Duking Days Rebellion

Chapter One
Exeter, June 1685

Helena clung to the hanging strap of the Woulfe family carriage as it clattered down the hill and turned onto Northgate Street, two haughty footmen clinging to the rear. This would be the first time they had gone to church without their father, Sir Jonathan and their brother Aaron. Her heart twisted and she sent up a silent prayer that, wherever they were, they, and Uncle Edmund were safe.
She looked up and met Bayle’s gaze, too anxious to return his smile. Nathan Bayle, body servant to Sir Jonathan, had been part of Helena’s life forever. ‘Ask Bayle.’ was the watchword at Loxsbeare Manor. House servants and estate staff alike called him Master Bayle, whether in earshot or not. To the family he was Bayle. Only her father ever called him Nathan.
A broad shouldered man, he kept his wavy brown hair slicked back from a high, flat forehead over expressive brown eyes. Despite his imposing size, he was a non-threatening figure with a calm expression. Occupying the majority of the seat opposite, he dwarfed her younger brother Henry, who would have surely fidgeted more had there been room for him to do so.
The smells of hot leather and horses, sun-baked grass and starched linen assailing her senses within the confined space made Helena queasy as iron-clad wheels bumped over the cobbles in Arches Lane.
Beside her, Lady Elizabeth sat staunchly upright, her delicate features turned to the window. Helena couldn’t see her face, but sensed her unease as she watched her fiddle with a lace lappet falling from her headdress, tugging at it with nervous fingers.
Exeter sported few private carriages, so as they rolled to a halt outside St Mary Arches Church, the knot of curious onlookers gathered to watch the Woulfes handed down at the lytch gate was not a cause for concern.
Helena bowed in greeting to several acquaintances at the church door, others looked away as they took their usual pew in the cool and lofty interior. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the curious eyes boring into her back and the low mutterings echoing from adjacent pews.
Let them whisper and gossip, she was proud the men in her family had stood up for their principles and were willing to die for them.
Master Triske, a thin, humorless man, completed his self-indulgent sermon. Under the eye of the magistrate in the front pew, and with some reluctance, Helena thought, the minister announced the Duke of Monmouth’s declaration, made a few days before from Taunton market place.
After several nervous starts, he informed them Monmouth claimed to be the rightful king and that James the Second had murdered his father, King Charles.
Helena went rigid with shock as murmurs of dismay rippled round the congregation. Beside her, Henry murmured, “Father said Monmouth did not seek the throne.”
“Hush!” Helena nudged him, her gaze on their mother, who stared stonily ahead, a spot of color developing on each cheek.
With an undertone of warning, the minister recited King James’ pronouncement that his nephew and all his ‘adherents, abettors and advisers’ were traitors and rebels.
Helena felt warmth creep into her face. Traitor? How dare this insipid cleric call Sir Jonathan Woulfe such a thing? Rebel indeed! Didn’t he realize he was trying to protect the very church where Triske condemned his loyalty? “If the king had his way, you, Master Triske, would be chanting in Latin,” she murmured under her breath.
Her self-righteous anger sustained her through the rest of the service, when Lady Elizabeth gathered her and Henry in her wake to glide regally down the aisle, watched by their erstwhile friends and acquaintances.
Helena stayed close to her mother’s skirts like a child, eager to be away from what she felt were disparaging murmurs and hard looks. A friend of Henry’s started forward, most likely to offer his greetings, but a male hand clamped down on the boy’s shoulder and after a murmured exchange, he was guided away. Helena narrowed her eyes, angry for Henry, who had harmed no one. Was this what they were to expect from a community who had always held the Woulfes in high regard?
She turned away, telling herself they would feel differently about their son associating with her brother once the Duke of Monmouth was in Whitehall.
“No one trusts Catholic James,” her Uncle Edmund once told her. She hoped it was true.
Lady Elizabeth exchanged polite greetings with the minister at the church door, but did not pause to chatter with friends as was her usual custom. Instead, she walked rapidly down the path toward their coach, past a glowering Lord Miles Blanden and his wife.
The Blandens owned an ancient manor at the top of St David’s Hill, richer than the Woulfes, but according to her father, the respect of the city’s citizens so far eluded them. Helena practically shared a nursery with their son, Martyn, and when she reached seventeen, they were betrothed. Helena liked him well enough, but she had been disappointed, expecting to feel something quite different for the man destined to be her husband.
Helena’s father granted her a generous portion, commensurate with the Woulfe name, and dazzled by his generosity, she had moved through a haze of over indulgence, exhilarated to be the center of so much attention.
Despite the heat of the churchyard, Helena shivered at the memory of that morning last December, when Martyn fell ill during a visit to Loxsbeare. His manservant half-carried him, in obvious pain, to his horse and bore him away before Helena could bid a proper farewell. Her enquiries as to his well-being were deflected with vague responses, and two days later, a messenger rode over from Blanden Manor to tell them Martyn was dead.
