by Angus Donald
He sat back down again on the stone bench and pondered some more and the view had its usual soothing, almost soporific, effect. The sundial showed the clockwork-like turnings of the universe, regular, timely, predictable: order created by a divine plan. Holcroft approved. Order was what he craved most. After the upsets of leaving his home and arriving at the Cockpit, the shock of meeting his new employer and taking on his new role and having to adapt to his new strange life, he needed this physical symbol of certainty, this symbol of the unchanging patterns in the world created by God. The sundial represented a universal truth – the truth of God.
He thought about his dead baby brother Neptune, took a deep breath, let it out, and allowed his poor infant soul to fly away, far, far away and up to the heavens. He thought about his mother, soon heading north to Lancashire: well, it was better than alternately starving and drinking herself insensible in Cock Lane. She would be cared for at Granny Maggie’s house, and so would Charles and Elizabeth – they would be far better off roaming in the fresh air of Lancashire than the dank, dangerous, soot-encrusted alleys of Shoreditch.
All would be well.
*
Sixteen miles to the northwest of the Privy Garden, in the little town of Romford, the bells of the church of St Edward the Confessor rang out for Evensong. Yet their chiming could scarcely be heard by the three men sitting on a bench by the wall inside the Lamb Inn that lay almost in the church’s shadow, due to the noise of the cattle and sheep lowing outside in the market and the cacophony of conversation inside the packed alehouse. It was market day, when the local farmers streamed in to Romford bringing their flocks and surplus produce for sale, buying the necessities of life, listening to the news, and indulging in a good deal of eating and drinking with their friends and neighbours. It was also on these days, if they felt the need of his counsel, that these stout Essex men and women paid a visit to that eminent physician, apothecary and surgeon, that man of parts, Dr Thomas Allen.
In looks and bearing, Dr Allen bore an extraordinary resemblance to that notorious rogue and outlaw Colonel Thomas Blood, except that he wore a long, sober black coat and high-crowned black hat with a buckle on the front and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on his long nose. It was through these that a pair of bright, innocent blue eyes now looked at his patient.
Mistress Harris, sitting on the other side of the table from Dr Allen and his two associates, had been speaking for some time now, listing her many and varied complaints, which ranged from earache to bunions, and passing through various distressing conditions of her chest, bowels and limbs. Dr Allen confined himself to nodding, tutting and murmuring expressions of mild dismay. He kept his eyes fixed on her round brown wrinkled face, his chin supported in his hand and the elbow plonked on the ale-splashed table, but his mind was entirely elsewhere. He was thinking about the girl Jenny Blaine and wondering if it would be possible to sell her. He had heard that some women, if they were as pretty as she, could be traded for as much as five pounds in the remoter parts of Yorkshire, which lacked a sufficient number of available females for marriage.
Since the debacle with the Duke of Ormonde in Piccadilly twelve days before, Jenny had been living with Blood, William Hunt and Joshua Parrot in one tiny, grimy room above the parlour of the Lamb. Blood had promised that they would be together if she fulfilled her side of the bargain in the Ormonde business – and she had. She had sent a note the next day to the bruised and battered duke, telling him that, after the terrifying violence of that rainy night in St James, she no longer wished to reside in London, nor to accept his protection, and while she was grateful for his many kindnesses, she was determined to return to her family’s remote village in Lincolnshire.
She had not consulted Blood about her decision to break with Ormonde. And it seemed that the duke was content to let her go, for he had made no reply to her note nor any effort to track her down. And so she was now all Blood’s, body and soul. Yet Blood, if he was completely honest with himself, was finding her constant presence a little irksome.
