E-Book, Englisch, 496 Seiten
Walters The Players
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ISBN: 978-1-80546-317-7
Verlag: Allen & Unwin
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Must-read sweeping historical fiction from 25-million copy bestselling author
E-Book, Englisch, 496 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80546-317-7
Verlag: Allen & Unwin
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Minette Walters is one of the world's bestselling crime writers and has sold over 25 million copies of her books worldwide. She has won the CWA John Creasey Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award in America and two CWA Gold Daggers. The Players is her fourth historical novel. She lives in Dorset with her husband.
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ONE
Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, 8 July 1685
WORD THAT THE DUKE OF Monmouth’s short-lived rebellion had ended in defeat at Sedgemoor in Somerset reached the neighbouring county of Dorset within hours. Few doubted the truth of the news, for the uprising had been doomed once the siren voices that had lured the duke from exile fell silent under threats of punishment for high treason. It was said that he had been promised an army of trained militiamen, but only labourers and artisans armed with pitchforks and clubs had rallied to his standard. It mattered not that many in the south-west had sympathy with his cause; England’s quarrelsome history of the last half-century meant people were wary of making their allegiances known.
Hard on the heels of the reports of King James’s victory came rumours that Monmouth and several of his aides had fled the field of battle in a bid to escape capture. Some claimed he was making his way west to Wales, others that he was heading south-east towards the Dorsetshire coast in the hope of paying a fisherman to give him passage back to Holland. Whatever the truth, no one who lived and worked on the Earl of Shaftesbury’s estate, some thirty miles north of the nearest port, expected to find themselves at the centre of the search for him.
As dusk fell on 7 July, a regiment of soldiers under the command of Lord Lumley and another of militiamen led by Sir William Portman encircled part of the estate, claiming to have tracked him to this very place. Acting on information supplied by a peasant woman who alleged that she had seen two strangers cross a hedge into a pea field, Sir William set his company to searching the cultivated land while Lord Lumley’s men tramped the area of scrubland beyond. Nevertheless, despite moving in serried rows and beating the vegetation with their musket stocks, the efforts of both companies proved fruitless.
Lanterns were commandeered from the many bystanders, who had been drawn by curiosity to see if there was any truth in the rumour that the fugitive had chosen their estate as a hiding place, and as Sir William’s militiamen began a second search some shouted that it would make better sense to set fire to the crops and burn the duke out. Sir William, unwilling to pay reparation to Lord Shaftesbury for such wanton destruction, refused, but his irritability grew as midnight came and went without success. His militia consisted of Somerset men, mustered in Taunton where he was the Member for Parliament, and none had any knowledge of the area they were searching. If they had, they would have known of the water-filled ditches beneath the hedgerows and would have tramped those as diligently as the fields.
A message came shortly after dawn on 8 July that a Dutchman had been taken prisoner by another militia some three miles away. Under brutal questioning, he had confessed to being one of the strangers the peasant woman had seen, claiming to have made his escape before Lumley’s and Portman’s cordons had been fully established. He further confessed to leaving his companion, the Duke of Monmouth, behind, saying the duke had been too exhausted to walk. Upon hearing this, Sir William instructed his men to renew their efforts, reminding them that a bounty of five thousand pounds had been placed on the fugitive’s head.
The sun had been up two hours when cries for help echoed across the pea field which the peasant woman had first identified. The shouter was Henry Parkin, and when his fellows ran to his aid he pointed to a patch of brown fabric showing through a straggle of ferns and brambles at the bottom of a ditch. In darkness, it had been invisible; in daylight, it contrasted strongly with the green vegetation above it. Even so, a command to ‘stand and show yourself’ brought no response. Either the garment had been abandoned or whoever wore it was deaf, asleep or dead.
Parkin seized a sword from one of his companions and prepared to thrust the tip into the fabric, but a tall bystander, dressed in black with the white lace bands of a parson about his throat, stepped forward and took hold of his right arm. ‘Piercing him with a blade will not cure his weakness, sir. Allow me to enter the ditch to assist him.’
‘As long as you recognise that the find was mine and will testify the same to Sir William Portman.’
‘I do and will,’ said the parson, easing himself down the bank and pulling aside the ferns and brambles with gloved hands. ‘I have no interest in the bounty.’
