by Angus Donald
It was money that she sought from Buckingham, a great deal of money, but not for the production of the play, and she knew from long experience of the bloody man that the duke, rich as he was, would be most unwilling to part with it. Nevertheless, she felt reasonably confident that she could persuade him to hand over a decent amount, if not the whole sum – enough for her present needs anyway. The alternative did not bear thinking about.
Halfway down The Street, she turned right into the narrow alleyway that led up to the Cockpit, keeping to the side to keep her high-buttoned boots out of the river of brown filth that trickled down the centre of the cobbles. She passed the tennis court and heard the excited voices of the players and spectators echoing against the panelled walls and the thwack of ball on wood. At the top of the alley, she turned left, and was stopped at the gate into the duke’s private garden by a surly porter, a scarred oaf with grease-matted hair in an ancient military coat with a half-pike in his hand and a sword at his belt, who demanded that she state her business.
‘I have come to pay a courtesy call on His Grace the Duke of Buckingham. He is a very old and dear friend of mine.’
The porter looked her up and down in a most offensive manner, eyeing her pretty face, blonde curls, her slim waist and the swell of her gauze-covered bosom at the top of her widow’s weeds. ‘A dear friend, you say. I wager you are,’ he muttered and rang a brass bell to summon the duty page.
Five minutes passed while Aphra sat on the dirty bench in the lodge, staring into space and ignoring the open leers of the porter, and then a small ginger-haired child of about ten years in a golden coat and a red waistcoat and breeches came running across the garden from the western side and skidded to a halt by the lodge.
‘What’s doing, Arnold?’ piped the child in a French-tinged accent, wiping a few breadcrumbs and a smear of butter from his pink cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘We were just sitting down to our dinner.’
‘It’s a lady, Fox Cub,’ said the porter, making the word sound almost exactly like whore, ‘come here on her own two feet, no horse or carriage, no chair, no lady’s maid or escort, and come to see our own dear duke.’
‘He’s very busy, ma’am; he has a moil of paper work to attend to; he ain’t put a nose out of doors all day, just scratch, scratch, scratch with his quill. But I’ll tell him you’ve come to visit. What name shall I give?’
‘Mistress Aphra Behn. Tell him I urgently need to speak to him about a most delicate and private matter.’
Arnold sniggered. ‘Make sure you tell him she’s a rare looker, Foxy. And say it’s a very dear friend.’
*
‘He forgave him!’ said the duke. ‘He found him in a cupboard in my lady’s chamber, naked as the day he was born and he just laughed and said he forgave him because he did it for his daily bread. The luck of that devil. Then the King stayed to pleasure her himself. Has the man no self-respect?’
Holcroft had nothing to say, and indeed no words were required of him. He just stood like a statue beside the duke’s overflowing desk and tried to look as grave as Solomon in judgment.
‘I know what you are thinking, you greedy rascal – you are thinking, What about my hundred pounds? Well, you can forget about that! That money was conditional on the downfall of that lustful bitch, and has she fallen, no! She is back in the King’s affections, more so now than ever, I’m told, and even better placed to pillage the royal coffers at her leisure.’
Holcroft had in fact been thinking that the duke’s information was surprisingly accurate. He had been told the full story by Jack the day before, his friend thanking him handsomely for his warning – that had made Holcroft squirm – and telling him word for word what the King had said. The maid, Holcroft thought, it could be no one else, and his respect for the duke’s information-gathering system increased tenfold; his fear of it, too.
Had the maid told Buckingham about his abrupt entrance and warning of the King’s imminent arrival? He assumed not, for he would surely have been dismissed by now, if not worse. He should make her a present of some kind, a golden guinea to stop her mouth, perhaps. The loss of the hundred pounds was no great tragedy. His winnings from the card tables meant that he could afford to send an adequate sum of money to his mother. But he had learned two things today: firstly that the duke’s promises were not to be trusted; secondly, that what his father had told him was true: his master had spies everywhere. He would step more carefully in future.
