The Monmouth Summer Read online

  The Monmouth Summer

  Tim Vicary

  First published as an ebook by White Owl Publications Ltd 2012

  Copyright Tim Vicary 2012

  ISBN 978-0-9571698-3-8

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

  No reproduction without permission

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Tim Vicary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Author’s Note

  These events, or something very like them, really happened in the south west of England in the summer of 1685. Many of the characters in this book have the names of real people. The Duke of Monmouth was real, of course, as was Lord Feversham, his opponent, and John Churchill, Winston Churchill’s famous ancestor, who later became the Duke of Marlborough. But the actions of these great men influenced, very dramatically, the lives of ordinary men and women. Many of them lived in the small town of Colyton, which Judge Jeffries later called ‘The most rebellious town in England’. There really were men called John Spragg, (or Sprake), Roger Satchell, William Clegg, Philip Cox, and John Clapp, and the things they did and which happened to them were very similar to the events described in this book. It’s not possible to know exactly how they spoke and thought, of course; like any writer I’ve had to use my imagination to try to bring them to life. But the battles they fought in, the marches they made, the equipment they used, and the choices they had to make, are described here as accurately as possible.

  There was no real young woman, so far as I know, called Ann Carter, or her father Adam. But there easily could have been. All these men had wives and mothers and daughters, and the events of that summer of 1685 overturned the women’s lives, just as much as they did those of their men.

  Other e-books by Tim Vicary

  Historical novels

  The Blood Upon the Rose

  (Love and terror in Ireland, 1920)

  Cat and Mouse

  (Suffragettes and Rebellion in 1914)

  Legal thrillers

  A Game of Proof

  (The Trials of Sarah Newby, book 1)

  A Fatal Verdict

  (The Trials of Sarah Newby, book 2)

  Bold Counsel

  (The Trials of Sarah Newby, book 3)

  Website: http://www.timvicary.com

  Blog: http://sarahstrials.wordpress.com/

  Twitter @TimVicary

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  About the Author

  Other Books by Tim Vicary

  1

  "LET ME loosen it."

  "No, Rob. I..." She turned her head slightly but his hand followed, touching her cheek and the ribbons of her white bonnet.

  "It's a warm day, you know. Let the breeze cool you."

  The girl sat on the grass at the top of the hayfield, her back arched, her head thrown back slightly to catch the soft summer breeze. The young man knelt beside her, caressing the neck which her posture showed to such advantage. The horses which had brought them here – a dark bay hunter and a chestnut pony – grazed peacefully behind them, near the wood which, the young lovers hoped, shielded them from prying eyes.

  His fingers began to undo the ribbons below her chin. The fingers were careful, rather awkward with the knot, and as she sat still letting him do it Ann felt the blood rush into her face. I am a fool, she thought, I am being used. Then the ribbons came free and Robert smiled at her, his lean freckled face a few inches from hers. The corners of his brown eyes crinkled with amusement.

  "So now ... what do we see?" He lifted the bonnet off her head and embarrassment overcame her. Not being a girl who spent hours dressing, that morning she had simply wound her hair loosely round her head, pushed a pin through it, and tied the bonnet on top. She lifted her hands and felt loose wisps of hair everywhere.

  "No. Let me." He reached out a hand, to help.

  "'Tis all right." She ducked out of his reach. "There's a pin, here ... somewhere." She found it, pulled it out, and felt the long thick auburn locks tumble around her shoulders. She shook them free, combed them roughly straight with her fingers, and looked back at him, half-amused, half-ashamed.

  "So. This is the real Ann Carter. A model of high fashion indeed!" He lifted a long tress and let the breeze blow it back. "Do I embarrass you? I'm sorry. It's beautiful, Ann - you should always wear it like this!"

  "So you could laugh at me."

  "No. Not laugh at you. Never. It's more that I mock myself, for being unworthy. Ann, when I am with you, you seem so good, so beautiful, I feel sometimes I have died, and am in Heaven with the angels."

  She knew his words were blasphemous as well as foolish. Courtier's words, nonsense - the sort of talk that charmed and frightened her at the same time. No-one in her family would speak like that. But then, that was the thrill of being with him: to dare to play foolish, dangerous games, to say things that should not be said. To let him loosen her hair, call her an angel.

  "And then, to prove it is not so ... " He bent forward and kissed her. It was the first time that day; in fact, only the fifth time ever. For a moment she responded, just her lips touching his; then, as his arm reached round her waist, she twisted away swiftly and firmly before any more could come of it.

  "If we are in Heaven, Rob, then we must behave like the angels. Sit here beside me and listen to the heavenly music - of the larks, up above us, there!"