Neither did Jenny relish her new circumstances as much as she had believed she would. She was used to ducal splendour, to space and the best of everything at the pull of a bell rope, and Blood, who had long since spent all the money he had been advanced for the attempt on Ormonde, was barely able to pay for the room and board for the four of them. She made her displeasures well known. In short, she complained loudly and ceaselessly about everything. She complained about Blood’s drinking; she complained about the bed that she shared with him – apparently it was infested with a greater number, or a livelier species of bedbug than she was used to; she complained about Parrot’s thunderous snoring, about Hunt’s sly attempts to glimpse her naked body when she made her toilet in the small wash basin in the corner of the room. How much sweeter it had been, thought Blood, when he’d merely been fucking Ormonde’s whore and gleefully setting a pair of cuckold’s horns upon his greatest enemy’s head.
He was fond of her, no doubt about it. But the idea of selling her had its attractions, too. He did not plan to abandon her to the caresses of some love-starved Yorkshire clod; his plan was to sell her and then, once he had been paid in full, to rescue her from her new home after a day or so, ride to the next town and repeat the process. However, he did not relish explaining the scheme to her. He doubted she would see it in a sensible light.
Dr Allen was suddenly aware that a heavy silence hung over the table between him and his patient. Mistress Harris was looking at him expectantly and he wondered how long it had been since she had ceased speaking. He nodded his head. He looked to his right and saw that Hunt had fallen asleep, his head hanging back, mouth open. Joshua Parrot was over by the tap, deep in conversation with the Lamb’s landlord, Nathaniel Borrell.
‘Mistress Harris, this is without a doubt one of the most interesting cases I have ever come across,’ said Dr Allen, in his gravest voice. ‘Truly fascinating. I have not had a patient with such a distressing array of ailments since I treated the Great Cham of Tartary a year or two back. But you will be relieved to know that I cured that noble personage entirely and he presented me with this solid silver pistol as a gesture of his gratitude.’ He tapped the gleaming steel stock of the weapon shoved into his belt.
Mistress Harris looked suitably gratified to be linked in misfortune to such an evidently important foreign gentleman, even if she did not know exactly – or indeed at all – who he was.
‘Did this Cham also suffer from shooting pains in his knees?’
‘Indeed he did,’ said Dr Allen, stroking his chin, ‘although I don’t believe they were as severe as those in your own poor limbs.’
She beamed at him.
‘However,’ he continued, ‘I do believe that I have the remedy for your ailments – for all your ailments.’
Blood groped in his pocket and pulled out a small waxed linen pouch, which he gently pushed across the table to the old woman.
‘Only this extremely rare powder has the strength to cure your many distressing and unusual conditions, Mistress Harris. If you sprinkle the exact amount that will cover a shilling piece into warmed ale, and drink it down at dawn, noon and midnight, your problems will soon be completely cured—’
‘Horse shit,’ interrupted Mistress Harris, who had opened the pouch and, wrinkling her nose, taken out a pinch of the brown, strong-smelling and somewhat grassy dust that it contained. ‘It looks like dried horse shit.’
‘It is the roasted excrement of the Nazareen Gryphon – a terrible beast that is part lion and part eagle. I purchased it in the Holy Land, where it had been collected up, dried in the ovens where the Host is made and blessed by the High Abbot of the monks in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem itself. It is worth far, far more than its weight in solid gold but, because I have a kindness for you and you remind me of my own saintly mother – may she rest in peace, poor soul – I will let you have the packet for only two shillings. Plus, of course, a one shilling fee for the private consultation.’<
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As the old lady passed over the coins, and got up to go, Blood saw that Parrot was making his way through the crowded parlour towards the table.
‘Osborne sent a rider with a message. He says: “The Bull’s Head. Next Saturday. At noon.” The fellow is awaiting your reply.’
Blood let out a hiss of dissatisfaction. ‘Next Saturday? That’s Christmas Eve. I’m not traipsing all the way into London. It would be almost blasphemous, surely. Besides it’s too dangerous now. Tell him no. Tell the rider to tell Osborne that if he wants to deliver a rebuke for the Piccadilly business, fine, but let him come here to do it. Tell him I’m not running my head into a London noose just so he can have the pleasure of scolding me.’
