Blood On the Stone

by Jake Lynch

‘Too much nudity, I’m afraid, for modern tastes,’ the Professor said with a wry smile. ‘Supposed to illustrate the Last Judgement. They were put up in the chapel less than twenty years ago, d’you know, but they’ve had to be taken down – some visitor said something to the Bishop, and the Bishop said something to the Warden.’

  ‘And they’ve ended up in your chambers?’ Luke could not help but feel amused.

  ‘Aye, indeed, for the moment,’ his host twinkled, evidently sharing the joke. ‘It’s probably assumed that, as a medical man, my interest in such forms is purely anatomical. And, at my time of life, the assumption is probably correct. D’you know?’

  Millington’s desk was strewn with plant samples, and he ushered Luke over to join him there.

  ‘Now, if you’d care to look through here, Luke, you’ll see something interesting.’

  ‘A snake’s head? There were some of them out in the meadow yesterday.’

  ‘Aye, they’re early this year, indeed. The part of the flower on that slide – d’you see? – that’s the “attire” – or some men call it the stamen. It’s the plant’s male organ, d’you know?’

  Luke peered down through the eyepiece of the Reeve microscope that held pride of place in the Professor’s office. Sure enough, the portion of the flower Millington had cropped did look distinctly phallic.

  ‘And this slide has the female part,’ Millington told him, deftly exchanging one for the other.

  ‘Fascinating – will you publish something on it, Tom?’

  ‘Alas no, my dear chap – I’m far too busy these days. No, it’s being written up by Nehemiah Grew – d’you know him?’ Luke shook his head. ‘Published The Anatomy of Plants, a few years ago – now he’s putting out a second edition, so this’ll be in it. But – forgive me – I haven’t looked at your picture frame.’ The Professor unwrapped the parcel and held the picture up to the light.

  ‘A Lely frame, Tom, with oak leaf motif. In gold gilt, as we discussed.’

  ‘Ah yes, a fine job, dear boy, a fine job. I’ll get Babbington to wrap it back up. Just in time to take it with me to London. The Royal College will be delighted – thank you kindly.’ He opened his desk drawer, removed a strongbox and unlocked it, and counted out the agreed price of twenty shillings.

  ‘By the way,’ Millington said, as Luke got up to leave. ‘I heard our mutual friend Harbord came to grief the other day?’

  ‘Why, yes, so he did – but I never realised you knew him.’

  ‘I thought we both did. He was at Brasenose, if memory serves – he came to some of the Natural Philosophy meetings.’

  Luke furrowed his brow.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I never met him.’

  ‘Ah well, perhaps before your time then, Luke. Always had a feeling he’d meet a sticky end, that one.’

  ‘Come to think of it, I never knew he’d been at Oxford at all. His parliamentary file says he went to Leiden.’

  ‘Why, I believe he did – but that was later. Left Oxford in a hurry, d’you know. Soon acquired a reputation as a philandering rogue, I’m afraid. Before long, he’d got some local girl into trouble, but didn’t do the right thing by her, as you did. So he had to get his degree somewhere else, I suppose.’

  There was a pause as Luke digested this new and surprising information.

  ‘Do we know the girl?’ he asked. He should surely find out as much from Millington, before the great man left for London, as he could.

  The Professor squinted in thought.

  ‘I seem to remember hearing she’d drowned, when the child was very young. So the boy was left without mother or father. It was all terribly tragic.’

  Bidding the Professor farewell, Luke walked back home to deposit his fee – managing to slip in and out quietly enough to avoid another encounter with his wife – and strode off down Blue Boar Street deep in thought. Yes, he himself had ‘done the right thing’, as Millington put it. The consequences of any other course of action, especially for Elizabeth and the then-unborn Jane, would have been unthinkable. But he was left with a nagging sense of unfulfilled possibilities and potential – a sense that seemed to crystallise in the proximate yet frustratingly unreachable person of Catherine Weston, née Napper. Luke slowed his tread as he neared the Guildhall. Surely, now both his children had left home, he had met his family obligations? As Cate’s image grew in his mind’s eye, he was reminded that he, at least, had not yet reached the point where interest in such matters became purely academic, confined to observing the sexual organs of plants.

