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CHAPTER TWELVE

Love and revenge

London, of course, was where Lorna was, but it was five weeks before I saw her. Because I was a kind of prisoner, I was not allowed to move freely around the city and I had to report every day to the judges’ rooms. However, I came before Judge Jeffreys at last. He remembered me, believed my story, and gave me papers which said I was a free man and an honest servant of the King.

I was now free to go and see Lorna but, to tell the truth, I was a little afraid. It had been a year since she left Exmoor - a year without one word or letter from her. Did she remember the old days in our farmhouse? Did she still love her poor, simple farmer, a man without great riches or a famous family name? It was true that the Ridds had held their own land on Exmoor for hundreds of years, but Lorna came from a family that had Scottish kings in its history.

Everybody in London knew Lady Lorna Dugal. They spoke of her great beauty, and told me how rich she was, and that the Queen was very friendly with her. But if Lorna still loved me, then neither riches nor a proud family would keep me away from her.

So, with fear and hope in my heart, I went to Earl Brandir’s house. It was a very grand place. I was taken upstairs to a little sitting-room, and told to wait. Then, suddenly, the door opened and Lorna was standing before me, in a simple white dress, with her long black hair falling down her back. She was more beautiful than ever.

She came towards me, holding out her hand. Gently, I took her hand in mine, then bent and kissed it.

‘Is that all?’ she whispered. I saw the shine of tears in her eyes, and in another second she was crying in my arms.

‘Darling Lorna,’ I cried, holding her close to me. ‘I love you dearly, but surely, you don’t care for me now.’

‘Yes, I do, John. Yes, I do. Oh, why have you behaved so unkindly?’

‘I am behaving,’ I replied, ‘as well as I can. No other man in the world could hold you like this, without kissing you.’

‘Then why don’t you do it, John?’ asked Lorna, looking up at me, with a laugh in her bright eyes.

After that, of course, there was no more talking, for about five minutes. Then my darling pulled away from me, and began to question me.

‘John Ridd, you must tell me the truth, the whole truth. Why have you never, for more than a year, taken any notice of your old friend, Lorna Doone?’

‘Because,’ I answered, ‘my old friend, and true love, sent me not one word or letter in all that time.’

‘What!’ cried Lorna. ‘Oh no, my poor John! I have often suspected something like this, but she always said -‘ With these words, she rang a bell very violently, and a few seconds later her servant, little Gwenny, came in.

‘Gwenny,’ said Lorna, ‘what have you done with all the letters I gave you to send to Mr. Ridd? No more lies, now.’

Gwenny gave me a very black look. ‘I didn’t send them,’ she said. ‘You’re a grand lady now, mistress. You should marry some grand lord, not a poor farmer from Exmoor. I was only thinking of you.’

‘Gwenny, you may go,’ said Lorna, her voice full of quiet anger. ‘I don’t want to see you or speak to you for at least three days.’

At this, Gwenny ran out of the room, crying noisily, and Lorna turned to me. ‘Oh John, try not to be too angry with her. She loves me very much, and I’m afraid that if you take me, you’ll still have to take Gwenny too.’

‘I’ll take fifty Gwennies,’ I said, ‘if you want me to.’ After this, we spoke of ourselves. I tried to tell Lorna that, when she was free to decide her own future, she must think very carefully. The world would say she was mad if she chose to become a farmer’s wife. Of course, at Plover’s Barrows farm she would have a comfortable home, plenty of good food, and all the love and care I could give her. But it was not the same as being a grand lady, who owned half of Scotland and who could marry any lord she wanted.

Lorna could not wait for me to finish. ‘I decided long ago, dear John,’ she said, very seriously, ‘that you must be my husband. I think it was the day you climbed up the waterfall, with your shoes off, and a bag of fish for your mother. So, after all these years of loving, shall little things like money and a family name separate us? They mean nothing. I have not been here a year, John, without learning something. Oh, how I hate it! Only my uncle and Gwenny really care for me. All the rest are only interested in my land and money. Oh John, you must never leave me - it would break my heart.’

Of course, I gave in at once, and said, ‘Darling, you must do exactly what you please.’

For that she gave me the sweetest of kisses; and as I left, I went grandly down the great stairs of Earl Brandir’s house, thinking of nothing else except that.

For the rest of my time in London I went to see Lorna every day, forgetting all about my poor mother and the work that needed doing on the farm. Then one day I received a letter from Lizzie, and I realized that I must get home as quickly as possible. My darling Lorna cried and held me close, but she understood why I had to go.

Lizzie’s news was this: Jeremy Stickles and his soldiers had finally made their attack on Doone valley - but it had failed, and Jeremy had been injured. This was the worst possible thing for Exmoor. Now the Doones would make more trouble than ever before - and of course they would attack our farm.

When I got home, I learnt that the Doones were robbing everyone around them, and the whole of Exmoor was living in fear of them. Then a few weeks later something even more terrible happened.

