The Shadow of Tyburn Tree
( Roger Brook - 2 )
Dennis Wheatley
Nov 1787 - Apr 1789
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree tells the story of Roger Brook–Prime Minister Pitt's most resourceful secret agent–who, in 1788, is sent on a secret mission to the Russia of that beautiful and licentious woman Catherine the Great. Chosen by her to become her lover, Roger is compelled to move with the utmost care, for if it was known that not only was he spying for two countries but also having an affair with the sadistic and vicious Natalia, he would meet certain death.
The story moves to Denmark and the tragedy of Queen Matilda, to Sweden and the amazing ride of King Gustavus to save Gothenborg, and finally back to England where Roger returns to the arms of his one great love, Georgina..
THE
SHADOW OF TYBURN TREE
by
DENNIS WHEATLEY
HUTCHINSON & CO.
CHAPTER I
THE BEST OF FRIENDS
GEORGINA ETHEREDGE'S limpid black eyes looked even larger than usual as, distended in a semi-hypnotic trance, they gazed unwinkingly into a crystal goblet full of water. It stood in the centre of a small buhl table, at the far side of which sat Roger Brook. His firm, well-shaped hands were thrust out from elegant lace ruffles to clasp her beringed fingers on either side of the goblet while, in a low, rich voice, she foretold something of what the future held in store.
She was twenty-one and of a ripe, luscious beauty. Her hair was black, and the dark ringlets that fell in casual artistry about the strong column of her throat shimmered with those warm lights that testify to abounding health; her skin was flawless, her full cheeks were tinted with a naturally high colour; her brow was broad and her chin determined. She was wearing a dress of dark red velvet, the wide sleeves and hem of which were trimmed with bands of sable, and although it was not yet midday the jewels she was wearing would have been counted by most other women sufficient for a presentation at Court.
He was some fifteen months younger, but fully grown and just over six feet tall. His white silk stockings set off well-modelled calves; his hips were narrow, his shoulders broad and his back muscular. There was nothing effeminate about his good looks except the eyes, which were a deep, vivid blue with dark, curling lashes, and they had been the envy of many a woman. His brown hair was brushed in a high roll back from his forehead and tied with a cherry-coloured ribbon at the nape of his neck. His coat, too, was cherry-coloured, with a high double collar edged with gold galloon, and open at the neck displaying the filmy lace of his cravat. His teeth were good; his expression frank and friendly.
They were in Georgina's boudoir at her country home; and, having breakfasted together at eleven o'clock, were passing away the time until the arrival of the guests that she was expecting for the week-end.
So far, the things she had seen in the water-filled goblet had been a little vague and far from satisfactory. For him a heavy loss at cards; concerning her a letter by a foreign hand in which she suspected treachery; for both of them journeys across water, but in two different ships that passed one another in the night..
For a moment she was silent, then she said, "Why, Roger, I see a wedding ring. How prodigious strange. 'Tis the last thing I would have expected. Alack, alack! It fades before I can tell for which of us 'tis intended. But wait; another picture forms. Mayhap we'll learn.... Nay; this has no connection with the last. 'Tis a court of justice. I see a judge upon a bench. He wears a red robe trimmed with ermine and a great, full-bottomed wig. Tis a serious matter that he tries. We are both there in the court and we are both afraid—afraid for one another. But which of us is on trial I cannot tell. The court is fading—fading. Now something else is. forming, where before was the stern face of the judge. It begins to solidify. It—it. .. ."
Suddenly Roger felt her fingers stiffen. Next second she had torn them from his grasp and her terrified cry rang through the richly-furnished room.
"No, no! Oh, God; it can't be true! I'll not believe it!"
With a violent gesture she swept the goblet from the table; the water fountained across the flowered Aubusson carpet and the crystal goblet shattered against the leg of a lacquer cabinet. Her eyes staring, her full red lips drawn back displaying her strong white teeth in a Medusa-like grimace, Georgina gave a moan, lurched forward, and buried her face in her hands.
