by Angus Donald
He heard a series of bangs behind him, felt a blow like a kick from a mule against his thigh and his right leg collapsed under him, dumping him on the wooden decking of the wharf. He looked down at the blood oozing from his leg, looked up at the wall of shouting men in yellow leather, running up the wharf and converging on him. He tried to raise the bloodied sword-stick, tried to say: ‘Who wants to die first?’ But all that came out was a croak and the word ‘Die!’
Someone kicked the blade out of his hand and he found that he was staring into the furious face of the officer Wythe Edwards, who had a pistol pointed directly at his head, inches away, his finger white upon the trigger.
Part Three
Friday 12 May, 1671
‘Your Grace,’ said Holcroft, clearing his throat noisily and unnecessarily. ‘Your Grace, if I might speak with you.’
The duke continued to ignore him. Holcroft was standing stiffly beside Buckingham’s desk in his study, hands behind his back, watching his master read The London Gazette, turning the pages and gazing at the close lines of print as if utterly absorbed, as if he did not already know far more about what was going on in London than Henry Muddiman, the Gazette’s editor.
Finally the Duke of Buckingham laid down the newspaper. ‘Would you say your father was a discreet man, Holcroft?’ he said, looking up at his confidential clerk. ‘A man who knows how to keep his mouth shut when he is in a tight place?’
Holcroft had no idea how to answer and so he said nothing.
‘Because, you see,’ continued the duke, gesturing at the Gazette, ‘after his latest high jinks he is in rather a tight spot now, wouldn’t you say?’
‘He is in the Tower of London, sir, and as I understand it the cells are not cramped, not as you might say tight at all, surprisingly capacious. Fit for a great nobleman, I’m told.’
‘I do sometimes wonder, Holcroft, if you are mocking me with your insistence on being so literal in your comprehension of my questions. That would be most unwise, let me tell you. That would lead to a very swift termination of our relationship. So – are you mocking me, Holcroft?’
‘Oh no, sir.’
‘Then tell me: do you think that your father will tell his inquisitors everything that he knows about this bungled attempt to purloin the Crown Jewels? Will he readily give up the names of his co-conspirators? In the low cant of thieves: is he a blab?’
Holcroft thought about it for a moment or two. Then he said: ‘I do not think he will tell them anything at all.’
‘Even if they apply the rack, bring out the red-hot pincers, all that?’
Holcroft had never attempted to make an analysis of his father’s character before but now he said with complete certainty: ‘I think he would resist his questioners with all his strength. I think that the more they abused him, the stronger his resistance would become. I think he would die rather than give up his friends.’
‘Good. And, in fact, I agree with your assessment. That is one of the qualities that I most admire about him. He’s an incompetent old buffoon, that’s for sure, far too arrogant for a man of his station, foolhardy, rash, intemperate, a rake-hell and drunkard. But I would not say that he is a blab. However, I do think that it would be wise for you to pay him a visit just to remind him who his friends are. Go and see him in the Tower, Holcroft, this Sunday – I shall not require your services on the Lord’s day – see if he lacks for any comforts, food, wine, money, what have you, tell him that he only has to ask his friends and it shall be provided. But tell him also that his friends rely on his absolute discretion and that they are working night and day to have these false charges against him dropped – but they will be successful only if he is discreet. Will you tell him that?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘There is one other thing, Your Grace.’ Holcroft shifted nervously from one foot to the other. ‘The matter of James Pratt and the, ah, the Duke of Ormonde’s letter.’
‘Oh yes?’
Holcroft swallowed; he could feel a flush suffusing his neck. He said, very quickly: ‘I wondered whether you had given the matter any more thought since we last spoke, sir.’
Buckingham stared at him.
Holcroft said: ‘As I said to you before, sir, the owner of the letter insists payment must indeed be a thousand in gold and says, if you are not interested, perhaps my Lord Arlington might be prepared to come up with this modest sum. Do you have an answer for him?’
‘I remember our conversation perfectly, Master Holcroft. And I believe that I remarked that it was very cunning of your Mister Pratt to arrange an auction between two bidders. Hmmm. So he is eager for an answer, is he? I do like eagerness in an adversary. It leads to rashness. Very well, tell him I will make it five hundred but – and this point I will not concede – I must see the letter, hold it in my hand, before I will make any payment to him at all.’
‘I don’t think he’ll—’
‘Just tell him. It’s five hundred pounds in gold but I want to see it first. Or there can be no accommodation for him.’
‘I could recite the contents of the letter again, sir. I can recall them perfectly clearly.’
