‘I would be left alone, Will. Left alone.’
Will is thoughtful. He sips his coffee – strange, bitter stuff he downs in gallons. He has taught the boy Tom to prepare it, in a drawn-out ritual of roasting and grinding, sizzling and boiling.
He says it makes him vibrant. Makes him see clearer. Sam cannot stomach it.
‘Sam, you must give Thurloe something. I know the man. He is not easily fooled. It would not do for you to be arrested now.’
‘I know. I will think of something. Gossip from the court. I will tell him of Manning’s arrest – he may not yet know of that.’
Will is silent for moment. He looks at Sam with an inscrutable face, and then leans in to speak quietly. ‘Sam. You will not use this affair for the sake of Charles Stuart? You will not engineer it so that Sidrach succeeds?’
‘My first aim is to protect Patience. To rid her of that man.’
‘Aye, but your second aim?’
‘I have not been thinking of it,’ Sam lies. He knows that Will must know it is a lie. It is too feeble to be true.
‘Will,’ he says. ‘There must be candour between us. I love your sister. With all that I have. Do not doubt me. She is what matters in this. Cromwell and Stuart? Both may hang, for all I care.’
Will nods, as if Sam has told him something he already knows. Perhaps he does. ‘His death will not bring back the king, Sam. His death will bring bloodshed and misery. None of us would thank you – not I, not Blackberry. And certainly not Patience.’
Slowly, the days pass. Patience settles into a remembered pattern. There is not always comfort in familiarity, she finds.
She patters around the house trying to avoid Sarah and Sidrach. She watches Sidrach’s face, trying to anticipate the growling that heralds a storm.
She is a watcher of runes, of omens. A soul-shifter who wraps her own moods around his. She must be nimble, relentlessly vigilant. Any inattention can pull the wrath down upon her aching head. It is exhausting. In the evenings, she pretends to read the Bible next to him. Eyes open, she uses the silence as a cover for still, secret thoughts.
She thinks of Sam. Of Will and Blackberry. Of her parents and her sisters. Each enumeration of people she loves is a small victory, a small recovery of herself from the shadow who pads through this house.
Sometimes she thinks of the slim pity she felt for her husband on the night she returned. He has slowly pressed it out of her, like a mangle working the linen. Every glower, every snap, every tut is a fresh press. A fresh wring of that compassionate sliver.
The nights. Oh, Lord Jesus, the nights. Her absence has pepped his passion. Either that or he is determined to get her with child.
Lord. Lord Jesus, she prays as he grinds on top of her. Lord, let me not bear his child. Lord, let me not bear his child.
They sit at the table one morning. His slow, determined chewing makes her stomach turn. A side of soft and creamy cheese sits between them. He moves to cut another slice of bread, and swivels to look at her as she says: ‘Husband?’
‘Yes, my dear?’
‘I think I will visit Will and Blackberry, after we have eaten.’
‘You will not.’
‘But—’
The knife slams to the table.
‘Your brother knows altogether too much about our family. I will not have him laughing at us.’
‘Sidrach, I am sure he does not laugh. I know he does not.’
‘You will not contradict me, Patience. Every time I open my mouth, you rush in to contradict. Is that the proper duty you owe to me? Oh, the sin of Eve, Patience. Did she not contradict the Lord’s wishes? I say again, he laughs at us. And if I say so, it is so.’
He picks up the knife. Half a slice hangs limply from the loaf. It will be difficult to cut the full slice straight now. He looks at her, furious. The bread is her fault too. She can see that he is fraying. She knows that she should not tug at the unravelling ends of his temper.
And yet. Sometimes the strains of submitting are worse than the consequences of dissent.
‘I would see him,’ she says softly. ‘He is my brother.’
‘And I am your husband.’
He grabs at her wrist and turns it upwards. She stares at the scrabble of blue veins underneath her white skin.
Slowly he presses the knife to her wrist, letting the jagged edges of it nick her skin. He licks his lips; leans in a little closer.
‘You will learn to obey me, Patience. I will not be forced to correct you again.’
