Blood On the Stone

by Jake Lynch

  ‘’B-but ’twas real, Master Sandys!’ he wailed. ‘As real as you s-standing there! ’Twas the ghost of W-william Harbord!’ Luke glanced at Birch, who was obviously at a loss as to how to respond.

  ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me, Robshaw, by God?’ he growled, genuinely annoyed now. How dare he trivialise their investigation, in front of one of Luke’s old friends? ‘We’d better go. Dowling, that’ll do for today. You’ll need to leave room in the cart anyway, this one’s in no condition to ride a horse, you’ll have to carry him.’

  *

  Celia Robshaw opened the door of their little house on New Inn Hall Street and matter-of-factly helped her stricken husband inside. ‘I’ll take care of him from here, Master Sandys, thank you.’

  Once the working party reached Christ Church, word was sent to Bishop Fell, who descended from his eyrie to oversee the proceedings in person as the first batch of stone was unloaded and stacked in a large lockable shed, set aside for the purpose at the side of the College stable block.

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ he purred, as Luke returned from handing in their horses to the ostler at the Guildhall. ‘No creato ex nihilo, eh, Sandys? It’s creato ex materia from now on, my boy.’

  ‘Yes, there should be plenty of material to create with now, your Grace,’ Luke replied with a smile. ‘Kempster’s men can go back any time – they know they’re to take the stone from the tumbledown parts of the ruin first. They won’t get any trouble from the vagabonds in that case.’

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ the Bishop repeated.

  Chapter 36

  Some New Information

  When Luke finally returned to his own office and slumped down behind his desk, he was startled by a sudden movement at the edge of his field of vision. He jerked his head round to find his glance met steadily by a pair of cold, calculating grey eyes. As their owner rose from a chair in the corner and approached to offer his hand, Luke recognised him as the man he’d guessed was an intelligence officer working for Lord Finch, when he’d been advising Colonel Russell and the Lord Chancellor the previous afternoon.

  ‘Luke Sandys? We met yesterday,’ the man said softly.

  Relief that his chamber had not, after all, been invaded in his absence by a complete stranger mingled in Luke’s breast with a creeping dread. How had the man got in? And how had he managed to sit there so silently that Luke had been unaware of his presence? The catlike grace of the visitor’s movements, and something about the set of his weatherbeaten face, suggested an efficient ruthlessness that was no doubt common currency in his trade.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ he replied, striving to master his misgivings. ‘And you are?’

  ‘In the Lord Chancellor’s service, as you know. You can call me Tom.’ Seemingly in no mood for small talk, he came straight to the point. ‘Do you want some information about the late William Harbord?’

  ‘Why yes, I suppose so…’

  ‘You should.’ The spy reached inside the front of his coat, and Luke could not altogether dispel the notion that he was about to draw a weapon: a stiletto, perhaps, or even a pistol. In fact he merely produced two documents, and proceeded to unfold them on Luke’s desk.

  ‘These are copies of two notes from the French Ambassador, Paul Barillon. Each confirms a payment to Harbord of five hundred guineas, both made over the last eighteen months.’

  Luke whistled through his teeth.

  ‘Where are the originals?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ ‘Tom’ said with a half-smile. ‘But our man went to his grave believing they were safely locked in a bureau in his study at the ancestral pile in Norfolk.’ This seemed to make no sense. Harbord had been the unofficial leader of a group dedicated to the crackdown on Papists and the exclusion of James, Duke of York from the line of succession; and was well known from his speeches in Parliament as a critic of France, one of the leading Roman Catholic powers in Europe.

  ‘So what were they paying him for?’

  The intelligence officer stretched his long form as he leant backwards in the seat at the other side of Luke’s desk, put his midnight-blue felt hat on the floor and clasped his hands together behind his head.

  ‘Politics is a world in which nothing is quite as it seems,’ he began expansively. Harbord had been instrumental in the impeachment of Lord Danby, formerly head of the government, ‘Tom’ reminded him. As Luke remembered from reading the murdered MP’s file at the parliamentary clerks’ temporary office in the Bodleian, Danby had been exposed in the House of Commons as having secretly sued for peace with France while asking Parliament to approve ‘supply’ – that is, leave to spend money raised in taxes – for a standing army, ostensibly to go to war with the same country. For this service, it seemed, the late Member for Thetford had received the first of his generous remittances from Barillon.