Helena feigned her tears, her overwhelming emotion at the time being relief. Even Lord Blandon had appeared more frustrated than grief stricken, making Helena wonder if he had instigated their betrothal so he could bathe in the reflected glory of the Woulfes’ reputation.
She offered them a perfunctory curtsey, but kept her face expressionless, conscious of their eyes boring into her back as Bayle helped her up the step into the carriage.
“What do you suppose he wants?” Henry nodded to the black-garbed city magistrate, who strode grim-faced down the path in their direction. The man raised a hand to attract their attention, but the carriage already lurched towards the North Gate, leaving him standing in the middle of the road, frowning.
“His duty can wait a little longer,” Bayle muttered.
Helena gave him a thin smile, unable to bring herself to ask what that duty might be.
The carriage rumbled beneath the stone gatehouse to climb the steep Longbrook. Images crowded Helena’s head of the days before her father left, when he would shut himself in the great hall for hours with a succession of anonymous men. Visitors their Father forbade her and Henry to see, much less ask about.
She had once tried to listen at the door, but heard only a low murmur of male voices, the chink of glass on glass and an occasional brief laugh through the thick wood. The distinctive sound of a chair scraping back had alerted her to fear of discovery, and Helena swung round in preparation for flight, right into the arms of Tobias Lumm, her father’s steward.
His strong hands closed on her upper arms and his eyes danced with amusement. “I beg your pardon, Mistress.”
Helena froze, her thoughts racing to formulate a good reason for being crouched outside the door, but she couldn’t think fast enough. A flush warmed her face as she realized he had not released her. Indignant, she squirmed out of his grasp, slapping at her skirt in an attempt to restore her dignity.
Tobias dropped his hands with no show of self-consciousness, as if what he was holding had no more effect on him than a sack of flour. He smiled, and then reached for the handle, saying, “May I assist you, Mistress?”
“No.” Helena bobbed on her heels. “Er . . . no, Lumm. I have changed my mind. I shall speak to my Father in the morning.”
He gave an exaggerated bow in her direction before the door of the great hall clicked shut behind him. Helena stomped up the stairs, forgetting to lift her skirt and almost falling when she trod on the hem. Hoisting it away from her foot with a vicious tug, she fled upstairs to the window seat on the half landing.
She and Henry kept long vigils there together, waiting, wondering, as the atmosphere in the house changed from light-hearted happiness to nervous tension.
Helena looked to where Henry sat huddled in the corner of the carriage, his sandy brown hair concealed under a dark peruke that made his skin seem paler than normal, his boyish grin nowhere in sight. He looked troubled and subdued today, as they all were.
Helena jutted out her lower lip and blew air upwards to create a breeze, lifting the ‘favorites’ at her temple. She would be glad to get out of this stifling coach, but suspected the rest of their Sunday would be no more restful.
* * *
Taking advantage of the warm weather, Helena and Lady Elizabeth occupied a bench beneath a stone arch cut in the garden wall. Bayle, Tobias and Henry sprawled untidily on the grass, the roar of the River Exe discernible below the Weare Cliffs behind the enclosing garden wall.
Helena stared up at the rear of the house, its soft gold ham stone facade almost glowing in the sunlight. She loved Loxsbeare and never tired of looking at it, sitting square on its grass embankment perched on the top of the cliff above the river. The clinging white blooms of trailing eglantine roses drooped in the afternoon sun, softening the walls. A window opened and a hand appeared, waving a white cloth, and then pulled it closed again with a bang, the leaded panes winking in the sunlight.
Set on one side of the house, the rose garden gave a view of the gravel road curving from St David’s Hill, through a set of impressive wrought iron gates into a cobbled courtyard. Tall, mullioned windows marched across the southern front reaching two stories high, with ornamental battlements built above.
Helena’s great-grandfather, Julius Woulfe, built the house for his fifteen-year-old bride when the first King Charles occupied the throne. To make her transition to married life easier, and perhaps the prospect of her twenty four year old groom less terrifying, he named their new home after the village near Tiverton where she was born.
His son, Thomas, Helena’s grandfather, possessed an artistic nature and had the interior white plasterwork painted with swathes of leaves and flowers trailing up the staircase and across the tops of doorways.
Helena waved her fan back and forth across her face, the feathers catching on her damp skin, making her feel sticky and uncomfortable. She pulled her skirt away from her prickly legs, shifting on the bench, her gaze sliding toward Tobias, unnerved by the easy way he slouched on the grass. He would never have relaxed so completely in her father’s company, with his shirt unfastened at the neck and his thick brown hair loose on his shoulders.
Tobias had been estate steward for the past year, although where he came from, or admitted to, Helena had not demeaned herself to ask. A few years older than her elder brother, he was proud for a servant, with a knowing manner as if he were a possessor of secrets. He was strong-featured, many said handsome, with deep-set brown eyes, and a wide, ready smile. She would have denied it if challenged, but Helena found him interesting.