He pushes the knife a little deeper. It breaks the skin, drawing blood that swells into beads, like a bracelet of tiny rubies.
‘I could cut now. I could cut and cut. The Lord would thank me for unburdening myself of you. I have great work to do for Him. Great work. I am His servant. And you are a distraction. I thought I needed your brother for this great work. Therefore I thought I needed you. But I do not need you, Patience. Do you hear me?’
She is a statue. A frozen woman with a bleeding wrist. He grips her fingers together, and bends them back, so that her wrist arches towards the knife. Cut me. The pain is not so bad. Not as bad as the voice in her ear, the breath on her neck, the nearness of him.
‘The world would think you had done it to yourself. Poor stupid Patience. Had to kill herself. Had to give up. She was damned anyway. How could such a fool be elect?’
His voice is throaty and dark; just as she remembers it from that first time she saw him. When his charisma blocked out the street on the day the sun vanished, and she leaped two-footed into his path.
His voice is a velvet threat. He moves even closer, his lips brushing her earlobe.
‘And who would miss you, little wife, if I cut now? No one would know it was not you. No one but the Lord. He sees into your heart. He knows you for a cold, barren bitch.’
There is a waft of chill air, which freezes them still. Sarah has opened the door and is backing into the kitchen holding on to two full pails of water.
Sidrach drops the knife. But he is still close to her; he is still holding on to her hand.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ says Sarah, as she turns and sets down the pails heavily. Water slops to the floor. She looks at them both, clearly wrong-footed by their peculiar closeness.
‘No matter, no matter,’ he says, with a wide smile. He stands, and puts his napkin on his plate.
‘Well then, my dear,’ he says to Patience, with a bullish brightness. ‘You are to stay here this day. I am glad of it. The silver needs a polish, if you are in want of a job.’
LONDON
September 1655
PATIENCE IS SO STILL, SHE CAN HEAR THE BEAT OF HER own heart.
She presses herself back against the wall, listening to the quiet of the house. The silence that settles on the stair treads, on the wooden floors, in the dead eyes of the portraits of dead Simmonds men.
She shuffles sideways, her hand reaching for the doorknob. It is cold to the touch, shockingly so on this sweltering day. The sun’s light cannot find its way inside, but its heat pushes through the thick walls. The sweat is slick on her skin – although where the punishment of the heat ends and the fear begins, she cannot tell.
The click of the door’s opening ricochets through the house. She stands and listens to it, trying to still her thumping heart by will alone.
She finds the energy to laugh at herself as she slides backwards into the room as if she is being watched. She is only entering his study because they are both out and she is alone, for once, in the house. So this scuttling is absurd. Still, she cannot help it.
Inside, it smells of him. It reeks of his presence. The joyless books stacked just so. The bible open on his desk. The knife he uses to sharpen his quills glinting at her. The chair turned towards the door, so he can listen for her misdemeanours even as he pretends to work.
She moves towards the desk, not sure what she is looking for. She pulls out the drawers, appalled by the booming scraping sound. Inside the very bottom drawer there is
a case. She lifts it out and unlatches the catch. She knows before she opens the lid what she will find there. A pair of dark, long-barrelled pistols.
The knowing is not enough to stop her panicking. She lets the lid fall with a violent clang. As she moves to put the box back where she found it, she spots a paper lining the bottom of the drawer. She pulls it out. It is some sort of legal document; a lease, she thinks. Relating to a set of rooms above an inn – the sign of the Bird in Westminster. Near the Holbein Gate. She has not been in, but she knows it. It is not the type of place where a woman like her belongs.
Nor a man like Sidrach.
Before she has time to think, she hears a noise. A thumping. She pushes the paper back flat into the drawer, and sits the case of pistols on top. Darting to the door of his study, she sidles out into the corridor.
Her breathing is too loud. She can’t hear above its jagged wheeze. She fights for calm. She is entitled to be in the corridor. She is safe.
Safe. A strange word to use in this house, she thinks.
The noises come from the kitchen, and she makes her way there slowly.
Sarah is back, and with her is the girl from the butcher’s shop. Anne. Hattie the woman-butcher’s girl-apprentice. Patience smiles at her, and Anne grins back.
