Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  “One and the same. I saw him that day the body was found, and about four days later, he came up to me and asked about Neyoe—Had he lived in the Welsh house? Did he come and go? I told him, not knowing I might be doing wrong.”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Adam. Your help has been immeasurable.”

  There was a silence after Adam left the chamber. Slane listened to the sound of the clerk scribbling. He summoned outrage to his voice, his face.

  “I don’t know that man. I have never seen him before. Someone is lying to you, sir—”

  “So he is, and doing excellently, too. Bravo, Slane. Tell me how you knew Neyoe?”

  Slane sighed, sagged down in the chair, sullen. “We grew up in the same village.”

  “In Ireland?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what village would that be?”

  He said the first name that came to mind.

  “Did you come to London together?”

  “No. I hadn’t seen him in years. We ran across each other in London, and he asked me, every once in a while, to pick up letters for him at certain taverns and coffeehouses.”

  “Letters for him?”

  “Him, other men sometimes.”

  “What names?”

  “Burford, Rogers…I don’t remember any more.” These were Jacobite code names. Neither one was Gussy’s; neither one was Rochester’s. God forgive me, Slane thought.

  “And it didn’t trouble you that Mr. Neyoe received mail under names other than his. You had no questions about it.”

  “Not really. I was just glad for the dinner he bought me once in a while. It meant nothing to me. It wasn’t my affair.”

  “To correspond with the Pretender or any of his adherents is high treason.”

  “The Pretender! I wrote no letters! Received none! I did a favor for a friend.”

  All I must do, thought Slane, is get out of this chamber.

  “He was a Jacobite. You must have known of his Jacobite feelings.”

  “No.”

  “He never tried to recruit you, never asked for more than your picking up a letter for him?”

  “He asked for money whenever he could, nothing else.”

  “He didn’t wish to be presented to Lady Shrewsborough or the Princess of Wales?”

  “Good God, no. I would never have presented him. He was a sniveling little wretch.”

  Walpole didn’t even smile. “And when you saw him on the stairs, how did you feel?”

  “Upset, frightened, I don’t know. Philip owed me a debt, and I’d been looking for him. I never expected to find him dead.”

  “Frightened, you say. Why, frightened?”

  “Doesn’t death always frighten?”

  “Indeed. And so you saw Philip Neyoe after his death, were told by Mr. Adam Webster that he lived in Modest Welsh’s house, yet still say you didn’t go to the door and ask Mrs. Welsh about lodgings.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Someone took something from Neyoe’s pocket after he was dead. Did you follow the cart carrying Neyoe’s body to Whitehall, take something from the pocket?”

  “I did not!”

  If Walpole brought the official in, the man would identify Slane. I asked him if he’d seen a man running, the official would say, and he told me to go that way. Offered me an apple, the cheeky rascal.

  “And so you didn’t discuss with Neyoe any of your high friendships—your card games with the Princess, with Lady Shrewsborough—”

  Slane stood and pulled the table up into Walpole, who fell back in his chair, the table atop him. The face of the clerk was shocked. He was still sitting in his chair, pen poised. Slane was at a door, opening it. There stood the two men who’d captured him. They pushed him back in the chamber, took in the sight of Walpole rising from the debris, and pushed Slane into a wall, slammed fists into his face and abdomen. The shock of his head hitting the wall took the fight from him. A familiar sickness rampaged in his middle, a ringing in his head, bad enough to mute the pain of their fists.

  “Enough.”

  Walpole spoke. Slane couldn’t think against the rising, nauseous pounding in his head and middle. I’ve hurt my head again, he thought before he fainted.

  When he opened his eyes, the clerk, Bone, was kneeling at his side. There was a wet cloth on his head. He sat up, leaned over and retched up some of his breakfast. Bone made a disgusted sound. Thank God I ate, Slane thought.

  “Can you sit?” he heard Walpole say.

  He ground his teeth. “No.”

  Walpole held a handkerchief to his nose. “The stench.”

  “Open a window,” gasped Slane, before he gave up more of his breakfast.

