by Jake Lynch
The clattering from the kitchen that cut through Luke’s reverie, as his wife supervised culinary arrangements for their guest, signalled her need for his attention. He’d wed Elizabeth in haste, after they ‘got carried away’, as it was said, and she fell pregnant with Jane. Now their daughter was herself safely married off, and Sam gone, her nest was empty. Much as he might roll his eyes and shake his head at her summons, sheer force of habit carried his feet downstairs.
‘All well, my dear?’
‘Well, husband, thank you. If, praise God, Edwin ever gets here. We must hope he’s not too long delayed on the road.’ Mistress Sandys impatiently seized a dish from Joan, the cook-maid, and took over the job of whipping cream for a posset, to be set to cool for pudding, while the servant went and sulked in the corner over a plate of dried fruit.
‘He shouldn’t be too long. I heard they met the Lord Lieutenant’s party at Wheatley earlier.’
‘Build up the fire in the hall then, Luke, and light some more candles,’ she said, vigorously agitating the mixture. ‘If he’s had to wait around outside this evening, he’ll be chilled to the marrow.’
*
‘The Green Ribbon Club?’ Captain Edwin Sandys – Ed, now he was back in his old home – helped himself to another portion of rabbit pie. The family did not stand on ceremony while dining in private: the Sandys’ retainers were now so old and infirm that their presence at table was less a help than a hindrance. ‘They’re convinced we’re all about to be murdered in our beds, on direct orders from the Vatican.’
‘We met their leader today – a Member of Parliament, William Harbord.’
‘Aye, Harbord’s a hammer of Rome, all right,’ Ed reported, with a grimace. ‘Never backward in accusing men of treachery, either.’
‘Are they dangerous?’ Luke recalled the sense of menace in the air at The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well.
‘They would be, given half a chance. They can’t make any real trouble here, with so many Guards around. But of course they’re fanatical about the Exclusion. They’ll be trying to put pressure on the Lords to pass it.’
‘Why, ’tis wrong to make the King cut off his own brother!’ Elizabeth said.
‘’Tis politics! James was outed by the Test Act. That’s when he had to step down from the Admiralty. He could have been a Papist in private – but in public?’ Ed gave a wry shake of the head. ‘The real problems will start when he accedes.’
Luke got up to put another log on the fire. ‘The Green Ribbon men are loyal to Charles, though?’
‘Well – they’d rather have someone keener on persecuting Catholics. There’s Monmouth, of course. If they do manage to exclude James, he’d be favourite for the succession.’
‘Your old commander?’
‘Indeed. Though I haven’t seen him since the Anglo-Dutch Brigade at Saint-Denis – three years ago, now.’
‘Is he still in exile?’ Luke had not kept up with recent developments as well as he should, he now realised.
‘They sent him away? How come?’ his wife asked. ‘’Tis no way to treat a man who fought bravely for King and country!’
‘Made him too popular, I’m afraid. Started up all that business again, over his birth.’ Luke made a quizzical expression. ‘Was Charles secretly married to his mother, is he the rightful heir after all?’ Ed explained. ‘No, England has to have time to forget his derring-do, then he can come back when he’s no longer a threat.’
‘’Twill be the doing of that damn Frenchwoman, no doubt – the King’s mistress,’ Elizabeth said, in distaste. Luke looked at his wife askance: it was rare for anything to move her to curse out loud, even with only close family for company. ‘Duchess of Portsmouth, they call her. Power behind the throne, ’tis said. She’s probably here now, is she, Ed?’
‘Louise de Kérouaille? Yes, she’s come to Oxford, she travelled in the Royal Carriage.’
Elizabeth shook her head and sighed.
‘Anyway, shouldn’t you be persecuting Catholics, Luke?’ Ed wondered. ‘Orders are being sent down from the Privy Council all the time. I presume they reach you here?’
‘Latest is, we’re supposed to give lists of “recusants” to the magistrates, who have them brought to court and make them take the oaths in public.’