Just then the russet head of Fox Cub poked through the door, and he waggled his eyebrows up and down at Holcroft until he went over to speak to the young French page.
‘There is a lady to see you, Your Grace,’ Holcroft said, when he had conferred with Fox Cub and returned to his master’s side. ‘It is Mistress Behn from the theatre. Apparently she has something urgent to communicate to you: a delicate and private matter.’
The duke gave Holcroft a thoughtful look. ‘I do not care to wait upon the lady today. Indeed, I do not foresee a situation in which I shall ever be pleased to welcome her into my presence. You know her, Holcroft, go out and see her and tell her that I am otherwise engaged; tell her that if she has anything to communicate to me, particularly if it is delicate and private, she should set it down in a letter. A nice long letter and I shall reply to it or not as I see fit. Although best you don’t tell her that last part.’
‘As you command, Your Grace,’ he said, and left the room.
Holcroft went directly to the porter’s lodge and rescued Mistress Behn from the attentions of Arnold Smith – who had been regaling her at tedious length with descriptions of his sexual conquests, hinting not too subtly that he would be happy to add her name to that illustrious list.
As a denizen of the theatre, Aphra was entirely used to the motions of lecherous, self-deluding old men and she let his words slide over her without paying them too much heed. What old Arnold did not know was that she had a blade, a short but wide and extremely sharp double-edged weapon in a leather sheath secured to her thigh and she was quite prepared to discourage him with force if necessary. Her long skirts had a discreet slit known as a placket cut into them on the right-hand side so that she could easily gain access to the weapon. It would not have been the first time she had been forced to use that razor-edged blade on an importunate man.
But she was relieved to see Holcroft, nonetheless. She remembered him vividly from the theatre and, although she still recalled his merciless words when she had moments of self-doubt about her craft, she gladly agreed to his suggestion that they take a turn in the small garden together.
‘He won’t see you,’ said Holcroft without preamble after they had walked a dozen yards in the sunshine. ‘He says you’re to write him a letter.’
‘How very cowardly of him.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? What was it that you wanted with him anyway?’
‘Oh the usual thing. I wanted some money. The duke owes me a great deal and without it I shall be put in an awkward position with my creditors.’
They paused to inspect the tulip bed, which was in full and glorious bloom, a sea of waving purple and white.
‘Why does he owe you money? Did he borrow it from you?’
Aphra laughed. ‘I don’t have the kind of money to lend to great men like the Duke of Buckingham. No, I was in his service, you might say, and I ran up debts in my name while engaged in his affairs, which he promised faithfully to settle. He has not settled them.’
‘I don’t think he is a man of his word,’ said Holcroft, as they walked away from the flowerbed. ‘I don’t think you will ever see your money. He promised me a goodly sum too, and I don’t think he ever means to pay me.’
‘You mean your wages?’
‘No, he promised me a hundred pounds for . . . for something, for a special service.’
‘Was it a betrayal? Did he ask you to betray somebody?’
Holcroft stopped dead. For the first time in their walk he looked directly into her brown eyes. How could she p
ossibly have known?
‘You don’t have to tell me. He did it to me, too, asked me to betray somebody, a dear friend, to prove my absolute loyalty to him. I think he likes to do it. It demonstrates his power. He likes to make you forsake those whom you love, to break those bonds, so that you belong only to him.’
Holcroft said nothing.
Aphra said, ‘So he owes each of us a goodly sum – how shall we make the noble Duke of Buckingham pay his debts?’
They continued their walk around the garden, following the stone-flagged path, neither saying anything, but Holcroft was aware that they had fallen exactly into step with each other, like the soldiers of the King’s Foot Guards when they paraded in The Street in all their pomp. Together, they began a slow second circuit of the tulip garden. It seemed entirely natural that they should be walking together, talking together like this. Once again Holcroft was aware of the strange sensation that he already knew Mistress Behn from somewhere and they were more than acquaintances. In fact, he had the strongest feeling that they were already good, even intimate, friends.
