Forest by Rutherfurd Edward

Author:Rutherfurd, Edward [Rutherfurd, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2000-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

1648

December. A cold breeze in a grey dawning.

A single man on a grey horse - in his forties; good-looking; dark hair greying, grey eyes watching - stared from the ridge by Lymington across the salt marshes to the small grey castle of Hurst in the distance.

Grey sea, grey sky, grey foam by a grey shore, soundless because distant. From that fort by the winter sea very soon would issue, under close guard, the small wreck of a captured king.

John Lisle pursed his lips and waited. He had thought of riding down to join the cavalcade, but then decided against it. It is not, after all, an easy thing to meet a king whose head, very soon, you plan to cut off. Conversation is difficult.

But it was not the fate of King Charles that concerned him so much. He cared nothing for him. It was the quarrel he had just had with his wife that worried him - the first serious crisis in the twelve happy years of their marriage. The trouble was, he couldn't see a way out.

'Don't go to London, John. I beg you.' Again and again she had pleaded through the night. 'No good will come of this. I can feel it. This will be the death of you.' How could she know such a thing? It didn't make sense, anyway. It was not like her to be so timid. 'Stay down here, John. Or go abroad. Make any excuse, but don't go. Cromwell will use you.'

'No man uses me, Alice,' he had responded irritably.

But it hadn't stopped her. And finally, some time before daybreak she had turned on him in bitter reproach. 'I think you must choose, John, between your family and your ambition.'

The absurd unfairness of this had struck him with such force and so hurtfully that he could not speak. He had got up and ridden out of Albion House before dawn.

His eyes remained fixed on the distant fort. Like it or not, the thought kept nagging at him: what if she were right?

Although, two years after their marriage, her father's death had left Alice the mistress of large estates, it had never occurred to John Lisle to retire to the Forest and give up his career. Nor had Alice ever suggested it. However much she loved him, she probably would have scorned a husband who only lived off her wealth. Besides, he had two sons from his first marriage to provide for, as well as the children that he and Alice had soon started to have together. He had been a hard-working lawyer and a good one. He had risen in his profession. And when, after eleven years of personal rule, King Charles had finally been forced to call a Parliament in 1640, John Lisle had been chosen, as a man of wealth and stature, to represent the city of Winchester.

Did that make him too ambitious? It was easy for Alice to say such a thing. She had never known anything but security. Disgrace, failure, ruin - she had never felt their keen bite.

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