The Doones came one evening to the farmhouse of Kit Badcock, a neighbour of ours, while he was out working in his fields. They broke down the door and stole his young wife Margery. Two of them carried her, screaming and fighting, to their horses, and then rode away. Meanwhile, the other Doones were searching the house for food and drink to steal, and one of them found the Badcocks’ little son crying in the kitchen. He picked the baby up, threw him into the air, and let him fall on to the hard stone floor. The child’s neck was broken, and he died at once.

It made me sick just to think of the cruelty of this man, and when people heard this terrible story, they were very angry. They said it was time for the people of Exmoor to take their own revenge.

Men from all the farms and villages of Exmoor came to see me. ‘We cannot expect any more help from the King against the Doones,’ they told me. ‘Because Jeremy Stickles’s attack failed, the King has refused to send any more soldiers. But we’ve had enough of the Doones. We want to attack them ourselves, and we want you to lead us, John.’

I said I was no leader, but they would not listen to this.

‘Try to lead us,’ they said, ‘and we will try to follow.’

In the end I agreed to do as they asked. I thought we had a chance against the Doones, if enough of us decided to fight. There were fewer of them now - some had been killed in the rebel fighting, and some during Jeremy’s attack. We arranged to meet again and make a plan. Tom Faggus, now quite well, rode over to join us - and he soon had a very clever idea.

‘We’re not soldiers,’ he said, ‘and we’ll never defeat the Doones if we try to fight all of them in their valley. So we must lay a trap. You know the caves on Exmoor where gold was once found? Well, we’ll tell a story around Exmoor that men have been digging secretly and have found a new cave, with rocks full of gold. We’ll say that the gold will be taken away on a certain night, at a certain time. The Doones will naturally plan to attack and steal this gold, but some of us will make a trap for them in the caves. Meanwhile, the rest of us will attack the valley, as soon as we know that some of the robbers have left.’

The second part of our plan was this: Tom would take some of our men and pretend to attack the Doone-gate, while our main attack would really come from the waterfall end of the valley - the route I had discovered so long ago.

The plan went well. The story about the gold was whispered in the right ears, and on the agreed night our spies watched a large group of robbers leave Doone valley on their way to the caves. Meanwhile, as the moon rose above the hills, I was leading my twenty men to the bottom of the waterfall. John Fry, our old farm-worker, was in the mountains which looked down into the valley. When he saw the fighting start at the Doone-gate, he would fire his gun as a signal to us.

Soon the sound of John’s gun rang around the mountains, and I and my men climbed up the waterfall and into the valley. Tom’s men were making as much noise as possible at the Doone-gate, and all the Doones had run to join the fight there. We went quietly along the valley, keeping to the shadows under the trees, until we came to the Doone-town. Then we got to work with our fire sticks, and before long every Doone house was on fire. We took good care, however, to burn no women or children, and we made sure that they were all out of the houses first.

When they saw the flames and smoke rising from their houses, the Doone men came running back from the gate. By the time they reached us, the whole valley was burning - houses, trees, everything, right up to the sides of the mountains. As the men came towards us, we saw that there were only twelve of them. In the bright firelight, they could not see us, but we had them right in front of our guns. There were so few of them that I thought we could take them as prisoners. But my men did not wait for a word from me - they saw the chance of revenge on the men who had burnt their homes and stolen their women for so many years. They fired, and five Doones fell dead.

The robbers fired back wildly, but they could not see us clearly in the shadows. Soon all the guns were empty, and the battle became hand-to-hand fighting, with knives and sticks. I stood to one side - the only Doone I wanted to meet was Carver. But as I started to look for him, I saw something white in the grass, moving close to the ground. I ran to see what it was, and found the Counsellor. I recognized him from Lorna’s descriptions, and here he was, on his hands and knees, trying to escape from the fighting. The white thing I had seen was his long white hair. When he saw me, he got to his feet. He knew at once who I was.

‘John Ridd!’ he said. ‘Won’t you be kind to an old man? Let me get away from this violence, John.’

‘I will let you go free, sir,’ I said, ‘but on one condition. Tell me honestly, which Doone killed my father?’

‘I will tell you honestly,’ he said, ‘though it hurts me to say it. It was my son, Carver.’

‘I thought it was him,’ I said. ‘But you were not there, so I don’t blame you.’

‘I’ve always been against violence,’ the Counsellor said, shaking his head sadly. ‘And now, John, let me go.’

He was an evil, lying old man, but I let him go. I don’t know what happened to him, but he was never seen again on Exmoor.

Then I went to look for Carver, but did not find him. Afterwards, I heard that he had led the Doones who had gone to the gold caves. Our trap was successful, and all the Doones had been killed - all except Carver, who had ridden his horse through the attackers and escaped.

The Doones were totally defeated, though. When the sun came up above their valley the next day, all their houses were nothing but blackened wood. We had lost sixteen men in the fighting, but out of nearly forty Doone men, only Carver and the Counsellor were left alive.

But the thought that Carver, that cruel and violent man, was still living somewhere on the moors, did not give me much peace.