  “Do it,” commanded Walpole, and Bone rushed to obey. The cold air was wonderful. Everyone breathed it in. Slane half crawled toward the window, followed by Walpole’s henchmen.

  He pulled himself up, saw that he was only two windows high, managed to cover their shoes with more breakfast, porridge, bacon, toasted bread. One of the men made a gagging sound. The other stepped back. In another second, Slane was out the window and dropping, catching one hand to a drain spout a moment to stop himself long enough to gather his wits, to soften his fall. He still landed too hard. He heard something snap in his ankle, felt it in ringing arcs up his leg and into his hip. His head, too, was ringing, and his abdomen, where they’d hit him. Some days, it didn’t pay to rise from bed.

  He glanced toward the window. No one there. Walpole’s men were already on the stairs, coming down for him. He half ran, half limped—he’d crawl if he had to—stopping only to pull off his wig and coat, stuff them under hay in a cart. He knew this part of London the way he knew his own hand. He knew any part of London as if it were his own hand. To steal another wig, a cloak, would be nothing. To get to Seven Dials, London’s infamous slum, festooned with gin cellars and rotting buildings, would be nothing. All he had to do was reach one of his army of beggars’ children, one beggar’s child to lead him, and as the game of his boyhood said, he was home, free. Good-bye, Gussy, I cannot save you. Walpole wins. How bitter that thought was. His finch. What will happen to her? Good-bye Barbara. Be well, my love. We aren’t finished, you and I, but I’m leaving England. The Fates have spoken far too loudly and far too clearly.

  “’THIS WAS a dreadful Sight to me, especially when going down to the Shore, I could see the marks of Horror, which the dismal Work they had been about had left behind it, viz. The Blood, the Bones, and part of the Flesh of Humane Bodies, eaten and devour’d….’”

  Barbara read aloud to the King. He was like a boy, listening. She read until she stumbled over words.

  “You are fatigued,” the King said. “It has been a long day.”

  In the bedchamber at St. James’s that belonged to Barbara as a lady-in-waiting, Bathsheba helped her to undress, brought her a cloth and water to wash herself with. There were no words from Bathsheba, and Barbara was glad. At the sound of a knock on the door, Bathsheba went to it, opened it, called Barbara, in that soft way she had. There on the floor lay a bouquet of roses. Barbara brought them in, knelt by the fire to look at them. They were deepest, darkest red, like blood, and in among them was one white one. Slane. He was gone. She didn’t know how and she didn’t know why, but he was gone. Thank God.

  She put the white rose into the flames. The rest she held to herself, as if they were Slane. No, not Slane anymore. Duncannon. There was pain in her heart, and she began to cry, but there was also gladness. What was the verse, the beautiful, beautiful words? Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Much yet to do, Gussy’s trial, the fine, Gussy’s death to survive, but Slane was safe. She could sleep now, the way she hadn’t in days.

  Tomorrow, Jane went to see Gussy. There was that, at least.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  THEY WERE GATHERED AT AUNT SHREW’S, DRESSING JANE AS IF she were a bride. Jane’s hair had been curled with heated tongs, and Barbara had brushed it, pinni
ng in her most beautiful feathers. Jane wore an ornate gown of Aunt Shrew’s and one of Barbara’s necklaces, and Barbara brushed powder on her face, screwed earrings in her ears, put patches at her mouth.

  Lady Ashford was pinning the gown where it hung too loosely.

  “Too thin,” she said to her daughter.

  “Enough for Gussy,” said Aunt Shrew.

  “Done,” said Barbara. She clapped her hands together. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mrs. Augustus Cromwell.”

  She held Jane’s hand, made her turn in a circle. The room erupted into applause.

  “Now, you listen to me, Jane Cromwell.” Aunt Shrew held up a small leather bag. “You are to flirt with every man in the guardroom of his tower, and if you can’t do that, at the least give them coins and tell them to drink at a tavern later to your husband’s health. Trust me in this, Jane. Make allies of them. Smile and be kind and flirt if you have it in you. You may need them for kindness later on.”

