A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago, Yonge [best adventure books to read txt] 📗

said Charles, “the defence that would have served my innocent cousin cannot serve me, who know what I did to Oakshott.  I am now aware that it is quite possible that the sword might not have killed him, but when I threw him into that vault I sealed his fate.”

“How deep is the vault?”

Mr. Lee and Dr. Woodford both averred that it was not above twenty or twenty-four feet deep, greatly to Charles’s surprise, for as a lad he had thought it almost unfathomable; but then he owned his ideas of Winchester High Street had been likewise far more magnificent than he found it.  The fall need not necessarily have been fatal, especially to one insensible and opposing no resistance, but even supposing that death had not resulted, in those Draconian days, the intent to murder was equally subject with its full accomplishment to capital punishment.  Still, as Colonel Archfield could plead with all his heart that he had left home with no evil intentions towards young Oakshott, the lawyers agreed that to prove that the death of the victim was uncertain would reduce the matter to a mere youthful brawl, which could not be heavily visited.  Mr. Harcourt further asked whether it were possible to prove that the prisoner had been otherwise employed than in meddling with the body; but unfortunately it had been six hours before he came home.

“I was distracted,” said Charles; “I rode I knew not whither, till I came to my senses on finding that my horse was ready to drop, when I led him into a shed at a wayside public-house, bade them feed him, took a drink, then I wandered out into the copse near, and lay on the ground there till I thought him rested, for how long I know not.  I think it must have been near Bishops Waltham, but I cannot recollect.”

Mr. Lee decided on setting forth at peep of dawn the next morning to endeavour to collect witnesses of Peregrine’s appearances.  Sir Edmund Nutley intended to accompany him as far as Fareham to fetch little Philip and Lady Nutley, if the latter could leave her mother after the tidings had been broken to them, and also to try to trace whether Charles’s arrival at any public-house were remembered.

To her dismay, Anne received another summons from the other party to act as witness.

“I hoped to have spared you this, my sweet,” said Charles, “but never mind; you cannot say anything worse of me than I shall own of myself.”

The two were left to each other for a little while in the bay window.  “Oh, sir! can you endure me thus after all?” murmured Anne, as she felt his arm round her.

“Can you endure me after all I left you to bear?” he returned.

“It was not like what I brought on you,” she said.

But they could not talk much of the future; and Charles told how he had rested through all his campaigns in the knowledge that his Anne was watching and praying for him, and how his long illness had brought before him deeper thoughts than he had ever had before, and made him especially dwell on the wrong done to his parents by his long absence, and the lightness with which he had treated home duties and responsibilities, till he had resolved that if his life were then spared, he would neglect them no longer.

“And now,” he said, and paused, “all I shall have done is to break their hearts.  What is that saying, ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’”

“Oh, sir! they are sure not to deal hardly with you.”

“Perhaps the Emperor’s Ambassador may claim me.  If so, would you go into banishment with the felon, Anne, love?  It would not be quite so mad as when I asked you before.”

“I would go to the ends of the world with you; and we would take little Phil.  Do you know, he is growing a salad, and learning Latin, all for papa?”

And so she told him of little Phil till his father was seen looking wistfully at him.

With Sir Philip, Charles was all cheerfulness and hope, taking such interest in all there was to hear about the family, estate, and neighbourhood that the old gentleman was beguiled into feeling as if there were only a short ceremony to be gone through before he had his son at home, saving him ease and trouble.

But after Sir Philip had been persuaded to retire, worn out with the day’s agitations, and Anne likewise had gone to her chamber to weep and pray, Charles made his arrangements with Mr. Lee for the future for all connected with him in case of the worst; and after the lawyer’s departure poured out his heart to Dr. Woodford in deep contrition, as he said he had longed to do when lying in expectation of death at the Iron Gates.  “However it may end,” he said, “and I expect, as I deserve, the utmost, I am thankful for this opportunity, though unhappily it gives more pain to those about me than if I had died out there.  Tell them, when they need comfort, how much better it is for me.”

“My dear boy, I cannot believe you will have to suffer.”

“There is much against me, sir.  My foolish flight, the state of parties, and the recent conspiracy, which has made loyal families suspected and odious.  I saw something of that as I came down.  The crowd fancied my uniform French, and hooted and hissed me.  Unluckily I have no other clothes to wear.  Nor can I from my heart utterly disclaim all malice or ill will when I remember the thrill of pleasure in driving my sword home.  I have had to put an end to a Janissary or two more than once in the way of duty, but their black eyes never haunted me like those parti-coloured ones.  Still I trust, as you tell me I may, that God forgives me, for our Blessed Lord’s sake; but I should like, if I could, to take the Holy Sacrament with my love while I am still thus far a free man.  I have not done so since the Easter before these troubles.”

“You shall, my dear boy, you shall.”

There were churches at which the custom freshly begun at the Restoration was not dropped.  The next was St. Matthias’s Day, and Anne and her uncle had already purposed to go to the quiet little church of St. Lawrence, at no great distance, in the very early morning.  They were joined on their way down the stair into the courtyard of the inn by a gentleman in a slouched hat and large dark cloak, who drew Anne’s arm within his own.