' Roger had started to his feet at her first cry. Swiftly he slipped round the table and placed his hands firmly on her bowed shoulders.
"Georgina! Darling!" he cried anxiously. "What ails thee? In Heaven's name, what dids't thou see?"
As she made no reply he shook her gently; then, parting her dark ringlets he kissed her on the nape of the neck, and murmured, "Come, my precious. Tell me, I beg! What devil's vision was it that has upset thee so?"
" 'Twas—'twas a gallows, Roger; a gallows-tree," she stammered, bursting into a flood of tears.
Roger's firm mouth tightened and his blue eyes narrowed in swift resistance to so. terrible an omen; but his face paled slightly. Georgina had inherited the gift of second-sight from her Gipsy mother, and he had known too many of her prophecies come true to take her soothsaying lightly. Yet he managed to keep his voice steady as he said, "Oh come, m'dear. On this occasion your imagination has played you a scurvy trick. You've told me many times that you often see things but for an instant. Like as not it was a signpost that you glimpsed, yet not clearly enough to read the lettering on it."
"Nay!" she exclaimed, choking back her sobs. " 'Twas a gibbet, I tell thee! I saw it so plainly that I could draw the very graining of the wood; and—and from it there dangled a noose of rope all ready for a hanging."
A fresh outburst of weeping seized her, so Roger slipped one arm under her knees and the other round her waist, then picked her up from her chair. She was a little above medium height and possessed the bounteous curves considered the high-spot of beauty in the female figure of the eighteenth century, so she was no light weight. But his muscles were hardened with riding and fencing. Without apparent effort he carried her to the leopard-headed, gilt day-bed in the centre of the room, and laid her gently upon its button-spotted yellow satin cushioning.
It was here, in her exotic boudoir reclining gracefully on her day-bed, a vision of warm, self-possessed loveliness, that the rjph and fashionable Lady Etheredge was wont to receive her most favoured visitors and enchant them with her daring wit. But now, she was neither self-possessed nor in a state to bandy trivialities with anyone. Having implicit belief in her uncanny gift, she was still suffering from severe shock, and had become again a very frightened little girl.
Roger fetched her the smelling-salts that she affected, but rarely used in earnest, from a nearby table; then ran into her big bedroom next door, soused his handkerchief from a cut-glass decanter of Eau de Cologne and, running back, spread it as a bandage over her forehead. For a few moments he patted her hands and murmured endearments; then, realising that he could bring her no further comfort till the storm was over, he left her to dab at those heart-wrecking eyes that always seemed to have a faint blue smudge under them, with a wisp of cambric, and walked over to one of the tall windows.
It was a Saturday, and the last day of March in the year 1788., George III, now in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, was King of England, and the younger Pitt, now twenty-eight years of age, had already been his Prime Minister for four and a quarter years. The Opposition, representing the vested interests of the powerful Whig nobles, and led by Charles James Fox, was still formidable; but the formerly almost autocratic King and the brilliant, idealistic, yet hard-headed son of the Great Commoner, with a little give and take on both sides, betwee
n them now controlled the destinies of Britain.
The American colonies had been lost to the Mother country just before the younger Pitt came to power. Between the years '78 and '83 Britain had stood alone against a hostile world; striving to retain her fairest possessions in the distant Americas while menaced at home, locked in bitter conflict upon every sea with the united power of France, Spain and the Dutch, and further hampered by the armed neutrality of Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden and Austria also arrayed against her.
From this desperate struggle Britain had emerged still proud and defiant, having given her continental enemies harder knocks than she sustained; but so exhausted by the effort that the great majoity of her people believed that she was ruined for good and, still isolated as she was, must now sink to the station of a second-class power.