Parrot leaned even closer in. ‘He supposed that you might say that. The second message is this: “He says if he does not see you at the appointed time and place, he will tell the House of Lords commission, which is at this very moment sitting to investigate the Ormonde affair, that if they were to send a troop of the King’s cavalry to the Lamb Inn, in the town of Romford, Essex, they may find the perpetrator residing there with his rascally confederates.”’
*
Holcroft sat on the stone bench until it was too dark to see the sundial at all. He was only roused from his thoughts by the arrival of Fox Cub bearing a brass lantern and a summons from the duke himself. The boy seemed overly pleased that he had managed to locate Holcroft: ‘The duke is in such a taking, Holly. He has been asking everywhere for you.’
The little boy skipped along beside Holcroft’s long-legged stride as they made their way out of the gate at the north-western corner of the Privy Garden, crossed The Street, and ducked into the filthy alleyway that led to the duke’s apartments in the Cockpit.
‘Do you think he might make me a confidential clerk one day,’ piped the boy in his charming accent. ‘I have been here a year and he has yet to take the slightest notice of me.’
‘I very much doubt it,’ said Holcroft. ‘Unless you have some skill at the reading and writing of ciphers.’
The boy went silent. Holcroft was aware that he had said something out of turn. He looked down at the boy and, although he was not skilled at reading the facial expressions of his fellow men, he did perceive that the boy now looked particularly downcast. It dawned on him belatedly that he had upset his companion. And something his mother often repeated to him rose in his mind: ‘Remember that other people have feelings too, Holly, and they’re as easily bruised as yours. Have a care what you say.’
‘I am sure that the duke has something in mind for you that is much better than mere confidential clerk,’ he said, after a moment’s consideration. ‘I am sure that he recognises your quality and will shortly reward it.’
Fox Cub brightened immediately, his little pink face shining once more, but Holcroft felt a weight on his heart: he had just told a lie. And that was a sin. Or was he merely making a joke? He didn’t know.
The Duke of Buckingham was in a fine temper. He stalked up and down the edge of the carpet by the big windows in the blue audience room letting out a stream of foul-mouthed abuse about the character of the King’s mistress and quaffing from a large glass of wine that a servant, following him about the room at a discreet distance, refilled at every opportunity.
‘. . . as if it wasn’t bad enough that she inveigles a new title almost every month from our lust-fuddled King, either for her or for her growing brood of royal bastards, I’m told that Charles has just granted her an income worth four thousand seven hundred pounds a year from the Post Office. He doesn’t have enough money to feed his filthy pack of spaniels and he’s giving her Post Office funds to squander on parties and new hats and God know what else. She must be the greediest woman in England!’
The duke’s audience was Sir Thomas Littleton, who sat glumly in a vast armchair, his arms tucked in around his belly and looking even more like a vast owl than usual. As the duke paced up and down, Littleton tried to think of something to say that would soothe him. Holcroft, who had been admitted by Fox Cub some ten minutes earlier, stood silently beside Littleton’s chair and tried to comprehend why his master found the fortunes of the Duchess of Cleveland, Baroness Nonsuch, etc., so enervating.
‘Why does this affect us?’ asked Littleton finally.
Buckingham rounded on him. ‘It affects us, you goggle-eyed dunce, because I am trying my hardest to put the King’s finances back into some kind of order and, despite my efforts, this bloody woman is merrily stripping him bare on an almost daily basis. She “borrowed” – borrowed, ha! I should say helped herself to – ten thousand pounds from the privy purse last month.’ The duke took a gulp of wine. ‘She told the King about it afterwards and he forgave her – he just forgave her! And she gave half of it – five thousand pounds – to her new lover Jack Churchill. And do you know what he did? Do you know, Littleton? Did he spend it on fine new clothes, old wine, any kind of debauchery? No, sir, he did not. He had the barefaced cheek to convert it straightaway into an annuity, bought from the Marquis of Halifax and worth a cool five hundred pounds a year. That Churchill boy will go far – you mark my words. Cousin Barbara steals the King’s money and gives it to her lover and he invests it! In this dissolute day and age – can you imagine? Are you listening to this, young Holcroft! There’s an important lesson to be learned here.’