‘I know the letter’s contents: Ormonde to support Prince William in a bid to be the King of England, marriage to Mary, militia commanders keen, members of both Houses secretly in support, blah, blah, blah. It’s not so much the content, Holcroft, I want to see the letter itself. I want to study the handwriting, the style of the words, the exact language he used, examine the signature. Tell your Mister Pratt that. I must see the letter itself. You may also tell him that I have eyes in Lord Arlington’s household and if I hear that he is offering the letter to him, our arrangement is null and void; furthermore I will send a note immediately to the Duke of Ormonde telling him that his senior page – beg pardon – his assistant secretary is selling off his private correspondence to the highest bidder. See how he likes that.
‘Now, enough of this damned Ormonde nonsense. That will be all for now. Go and see your incompetent father in the Tower this Sunday and remind him who his friends are, impress on him the necessity of silence.’
*
The room on the first floor of the Blue Boar Inn off White Chapel Street was extremely small. Three nights ago, when there had been five big men snoring under their blankets on the straw pallets on the floor, there had barely been the space to walk to the chamber pot under the stool in the corner without treading on a limb. Now, even with only two occupants, Tom Blood and Joshua Parrot, it still seemed cramped and airless. It stank, too, for the window was rarely opened, the chamber pot was almost full and the two men did not leave the room either by night or day. Added to that, Parrot’s wound, a musket ball deep in the meat of his right shoulder, was beginning to rot, seeping quantities of a cloudy liquor along with the blood into the bandage and giving off the odd mouse-like odour of corruption.
William Hunt had been the first to the horses at the Iron Gate, followed by Parrot who was staggering along the wharf, bleeding badly and being supported by Tom. Smith had the reins untied and the four of them had thrown themselves into their saddles with no hesitation at all. The Tower guards were firing their muskets, reloading and advancing steadily like the trained troops they were, and lethal missiles flew all around, smashing the windows and brickwork of the houses on either side, pinging from the rusty Iron Gate itself. Tom had his hat blown clean off. The nearest horse to the advancing troopers had its spine broken by one ball, another in its haunch and was screaming horribly. So none of them had waited even a half minute for Blood but, as had been agreed beforehand, each had individually galloped off up the road as soon as they were in the saddle, mingling with the thickening morning crowds and losing themselves within minutes in the hurley-burley of London.
They had all arrived at the Blue Boar less than a half hour later, sweating, shaken, exhausted but, apart from Parrot, all whole and unmarked, and carrying with them tens of thousands of pounds’-worth of the King’s jewels, crammed into their pocke
ts, stuffed into boots and, in Joshua Parrot’s case, wedged down the front of his breeches. They had dumped the jewellery with the rest of their belongings in their room, hiding the glittering mound under a cloak, then they returned downstairs to the parlour and called for ale, drank it and waited patiently, a pair of eyes at all times on White Chapel Street, for Colonel Blood to make his belated appearance.
No one was certain what had happened to their leader – William Smith thought he had seen someone diving off the wharf and into the river during the confused fighting, and there was another exit at the far end of the wharf, so he might have got away that way – or he might have been captured. The fifth horse, Blood’s horse, had been mortally wounded, so there was no possibility of his riding it back to the Blue Boar – but they all knew him as a man of ingenuity and cunning and, even if he had been taken, there was a slim chance that wearing his pastor’s black habit he might give his captors the slip or talk his way to freedom. This, anyway, was what the men told themselves as they drank and waited for their captain to come to them.
By the time the third pint of ale was being drained, Hunt had disappeared. One minute he was there, the next gone. Smith, too, took his leave a little after noon; he was heading back to Romford, or so he said, to await the colonel there. So after taking a bite of dinner in the parlour, Parrot and Tom retired to their room – Parrot as pale as a corpse and on the verge of collapse – and saw that the bright pile of royal baubles had been diminished considerably by either Hunt or Smith, or most probably by both, but that there was still a very respectable fortune in assorted jewels and precious metal for them to hold up to the light of the window and savour.
That had all been three days ago, and since then they had waited and waited and there had been no sign of Blood. Tom agonized over what he should do: Parrot was too ill to be moved – not that Tom could have managed his bulk anyway – but neither could he bring himself to abandon the man to die or recover on his own. The inn-keeper, Warburton, an old friend of Blood’s with only one leg, who owed the colonel some very large favour, was growing increasingly nervous about housing the two fugitives under his roof. He knew they had committed a grave felony – the cry, ‘The crown is taken out of the Tower; the crown is stolen’ had echoed up and down White Chapel Street – and, while he might have been persuaded to put up with Blood’s presence, he had no relationship with his son nor with the huge man who was groaning, bleeding and probably dying up in his room.