Yet, in four short years the colossal industry and ability of young Billy Pitt, both in the sphere of commerce and foreign relations, had lifted his country once again to first place among the nations. His financial genius had restored her prosperity and his broad vision had gained her friends. In '86 he had struck at the roots of England's most cancerous, wasting sore—her centuries-old feud with the French— by a commercial treaty which was now rapidly bringing about a better understanding between the two countries. And in recent months he had successfully negotiated defensive treaties with both the Dutch and the King of Prussia; thus forming the Triple Alliance as an insurance against future aggression. Since the Peace of Versailles in '83 his wise policies had done more than those of any other statesman to stabilise a shaken world, and it seemed that Europe might now look forward to a long period of tranquillity.
Roger Brook was justly proud that, young as he was, he had, in some small measure, secretly contributed to the new Alliance*; and, during the past five months, he had put all thought of work from him, to enjoy to the full the almost forgotten feeling of well-being and security that Mr. Pitt had re-won for the people of England.
*The Launching of Roger Brook (His story in the years 1783-87).
Several of these care-free weeks Roger had spent with his parents, Rear-Admiral and Lady Marie Brook, at his home on the outskirts of Lymington, in Hampshire; others he had passed in London; frequently going to the gallery of the House to hear the learned, well-reasoned but tedious orations of Edmund Burke, the melodious, forceful eloquence of Fox, and the swift, incisive logic of the young Prime Minister; but he had devoted the greater part of his time to the tomboy companion of his early adolescence, who had since become the beautiful Lady Etheredge.
Meeting again after a separation of four years they had seen one another with new eyes. During most of November they had danced, laughed and supped together in the first throes of a hectic love affair; and since then he had been a frequent guest here at "Stillwaters," the magnificent setting she had secured for her flamboyant personality down in the heart of the Surrey woods, near Ripley.
The stately mansion had been designed by William Kent, some half a century earlier, and was a perfect specimen of Palladian architecture. Forty-foot columns supported its domed, semi-circular, central portico; from each side of which broad flights of stone steps curved down to a quarter-mile-long balustraded terrace with pairs of ornamental vases set along it at intervals and between these, other nights of steps gave onto a wide lawn, sloping gently to the natural lake from which the house took its name. Kent, the father of English gardens, had also laid out the flower-borders and shady walks at each end of the terrace; and nature's setting had been worthy of his genius, since the house and lake lay in the bottom of a shallow valley; a secret, sylvan paradise enclosed on every side by woods of pine and silver birch.
Now that spring had come blue and yellow crocus gaily starred the grass beneath the ornamental trees, and the daffodils were beginning to blossom on the fringe of the woods, which feathered away above them in a sea of delicate emerald green. The scene was utterly still, and not even marred by the presence of a gardener; for it was her Ladyship's standing order that none of the thirty men employed to keep the grounds should ever be visible from her windows after she rose at ten o'clock.
Indeed, the prospect on which Roger looked down was one of such peace, dignity and beauty as only England has to show; but there was no peace in his heart. He loved Georgina dearly. They were both only children, and his fondness for her was even deeper from having filled to her the role of brother, than that of a lover. But she had been aggravatingly temperamental of late, and now this dread foreboding, that one or both of them would fall under the shadow of the gallows, had shaken him much more than he cared to admit.
After some moments he turned and, seeing that her weeping had ceased, went over and kissed her on her still damp cheek; then he said with as much conviction as he could muster:
"My love, I beg you to use your utmost endeavours to put this horrid vision from your mind. You know as well as I that all such glimpses of the unknown are only possibilities—not certainties. They are but random scenes from several paths which circumstances make it possible that one may tread; yet, having free-will, we are not bound to any, and may, by a brave decision taken opportunely, evade such evil pitfalls as fate seems to have strewn in our way. You have oft predicted things that have come true for both of us, but there are times when you have been at fault; and others when you have seen the ill but not its context, so that in the event it proved harmless after all, or a blessing in disguise. With God's Mercy, this will prove such a case."