‘What if they don’t?’
‘Then we’re to collect their fines, and lock them up if they won’t pay – or can’t.’
‘And do you?’ Luke paused, wondering how to put it.
‘It doesn’t really get that much of anyone’s time or attention.’
‘Ah, then you’d fall foul of the Green Ribbons. For showing insufficient zeal against the Popish Plot.’
‘You’re not going to get in trouble, are you, Luke?’ Elizabeth asked nervously.
‘Nay, wife! And surely,’ he said, turning to Ed, ‘that nonsense can’t go on for much longer?’
‘Now, that would get you in trouble, Luke, if you said it out loud in the wrong company.’
‘I just can’t believe the Catholics in Oxford are involved in some Jesuit conspiracy to seize the crown.’
Ed finished chewing a mouthful of the pie, then took a deep draught of wine.
‘Between ourselves, of course, I agree with you. But – well, ’tis as the Earl of Halifax put it: “We must all act as though the Plot is true, whether we believe it or not.”’
‘But what’s the evidence? A moth-eaten list of names, found by some reprobate in a closet, or so ’tis said? And men have been sent to the gallows for it.’
‘Politics doesn’t work like one of your Wadham experiments, Luke. Circumstances alter cases: something is evidence if enough men say it is.’ Luke had become attached to scientific methods at meetings of the Natural Philosophy club, run by the Warden of Wadham College, John Wilkins, during his student days.
‘The true method of experience first lights the candle,’ he said now, as he replenished his cup. ‘Adaequatio intellectus nostri cum re – let our minds conform to the facts. That’s how I’ve always tried to work. At least then we don’t hang the wrong man. Well, not very often.’
Joan brought in the posset and dried fruits.
‘Jis, but there’s a sharp chill out now,’ she mumbled ill-humouredly. ‘I could freeze my bubbies off, going out there in this weather, to be sure!’
‘Joan!’
‘Beggin’ your pardon Mistress: but ’tis just the boys – and they know me too well, I can’t change my ways at my time of life, so I can’t.’
‘Their father would’ve whipped you for insolence! Maybe they’ll do likewise.’
‘Thank you Joan, we’ll manage from now on,’ Luke said, stifling a grin. ‘Perhaps you should turn in for the night, and leave tidying up till the morning.’
‘Very well then, Master. I’ll be off to bed, soon as I’ve finished my cup of sack.’
Elizabeth exhaled audibly and shook her head at the maid’s departing back.
‘Still the same Joan, then,’ Ed said, smiling, when she had gone.
‘Aye – more’s the pity,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘Though how much longer she’ll be able to get up and down those stairs…’
‘If she stopped working, I don’t know what she’d do, or where she’d go,’ Luke mused. ‘She’s got no relatives that we know of.’ Joan’s Irish labourer father, and her mother, a freed African slave girl, were both long dead, and her siblings scattered to the four winds; so the Sandys were her only family.
Ed returned to the subject.
‘So, apart from rounding up recusants, how are things at the Guildhall these days?’
‘At least that prating ninnycock Robert Pawling’s left off being mayor,’ Elizabeth cut in. ‘He gave more troubles than all the knaves in Oxford!’
Luke discreetly moved the jug of canary out of his wife’s immediate reach.
‘Yes, we don’t have to look after Pawling on night watch any more. He’s gone back to farming, over at Headington.’ As incumbent mayor, the previous year, the fa
rmer had sent constables out on night patrol, and regularly joined them in person; thus antagonising the University, whose proctors were in sole charge of law and order while the city was asleep.
‘Men still paying to get out of serving as constables?’ Ed asked. Luke’s term in the office now stretched over several years, as other freemen decided they could not afford to take time off their trade or craft to fulfil the historic duty.
‘Aye, still plenty of them.’
‘And you still wouldn’t stand for one of the elected offices?’