The sight he exposed was a sorry one: a human shape, wrapped in a saturated, threadbare cloak, lying on his front in the damp mud of the ditch with his face resting on folded arms and the hood of the cloak covering his head. With no signs of life, the parson stooped to turn the body onto its back, causing the arms to unfold and the hood to fall away, revealing a shaven head and a gaunt, colourless face torn by brambles.
Parkin gave a grunt of disappointment. ‘It’s not him,’ he said. ‘This man’s too old.’
‘Is he dead?’ asked another.
The parson removed a glove and touched his fingers to the unfortunate’s neck. ‘I fear so. There’s no warmth in him. I’ll need your help if we’re to lift his body from the ditch.’
The request was met with shrugs of indifference, as if none thought it worth the trouble. The Duke of Monmouth had been described to them as a man of thirty-five who bore a strong resemblance to his father King Charles II, while the emaciated creature in the mud looked more like a starving vagrant than a pretender to the throne of England. They would have returned to their searching and left the parson to deal with the corpse alone had Sir William not seen their gathering from a hundred yards distant. He arrived at a canter and demanded to know why they were idle.
Parkin gestured behind him. ‘I saw a cloak beneath the ferns, sir, but the man who wears it is too old to be the duke . . . and dead also, by the looks of him.’
Sir William dismounted and pushed through the group to stare down at the upturned face. ‘It must be Monmouth. The Dutchman named him as his companion.’ He raised his gaze to the parson. ‘What attempts have you made to revive him?’
‘None. You reached us as these gentlemen were about to help me lift him onto dry ground. If he’s alive, he’ll need to be warmed and fed before he can speak or stand.’
Sir William drew his own sword with a contemptuous laugh. ‘I don’t have your soft heart, Reverend. Let’s see what a few pricks to the groin can achieve.’
With a sigh, the parson deflected the thrusted blade with his gloved hand, causing the tip to embed itself in the bank. ‘I can’t in good conscience allow you to do that, sir. Whoever this man is, and whether he’s insensible or dead, you’ll be torturing him to no purpose. We can all see that he’s incapable of rising out of this ditch of his own accord.’
‘Do you doubt it’s Monmouth?’
‘I do, sir, for he looks nothing like the description you gave your men. Are you so well acquainted with him that you don’t have doubts yourself?’
‘Who else can it be?’
The parson knelt on one knee to search a pocket of the cloak. ‘A destitute in search of food?’ he suggested, pulling out a handful of raw peas and displaying them on his palm. ‘It’s not uncommon for such people to make their beds in ditches. I buried a woman six months ago who was found in similar circumstances.’
Sir William sheathed his sword with unnecessary force. ‘You’re trying my patience, sir. Your name and reason for being here?’
‘Reverend Houghton. I have business in Ringwood but paused out of curiosity to discover why so many men were drawn to search these fields.’ The parson discarded the peas and replaced his glove. ‘Unless you intend to leave this man in an unmarked grave, I suggest you instruct your soldiers to assist me in lifting him up the bank.’
It is truly said that the margins between success and failure are very thin. Had the ‘corpse’ remained insensible, the parson might have been able to perpetuate the pretence of death; as it was, rough handling caused a sigh of pain to escape the man’s lips, and once he was laid upon the ground a kick from Sir William Portman’s boot brought another.
‘It seems he’s not as dead as you thought, Reverend.’
The parson removed his long black coat. ‘God be praised,’ he murmured, dropping to his knees and bending his head in prayer before laying the coat across the body and speaking clearly. ‘I am a man of the cloth, my friend. My name is Reverend Houghton and I will give you what succour I can while the many gentlemen who surround you question you about your presence here. I seek only to help you and will remain at your side for as long as is necessary. Are they right to think you’re the Duke of Monmouth? If so, you will suffer less by admitting it than subjecting yourself to the same brutal interrogation that a Dutch prisoner endured six hours ago.’
A slow tremor began in Monmouth’s eyelids, but a minute passed before they opened. The parson looked for recognition in the gaze that stared up at him and was relieved when he saw it.
Monmouth moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Can I rely on your promises, Reverend?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘You can, my friend.’
‘Then you may tell my...