  Barbara looked at the rouged puff in her hand. She’d told no one yet of the execution date.

  “I don’t think she has it in her,” Aunt Shrew said to the Duchess.

  “She will be inspired from on high to do whatever she has to,” said Colonel Perry. “I am going to be praying for you, Jane. Once you leave this chamber, I am leaving my vagabond, wayward friends and going off to pray.”

  “Pray for Gussy, who will need strength this night,” said Aunt Shrew.

  There was laughter, then kisses and a little crying and fretting from various children as Barbara tied her best fur-lined cloak securely about Jane.

  “I want to go,” said Amelia, when she saw her mother and her grandfather leave the chamber.

  Barbara picked her up. “Wouldn’t you rather wear a patch?”

  Amelia wasn’t to be had easily. “Three?”

  “Five, if you want.”

  “I’m for a hand of cards,” said Aunt Shrew. “Who will join me? Has anyone seen that rascal Laurence Slane? He was to play cards with me last night, and he never showed. A woman, I suppose.” She dealt out cards to the Duchess and Lady Ashford. “I think I’ll go to live in Twickenham when this is all ended. I’m tired of London. I haven’t the heart for it all anymore.”

  “‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With cockle shells and silver bells, and pretty maids all in a row. If in October, you do marry, love will come but riches tarry. Marry in green, ashamed to be seen, marry in gray, you’ll go far away,’” Barbara quoted to Jane’s children, gathered around her. Her children, too; Jane had always shared them. She looked over to the trio playing cards, thinking of all the years among them, all the wisdom.

  “What is true love?” she heard herself say. She was thinking of Slane and of Roger.

  Colonel Perry, putting on his cloak, glanced at her sharply.

  “Give me a man who plays cards well, pleases me in bed, and doesn’t borrow all my funds, and I am happy,” said Aunt Shrew. “Richard, I don’t think looked at another woman once he won your grandmother, here.”

  He killed himself loving me, thought the Duchess, but that is another story.

  “What is it the Bible verse says, thinks no evil, envies not, bears all things—what else, Alice?”

  “‘Believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,’” said the Duchess.

  “Is that love or foolishness? Simplicity or error?” asked Aunt Shrew. “The essence of life or a lie? Who but a saint could live it?”

  Jane, thought Barbara, enjoy this treasure of time with your beloved.

  IN THE first great yard of the Tower, the one that extended across the moat, Jane stepped down from the carriage, shook out her skirts so she wouldn’t fall walking in them. They went into the grim building at one end and Jane followed a woman to a small chamber, while her father waited.

  When the woman was finished examining her, Jane brushed quickly, furtively, at the tears that had come at the woman’s brisk manner, probing fingers. She and her father, shivering in the cold, followed the guard across the bridge that crossed the moat, walking alongside the high outer wall. There were walls to each side of her. She felt suffocated and looked up once to see if she could see stars, but there were none this night, only the light from the guard’s lantern. They walked through an archway. Another few days, and Christopher Layer’s trial would begin. Where has the time gone? thought Jane. It seems only yesterday that I came to London with the children.

  “Bloody Tower over us,” said the guard, and began reciting details, that the Tower was eighteen acres, that the high wall all around was ninety feet high, surrounded by a moat. It was an ancient fortress, he told them, added to by each king. There were many towers inside the walls, each with a particular name: White Tower, Bell Tower, Lion Tower. Jane stepped out of the archway. It was too dark to see much, but she saw lanterns here and there, the bulk of a building behind them.

  “We’re like a small village,” said the guard. “The mint is here, where the King’s coins are made and kept, the crown jewels are here, the royal menagerie is here, lions and leopards.” He began to describe certain dungeons. “They’ve earned their names: Cold Harbour, Little Ease, Little Hell.”

  “Be quiet, man,” said Sir John.

  But all Jane was aware of was a distant wall, rising up to the sky, it seemed. The guard knocked on a door before some building, and opened it. They stepped into a hall.