His station in life certainly did not hinder his fondness for flamboyant clothes, which he purchased second-hand and wore like an impoverished cavalier. She heard him once giving half-threatening instructions to the laundresses for the care of his garments.
Her father ignored her mistrust, which infuriated her when she saw them together around the house and grounds, their heads close together, more like equals than master and servant. Even Bayle regarded him as hard working and efficient, giving her no choice but to accept the man, but she did so at a distance.
As if he sensed her thoughts, Tobias glanced across at her and gave a slow wink. Helena lifted her chin and stared off, annoyed he had caught her looking at him. He’s impertinent too!
“Lord Feversham has been put in charge of King James’ forces sent to the West.” Bayle confirmed Helena’s suspicion that his frequent visits to Exeter had little to do with obtaining supplies.
Squinting against the sun, Tobias handed Bayle a glass of lemon water from a tray. “Churchill will feel slighted by that,” he tutted. “To be overlooked in favor of a Huguenot. The man has a long memory.”
Helena looked up at his reference to Huguenots. There were quite a number of them living in Exeter, refugees from the unyielding French king. She had heard about how King Louis dragged families apart, forcing children of Protestants to accept the Roman faith. St Olave’s Church in Fore Street had been renamed the French Church, where the émigrés gathered to seek alms.
“You don’t think King James would let such a thing happen here. Force us to be Catholics, I mean?” Henry looked up at Tobias, shielding his eyes with one hand.
“Let it happen?” Tobias thumped his knee with a fist. “I fear he might make it happen.”
Helena watched the steward and the manservant, marveling at the change in them since her father left. Bayle deferred to Tobias naturally and they shared duties with no rancor, despite Bayle having been at Loxsbeare since his boyhood. Despite her misgivings about Tobias, Helena found their presence reassuring, and they both took special care of her mother, for which she was silently grateful.
Henry sat cross-legged in breeches and shirt, his wig discarded and the latest newssheet on his knees. “Monmouth has gained possession of Axminster!” he read aloud. “They were barely ahead of Lord Albermarle’s militia and when they encountered Monmouth’s men outside the town, some of the Somerset militia ran away.” He looked up with a bright smile. “That must have pleased the Rebels.”
“Don’t call them Rebels, Henry. It makes a chill run through me.” Helena snapped her fan shut and gave a shudder.
Henry ignored her. “It says, when they reached Taunton, the townsfolk lined the streets in welcome. A party of schoolgirls presented Monmouth with a pennant bearing the initials ‘JR’ topped by a crown.” He turned bright eyes on his mother. “You see, Mother? They want Monmouth for their king.”
“It’s not all good news, Master Henry.” Bayle batted away a persistent fly with a hand the size of a small shovel. “There was that skirmish at Ashill.” Helena’s gaze flew to his face. “Was it serious?”
“Four of Monmouth’s men were killed and some wounded, I believe.” Tobias offered Bayle a lace kerchief, which he dismissed with a snort.
“Did they kill any troopers?” Henry pulled a wide leaf from a nearby shrub, chewing at the woody stem.
Tobias pocketed the kerchief with a flourish and leaned back on one elbow. “Churchill lost three men, including one of his best officers, a Lieutenant Monoux.”
Henry raised a fist, giving a loud whoop, and Helena’s heart beat a little faster, wondering if her family was among the casualties.
“Jonathan promised there would be no bloodshed.” Lady Elizabeth nibbled at her bottom lip. “Monmouth and Churchill used to be friends.” She stared off as if remembering. “Perhaps the king does not trust Churchill, so he put the Frenchman in command.” She gave a small sigh and discarded the embroidery she had been holding, but not working on.
Helena looked away, embarrassed for her mother, whose thoughts lately seemed discordant and rambling, but not knowing what to do about it.
A warm breeze brought the sound of the river into the garden, ruffling Helena’s hair. Insects buzzed in nearby flowers and the snap-snap-snap of a startled pigeon disturbed the quiet. She cast her mind back to the day her father had left with Edmund and Aaron. The messenger who came to tell them Monmouth had landed at Lyme with eighty men, was not a dark, brooding stranger galloping a sweating horse into the courtyard under cover of night, but a nondescript laborer who kicked his ancient mount into a lumbering trot through the manor gates.
Helena shivered in the heat, recalling an image of her father, brother and uncle riding away with a group of the Loxsbeare servants, watching them grow small on the road. She hadn’t understood then why she was afraid, just as her fears confused her now. Loxsbeare was where she felt safe, the only home she had ever known. Her father had been adamant that the Duke of Monmouth was what the people wanted, but since then, he had declared his uncle a murderer and himself king. Surely, that changed things?
A bank of cloud appeared on a stiffening wind and a long shadow slid over the garden, sending a tremor of foreboding down her back.