as the melee threatened to envelop them. Yates, in breeches and a shirt stained with sweat and dirt, had been pulled to his feet by a soldier in the cart with him, and stared silently out at the riot breaking out on his behalf.

A shot shattered the air, halting the skirmish.

“This will be your only warning!” roared the red-faced officer, smoking pistol in hand, still pointed towards the sky. “Whosoever causes further disturbance will be arrested.”

Royalists and rebels backed away from one another, exchanging final shoves and sneers, and the crowd subsided into muttering.

“Proceed with the punishment!” the officer barked. “Lieutenant!”

A young lieutenant stepped forward, and read from a printed broadsheet, his voice cutting into the silence.

“The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England have thought fit to enact and declare that no person whatsoever do presume to hold any correspondence with Charles Stuart, son of the late traitor, or with his party, or with any of them, nor give any intelligence to them, or to any of them, nor countenance, encourage, abet, adhere to, or assist them or any of them, nor to voluntarily afford or deliver, or cause to be afforded or delivered to them or any of them, any victuals, provisions, arms, ammunition, plate, money, men, or any other relief whatsoever, under pain of high treason.”

A few hisses and shouts of “boo” rang out, and the lieutenant glanced at the crowd and took a breath before continuing.

“Whosoever shall offend against this Act and Declaration, shall or may be proceeded against by a Council of War, who are hereby authorised to hear and determine all and every the said offences, and such as shall by the said Council be condemned to suffer death, shall also forfeit all his or their lands, goods, and other estate, as in case of high treason.”

Jane had read the words of the proclamation when it was published in August, which now seemed a lifetime ago. But how vastly different to hear read aloud each offence of which she and her family were guilty, with Francis Yates standing not twenty feet away and about to die merely because he had guided the king to Whiteladies in that dark night after the battle.

“Drummer!” the captain shouted, and the drummer started into an ominous roll.

The soldier beside Yates placed the noose that hung from the gibbet around his neck and tightened the rope.

“Let him speak!” someone shouted at the back of the crowd.

“Aye, let him speak!”

The cry was taken up and the crowd was roaring now. They far outnumbered the soldiers guarding the gibbet, and Jane saw sweat rolling down the face of a fair-haired young soldier who stood a few feet before her. She looked beyond him to Yates. He was near tears now, but not of fright. He nodded at familiar faces, pulling at his bound arms as though he would have waved and saluted in response to the cries.

“God save the king!” he shouted, and the crowd called back.

“God save the king!”

“We won’t forget thee, Frank!”

“You’ve a heart of oak, lad! Your name will live in England forever!”

Yates held his head high, his brimming eyes bright with emotion. The drummer played furiously, in a futile effort to drown out the yells of the crowd.

“Drive on!” the captain bellowed.

The driver of the cart lashed the horse, and the cart started forward.

Francis Yates, nothing beneath his feet now, jerked and bucked at the end of the rope, his face contorted in desperation and agony, his eyes bulging, his tongue rolling forth as he struggled for the breath that would never come.

Henry thrust Jane back against her father as he and John rushed forward, followed by the five Penderel brothers. There was a moment’s hesitation as they confronted the soldiers who faced them. Then the soldiers’ eyes snapped away from them, not seeing them, deliberately not seeing as Henry and John strode to the foot of the gibbet, and the Penderel brothers ranged themselves in a half circle, facing the howling crowd. John and Henry each seized one of Francis Yates’s legs, their eyes met and they nodded, and they pulled with all their strength, a sharp and brutal shock. Yates’s body twitched, but he struggled no more. Sobs and cries echoed in the cold air. John looked up at Yates’s face, purple but still, then stepped back and saluted the swinging corpse. Henry mirrored him on Yates’s other side.

Sobs tore Jane’s throat, and she clung to her father. He clutched her to his chest, and she could hear that he was weeping, too, and the enormity of what danger she had brought upon him, her mother, and all her family as well as herself swept over her. If her part in the king’s escape were discovered, she would die just as Yates had, with John and Henry likely dangling at her side, and her old parents would lose their house and lands and all they had.

God, keep them safe,
she prayed.
Let my deeds never come to the light, that Henry and John and my parents and those I love do not suffer for what I have done
.

T
HE SPECTACLE OF
F
RANCIS
Y
ATES’S EXECUTION HAUNTED
J
ANE’S
dreams. Adding to her anxiety was the fact that as yet, the newsbooks, broadsheets, and proclamations carried no news of Charles. When she parted from him, he had been within a day’s ride of the coast, and Frank Wyndham had been confident that his friend would find him a boat and get him safely on his way. He should have reached France long since. Even if the worst had happened and he had been taken, that news would have been proclaimed far and loud. The only reasons she could think of for the silence were ominous. He could have been killed by robbers or in some accident on the road, or set to sea only to be drowned. Perhaps it was even possible he had been captured by Cromwell’s soldiers and was now in some prison, silenced from communication with the outside world, the fact that he lived too dangerous to be made known. And if that was the case, he would spend the rest of his life, however short or long that might be, locked away from all hope and happiness.

J
ANE’S COURSES HAD STILL NOT COME, AND HER BODY FELT STRANGE
in many little ways that were so subtle she could not quite put them into words. She felt almost certain now that she must be with child, but she did not know of any way to ascertain either that she was or that she wasn’t, and if she was, there was nothing to be done about it. How long would it take before her belly began to show? She didn’t know.