Georgina was far too strong a personality to give way to panic for long, and having by an effort regained her composure, she replied firmly, "Thou art right in that, dear heart, and we must take such comfort from it as we may. Yet, I confess, the vision scared me mightily; for I once before saw a gibbet in the glass when telling poor Captain Coignham's fortune, and he was swinging from one on Setley Heath within the year."
"Egad!" exclaimed Roger, with a look of shocked surprise. "Coignham was the highwayman you once told me of. The same that held you up in the New Forest when you were scarce seventeen, and robbed you of your virginity as ransom for your rings. Dost mean to tell me that you took to meeting the rogue afterwards? Damme, you must have! No occasion could have arisen for you to tell his fortune otherwise."
She smiled. "I'll not deny it. Dick Coignham was near as handsome as you are, Roger darling; and 'twould be more fair to say that he persuaded me to give, rather than robbed me, of what he took. It never cost me a moment's regret, and 'twas a fine, romantic way to lose one's maidenhead."
"That I'll allow, as an unpremeditated act committed in hot blood —but to deliberately enter on an affair with a notorious felon. How could you bring yourself to that?"
"And why not, Sir?" she countered, with a swift lift of her eyebrows. "You may recall that 'twas soon after my first meeting with him that I went to Court for my presentation, and during that season I threw my slippers over the moon with the handsomest buck of the day. On my return to Highcliffe there came yourself; but only that once, then you went to France. You'll not have forgotten how Papa's having taken a Gipsy for his wife had estranged him from the county, and the almost solitary existence that I led down there in consequence. After a little, with not even a local beau to buy me a ribbon, I became prodigious bored. So when out riding one day I encountered Dick Coignham again, what could be more natural than that I should become his secret moll. More than once I slipped out at night to watch him waylay a coach in the moonlight, and afterwards we made love with the stolen guineas clinking in his pockets. He was a bold, merry fellow, and I vow there were times when he caused me to near die of excitement."
"Georgina, you are incorrigible!" murmured Roger, with a sad shake of his head.
She gave a low, rich laugh. "And you, m'dear, are the veriest snob. Why should you be so shocked to learn that I took a tobyman for my lover? Since that day long ago, when I turned you from a schoolboy into a man, I've made no secret of the fact that I was born a wanton and will always take my plea
sure where I list. 'Tis naught to me how a man gets his living, provided he be clean, gay and good to look upon. Think you poor Dick was more to blame because he paid for the gold lace upon his coats by robbing travellers of their trinkets, than all the fine gentlemen at Westminster who take the King's bribes to vote against their consciences?"
"Nay, I'd not say that. I meant only that there are times when I fear your reckless disregard for all convention may one day bring you into grievous trouble."
"Should that occur I'll count it a great injustice. Men are allowed to pleasure themselves where they will, so why not a woman? When you were in France. . .."
With a smile, he held up his hand to check her. " 'Tis true enough. I tumbled quite a few pretty darlings whose lineage did not entitle them to make their curtsy at Versailles, and I know, of old, your contention that what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose in such matters. But the world does not view things that way. And—well, should aught occur to part us I do beg you, my pet, to harness your future impulses with some degree of caution."
One of those swift changes of mood to which she was frequently subject caused her tapering eyebrows to draw together in a sudden frown. "You were thinking of the horrid thing that I saw but now in the glass?"
"Nay," he protested quickly, cursing himself for having brought her thoughts back to it.
"Indeed you were, Roger. To me your mind is an open book. But have no fears on that score. 'Tis all Lombard Street to a China Orange against my ever again becoming a cut-purse's doxey, and getting a hanging from being involved in his crimes. Dick Coignham was an exception to the breed, and I was a young, romantic thing, in those days. For the most part they are a race of scurvy, unlettered, stinking knaves, that no female so fastidious as myself would lay a finger on. 'Tis you who must now take caution as your watchword. Tis far more likely that, as a man, your temper may lead you into some unpremeditated killing than that I, as a woman, should shed human blood."
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