  ‘Why should the French pay him for that, I don’t understand?’

  The spy leant forward in sudden intensity.

  ‘Cui bono? What’s the situation after the impeachment, and who stands to gain by it?’ Luke shook his head. ‘Danby went to the Tower – bad luck for him. So who now is going to propose raising taxes to set up a standing army? That cover’s blown. England is defended, but by part-time local garrisons. Hodge with his rusty halberd is hardly going to make trouble for France in her quarrels with the Dutch and Spanish.’

  The second of the two notes was much more recent, indicating a payment for introducing a bill during the so-called Second Exclusion Parliament, which had been dissolved just two months earlier in January, prohibiting the government from raising loans on the London money market.

  ‘If there’s no supply, what happens?’ The Lord Chancellor’s man was taking it upon himself to give his host a short course in the ways and means of political chicanery. ‘Does government just cease altogether?’ Luke supposed not. ‘So, where will the money come from, to allow ministers to pay people to carry out the King’s policies and his wishes? Thanks to Harbord’s bill, they can’t borrow it in London, which leaves only one real option – the one across the Channel.’

  This was, Luke realised, what the fellow was driving at. The King of France, Louis XIV, had just stunned Europe with an ostentatious show of his vast wealth, accumulated through absolute rule: the magnificent palace at Versailles, just outside Paris, living quarters for which had recently been completed. The opulence of both grounds and interiors was already the stuff of legend.

  ‘This Parliament is supposed to forget about the Exclusion. Now we’ve left London, everyone is supposed to realise they were really good friends all along, and start agreeing with each other,’ Tom continued sardonically. ‘I’d give it a fortnight of sitting, at the most.’

  ‘That’s going to disappoint a lot of people here,’ Luke replied. ‘Oxford has been looking forward to rich pickings.’

  ‘Can’t be helped. The point is, the “Honourable Members” won’t agree supply without Exclusion, and that’ll get blocked in the Lords, where Old Rowley has a rock-solid majority. If he can’t get cash from Parliament or the money-lenders, he can only turn to Louis. They’re cousins, after all, did you know?’ Luke nodded. ‘And that will put England pretty much in Barillon’s pocket.’

  Leaning his elbows on the arms of his chair, the Chief Bailiff’s Officer tented his fingers.

  ‘So let me see if I get this straight. Harbord’s public image is as a hammer of the French, so to speak…’

  ‘A Gallophobe, yes. Which is exactly what made him so valuable. No one would suspect him…’

  ‘…of secretly serving French interests,’ Luke finished off the sentence.

  ‘Very good! Now you’re starting to understand politics!’ the spy said with a cold smile.

  ‘But what of his friends in the Green Ribbon Club? They didn’t know about these payments, surely?’

  His guest’s demeanour grew grave, and he continued only after a slight pause, during which he seemed to be debating with himself.

 
‘I’ll take you into my confidence, Sandys. I’ve been told you’re reliable.’ Luke inclined his head. ‘Frankly, there’s no need for me to be involved in discussions about the King’s security in Oxford. Colonel Russell has all that under control, he’s a competent officer. No, that’s just a cover story: I came when I heard about the murder, because it made me think we must’ve had a leak somewhere.’

  A new shape and pattern to Harbord’s killing, and its political context, was beginning to form in Luke’s mind.

  ‘We did wonder whether someone on the other side of politics might have had him killed…’

  ‘But?’ the spy prompted.

  ‘But what if someone found out about these payments? Someone on his own side?’

  ‘He’d be seen as a traitor.’

  ‘And a target.’