  Then, so far as the investigation was concerned, did it change the picture at all, knowing that Harbord had an Oxford connection in his past – and one that was not to his credit? On balance, he was inclined to think not. If, in his record, all mention of his time at Brasenose had been suppressed, then it would be unlikely to play any part in his political activities or connections. Luke kicked a loose cobble against the wall, then intercepted it as it bounced back. The shady episode was not all that unusual, he reflected. Harbord was certainly not the only figure in public life who’d fathered a child on the wrong side of the sheets: from the King downwards, as it were.

  No: the chief suspects in Harbord’s killing, as in that of Unsworth, must surely still be Settle and his henchman – what was his name? – Francis. A shaft of light illuminated the threshold of the Guildhall as Luke approached it. The sun was nearing its zenith, as he had noted from Wren’s turquoise sundial on leaving All Souls. The hours were counting down till he could put his theory to the test, that the pamphleteer would be so desperate for the return of his notes that he would risk returning to The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well. And when he did that, he would walk straight into Luke’s trap.

  Chapter 52

  An Unlikely Ally?

  Cate spent much of the long span of daylight in silent prayer, as the men alternately dozed, or sharpened their swords on a small whetstone Francis produced from his pocket – truly, he seemed a resourceful character – or stood to pace restlessly back and forth. Always, they made sure at least one of them was awake and vigilant, lest she be tempted to cry out, or perhaps even try to scale the wall and escape: a notion she had briefly entertained early in her captivity, only to reject it as impractical.

  At one point, there came a renewed rapping on the door: Here’s-a-health-unto-His-Majesty. Settle strode hurriedly over and turned the key.

  ‘What is it?’ he hissed.

  A lowered voice came from without, as Cate once more cocked an ear.

  ‘College has arrived in Oxford. Wants a word with you.’

  ‘Armstrong is supposed to be dealing with him.’

  ‘Wants to meet up in person – says you need to be there when they plan how to coordinate, in the morning.’ Settle let out an exasperated sigh.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Back of the lodgings, just round the corner.’ The pamphleteer turned to Francis.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing for it, I shall have to go out and speak to him; just hope no one sees. Don’t let her out of your sight for a moment.’ The other nodded assent, and Settle slipped away with his co-conspirator.

  ‘Whence came you, sir?’ Cate asked, on suddenly catching Francis’s eye after the passage of a lengthy interval. It was a question she had been weighing up for several hours: both out of a genuine curiosity, as to how someone so different from herself, and everyone she knew, came to be here; and out of calculation that – knowing nothing else about him – she must seek to draw out the man she’d identified as potentially the more pliable of her two captors by opening up the only subject she could think of.

  ‘From Stepney. East London,’ he replied, having observed her critically and seemingly decided there was no harm in answering, albeit in a manner that invited no follow-up enquiries.

  ‘No, but… before?’ the young woman persisted. Francis sighed, and she realised with a flush of self-reproach that he must have been subjected to many such interrogations.

  ‘My father was out
of Africa. A slave, captured and borne far away from home, to the New World, to work on a plantation.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘Well, that’s been and gone. This is a better place, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘So how did he come to be in England?’

  The reply contained more than a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘D’you not know, miss? The air of England is too pure to be breathed by slaves, so no man here can be owned by another – though plenty of Englishmen make money from the trade. Anyway, he escaped, stowed away on a ship, and came ashore in London town.’ The account was matter of fact, but Cate’s imagination strained to fill in the detail. Escape – in theory, it seemed so simple! If only it were so, for her now, in practice. She nerved herself to go on.

  ‘I see. And your mother?’

  ‘A washerwoman. English.’

  ‘So you were brought up…?’

  ‘As a Christian – and to not trust Papists.’

  This was, she could tell, an attempt to deter further probing; but, rather than waste any of the time she had with him alone by falling silent, Cate changed tack.

  ‘And what is your trade, sir?’