‘I know that if you want money from someone you must offer them something that they want in exchange,’ said Holcroft.
‘What do people want these days? I have no any idea any more. Love. Power. Revenge. What do you want?’
‘I want to be a soldier,’ said Holcroft immediately. He had no idea where the answer came from but he immediately knew it to be entirely true.
‘If you had your money you could buy yourself a commission. I know a soldier, Colonel John Russell is his name, who could make you an ensign in his regiment for a hundred pounds.’
Holcroft thought about that for a while. He could scarcely imagine anything more wonderful.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘I want to stay out of the Marshalsea. I want to write wonderful plays, and maybe a wonderful romance or two as well, I want to be the toast of London. I want money and fame, and ease and contentment, and the love of a good man and a large house with servants, a fine carriage and horses and a lovely garden like this one. I want everything.’ She kicked a stone in the path, which rattled across the paving stones. ‘But what does our duke want? He is rich and powerful already. What can he really desire?’
They walked on a few more steps.
‘I know what he wants,’ Holcroft finally said. ‘I know what he wants above all else.’
‘And what is that?’
‘He wants to destroy the Duke of Ormonde. He wants to be Lord Steward of the Household. He wants to be the most powerful man in the Three Kingdoms after the King. That’s what my master truly wants.’
‘Then that is what we shall offer him.’
*
In the booth in the corner of the Lamb Inn, Romford, the Thomas Bloods senior and junior, William Hunt, Joshua Parrot and Jenny Blaine were squashed around the ale-wet table and the remains of a goose pie. Blood had just finished giving a description of their reconnaissance of the Jewel House and their first encounter with Talbot Edwards and his family.
Parrot said: ‘You say the bars are too thick to cut through?’
‘They are an inch thick and made of hardened iron and mortared into the wall,’ Blood said, shaking his head. ‘And you could not saw or file through just one bar, you would need to cut half a dozen to be able to lift the cage away and get to all the jewels. Even cutting through the steel of the padlock would take hours of work – maybe half a night. This needs to be a quick in-and-out affair before Edwards is missed.’
‘What about powder?’ asked Parrot. ‘A small charge attached to the bars against one wall?’
‘The noise would bring the Tower guards running. And black powder is chancy stuff: too much and you’d blow the jewels to worthless fragments, too little and it doesn’t shift the bars in the slightest. No, gentlemen, it has to be the key. We must take the key from him or persuade Edwards to open the cage door himself. It is the only way.’
‘I could dally with him while you steal the key,’ said Jenny.
‘You are a good lass. But Mistress Edwards would never let you get anywhere near him alone. And I’m not sure the old man still has that much inclination for red-blooded adultery.’
They all sat in silence for a while. Blood cut himself a slice of pie and chewed meditatively for a while. Then he said, ‘I do believe there is a way whereby we can get him to open that cage of his own free will: the essential element is his daughter. I never saw an uglier creature in my life, and of marriageable age with nary a suitor in sight. That, I believe, is his greatest weakness. The girl is the key that unlocks the treasure.’
Thursday 20 April, 1671
‘The Lord High Admiral, His Grace the Duke of York,’ intoned the footman, holding open the door to allow a tall, austere man in a golden periwig to march into the room.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said, bowing low to the figure in a plain blue robe seated at a small table drinking a cup of coffee and nibbling a tiny almond biscuit. ‘You honour me with an audience.’
‘Good day to you, James,’ said the King, nodding affably to his brother. ‘I don’t think you really have to call me Majesty when we’re alone. No need to stand on ceremony. Come, sit, have a cup of this most refreshing Arabian brew. It will set you up like nothing else.’
James frowned at him. ‘Really, Charles, if we two do not observe the traditional forms of respect due to a monarch, how can we expect the rest of your subjects to do so?’
‘The rest of my subjects are not with us, thank God. And if you don’t sit down, take your wig off and have a hot cup of coffee and a biscuit, I’m going to issue you with a royal command to do so.’