Truly there was peace on that morning, and strength to the brave man beyond the physical courage that had often before made him bright in the face of danger, and Anne, though weeping, had a sense of respite and repose, if not of hope.

Late in the afternoon, little Philip was lifted down from riding before old Ralph into the arms of the splendid officer, whose appearance transcended all his visions.  He fumbled in his small pocket, and held out a handful of something green and limp.

“Here’s my salad, papa.  I brought it all the way for you to eat.”

And Colonel Archfield ate every scrap of it for supper, though it was much fitter for a rabbit, and all the evening he held on his knee the tired child, and responded to his prattle about Nana and dogs and rabbits; nay, ministered to his delight and admiration of the sheriff’s coach, javelin men, and even the judge, with a strange mixture of wonder, delight, and with melancholy only in eyes and undertones.

CHAPTER XXX
Sentence

“I have hope to live, and am prepared to die.”

Measure for Measure.

Ralph was bidden to be ready to take his young master home early the next morning.  At eight o’clock the boy, who had slept with his father, came down the stair, clinging to his father’s hand, and Miss Woodford coming closely with him.

“Yes,” said Charles, as he held the little fair fellow in his arms, ere seating him on the horse, “he knows all, Ralph.  He knows that his father did an evil thing, and that what we do in our youth finds us out later, and must be paid for.  He has promised me to be a comfort to the old people, and to look on this lady as a mother.  Nay, no more, Ralph; ’tis not good-bye to any of you yet.  There, Phil, don’t lug my head off, nor catch my hair in your buttons.  Give my dutiful love to your grandmamma and to Aunt Nutley, and be a good boy to them.”

“And when I come to see you again I’ll bring another salad,” quoth Philip, as he rode out of the court; and his father, by way of excusing a contortion of features, smoothed the entangled lock of hair, and muttered something about, “This comes of not wearing a periwig.”  Then he said—

“And to think that I have wasted the company of such a boy as that, all his life except for this mere glimpse!”

“Oh! you will come back to him,” was all that could be said.

For it was time for Charles Archfield to surrender himself to take his trial.

He had been instructed over and over again as to the line of his defence, and cautioned against candour for himself and delicacy towards others, till he had more than once to declare that he had no intention of throwing his life away; but the lawyers agreed in heartily deploring the rules that thus deprived the accused of the assistance of an advocate in examining witnesses and defending himself.  All depended, as they knew and told Sir Edmund Nutley, on the judge and jury.  Now Mr. Baron Hatsel had shown himself a well-meaning but weak and vacillating judge, whose summing up was apt rather to confuse than to elucidate the evidence; and as to the jury, Mr. Lee scanned their stolid countenances somewhat ruefully when they were marshalled before the prisoner, to be challenged if desirable.  A few words passed, into which the judge inquired.

“I am reminded, my Lord,” said Colonel Archfield, bowing, “that I once incurred Mr. Holt’s displeasure as a mischievous boy by throwing a stone which injured one of his poultry; but I cannot believe such a trifle would bias an honest man in a question of life and death.”

Nevertheless the judge put aside Mr. Holt.

“I like his spirit,” whispered Mr. Harcourt.

“But,” returned Lee, “I doubt if he has done himself any good with those fellows by calling it a trifle to kill an old hen.  I should like him to have challenged two or three more moody old Whiggish rascals; but he has been too long away from home to know how the land lies.”

“Too generous and high-spirited for this work,” sighed Sir Edmund, who sat with them.

The indictment was read, the first count being “That of malice aforethought, by the temptation of the Devil, Charles Archfield did wilfully kill and slay Peregrine Oakshott,” etc.  The second indictment was that “By misadventure he had killed and slain the said Peregrine Oakshott.”  To the first he pleaded ‘Not guilty;’ to the second ‘Guilty.’

Tall, well-made, manly, and soldierly he stood, with a quiet set face, while Mr. Cowper proceeded to open the prosecution, with a certain compliment to the prisoner and regret at having to push the case against one who had so generously come forward on behalf of a kinsman; but he must unwillingly state the circumstances that made it doubtful, nay, more than doubtful, whether the prisoner’s plea of mere misadventure could stand.  The dislike to the unfortunate deceased existing among the young Tory country gentlemen of the county was, he should prove, intensified in the prisoner on account of not inexcusable jealousies, as well as of the youthful squabbles which sometimes lead to fatal results.  On the evening of the 30th of June 1688 there had been angry words between the prisoner and the deceased on Portsdown Hill, respecting the prisoner’s late lady.  At four or five o’clock on the ensuing morning, the 1st of July, the one fell by the sword of the other in the then unfrequented court of Portchester Castle.  It was alleged that the stroke was fatal only through the violence of youthful impetuosity; but was it consistent with that supposition that the young gentleman’s time was unaccounted for afterwards, and that the body should have been disposed of in a manner that clearly proved the assistance of an accomplice, and with so much skill that no suspicion had arisen for seven years and a half, whilst the actual slayer was serving, not his own country, but a foreign prince, and had only returned at a most suspicious crisis?

The counsel then proceeded to construct a plausible theory.  He reminded the jury that at that very