‘I think not,’ he replied. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at his wife as she raised her cup. In quiet moments alone, Luke still raked over the series of misunderstandings that had brought him to her door when she was alone in the house; and their rashness in sitting together unchaperoned on that fateful afternoon, nearly twenty-five years earlier. Her pitiable expression, when she later came to confide that she was with child, had jolted him into the right, indeed the only responsible course of action. Of that, he remained certain. But these days he felt, if anything, ever more keenly what he had lost. His chance of a college Fellowship – a position reserved for single men – for one. And even now, people referred to their union as a ‘knobstick wedding’. He was sure it was held against him. Luke was proud of the bachelor’s degree he did manage to achieve, but University connections were not seen these days as a political asset, at least not in the City’s eyes; let alone lingering memories of their father’s suspect religious allegiances. All would risk being dredged up if ever he put himself forward for an elected office as a bailiff or councillor.
‘Nay,’ he told his brother. ‘Better to grow the oak than seek the laurel.’
Chapter 3
A Body Politic
Elizabeth had not long gone up to bed, declaring that she had ‘a-boused and bolled enough for one night’ – more than enough, Luke thought – when there came a thunderous knock at the door.
‘Sorry to disturb, sirs.’ A great dark cloak made Robshaw’s outline in the candlelight even more bearlike than usual.
‘What is it, Robshaw?’
‘A body, sir. Night watch found it, a short while ago, on the doorstep of that there new tavern, where we was earlier.’
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Not yet – one of the proctors knocked me up and I came straight here. ’Tis said he’s been stabbed.’ Luke felt a twist of dread: the political atmosphere already contained enough tension, as their supper conversation had affirmed. An act of violence, as MPs and their hangers-on converged on the city, smelt of trouble.
‘You did right. Very well, let’s go.’
*
The grey of the once-distinguished temples seemed to have drained through the face, washing out the vitality, as Luke peered down at the still, beaky face and splayed figure of the man who had introduced himself to them earlier as William Harbord, MP. Steady luminescence from the clear night sky mingled with the guttering light of Robshaw’s lantern as he held it above the body.
‘There’s the wound,’ the deputy pointed out unnecessarily, as the two light sources refracted in the congealed surface of a pool of blood emanating from Harbord’s abdomen.
‘Where’s the weapon?’ One of the University proctors, who had stood guard over the scene, piped up in reply.
‘Can’t be found, sir.’
‘Well, hasn’t been found, anyway. We’ll have to take a proper look in daylight.’
‘I’ll need to clean up this here step, sirs.’ Unsworth had pulled on coat and boots over his vest and canions, against the chill, and was now shifting agitatedly from foot to foot, a grimace of dismay etched on his features. The innkeeper had been held back from the murder scene by the watchmen, who looked a question in Luke’s direction. He nodded.
‘May as well move it now, we can’t learn anything else here for the moment. Robshaw, put the body in my parlour.’ The ‘parlour’ was in fact a wide stone landing at the head of a staircase down to a small cellar, behind Sandys’ office at the back of the Guildhall, a little further up Fish Street. Robshaw jingled his bunch of keys at the men to fetch the low cart they used to scoop up the dead and the dead drunk alike from the city streets.
Turning to the innkeeper, Luke asked: ‘So he was lodging, as well as drinking, in your unlicensed premises?’ Unsworth’s voice and manner assumed their default attitude of obsequious wheedling.
‘That he was, Master Sandys sir, though he was ever such a proper gentleman, sir.’
‘That’s beside the point, Unsworth, as well you know. You told the night watch that you heard and saw nothing of this… incident? No altercation, no raised voices?’
Unsworth made as if to say something, then glumly shook his head.
‘Very well. I shall want to talk to you further tomorrow. Make sure you’re here, or if you must go out, don’t go far.’
‘Yessir,’ he nodded, relieved.