James, Duke of York, looked around the Rose Room, so called because it looked out on to a private rose garden, which was decorated in salmon pink and scarlet with touches of gold, and saw that it was completely empty of life save for the King, looking faintly dishevelled as if he had just risen from somebody’s bed, and two fat spaniels who were snoozing by the fire. He pulled off his wig and hung it on the back of his chair, sat down next to his brother, and scratched with happy relief at his thinning scalp while the King poured him out a cup of dark, fragrant liquid.
‘How goes it at Chatham?’ asked the King once they had both had a sip and he saw that James’s shoulders had begun to drop. ‘How go things with the rebuilding of my Royal Navy?’
‘Slowly. Damnably slowly. In fact, it has almost come to a stand. The shipwrights have said they will do no more work on the new hulls this month until they are paid in full the wages owed them. The chandlers will no longer accept my notes of hand and half the seamen I had collected have returned to their fishing smacks and merchant vessels. The fleet will not put to sea this year, brother. Perhaps not the next either.’
‘Is it just the money? Or is there another reason for the delay – a certain reluctance for this Dutch war?’
‘It is mostly the lack of money. And from what I hear from Westminster, Parliament is in no mood to grant you any more subsidies. But it is true, my Chatham people do not truly want to wage another war against the Dutch. They call them our Protestant brothers and say they cannot be beaten at sea. After the Dutch raid on the Medway, that foul humiliation, I thought they would be eager for revenge but no – the men claim that France is our true foe and we should be at war with His Most Catholic Majesty not with these contumelious, heretical, God-damned cheese-mongers.’
‘Calm yourself, brother, the delay is no matter anyway. We cannot go to war until the French are ready, and they are not. They must make their concordats with Munster and Cologne, for Louis gave his solemn word to the Holy Roman Emperor that he would not invade north through the Spanish Netherlands, and so he must take his armies around the side and attack from the east, and that means going through Liège, a fief of the Archbishop of Cologne. We have time, James, plenty of time to prepare. We can proceed just as slowly as we must. And I am sure you are clever enough to find a way to drive the ship-building forward.’<
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‘There is no hope of any more money, then?’
‘I can let you have a few thousand to quiet the worst of your creditors but no more. I mean to ask the East India Company for a loan of twenty thousand pounds specifically for the Navy but, in truth, I’m not hopeful.’
‘What about the French money from the treaty?’
‘It is gone, brother, all gone. My own creditors had it all.’
James stared gloomily into his coffee cup. ‘I prayed for divine help this morning. I took the Eucharist from Father Simon and made my confession. I beseeched God Almighty to help us in this struggle . . .’
‘Have a care, brother. It is not for me to dictate to you on private matters of the soul but you know as well as I do the mood of the people. If it were generally known that you adhere to the old faith, and that you regularly attend Mass and avoid the Anglican ceremony, you would make things far more difficult for me. England is a Protestant nation. It has been this last age or more. And I am the head of the Church of England, the Defender of the Faith, as you well know.’
‘And you know too that the Protestant faith is a false, damned, heretical creed. You know in your heart that here is only one true Christian faith, one holy Catholic Church. Only Rome has the authority of the succession of St Peter: “On this rock, I shall build my Church,” said Our Lord Jesus Christ.’
The King said nothing for a few moments. ‘I invited you to be at your ease with me, brother, so I shall ignore your last remarks. But I give you warning that you must keep your faith to yourself. I might well be compelled to send you from me – to France, say – quite against my wishes, if you do not govern your tongue in this regard. I say this not as a threat but as an expression of the realities of this realm. In their current mood, the English will not have a King who is sympathetic to the old faith – after Queen Mary and the Oxford Martyrs and Guido Fawkes and all of the bloody wrangling over their souls for the past hundred years. They will not stand for it. Not now. Perhaps one day, if God wills it, but not this year, nor the next. If, by your indiscretions, I am forced to choose between the preservation of my throne or my brother’s position at court I know which I shall choose.’