  “Up those stairs,” he said, motioning. At the top was the guardroom. Jane presented the paper signed by the constable of the Tower. The guardroom was long, with a fireplace at one end. Women and children sat there.

  “Family of the guards,” her father said to her.

  Jane began to put coins in the hands of the guards, who, though startled, immediately accepted them.

  “I’m Mrs. Cromwell. I am so happy to see my dear husband. Drink to our joy this night. Drink to the King’s mercy when all is said and done.”

  One of the doors set in the walls was open. Jane saw stairs leading upward.

  “We opened it for you,” said a guard.

  So. That was the door to the stairs that led to Gussy’s cell upward, nestled in a side tower of the building.

  Jane took off her cloak, folded it carefully, stood before her father.

  “I feel as I did the day I gave you away in marriage,” Sir John said.

  “Bless me the way you did that day, Father.”

  He put his hand on Jane’s head. “Father of us all, bless this beloved child and her beloved husband. I put their care into Your hands.”

  Jane walked to the door. A guard was already there, on the stairs.

  “The door above is open. I unlocked it for you. Don’t pull it all the way shut or you will lock yourself inside.”

  She stopped somewhere about halfway. It was dark, but there was light ahead. The wooden door of the cell was ajar, and light spilled out softly, like a welcome. She touched the cold stone of the wall around her. It felt massive, impenetrable. She stepped inside, a small chamber, a fireplace with the fire going, though it was still cold. She would imagine this stone never warmed.

  She saw him, standing in shadow. Barbara had warned her that there might have been roughness, but to see his face, the hurt to it, was hard. At that moment she hated Walpole more than she had ever hated anyone in her life. I’ll remember this, she thought. It will keep me strong.

  He was walking toward her, and upon his face was the most beautiful of smiles. Under the bruises, the swelling, was still Gussy. I love you, she thought. You are my heart. How will I live without you if they convict you? She touched his face, the emotion in her so strong that it hurt to breathe.

  “What have they done to you?”

  “Many things. But it isn’t me who’s changed. You look like a queen. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  He touched her face where Barbara had placed a patch.

  “I wanted to look beautiful for you.”

  “You’ve always been beautif
ul to me, Janie.”

  They held each other. She smelled his shirt, his chest, him. Gussy. Too thin. Swellings on his back. What had they done to him? There was only tonight to see.

  They stood apart from each other, their presence, this closeness, a feast. Holding his hand, for she couldn’t bear to let loose of him, she went to the narrow bed.

  “Wait,” he said.

  He pulled back the cover. Everywhere were white rose petals.

  “A gift from friends, I don’t know who. I heard a knock on the door, a turning of the key, and I found a bag on the top stair, filled with these. Our bridal bed, Jane, better than the first time.”

  She sat down. He was kneeling before her, holding her face in his hands, kissing her lips and brows and forehead, kissing the places where Barbara had placed the patches. The tenderness of his kisses, the way they made her heart shake, was almost too much to bear.

  “Foolish Janie, don’t cry. My dove, my sweet, my angel, let me move these foolish feathers, unlace this gown and see where else your bad Barbara has placed patches….”

  “WHERE IS your mind, Alice?” said Aunt Shrew. “I’ve won again. You know, don’t you?” she said, “that there’s talk the King will build a house for the Princesses at Devane Square. Wren is beside himself, thinking of it, what should grace that hill where Devane House was. It would be difficult to build anything that beautiful again, he says. He thinks whatever is built ought to complement the Virginia garden. You’ve done well, Barbara. You’ve taken Roger’s muck and made something grow from it.”

  Behold, thou are fair, my love, thou hast doves’ eyes. The Duchess was thinking of Richard. Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant; also our bed is green—so Richard had said, their wedding night. Richard, I am going to die. It was said, through Barbara, through Diana, through Andreas, that Sir John was going to lose his farm. Crops were poor, and he owed money from the South Sea. Send him to Virginia, said Barbara. Why not, Grandmama? He and Lady Ashford and Jane and the children. He can be your agent there. Do it.