A Reputed Changeling

  Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

  A REPUTED CHANGELING, or, THREE SEVENTH YEARS TWO CENTURIES AGO

  PREFACE

  I do not think I have here forced the hand of history except bygiving Portchester to two imaginary Rectors, and by a littleinjustice to her whom Princess Anne termed 'the brick-bat woman.'

  The trial is not according to present rules, but precedents for itsirregularities are to be found in the doings of the seventeenthcentury, notably in the trial of Spencer Cowper by the same JudgeHatsel, and I have done my best to represent the habits of thosecountry gentry who were not infected by the evils of the laterStewart reigns.

  There is some doubt as to the proper spelling of Portchester, but,judging by analogy, the t ought not to be omitted.

  C. M. YONGE. 2d May 1889.

  CHAPTER I: THE EXPERIENCES OF GOODY MADGE

  "Dear Madam, think me not to blame;Invisible the fairy came.Your precious babe is hence conveyed,And in its place a changeling laid.Where are the father's mouth and nose,The mother's eyes as black as sloes?See here, a shocking awkward creature,That speaks a fool in every feature."

  GAY.

  "He is an ugly ill-favoured boy--just like Riquet a la Houppe."

  "That he is! Do you not know that he is a changeling?"

  Such were the words of two little girls walking home from a schoolfor young ladies kept, at the Cathedral city of Winchester, by twoFrenchwomen of quality, refugees from the persecutions preluding theRevocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who enlivened the studies oftheir pupils with the Contes de Commere L'Oie.

  The first speaker was Anne Jacobina Woodford, who had recently comewith her mother, the widow of a brave naval officer, to live withher uncle, the Prebendary then in residence. The other was LucyArchfield, daughter to a knight, whose home was a few miles fromPortchester, Dr. Woodford's parish on the southern coast ofHampshire.

  In the seventeenth century, when roads were mere ditches oftenimpassable, and country-houses frequently became entirely isolatedin the winter, it was usual with the wealthier county families tomove into their local capital, where some owned mansions and othershired prebendal houses, or went into lodgings in the roomy dwellingsof the superior tradesmen. For the elders this was the season ofsocial intercourse, for the young people, of education.

  The two girls, who were about eight years old, had struck up a rapidfriendship, and were walking hand in hand to the Close attended bythe nurse in charge of Mistress Lucy. This little lady wore a blacksilk hood and cape, trimmed with light brown fur, and lined withpink, while Anne Woodford, being still in mourning for her father,was wrapped in a black cloak, unrelieved except by the white borderof her round cap, fringed by fair curls, contrasting with her browneyes. She was taller and had a more upright bearing of head andneck, with more promise of beauty than her companion, who was muchmore countrified and would not have been taken for the child ofhigher station.

  They had traversed the graveyard of the Cathedral, and were passingthrough a narrow archway known as the Slype, between the south-western angle of the Cathedral and a heavy mass of old masonryforming part of the garden wall of the present abode of theArchfield family, when suddenly both children stumbled and fell,while an elfish peal of laughter sounded behind them.

  Lucy came down uppermost, and was scarcely hurt, but Anne had fallenprone, striking her chin on the ground, so as to make her bite herlip, and bruising knees and elbows severely. Nurse detected thecause of the fall so as to avoid it herself. It was a cord fastenedacross the archway, close to the ground, and another shout ofderision greeted the discovery; while Lucy, regaining her feet,beheld for a moment a weird exulting grimace on a visage peepingover a neighbouring headstone.

  "It is he! it is he! The wicked imp! There's no peace for him! Isay," she screamed, "see if you don't get a sound flogging!" and sheclenched her little fist as the provoking "Ho! ho! ho!" rang fartherand farther off. "Don't cry, Anne dear; the Dean and Chapter shalltake order with him, and he shall be soundly beaten. Are you hurt?O nurse, her mouth is all blood."