Luke held open the door at the back of the Guildhall, off the stable yard. Harbord’s corpse was manhandled in and through to the chamber at the back of the office, laid on a trestle table and covered with a length of muslin. Then he bade his deputy goodnight, locked up, and walked slowly back along Fish Street, towards the river. Unsworth was, sure enough, swabbing the threshold of The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well, too preoccupied to notice him passing by on the other side. The imposing limestone of Christ Church formed an apparently impenetrable barrier. Surely the King would be safe here? Though, on second thoughts, men still talked of the nine-pound shell fired by the New Model Army during the siege of Oxford in the time of His Majesty’s father, Charles I, which had thudded against the wall of the college dining hall.
The great wooden doors, long since bolted for the night, were just a stone’s throw from the murder scene. He would have to interview the porters to find out if they had seen anything amiss. That would mean approaching the dean of the college, Bishop Fell, for permission to speak to them. Fell was an old friend, but would doubtless want something in return. Luke sighed. They had already been braced for a busy week – and now there was this.
Turning homewards, Luke reached the junction of Blue Boar Street. He could take the short cut to the back end of Magpie Lane – but, on second thoughts, decided to go the long way round. With time now to plumb his memory, he recalled seeing Harbord’s name mentioned in one of the newsletters, or ‘mercuries’, that carried reports of parliamentary proceedings. Jane occasionally sent them to him from London. The Member for Thetford had been a great agitator of the Popish Plot, telling the House of Commons that ‘I profess I never go to bed, but I expect the next morning to hear of the King’s being killed.’ In a few short hours, news of his own death would be bruited abroad on the streets of Oxford.
As he passed The Mitre, a large coaching inn on the High Street, a faint light was snuffed out somewhere inside. Someone must have been tidying up, and was now retiring to bed. Luke’s pulse quickened as he realised it might be her – Cate Napper, the landlord’s daughter, and the person in Oxford whom he was most anxious to protect. He turned to walk on, though more slowly now, delaying his return. As he trod the moonlit pavement, he stepped in his mind’s eye into the bright future he imagined with Cate. Her faith seldom intruded into the vision, but now it loomed large as a potential hazard – for the Nappers were devotees of the old religion.
Luke turned up the collar of his coat as a chill breeze blew in from the east and wrenched his attention back to the present. Harbord was not short of friends or allies, and their chief preoccupation seemed to be – as Ed put it – persecuting Catholics. Wouldn’t they immediately blame the MP’s murder on ‘Papists’? How would they react, if they found out about the Catholic family who ran one of the city’s most frequented drinking establishments? Was there any way they could know what Luke himself knew – that Romish rites and sacraments were secretly administered in The Mitre’s generously proportioned vaults? He shook his head impatiently. No point vexing himself with conjecture. O
n the morrow, he would have to begin taking practical steps to solve the murder – hopefully before it had time to ratchet up the political tension still further. Home now, he turned the key, let himself in, lit a candle, and quietly climbed the stairs to bed.
Chapter 4
Blood on the Stone
If Captain Edwin Sandys soon forgot about the brief hiatus in the Royal progress, for Emily Hopkins the shot that frightened her cattle signalled the start of a traumatic evening. Earlier, Richard Bourke, her betrothed lover, had met her on his way back from work in Oxford as an apprentice stonemason. A few precious minutes alone together in the afternoon sunshine had turned into an hour. They felt the gentle swelling of her belly, hidden by the farm smock she wore for her duties, as the milchers cropped the season’s first growth. But a glance at the rapidly darkening horizon told her that she had tarried too long in the field. With a start, she shooed him on his way, and hurriedly summoned the beasts for the trudge back to Magdalen Farm.
The only pasture fit to be grazed this early in spring lay on a south-facing slope, at the far side of the London road – which they must therefore cross on the way home. In her haste, Emily realised too late that the herd did not have the route to themselves. Suddenly, on a narrow bend, cavalrymen in blue-and-red uniforms were shouting and angrily motioning at her to let them pass. But the kine had other ideas. A dozen in number, they stopped abruptly, glazed-eyed and fretful, their ears twitching.