  Luke took his turn to brief his companion about their investigation. Tom already knew about Gregory’s arrest and subsequent release, though the source of the trooper’s alibi was evidently news, along with their suspicion that the shreds of cloth that seemed to incriminate him had instead been planted on the body by Pawling. On one thing the two men ended up agreeing: it was now imperative to track down the mysterious caller who’d evidently disturbed Harbord’s composure at The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well, as the Green Ribbon Club met there on what turned out to be the MP’s last day on earth. As they rose, Luke made to pick up the copies of Barillon’s notes, but the spy was too quick for him. Pocketing them, he did at least promise to share any new leads that came his way.

  ‘So, how do I contact you?’

  ‘You don’t,’ the other said with a grin. ‘I contact you.’ For a while after Tom took his leave, Luke sat alone in the gathering gloom, then, on a sudden resolve, pushed back his chair, grabbed his hat and coat, locked the office door behind him and set off on the short walk to New Inn Hall Street.

  *

  ‘Hello Patch! All well, old lad?’ Luke fondled the spaniel’s ears as it gave a toothy grin, panted slightly and wagged its tail in greeting. The Sandys had never had dogs when he was growing up, but for some reason the creatures often approached him with friendly intent. ‘So what are we going to do with the big fellow, then, your master?’ he asked Patch, with a nod towards the corner of the room, where Robshaw sat by the fire. ‘He was in a bad way earlier.’

  ‘Should be outside, that one,’ his deputy said – but made no move to expel the dog into the cold. Instead, Patch settled back down beside him, resting his chin on his paws, as Celia Robshaw took a large pot from the grate and poured hot water into a wooden pail. She shoved it with her foot over to her husband’s chair, whereupon he lifted a pair of thick hairy calves as she manoeuvred it into place, and settled his blackened, shovel-like feet in the bath.

  ‘Aah – relief, at last. Thank you kindly, wife.’

  It was a sentiment that Luke silently seconded, since the herbal waft from the bucket took the pungent edge off his deputy’s own set of aromas. His pipe, for one, which he was relighting with a twig from the fire, amid copious deep puffing and snorting. ‘There’s mint in there, with ginger, and soldier’s woundwort,’ Celia said, nodding at the foot-bath as she caught Luke’s enquiring eye. ‘Or you might know it as yarrow. All good for a fever.’ She went back to her embroidery, under a candlelight on the far side of the room, as Robshaw invited Luke to sit, and transferred ale from an earthenware jug into two pewter cups. Now he was closer, the pair of coneys, hanging from a nail in the soot-covered wall, added their own distinctive bouquet. He felt Robshaw look up from pouring to catch his line of vision.

  ‘Of course, they’ll have come off common land?’ Luke said, nodding at the rabbits.

  ‘Aye, there’s plenty round the edges of Port Meadow. Mind, you’ve not come here to ask me and Patch about poaching.’

  ‘No, indeed. How are you, first of all?’

  ‘Nothing a good pipe can’t put right.’ He took a long draw of tobacco.

  Luke summarised his briefing from ‘Tom’, and the pair shook their heads, lost for a moment in silent thought as the embers in the grate shimmered grey-and-orange. Robshaw leant forward and threw on another log.

  ‘I don’t see how we’re going to find the killer, if it was all to do with these political intrigues in London,’ Luke grumbled presently. ‘With an Oxford man down, of course we’d know where to start looking.’

  ‘We’ll get him sir, or my name ain’t Jack Robshaw.’

  Luke was glad of his revived good cheer. It seemed like a propitious moment to take him back to the events at the Abbey.

  ‘So – your hallucinations, earlier.’

  ‘Halley – what?’

  ‘Seeing things that aren’t there.’

  At this, the deputy’s chin jutted and he shifted in his seat. ‘Why, it was there – a man, with the face of William Harbord, plain as you’re in front of me now.’

  From the corner of his eye, Luke glimpsed Celia shake her head, and pull a stitch through her sampler with added vigour. The dog sat up and yawned.

  ‘How can that be, Robshaw, really? We know Harbord’s dead.’

  ‘There’s some things as can’t be explained, Master Luke Sandys – not even with your science and book learning.’ He jabbed the air with his pipe-stem for emphasis. Patch raised an ear, tilted his head slightly to one side, and let out a little half-whine, half-growl of agreement.

  ‘Maybe it was someone who looked like Harbord?’