  "I hope she has not broken a tooth," said nurse, who had beenattending to the sobbing child. "Come in, my lamb, we will washyour face, and make you well."

  Anne, blinded with tears, jarred, bruised, bleeding, and bewildered,submitted to be led by kind nurse the more willingly because sheknew that her mother, together with all the quality, were at SirThomas Charnock's. They had dined at the fashionable hour of two,and were to stay till supper-time, the elders playing at Ombre, thejuniors dancing. As a rule the ordinary clergy did not associatewith the county families, but Dr. Woodford was of good birth and aroyal chaplain, and his deceased brother had been a favouriteofficer of the Duke of York, and had been so severely wounded by hisside in the battle of Southwold as to be permanently disabled.Indeed Anne Jacobina was godchild to the Duke and his first Duchess,whose favoured attendant her mother had been. Thus Mrs. Woodfordwas in great request, and though she had not hitherto gone intocompany since her widowhood, she had yielded to Lady Charnock'sentreaty that she would come and show her how to deal with thatstrange new Chinese infusion, a costly packet of which had beenbrought to her from town by Sir Thomas, as the Queen's favouritebeverage, wherewith the ladies of the place were to be regaled andastonished.

  It had been already arranged that the two little girls should spendthe evening together, and as they entered the garden before thehouse a rude voice exclaimed, "Holloa! London Nan whimpering. Hasmy fine lady met a spider or a cow?" and a big rough lad of twelve,in a college gown, spread out his arms, and danced up and down inthe doorway to bar the entrance.

  "Don't, Sedley," said a sturdy but more gentlemanlike lad of thesame age, thrusting him aside. "Is she hurt? What is it?"

  "That spiteful imp, Peregrine Oakshott," said Lucy passionately."He had a cord across the Slype to trip us up. I heard him laughinglike a hobgoblin, and saw him too, grinning over a tombstone likethe malicious elf he is."

  The college boy uttered a horse laugh, which made Lucy cry, "CousinSedley, you are as bad!" but the other boy was saying, "Don't cry,Anne None-so-pretty. I'll give it him well! Though I'm younger,I'm bigger, and I'll show him reason for not meddling with my littlesweetheart."

  "Have with you then!" shouted Sedley, ready for a fray on whateverpretext, and off they rushed, as nurse led little Anne up the broadshallow steps of the dark oak staircase, but Lucy stood laughingwith exultation in the intended vengeance, as her brother took downher father's hunting-whip.

  "He must be wellnigh a fiend to play such wicked pranks under thevery Minster!" she said.

  "And a rascal of a Whig, and that's worse," added Charles; "but I'llhave it out of him!"

  "Take care, Charley; if you offend him, and he does really belong tothose--those creatures"--Lucy lowered her voice--"who knows whatthey might do to you?"

  Charles laughed long and loud. "I'll take care of that," he said,swinging out at the door. "Elf or no elf, he shall learn what it isto play off his tricks on _my_ sister and my little sweetheart."

  Lucy betook herself to the nursery, where Anne was being comforted,her bleeding lip washed with essence, and repaired with a pinch ofbeaver from a hat, and her other bruises healed with lily leavessteeped in strong waters.

  "Charley is gone to serve him out!" announced Lucy as the sovereignremedy.

  "Oh, but perhaps he did not mean it," Anne tried to say.

  "Mean it? Small question of that, the cankered young slip! Nurse,do you think those he belongs to can do Charley any harm if heangers them?"

  "I cannot say, missie. Only 'tis well we be not at home, or theremight be elf knots in the horses' manes to-night. I doubt mewhether _that sort_ can do much hurt here, s
eeing as 'tis holyground."

  "But is he really a changeling? I thought there were no such thingsas--"

  "Hist, hist, Missie Anne!" cried the dame; "'tis not good to namethem."

  "Oh, but we are on the Minster ground, nurse," said Lucy, tremblinga little however, looking over her shoulder, and coming closer tothe old servant.