  He sat down and she leant back against him, partly to avoid the kiss. But his arm came around her, brushing her breast, and they both thrilled to the unacknowledged touch. For a while they said nothing, listening to the larksong overhead, and the sound of their horses grazing nearby. Ann's bonnet lay on the grass beside them, and the sinful breeze blew freely through her hair.

  "Perhaps you are right - perhaps we are in Heaven, and do not know it," she murmured thoughtfully. “I think Heaven must be full of times like this, when we do nothing, and yet are happy. The Saints must live like this.”

  Robert laughed, looking do
wn the valley to the fields far below. “And those sheep, and those yeomen down there - are they in Heaven too?"

  Ann smiled, following his gaze.

  "Those sheep? Oh, they are the holy lambs of God, don't you see? Poor dumb creatures that never know the temptations of evil, and are happy in their innocence! And the yeomen - they are making hay for the Lord's granary. Then up there, look - the larks! They are the angels - that's why their song's too high and pure for us to ever understand. Listen."

  She moved away from him and leant back on her elbows, her head back, her auburn hair tumbling over her shoulders, trying to see as well hear the lark that was singing so tumultuously overhead. She found it, lost it, found it again; and then deliberately unfocussed her eyes and let them wander in the depths of the endless blue sky - nothing but blue above her, near and far and forever, until it seemed that her soul was floating out of her body, into the boundless blue of the heavens.

  "But there are joys on earth as well."

  He bent over her, and she could no longer see the sky. He kissed her neck, softly, under her ear, and then suddenly he was kissing her full on the lips, her head arched backwards, his hand stroking her hair.

  And this time they kissed for a long, long moment, her lips parted, his tongue exploring, in a way she had not known before. She felt her body go limp and fluid, all concentrated in the kiss, as he laid her back gently on the grass, and a thrill went through her as his hand found her breast once again, and slowly, with infinite daring, began to slip inside the bodice. For a long age she lay there, at once completely relaxed and trembling with life, in every moment of time and utterly lost to it; then his thigh began to press on hers, and his hand move down to fumble with her skirts, and slowly, she returned to herself.

  "No, Rob." She pulled her face away from his and smiled up at him in gentle reproach. But his face, darkening with disappointment, looked so comic and solemn, like a young preacher rather than a cavalier, that she burst out laughing, and then on a sudden impulse pushed him off and rolled him over. Surprised, he fought back, but she was a strong girl and when she had the advantage he found he could not throw her off without hurting her. She held him down, startled and a little scared by her own triumph.

  He did not look amused.

  "What sort of minx's trick is this? Are you to play the man because you dare not play the woman?"

  "A man, Rob?" The effort of holding his arms down swung her full breasts before his face, and his eyes followed them hungrily. Teasing, she broadened her accent to sound like a proper Devon milkmaid. "No man, squire. But us country maids must save us honour, bein' as 'ow there bain't no gentlemen around to save it for us!"

  "Your honour, indeed!" With a great heave he forced her off, and sat up, brushing the grass off his coat. "Where's your precious honour in forever leading a man on, and then turning him away, as you do?"

  She was surprised and hurt by the bitter tone in his voice. "Rob, that's not fair, now! 'Twas you that come after me outside Beer, and asked to meet again. My father would whip me if he even knew I was with you! You can hardly expect me to - to couple with you here, in full view of the whole county!"

  She gestured down the valley. The wood behind them hid them from the road, but the view in front of them was open. They were sitting in a field of uncut hay at the brow of Colyton Hill, looking down the valley of the river Axe where it meandered its last lazy mile to the sea. Far below them, the methodical ant-like figures of haymakers cut their swathes steadily, their backs burnt brown in the sun. Beyond them, the sea glittered and sparkled in the mid-afternoon sunlight, and two small fishing luggers rocked lazily in the swell. Ann and Robert were out of sight of Colyton, and too far away from the haymakers to be recognised by them even if they were noticed, but nonetheless it was a huge risk for Ann to be alone even talking to a man like Rob, never mind going any further.

  The whole affair was a close secret, which tormented her with guilt as much as it thrilled her with her own daring. She had seen Rob every year of her life, riding through the village with his father, or occasionally attending their church instead of the chapel at Shute Manor. But the first time she had spoken to him was last month, when he had stopped to help her with her pony, which had gone lame. After that, they had met again, apparently by accident at first; or so each would have claimed, had they been asked. But they both took care that such accidents should occur well away from the Puritan folk of Ann's village; and Ann had spoken of him to no-one in her family.