  ‘Soldiering. I saw service with Monmouth, in Holland.’ He added, as he saw her shape another question, ‘Now, enough!’

  Just then, Settle’s return curtailed any further opportunity to keep him talking. The information Francis had divulged did, however, give her plenty to ponder. His father had been a slave. She racked her brains and dredged up a vague memory of one of Father Huddleston’s lessons about the Crucifixion. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who’d washed his hands of responsibility while sending Christ to his death, was supposed to have been a descendant of freed slaves. Yes, that was it: slavery was a thing of ancient Rome. She had never heard of it in modern times, but, she supposed, there must be many wrongs in the modern world of which her upbringing had left her in blissful ignorance.

  Slaves had first to be captured, of course – and they sometimes got away. Indeed, Francis seemingly owed his very existence to his father’s successful flight from captivity. Would that make him still more vigilant, in preventing any attempt she might make to free herself? Or would it stay his hand at some crucial point, out of a residual fellow-feeling for her plight? Pilate, she recalled with a shudder, was disposed to show mercy, but proved powerless to stop the Crucifixion.

  Chapter 53

  A Special Kind of Cartwheel

  Luke dropped back in at the Guildhall to find Robshaw in conclave with Ronald and Jethro Cox – the latter having, apparently, been fetched from his yard to give them some information in person.

  ‘’Tis about them two fellers, Master Sandys,’ Ron began, in answer to Luke’s raised eyebrow; but his brother cut in.

  ‘They ordered a special kind of wheel, see – one with these here brackets on it.’

  Luke took the wooden contraption from Jethro and examined it, admiring the precise craftsmanship with a practised eye. A thick, curved block, eight inches or so in length – one side had a broad groove cut into it, with edges slanted in a reverse diagonal, so the points faced inwards on the segment’s end profile. Cut through the block were two round bolt-holes, with hexagonal countersinking for the heads on the cut side.

  ‘So that part, it fits onto an extra ridge, all round the wheel, what has diagonals the other way, as a sliding dovetail joint,’ Jethro explained.

  ‘On a curve? How d’you do it?’

  ‘With a chisel, and a steady hand.’

  ‘’Tis some carpentry, is that,’ Luke said in admiration. ‘What’s its purpose?’

  ‘Why, ’tis for attaching a roller on to the wheel of a cart, like.’

  Seeing their puzzled looks, the wheelwright pulled a piece of paper and pencil from his apron pocket, and quickly sketched out the shape of the device.

  ‘You have four of these blocks, see, and a crosspiece made of iron, like this, what bolts on through them holes. Painted to keep off the rust. Then an axle attaches to the middle of the crosspiece, and through the middle of the roller.’

  ‘What’s that for, then?’ Robshaw wondered.

  ‘’Tis for breaking up clumps of soil, before planting seeds in it.’

  ‘But why not just use a longer axle through the cartwheels, and put the roller on the same one?’ Luke enquired.

  ‘Well, then the roller’s like to lift off of the ground, and keep stopping,’ Jethro replied. ‘This way, it has its own axle, what turns independent of the cart. The wheel has a big iron block on the other side, round the axle, to balance it up. And the mechanism has a stop on it, if ’tis not needed – a chock what goes through the raised ridge.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘I’ve never had no complaints. As long as you keep the surfaces smoothed and polished, ’twill run like water off a duck’s back – if ’twas well-crafted in the first place.’

  Luke snatched the sketch and turned it the other way up.

  ‘We’ve seen a drawing like this recently!’ he exclaimed, showing it to Robshaw.

  ‘Why, aye – in that there folder.’

  ‘Mind if I take this, Jethro?’

  ‘Be my guest, Master Sandys.’

  Halfway out of the room, Luke stopped and turned.

  ‘How many of these do you make, by the way?’

  The wheelwright sucked air in through his teeth.

  ‘Not many! Not of that size, leastways. Last one was a couple of years back for Paul Woolston, from Sir Thomas Spencer’s up at Yarnton. Mind, since the enclosure, his fields are that big, they’re fit for giants. No wonder he wanted a big roller.’

  ‘And are they expensive?’