  "Why do they think so?" asked Anne. "Is it because he is so uglyand mischievous and rude? Not like boys in London."

  "Prithee, nurse, tell her the tale," entreated Lucy, who had madelarge eyes over it many a time before.

  "Ay, and who should tell you all about it save me, who had it allfrom Goody Madge Bulpett, as saw it all!"

  "Goody Madge! It was she that came when poor little Kitty was bornand died," suggested Lucy, as Anne, laying her aching head uponnurse's knees, prepared to listen to the story.

  "Well, deary darlings, you see poor Madam Oakshott never had herhealth since the Great Fire in London, when she was biding with herkinsfolk to be near Major Oakshott, who had got into trouble aboutsome of his nonconforming doings. The poor lady had a mortal frightbefore she could be got out of Gracechurch Street as was all of ablaze, and she was so afeard of her husband being burnt as he lay inNewgate that she could scarce be got away, and whether it was that,or that she caught cold lying out in a tent on Highgate Hill, shehas never had a day's health since."

  "And the gentleman--her husband?" asked Anne.

  "They all broke prison, poor fellows, as they had need to do, andthe Major's time was nearly up. He made himself busy in saving andhelping the folk in the streets; and his brother, Sir Peregrine, whowas thick with the King, and is in foreign parts now, took thechance to speak of the poor lady's plight and say it would be thedeath of her if he could not get his discharge, and his Majesty,bless his kind heart, gave the order at once. So they took madamhome to the Chace, but she has been but an ailing body ever since."

  "But the fairy, the fairy, how did she change the babe?" cried Anne.

  "Hush, hush, dearie! name them not. I am coming to it all in goodtime. I was telling you how the poor lady failed and pined fromthat hour, and was like to die. My gossip Madge told me how when,next Midsummer, this unlucky babe was born they had to take him fromher chamber at once because any sound of crying made her start inher sleep, and shriek that she heard a poor child wailing who hadbeen left in a burning house. Moll Owens, the hind's wife, a comelylass, was to nurse him, and they had him at once to her in thenursery, where was the elder child, two years old, Master Oliver, asyou know well, Mistress Lucy, a fine-grown, sturdy little Turk asever was."

  "Yes, I know him," answered Lucy; "and if his brother's achangeling, he is a bear! The Whig bear is what Charley calls him."

  "Well, what does that child do but trot out of the nursery, and tryto scramble down the stairs.--Never tell me but that they you wot oftrained him out--not that they had power over a Christian child, butthat they might work their will on the little one. So they mustneeds trip him up, so that he rolled down the stair hollering andsqualling all the way enough to bring the house down, and his poorlady mother, she woke up in a fit. The womenfolk ran, Molly andall, she being but a slip of a girl herself and giddy-pated, andwhen they came back after quieting Master Oliver, the babe waschanged."

  "Then they didn't see the--"

  "Hush, hush, missie! no one never sees 'em or they couldn't donothing. They cannot, if a body is looking. But what had been aslikely a child before as you would wish to handle was gone! Thepoor little mouth was all of a twist, and his eyelid drooped, and henever ceased mourn, mourn, mourn, wail, wail, wail, day and night,and whatever food he took he never was satisfied, but pined andpeaked and dwined from day to day, so as his little legs was likeknitting pins. The lady was nigh upon death as it seemed, so thatno one took note of the child at first, but when Madge had time tolook at him, she saw how it was, as plain as plain could be, andtold his father. But men are unbelieving, my dears, and alwaysthink they know better than them as has the best right, and MajorOakshott would hear of no such thing, only if the boy was like todie, he must be christened. Well, Madge knew that sometimes theyflee at touch of holy water, but no; though the thing mourned andmoaned enough to curdle your blood and screeched out when the watertouched him, there he was the same puny little canker. So whenmadam was better, and began to fret over the child that was nighupon three months old, and no bigger than a newborn babe, Madge upand told her how it was, and the way to get her own again."