  One day soon she would be found out, she knew that. Ann trembled at her own daring as she remembered the dreadful sermon old Israel Fuller had preached, at a dissenters' meeting only last year, about the 'promiscuous sin and palpable flirtation' of that 'horrid Jezebel in our very midst' who had turned out to be poor Susannah Wilson, whom Israel had caught kissing Jonathan Hoskins in the hayfield one evening. Susannah had had to parade before the whole congregation with her hair cropped, dressed in a white sheet, to acknowledge her guilt. Ann remembered how she had trembled that day; she had not dared to speak to Susannah for months afterwards. Yet Susannah had sinned no more than Ann had this very afternoon.

  At least Jonathan, the boy Susannah had been with, was a sober Puritan dissenter, not the son of a rich Tory lord like Robert Pole. Robert claimed to be no more than a high Anglican, a staunch supporter of the established church, which was all he was, so far as Ann could tell. But she knew that for the fierce Presbyterians and Baptists of her own village, there had never been much difference between an Anglican and a Papist; and none at all since the beginning of this year of 1685, when King Charles had died, and his brother James the Second, an open and avowed Catholic, had become King and Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

  But what concerned young Ann Carter today was neither religion nor politics; it was rather a subtle sense of urgency, of increased seriousness below Robert's surface gallantry, which she had noticed ever since they had met this afternoon. It was as though for him the initial period of deliciously secret, light-hearted wooing were over, and now he was determined to press her further, perhaps to seduce her in earnest.

  She wondered uneasily if perhaps she had already gone too far. He was nearly five years older than her - that was part of his attraction. But it also added to the danger. She was quite alone and defenceless here. He must have known girls in London who were less strictly brought up than she was - perhaps he expected her to be the same? Yet surely he must know - even while he flattered her by trying - that any serious attempt at seduction was impossible? Or did he?

  She tried to keep her voice light and easy as she spoke again, on that same plane of gentle banter which she so enjoyed with him, because it was so different from the plodding solemnity of most of the young men she knew.

  "So is it your birthday today, my lord, when you can have whatever you want?"

  "I don't mean just today," said Robert angrily. "It's every day, every time we meet. Your everlasting country virtue! Why, in London ..."

  "Yes, say it then! In London you could have had dozens of girls with less trouble. That's what you mean, isn't it? Well, why didn't you? Perhaps you did?"

  Robert flushed, and looked ashamed, suddenly younger than his 23 years - like a schoolboy reminded of a whipping. In the short time she had known him there had been several moments like this; when she sensed some pain beneath the surface, that he wanted her to cure. She wondered if she changed in the same way for him; sometimes she felt shy and awkward as a little girl in his presence, at other times like a mother or elder sister.

  But then, if there had been older women in London, how could they have resisted him when he needed them so much? Perhaps they had not; that was the trouble now.

  "You don't understand, Annie. It was not ... like that, not exactly. A man can have a gay time with such women, true, but ..."

  "Yes, but ...?" She raised her eyebrows, and shivered inside with guilty delight at the phrase. 'A gay time' indeed! What would her father or Israel Fuller s
ay, if they heard a man speak to her like that?

  "But such things are not love. The sort of woman a man meets in London, they are just for the present, for the pleasure of a moment. One says things, but everyone knows they are only a game. Annie, it's different with you. You're beautiful, but you don't play these games. You’re ... you're real to me, somehow. You know that poem I told you of, the one that begins

  An Age in her Embraces past,

  Would seem a Winter's day.

  Well, it's pretty speech, I know, but it means something to me. Time does seem to fly in a winged chariot when we're together, and limp in leaden boots when we're apart. It's as though I have a portrait - a miniature of you in my mind whereever I go. "

  "Oh, Rob ... " She had not expected this. But the earnest sincerity in the pale brown eyes and bony freckled face made her think that he really did mean it; it was not just part of the role of the sophisticated gallant he so often adopted. As she stared at him, lips parted in surprise, she felt how she had longed for him to say something like that, and how easy it would be to fall into his mood and accept his declaration of love for what it was. But she dared not; it would destroy the delicate game they were playing, which let them meet without hurting each other, without any dangerous results.

  And then, what if he did not mean it? Perhaps the look of secret pain in his eyes was just part of the game he was playing with her - a trick to make her feel sorry for him. She drew her head back with a jolt, feeling herself blush as she did so.

  "That ... was prettily spoken, Rob. You must have made many conquests in London, if you spoke so to your ladies there."

  As the blood coloured her cheeks, it flooded his with anger.

  "How can you say that? I never spoke so to any woman before! You are cruel, just as I said! You lead me on and laugh at me!"

  "No, Rob, I don't laugh at you. But don't you rather laugh at me? You ride back to your fine manor house at Shute, and your soldier friends in London, and tell them of your conquest of a country maid - your fair shepherdess who lifted her skirts for you in a sheepfield for the price of a few fine words, like those ladies of London, who are just for the pleasure of a moment! Even the words you use are not your own, but borrowed from some cavalier poet with fine clothes and waxed moustaches ..."