A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago by Yonge (best short novels of all time txt) 📖

time, the summer of 1688, messages and invitations were being despatched to his present Gracious Majesty to redress the wrongs of the Protestant Church, and protect the liberties of the English people.  The father of the deceased was a member of a family of the country party, his uncle a distinguished diplomatist, to whose suite he had belonged.  What was more obvious than that he should be employed in the correspondence, and that his movements should be dogged by parties connected with the Stewart family?  Already there was too much experience of how far even the most estimable and conscientious might be blinded by the sentiment that they dignified by the title of loyalty.  The deceased had already been engaged in a struggle with one of the Archfield family, who had been acquitted of his actual slaughter; but considering the strangeness of the hour at which the two cousins were avowedly at or near Portchester, the condition of the clothes, stripped of papers, but not of valuables, and the connection of the principal witness with the pretended Prince of Wales, he could not help thinking that though personal animosity might have added an edge to the weapon, yet that there were deeper reasons, to prompt the assault and the concealment, than had yet been brought to light.

“He will make nothing of that,” whispered Mr. Lee.  “Poor Master Peregrine was no more a Whig than old Sir Philip there.”

“’Twill prejudice the jury,” whispered back Mr. Harcourt, “and discredit the lady’s testimony.”

Mr. Cowper concluded by observing that half truths had come to light in the former trial, but whole truths would give a different aspect to the affair, and show the unfortunate deceased to have given offence, not only as a man of gallantry, but as a patriot, and to have fallen a victim to the younger bravoes of the so-called Tory party.  To his (the counsel’s) mind, it was plain that the prisoner, who had hoped that his crime was undiscovered and forgotten, had returned to take his share in the rising against Government so happily frustrated.  He was certain that the traitor Charnock had been received at his father’s house, and that Mr. Sedley Archfield had used seditious language on several occasions, so that the cause of the prisoner’s return at this juncture was manifest, and only to the working of Providence could it be ascribed that the evidence of the aggravated murder should have at that very period been brought to light.

There was an evident sensation, and glances were cast at the upright, military figure, standing like a sentinel, as if the audience expected him to murder them all.

As before, the examination began with Robert Oakshott’s identification of the clothes and sword, but Mr. Cowper avoided the subject of the skeleton, and went on to inquire about the terms on which the two young men had lived.

“Well,” said Robert, “they quarrelled, but in a neighbourly sort of way.”

“What do you call a neighbourly way?”

“My poor brother used to be baited for being so queer.  But then we were as bad to him as the rest,” said Robert candidly.

“That is, when you were boys?”

“Yes.”

“And after his return from his travels?”

“It was the same then.  He was too fine a gentleman for any one’s taste.”

“You speak generally.  Was there any especial animosity?”

“My brother bought a horse that Archfield was after.”

“Was there any dispute over it?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Can you give an instance of displeasure manifested by the prisoner at the deceased?”

“I have seen him look black when my brother held a gate open for his wife.”

“Then there were gallant attentions towards Mrs. Archfield?”

Charles’s face flushed, and he made a step forward, but Robert gruffly answered: “No more than civility; but he had got Frenchified manners, and liked to tease Archfield.”

“Did they ever come to high words before you?”

“No.  They knew better.”

“Thank you, Mr. Oakshott,” said the prisoner, as it was intimated that Mr. Cowper had finished.  “You bear witness that only the most innocent civility ever passed between your brother and my poor young wife?”

“Certainly,” responded Robert.

“Nothing that could cause serious resentment, if it excited passing annoyance.”

“Nothing.”

“What were your brother’s political opinions?”

“Well”—with some slow consideration—“he admired the Queen as was, and could not abide the Prince of Orange.  My father was always at him for it.”

“Would you think him likely to be an emissary to Holland?”

“No one less likely.”

But Mr. Cowper started up.  “Sir, I believe you are the younger brother?”

“Yes.”

“How old were you at the time?”

“Nigh upon nineteen.”

“Oh!” as if that accounted for his ignorance.

The prisoner continued, and asked whether search was made when the deceased was missed.

“Hardly any.”

“Why not?”

“He was never content at home, and we believed he had gone to my uncle in Muscovy.”

“What led you to examine the vault?”

“My wife was disquieted by stories of my brother’s ghost being seen.”

“Did you ever see this ghost?”

“No, never.”

That was all that was made of Robert Oakshott, and then again came Anne Woodford’s turn, and Mr. Cowper was more satirical and less considerate than the day before.  Still it was a less dreadful ordeal than previously, though she had to tell the worst, for she knew her ground better, and then there was throughout wonderful support in Charles’s eyes, which told her, whenever she glanced towards him, that she was doing right and as he wished.  As she had not heard the speech for the prosecution it was a shock, after identifying herself a niece to a ‘non-swearing’ clergyman, to be asked about the night of the bonfire, and to be forced to tell that Mrs. Archfield had insisted on getting out of the carriage and walking about with Mr. Oakshott.

“Was the prisoner present?”

“He came up after a time.”

“Did he show any displeasure?”

“He thought it bad for her health.”

“Did any words pass between him and the deceased?”

“Not that I remember.”

“And now, madam, will you be good enough to recur to the following morning, and continue the testimony in which you were interrupted the day before yesterday?  What was the hour?”

“The church clock struck five just after.”

“May I ask what took a young gentlewoman out at such an untimely hour?  Did you expect to meet any one?”