‘Sausages,’ she says, holding up the packages she is carrying.
‘Thank you, Anne,’ says Patience. She turns to leave the kitchen, but a thought catches her suddenly.
‘Sarah,’ she says. ‘I’ve a yearning for strawberries. Could you go for me?’
‘Now?’ Sarah says. She puts her hands on her thin hips. ‘Can it not wait?’
‘No, it cannot. And Sidrach is not keen for me to leave the house today.’ Patience borrows her mother’s sharp servant-berating voice. It seems to work. Sarah looks sour, but she unwraps her apron. She makes to shoo little Anne out of the door, but Patience stops her.
‘Wait. I have a job for Anne. You go, and I will talk to her.’
Sarah opens her mouth to protest, but something in her mistress’s face warns her not to. Patience waits for the door to close before she moves closer to Anne.
‘Should you like to earn a penny, Anne?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘Well then. You must go to the house of my brother Will. You know him?’
‘Of course. My mother is friends with him.’
‘You must give him this message. Tell him I am safe, but Oliver is not. There are pistols. Tell him I am not allowed to leave the house. Tell him I am watching. Do you have that?’
‘You are safe. Oliver is not. Pistols. Not allowed to leave. Watching.’ The girl’s large blue eyes are solemn.
‘Good girl. Tell him I said to give you a penny. And you must find reasons to come here to pass messages back and forth. Can you do that?’ Anne nods.
As she runs off, Patience feels an intense relief. There is now a slender, girl-shaped link between her and Will. And Sam.
‘How was Thurloe?’ Will asks the question gently, noting Sam’s lack of verve and the nervous tapping of his foot upon the floor.
‘He was . . .’ Sam pauses, ‘exacting.’
‘Dear fellow,’ says Will, cutting a slice of Mary’s veal pie and offering it up. ‘Do not take it to heart. We must all make our compromises with power.’
‘Oh, I did not tell him much. I do not know much. I am very much on the fringes. But he probed, and I spilled what I did know, and I wonder if I let slip something, something that could be problematic.’
‘Do you care so very much about Charles Stuart?’
‘Him, no. But Prince Rupert? Oh yes. And those poor bastards sitting out there in Europe wanting to come home, trying to do right, cleaving to their cause. My erstwhile brothers. And now, I wonder, what am I? Who am I, Will?’
‘You are a good man. A loyal man.’
But Sam just waves a despairing arm, and takes a bite of pie as if to buy time.
‘Peace makes the world so blasted complicated. Cromwell’s death would—’ he begins to say as he swallows, and then he sees Will’s face and he stops talking again.
They turn with relief to the door, which opens to Hattie and the girl Anne. Anne is pushed forward towards them, and she says in a sudden blurt, ‘I seen Patience. Mrs Simmonds, that is. I seen her.’
The next day, Thursday, Anne creeps into the kitchen. Patience is sitting at the table polishing Sidrach’s silver. The eyes that stare at her from the shiny metal are hooded and tired.
Anne looks around for Sarah, but seeing only Patience, she advances more confidently.
‘He sends love, missus,’ she says in a rush, as if to make sure she is getting the words right. ‘And he says Sam has had word. He is to be at Whitehall steps. Tomorrow, missus.’
As Anne speaks, the answer clicks in Patience’s mind. She curses herself for her slowness. Her stupidity.
‘Listen, Anne. Go to Will. Tell him—’
The girl’s eyes widen suddenly, and she looks behind Patience towards the door. Sidrach’s voice, harsh and loud: ‘Be gone, girl. No messages. Go.’
Anne looks at Patience in a mute plea for advice. Patience, her heart sinking to her toes, nods at her. Tries to smile. ‘Go then, Anne. My dear love to my brother, that is all.’
Anne spins and flees from the room.
Patience watches the door close behind her. She hears Sidrach approaching, and she closes her stinging eyes.
‘Tell me again, Anne,’ says Will.
‘Then he came in and told me to go. Seemed cross, he did, sir.’
Sam is pacing the room. His furious glances at Anne are scaring the child, and her voice falters.