Holcroft inclined his head but said nothing. He could see his master was drunk.
‘Nice of you to make an appearance, by the way,’ said the duke sarcastically. ‘I’ve been asking for you all afternoon.’
‘You granted me a half-day holiday, Your Grace!’
‘Did I? Well, that doesn’t mean I don’t need you. Now to work – an anonymous letter for The London Gazette, I think, listing all the reasons why my grasping cousin Barbara Villiers should be exiled from the court forthwith. It will be in the form of a petition to the King from his concerned subjects. We will mention every rumour, every scrap of tittle-tattle about her money-grubbing ways; see if we can’t make a decent case for her dismissal. Or at least get her to curb her greed for a while. Fetch pen and ink, Holcroft. You, Littleton, can marshal some arguments too. Ready? Right, young Holcroft take this down: To Mister Henry Muddiman, editor of The London Gazette. Sir, I feel compelled to write to you on a most serious matter . . .’
Thursday 22 December, 1670
What the editor of The London Gazette made of the duke’s drunken and vitriolic letter denouncing the Duchess of Cleveland, Holcroft never discovered, for he heard no more about it, either from Buckingham or from anyone else. It was certainly never published in the Gazette. He had continued in his usual duties in the Cockpit in the days approaching Christmas and occasionally accompanied the duke to meetings with other members of the Ministry, carrying important papers for him, and sometimes jotting down notes at the duke’s command for future reference.
On one such excursion, Buckingham had asked Holcroft to accompany him to an audience with the King in his apartments on the other side of White Hall and carry some documents necessary for the conference. Holcroft had naturally been excited at the thought of making his first acquaintance with King Charles, but, in the event, he had been disappointed, and left outside in the Stone Gallery to kick his heels on a bench while his betters discussed weighty affairs of state in the King’s red audience room.
As was his practice, Holcroft pulled the Parisian pack of cards from his pocket and, after dealing them out and playing a game of Slamm with imaginary opponents, he settled down to commune with the queen of diamonds. He was just revealing to her his disappointment at not seeing so much as a glimpse of the King, when he was aware that he was not alone in the Stone Gallery. Jack Churchill was striding down the narrow alley towards him, with a smile on his face and a cheery greeting on his lips.
‘Holcroft, how good to see you,’ said the soldier. ‘All alone again, I see. Do you mind if I join you? I have been invited to dine with a friend who has her apartments here – but you know Barbara
Villiers, of course – and I am fearfully early. And it does not do to arrive before the appointed time with Barbara. She gets into the most awful rage if you disturb her before she is ready to receive you. She is not an early riser by habit and she always takes an age over her toilet. May I sit for a while?’
Holcroft happily made way for his friend on the bench. And they chatted companionably for a while about inconsequential things: the weather, which had turned cold, and the rebuilding works after the Great Fire in the City of London, much of which was nearly completed.
After a while, Jack said: ‘Tell me, Hol – may I call you Hol? Holcroft is such a mouthful – do you see much of your parents these days? Or does the duke keep you too busy for such mundane family matters?’
Holcroft frowned at him. It seemed an odd question.
‘I recall that you said you had visited your mother when we met last time. And I wondered if you also regularly saw your father?’
‘My mother has gone to Lancashire. But I expect I will be seeing something of my father at Christmas – at least I hope so. The duke has granted me a full day’s holiday.’
‘It is just that I have always wanted to meet him – I have heard much of his exploits during the wars. Such a colourful character. Do you think you might be able to introduce me? Is he in London now, for instance?’
‘I don’t know exactly where he is.’ Holcroft was not absolutely sure, but it seemed to him that his friend Jack was behaving a little strangely. His face was slightly flushed and his eyes were darting all over the place. Finally they fixed on the pile of cards that lay on the bench between them.