  ‘I charged them London fellers a pretty penny, I can tell you. Said they’d pay me to stop all my other work for to give them this one right away. I keep the iron pieces ready, but joints take time, see. And there’s a deal of wood in it.’

  ‘I never took them Green Ribbons to be farming folk, that’s for sure,’ Robshaw remarked to Luke’s retreating back, as he bounded away to his office to retrieve Settle’s leather wallet from his desk drawer.

  *

  Back upstairs, on opening the folder, both he and Robshaw straight away spotted the similarity with Cox’s drawing. What they had dismissed as mere ‘doodles’ included a rough likeness of the cartwheel Settle and his henchman had ordered, with its extra parts.

  ‘Now, what can they possibly want that for?’ Luke wondered aloud.

  ‘Cussed if I know.’

  ‘Maybe it’s for some local landowner who supports their political aims?’ Though neither constable could think of such a person among their acquaintance. Pawling, the tenant at Magdalen Farm, was no friend of the monarchy, and a supporter, in general, of efforts to thwart the Popish Plot and the Catholic succession; but he had no connections with London political clubs, so far as they knew. Luke tucked the leather binder under his arm and, reminding Robshaw to keep his ear to the ground for any clues as to Cate’s whereabouts (though, in truth, the day’s activity in the hue and cry had all but wound down), he set off to the Bodleian.

  Chapter 54

  ‘’Tis treason, sir!’

  As before, reaching the Bobs required him to negotiate a passage through the Foot Guards’ ring of steel before climbing the stairs to the glorified cleaners’ cupboard that had been pressed into service as temporary accommodation for the parliamentary clerks and past the stacks of files on the landing. He tapped on the door, which was ajar, though he could see no one inside among the maze of desks and boxes. Just as he was about to knock again, a pink face popped out from under one of the desks, and its owner rose from hands and knees through the not-so-very-great height to his feet, straightening his grey periwig as he did so.

  ‘Good day to you, sir!’

  ‘And to you, sir – Master Simkins, is it not?’ At that moment, the other, paler-faced clerk emerged from a not-so-very-great distance away, in the far corner of the narrow room.

&nbs
p; ‘I am Robert Simkins, sir,’ this one said.

  ‘And I am Robert Timpson. You are Master Sandys, from the Guildhall.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sirs – yes, indeed I am Luke Sandys. Thank you again for your help with the files the other day.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, sir,’ Bob Tim replied.

  ‘Nothing at all, sir,’ his colleague added. ‘Now, how may we help you today, sir?’

  Luke cleared a space on the nearest desk and opened up Settle’s document wallet.

  ‘I imagine you deal with tachygraphy, sirs, in keeping records of parliamentary debates?’

  ‘Why yes, all the time, sir,’ Bob Sim said.

  ‘Well then, can you read this?’ Luke showed them a double-page spread of the strange squiggles.

  ‘Ah – Master Shelton’s system,’ Bob Tim said at once.

  ‘Yes indeed, sir, Shelton’s shorthand – a very good system, sir, very clear and useful,’ the other Bob confirmed.

  Together they pored over the pages as Luke pointed out specific passages which – he had deduced from the occasional longhand note in the margin, or set of initials – might be of particular interest. The Bobs alternately clicked their tongues and shook their heads as they read, their expressions becoming graver by the minute.

  ‘Why – why, this is treason, sir,’ Bob Sim pronounced at length, removing his eyeglasses as he looked up.

  ‘The writer and his accomplices mean to assassinate His Majesty, sir.’

  ‘And replace him on the throne of England…’

  ‘…with James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth.’

  ‘’Tis treason, sir!’ they chorused in unison.

  Luke leafed through to the back page, from which – going by the initials, arrowheads and the drawing of the crown – he and Robshaw had formed the same impression. Now, as he explained to the Bobs, their reading of Settle’s shorthand notes had confirmed it.

  ‘And what of this section, sirs?’ he went on, pointing to the lower half of the same sheet. ‘’Tis a mixture of numbers, initials and the same Shelton script, but – without knowing what the shorthand says – I can make neither head nor tail of it.’