Will gives Anne a penny, and she bobs her thanks. Before she has left the room, Sam is shouting: ‘We must get her out, Will! We must go there!’
‘And do what, Sam? We need to finish this thing.’
‘What if he kills her?’
‘He will not. How can he build God’s kingdom on earth if he hangs for her?’
‘It is too great a risk.’
‘Patience begged us to trust her, remember? And she told Anne she was safe. Tomorrow, Sam. Tomorrow it will be over.’
‘But we know nothing. Meet at Whitehall steps with a hired boat, he says. Horses waiting at Ratcliffe, beyond the Tower. No more than that. Barely a time.’
Will, sober now for weeks, thinks with mounting urgency of the balm in the bottom of a bottle. I need a clear head, he thinks. Concentrate, he thinks.
‘Listen, Sam. The world knows that Cromwell leaves Westminster in a carriage for Hampton Court on a Friday. And tomorrow, this Friday, you are to meet Simmonds at the steps there with a boat. The coincidence is too bald. He will make his attempt.’
‘But where from? The bastard does not trust me.’
‘Nor should he.’
‘True.’ Sam pauses to smile, briefly, at Will.
‘Courage, Sam. It is nearly over.’
The darkness is absolute.
It has crept under her skin. She has strange fancies that if she were to cut herself, she would bleed black blood. There is a madness lurking close. She senses it.
Her eyes are closed. In her head there is sunshine. There are sparkles on river spray. Light – beautiful golden, velvet light – flickers between the branches of trees.
It is hot down here in the cellar. She cannot concentrate on her mind’s eye, and she loses focus. Panic rises. She feels the tremor in hands she cannot see.
Focus.
Sam’s face, smiling. Blackberry pretending to be a rabbit, hop- hopping through autumn leaves. Her father sleeping, slack with beef and port.
She tries to sleep, conjuring the ones she loves best as guardian angels. But the darkness is absolute and the door is locked and Patience’s angels cannot protect her now.
Sam sits in the damp bow of the boat. The oarsmen have tried to pass pleasantries with him, but his curtness has deterred them. The rise and bob of the vessel surges suddenly, and stinking Thames wa
ter crests over the gunwales and splashes his trousers.
He swears.
The older oarsman glances at the other, who clears his throat and says: ‘Much longer, sir?’
‘I’ve told you. I do not know. You are being paid for your time.’
‘Tide’ll turn soon, sir. If you want to shoot the bridge, we needs be off.’
‘Wait, damn you.’
He looks to the top of the steps. Should he trust Will with this? Will has never been a soldier. They need to find Simmonds. Will, loitering near the Holbein Gate, realizes that he has been a complete fool. He thought he would just see Simmonds. Follow him, then fetch Sam to help accost him and have him arrested. But as he looks upwards at the dense overhang of the houses backing on to the street, it becomes clear to him that the man could be anywhere.
Soon – in fifteen minutes, perhaps – Cromwell will come through that gate. He is in a meeting with the Council of State, and Will prepared the order papers. It will not last much longer, he judges. The sunlight has lost its glare, become more comfortable.
He will be unaware of the danger, Will’s beloved, difficult chief. Leaning back into his coach seat with relief. Mrs Cromwell beside him, her small hand resting in his. The great craggy face breaking into a smile at the thought of two days at his adored Hampton Court. There will be music, there will be good wine. Perhaps hawking, if he can find the energy in this enervating heat.
But somewhere in these dense shadows lurks Simmonds, who thinks that he can remake the world with one bullet. That his righteousness is a divine command. And Will does not know how to find him.
Sam appears beside him, making his overheated heart jump.
‘Sam. How are we to find him?’
Sam looks at the burling mill of people. The overhanging windows.
‘I will look,’ he says. ‘Stay here.’
‘Sam. In fifteen minutes, if we haven’t found him, I will have to warn Cromwell. Stop this thing.’
Both of them are thinking of Patience and her shackles. And of an England without a king again, and the torrent of blood that will rush to fill the king-shaped hole.
The Tyrant’s Shadow Page 25