Page 60 of Dawnlands

Alinor was in the parlor waiting for their return from church.

“Are you ready to go to Foulmire this week?” Matthew asked.

“It’s fit for us to live there? It’s not been left empty?”

“It was a royal lodge, kept ready for a visit from the queen.”

Alinor gave a little laugh. “Since I never went beyond the kitchen door, that should be good enough for me.”

“We’ll take our own sheets…” Alys raised her head at a noise. “Is that a wagon? There shouldn’t be a delivery on a Sunday?”

It was a carriage, drawing up on the cobbled quay outside the front door, the Avery crest bold on the doorway, the driver and footmen in the Avery livery. One jumped down from his place at the back of the carriage and came to the front door, a letter in his hand.

“Oh no,” Alys said. “Not her again.”

“I’ll go,” Matthew said, not waiting for the knock. He opened the front door and the footman bowed to him and handed him the letter addressed to Mrs. Shore.

“Wait here,” he said and took the letter into the parlor, where his mother was looking out of the window at the imposing carriage.

“It’s not the Nobildonna,” he told her. “It’s a letter for you.”

“For me?” Puzzled, she broke the seal and saw the signature. “It’s him,” she said, glancing towards her mother.

“And what does Sir James say?” Alinor asked steadily.

“He says: ‘I hope you will accept the loan of my carriage and servants to take you and your mother to Foulmire and home after your visit. I do not presume to hope for any future correspondence; but I would be glad to know if your mother is well. Please accept this as a small gesture of my respect for your mother, to whom I send my humblest service, as always. James Avery.’ Well!” She put down the letter and looked from her mother to her foster son. “Well!”

“We may as well use it,” Alinor remarked prosaically. “It’ll be far more comfortable than a hired coach.”

“We don’t want favors from either of them. Especially not from him,” Alys snapped.

Matthew knew there was no point in asking why. His foster mother had always regarded his birth mother with deep suspicion, and would not even speak of his stepfather.

“It was a long time ago. We can use their carriage,” Alinor overruled.

“Ma—”

“We can accept the Avery carriage to get there and back to the house the Nobildonna got for Matthew. It’s no more than hiring one. Go and tell the coachman what time you want him tomorrow morning, Matthew. They can put up at the Holly Bush overnight.”

Matthew glanced at his mother.

“Very well,” Alys said. “But we’ll send them straight back to London as soon as we arrive. I don’t want them at Foulmire, picking up gossip.”

Alinor smiled at her daughter. “We’ll be long forgotten,” she said gently. “The name on the deeds is Peachey, and we’ll be known as Matthew’s foster family. I doubt there’s anyone left to recognize us. Half of them’ll be dead of old age and buried in the churchyard. The king then, Charles the First, is dead, and his son, Charles the Second, dead too. And now they’ve killed his poor boy James Monmouth. It’s all long long ago. And we’ll never speak of it.”

TAUNTON, SOMERSET, AUTUMN 1685

Johnnie rode into the little county town of Taunton a few days ahead of the judge from London. The entourage of judge, prosecutors, clerks, and hangmen were working their way west, holding masstrials at all the market towns, leaving a trail of grief wherever they halted. Johnnie had to try three inns before he could find a bed for the night and stabling for his horse. The town was crowded with the families of the five hundred prisoners who were held in the town jail and in the cellars and dungeons of Taunton Castle. The London judge, George Jeffreys, the prosecutor, Henry Pollexfen, and scores of clerks, lawyers, reporters, the hangman, and his assistant had requisitioned chambers in the castle and in the town and were expected any day.

It was as busy as an annual fair, but there was none of the cheerful jostling and clatter of setting up stalls, or hucksters calling in the streets. It was a surly crowd that milled around the castle, the town hall, and the jail, asking for news. There was a shanty town of anxious families camped in the grassy outer ward of the castle, hoping for the chance to see their loved ones, praying that they would be freed.

It was impossible for Johnnie to make himself visible among so many people, all of them seeking information and losing hope; but as soon as he had secured his room and stabled his horse, he went out to walk the streets and ask people if they had seen a native, a servant, a slight dark boy by the name of Rowan. Half the people ignored him, turned away from any question, fearful that he was one of the many spies or ex-soldiers who were putting together evidence against a private enemy or to curry favor with the coming court. Other men seeking information were lawyers, appointed by desperate families, trying to show that a young man had joined Monmouth by mistake, or was not there at all. Nobody had any time for Johnnie, though he showed the gleam of a silver coin in his hand.

They all knew that death was coming to Taunton. The judge, himself crippled by the spleen, had hanged men at every stop on his way to the west country, had left hundreds more in jails awaiting execution. His clerk told the accused men that there was no time to hear pleas of innocence; they had better own themselves guilty and hope for mercy. Jeffreys himself had sworn he would break the heart of the west country. The families who crowded around the jail, begging to have a moment—just one moment—with a beloved son, knew that it was only to say good-bye. In Winchester, Jeffreys had sentenced aseventy-year-old woman to be burned alive. In Dorchester, he condemned nearly three hundred men to death.

Johnnie scanned the long list of prisoners’ names, looking for Ned Ferryman or any name that Ned might have adopted.

“That list is no good,” someone said at his shoulder.