  ‘Aye, maybe. Could have been his brother I suppose.’

  ‘Older or younger?’ Robshaw took another puff on his pipe as he thought back.

  ‘Younger, for sure.’ Now Luke remembered, Harbord’s parliamentary file contained something about a brother, but he’d been lost at sea. Another dead end. He sighed, and his deputy seized the opportunity of changing the subject.

  ‘Least we got Kempster’s men going with that there stone.’

  ‘That we did. Fell was pleased.’

  ‘So he ought to be, with the trouble we took.’ They supped their ale.

  ‘What did you make of that “colony” at the Abbey?’

  ‘Load of cullions,’ Robshaw replied contemptuously. ‘In their own little word, ain’t they?’

  ‘Mind, they’d heard about Harbord.’ At the other’s raised eyebrows, Luke went on: ‘I was surprised, too. After all, his seat’s in Norfolk.’

  ‘About as far away as you can get.’

  ‘Indeed.’ And, with that, the pair drained their cups, and bade each other goodnight.

  Chapter 37

  Cate on her Round

  Catherine Alexandra Napper

  The Mitre Inn

  High Street

  Oxford

  England

  The World

  Cate looked down at the childish script on the inside cover of her little prayer book with a nameless feeling of unease. To carry it with her and be able to feel it in her fingers was one of her chief comforts through these dark days. A reminder of happier times, when she had learned her letters at Father Huddleston’s knee. ‘Bright as a button’, he’d always called her. And what lustre those days wore now, in retrospect: before her family’s hopes for religious freedom in England, under its newly restored monarchy, were dashed by political fervour.

  Seeing the book nestling on the bottom of one of her two bread baskets as she pulled back its wickerwork lid, Cate instinctively felt in the pocket she had sewn into her skirt to keep the leather-bound litany out of sight. No: the tiny volume was an item in the wrong place, which was disquieting enough, given its all-too-clear Romish origins and its capacity, therefore, to give her away to ill-wishers as a ‘Papist’. That such an unexplained accident had occurred amid the unrest now roiling on the streets – as Oxford nervously awaited the opening of Parliament – imbued it with a still more disturbing aspect. She slipped it back into its hidey-hole with a frown.

  The influx of strangers to the city had cranked up the tensions engendered in the past couple of years by the so-called
Popish Plot. No doubt the murder of the MP had also played its part, as Luke Sandys had prophesied. Not that her family’s religious allegiances had stopped those injured in the sectarian riot earlier in the week – outsiders and locals alike – from turning automatically to The Mitre to find care and comfort, she reflected ruefully.

  Notwithstanding its role as a community hub, the inn still needed to pay its way, and Cate’s parents were far from alone in seeing the coming of Parliament as an opportunity for profit. But her mother’s face had assumed its most careworn aspect when Cate suggested taking her wares to sell in other nearby establishments.

  ‘But she’ll be out on her own! A young widow – most folk don’t even know about that: they’ll see her as a maid, without a chaperone!’

  But Jim Napper had glimpsed Cate’s mutinous expression.

  ‘Fie, Mary, we’re among friends here. And she’ll just be going from one tavern to the next – they all know her, they’ll look out for her.’

  ‘I’ll only be gone for an hour at a time, Ma – two at the most,’ the daughter protested. So, it was settled. Cate had a job that gave her a bit of precious independence. Where the parents were in agreement was over the quality of her output: both bread and cakes were the object of regular favourable comment among their clientele.

  She sat down and leafed through the prayer book, whose text set out the Rosary in full: first the Apostles’ Creed, then the Our Father. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ Well, that was her task now. The Lord was acting through her to meet the needs of her fellow beings, which enabled her to feel useful, at least, as she earned her keep. She particularly enjoyed setting out on clear mornings, when she would play a game of walking in the long shadow cast in the rising sun by the steeple of the All Saints Church, where the Nappers went to be checked off in the parish register every Sunday in minimum observation of the law. Once her footsteps took her beyond its shade, her heart would give a little leap for joy, as if temporarily freed from the oppressive influence of Anglican orthodoxy and the depredations it had visited on her own people.