  "What was that, nurse?"

  "There be different ways, my dear. Madge always held to breakingfive and twenty eggs and have a pot boiling on a good sea-coal firewith the poker in it red hot, and then drop the shells in one byone, in sight of the creature in the cradle. Presently it will upand ask whatever you are about. Then you gets the poker in yourhand as you says, "A-brewing of egg shells." Then it says, "I'mforty hundred years old and odd, and yet I never heard of a-brewingof egg shells." Then you ups with the poker and at him to thrust itdown his ugly throat, and there's a hissing and a whirling, and heis snatched away, and the real darling, all plump and rosy, is putback in the cradle."

  "And did they?"

  "No, my dears. Madam was that soft-hearted she could not bring hermind to it, though they promised her not to touch him unless hespoke. But nigh on two years later, Master Robert was born, as fineand lusty and straight-limbed as a chrisom could be, while the othercould not walk a step, but sat himself about on the floor, a-moaningand a-fretting with the legs of him for all the world like thedrumsticks of a fowl, and his hands like claws, and his face wizenedup like an old gaffer of a hundred, or the jackanapes that MartinBoats'n brought from Barbary. So after a while madam saw the rightsof it, and gave consent that means should be taken as Madge andother wise folk would have it; but he was too old by that time forthe egg shells, for he could talk, talk, and ask questions enough todrive you wild. So they took him out under the privet hedge, Madgeand her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his clothes off to floghim with nettles till they changed him, when the ill-favoured elfbegan to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs, and as illluck would have it, the master was within hearing, though they hadwatched him safe off to one of his own 'venticles, but it seemsthere had been warning that the justices were on the look-out, sohome he came. And behold, the thing that never knew the use of hisfeet before, ups and flies at him, and lays hold of his leg,hollering out, "Sir, father, don't let them," and what not. So thenit was all over with them, as though that were not proof enow whatmanner of thing it was! Madge tried to put him off with washingwith yarbs being good for the limbs, but when he saw that Deb wasthere, he saith, saith he, as grim as may be, "Thou shalt not suffera witch to live," which was hard, for she is but a white witch; andhe stormed and raved at them with Bible texts, and then he vowed(men are so headstrong, my dears) that if ever he ketched them at itagain, he would see Deb burnt for a witch at the stake, and Madgehung for the murder of the child, and he is well known to be a manof his word. So they had to leave him to abide by his bargain, anda sore handful he has of it."

  Anne drew a long sigh and asked whether the real boy in fairylandwould never come back.

  "There's no telling, missie dear. Some say they are bound there forever and a day, some that they as holds 'em are bound to bring themback for a night once in seven years, and in the old times if theywas sprinkled with holy water, and crossed, they would stay, butthere's no such thing as holy water now, save among the Papists, andif one knew the way to cross oneself, it would be as much as one'slife was worth."

  "If Peregrine was to die," suggested Lucy.

  "Bless your heart, dearie, he'll never die! When the true one'stime comes, you'll see, if so be you be alive to see it, as Heavengrant, he will go off like the flame of a candle and nothing be leftin his place but a bit of a withered sting nettle. But come, mysweetings, 'tis time I got your supper. I'll put some nice rosy-cheeked apples down to roast, to be soft for Mistress Woodford'ssor
e mouth."

  Before the apples were roasted, Charles Archfield and his cousin,the colleger Sedley Archfield, a big boy in a black cloth gown, camein with news of having--together with the other boys, includingOliver and Robert Oakshott--hunted Peregrine all round the Close,but he ran like a lapwing, and when they had pinned him up in thecorner by Dr. Ken's house, he slipped through their fingers up theivy, and grinned at them over the wall like the imp he was. Nollsaid it was always the way, he was no more to be caught than a bitof thistledown, but Sedley meant to call out all the college boysand hunt and bait him down like a badger on 'Hills.'