“No indeed, sir,” said Anne hotly.  “I had been asked to gather some herbs to carry to a friend.”

“Ah!  And why at that time in the morning?”

“Because I was to leave home at seven, when the tide served.”

“Where were you going?”

“To London, sir.”

“And for what reason?”

“I had been appointed to be a rocker in the Royal nursery.”

“I see.  And your impending departure may explain certain strange coincidences.  May I ask what was this same herb?” in a mocking tone.

“Mouse-ear, sir,” said Anne, who would fain have called it by some less absurd title, but knew no other.  “A specific for the whooping-cough.”

“Oh!  Not ‘Love in a mist.’  Are your sure?”

“My lord,” here Simon Harcourt ventured, “may I ask, is this regular?”

The judge intimated that his learned brother had better keep to the point, and Mr. Cowper, thus called to order, desired the witness to continue, and demanded whether she was interrupted in her quest.

“I saw Mr. Peregrine Oakshott enter the castle court, and I hurried into the tower, hoping he had not seen me.”

“You said before he had protected you.  Why did you run from him?”

She had foreseen this, and quietly answered, “He had made me an offer of marriage which I had refused, and I did not wish to meet him.”

“Did you see any one else?”

“Not till I had reached the door opening on the battlements.  Then I heard a clash, and saw Mr. Archfield and Mr. Oakshott fighting.”

“Mr. Archfield!  The prisoner?  Did he come to gather mouse-ear too?”

“No.  His wife had sent him over with a pattern of sarcenet for me to match in London.”

“Early rising and prompt obedience.”  And there ensued the inquiries that brought out the history of what she had seen of the encounter, of the throwing the body into the vault, full dressed, and of her promise of silence and its reason.  Mr. Cowper did not molest her further except to make her say that she had been five months at the Court, and had accompanied the late Queen to France.

Then came the power of cross-examination on the part of the prisoner.  He made no attempt to modify what had been said before, but asked in a gentle apologetic voice: “Was that the last time you ever saw, or thought you saw, Peregrine Oakshott?”

“No.”  And here every one in court started and looked curious.

“When?”

“The 31st of October 1688, in the evening.”

“Where?”

“Looking from the window in the palace at Whitehall, I saw him, or his likeness, walking along in the light of the lantern over the great door.”

The appearance at Lambeth was then described, and that in the garden at Archfield House.  This strange cross-examination was soon over, for Charles could not endure to subject her to the ordeal, while she equally longed to be able to say something that might not damage him, and dreaded every word she spoke.  Moreover, Mr. Cowper looked exceedingly contemptuous, and made the mention of Whitehall and Lambeth a handle for impressing on the jury that the witness had been deep in the counsels of the late royal family, and that she was escorted from St. Germain by the prisoner just before he entered on foreign service.

One of the servants at Fareham was called upon to testify to the hour of his young master’s return on the fatal day.  It was long past dinner-time, he said.  It must have been about three o’clock.

Charles put in an inquiry as to the condition of his horse.  “Hard ridden, sir, as I never knew your Honour bring home Black Bess in such a pickle before.”

After a couple of young men had been called who could speak to some outbreaks of dislike to poor Peregrine, in which all had shared, the case for the prosecution was completed.  Cowper, in a speech that would be irregular now, but was permissible then, pointed out that the jealousy, dislike, and Jacobite proclivities of the Archfield family had been fully made out, that the coincidence of visits to the castle at that untimely hour had been insufficiently explained, that the condition of the remains in the vault was quite inconsistent with the evidence of the witness, Mistress Woodford, unless there were persons waiting below unknown to her, and that the prisoner had been absent from Fareham from four or five o’clock in the morning till nearly three in the afternoon.  As to the strange story she had further told, he (Mr. Cowper) was neither superstitious nor philosophic, but the jury would decide whether conscience and the sense of an awful secret were not sufficient to conjure up such phantoms, if they were not indeed spiritual, occurring as they did in the very places and at the very times when the spirit of the unhappy young man, thus summarily dismissed from the world, his corpse left in an unblessed den, would be most likely to reappear, haunting those who felt themselves to be most accountable for his lamentable and untimely end.

The words evidently told, and it was at a disadvantage that the prisoner rose to speak in his own defence and to call his witnesses.

“My lord,” he said, “and gentlemen of the jury, let me first say that I am deeply grieved and hurt that the name of my poor young wife has been brought into this matter.  In justice to her who is gone, I must begin by saying that though she was flattered and gratified by the polite manners that I was too clownish and awkward to emulate, and though I may have sometimes manifested ill-humour, yet I never for a moment took serious offence nor felt bound to defend her honour or my own.  If I showed displeasure it was because she was fatiguing herself against warning.  I can say with perfect truth, that when I left home on that unhappy morning, I bore no serious ill-will to any living creature.  I had no political purpose, and never dreamt of taking the life of any one.  I was a heedless youth of nineteen.  I shall be able to prove the commission of my wife’s on which this learned gentleman has thought fit to cast a doubt.  For the rest, Mistress Anne Woodford was my sister’s friend and playfellow from early childhood.  When I entered the castle court I saw her hurrying into the keep, pursued by Oakshott, whom I knew her to dread and dislike.  I naturally stepped between.  Angry words passed.  He challenged my right to interfere, and in a passion drew upon me.  Though I was the taller and stronger, I knew him to be proud of his skill in fencing, and perhaps I may therefore have pressed him the harder, and the dislike I acknowledge made me drive home my sword.  But I was free from all murderous