On the morning of the second day Warburton had forbidden them the downstairs parlour. They might keep to their room while they waited for the colonel, he said, and take their food there. Tom had not felt able to argue with his landlord and so he had paid over the inflated lodging fee and spent the greater part of the next forty-eight hours sitting on a stool and staring out of the window at the plot of land behind the inn and listening to the grunts, moans and angry delirious babbling of Joshua Parrot.
Behind the inn was a small vegetable garden: rows of asparagus, onions, cabbages and beans neatly tended with nary a weed in sight. A path ran between the two large beds and continued north towards a row of houses, becoming a courtyard where a pair of questing chickens were pecking at the dust, and then evolving into Seven Steps Alley, a narrow path that led towards Gravel Lane, a moderate residential street.
How wonderful it would be, thought Tom, to have a vegetable garden, and perhaps a cow or even a goat, too, and a few fowl or pigs. With his share of the money, perhaps he would buy a smallholding somewhere rural and remote, find a wife and live in happy bucolic comfort, growing his vegetables, making cheese and butter, killing a goose at Christmas and feasting with his neighbours. He’d have a few children, would never speak about the past, of the bad things he had done. He would give himself a new name – Brown, Gray, White, something harmless and nondescript and settle down and just be quiet and happy for the rest of his life.
Then Parrot gave a wild cry, jerking awake, and sat up on his pallet, his blood-shot eyes staring madly, a foot-long naked dagger in his right fist. He stabbed the air repeatedly, striking invisible foes. He shouted incoherently.
Tom slipped off the stool and went to fetch his comrade a cup of cool ale from the jug. If only his father would come. He would know exactly what to do with Parrot, whether they could risk moving him, whether they should give him physic of some kind, or bleed him. If only his father would come, then the rest of his life could finally begin.
*
With his tongue, Colonel Thomas Blood explored the gap where his left incisor had been. He spat once, a thick gobbet of red splashing on the wooden floor, and looked up at his tormentor. Wythe Edwards loomed over him, shaking a bunched fist in Blood’s bruised face: ‘You will speak to me, you verminous piece of offal, you will speak. Because I shall make you.’
Blood said nothing. His wrists and ankles were manacled and he was tied to a chair with half a dozen coils of rope for good measure. The prison cell he was in was not exactly as capacious as his son Holcroft had imagined, but it was a good deal larger than the room in the Blue Boar in which his eldest son Tom now sweated so miserably. A small barred window admitted a good deal of light, and there was a large fireplace in which a mean coal fire was smouldering. Blood moved his battered head forward a little, took careful aim and spat again, showering Wythe’s ivory silk stockings with a glutinous mixture of blood and phlegm. The soldier went berserk, raining punches down on Blood’s unprotected face, smashing his head left and right, left and right, until it lolled quite loose on his neck. Blood was now beyond speech. He had barely uttered a word to his captors since being taken two days ago, except to mutter, ‘It was a gallant attempt, boys, however unsuccessful, and ’twas for a crown . . .’ before passing out on the wharf.
He had been dragged to the White Tower and slung into one of the prison rooms on the second floor, fully manacled from the start with heavy iron fetters that sheared his skin when he shifted his limbs. A surgeon had been summoned to inspect the wound in the back of his thigh. He’d briskly probed, grasped and removed the musket ball with a pair of forceps, washed the gory hole out with vinegar and bound it with linen. Blood had mercifully remained unconscious throughout the whole operation. Since then he had been given a little bread and ale, been allowed to wash using the jug and bowl on the stand in the cell, then been questioned without violence for several hours by Sir John Robinson, the lieutenant of the Tower, and the man who had responsibility, above Talbot Edwards, even above the Master of the Jewel House Sir Gilbert Talbot, for the safety of the King’s treasure. Blood had said next to nothing. He had merely confirmed his own name and admitted that he was guilty of the theft but, having done that, he shut his mouth and refused to say any more.
The Imperial State Crown had been recovered from Blood’s coat pocket, although it had been hammered flat and a large number of the smaller jewels had subsequently come loose. Several diamond bracelets, ruby pendants and golden cups had also been found on Blood’s person and, on the wooden decking of the wharf, a diamond the size of an acorn, a large pearl and several smaller gemstones had been recovered. However, the two sceptres and the orb of state were still missing, along with a large number of other treasures and, understandably, Sir John was keen to force Blood to reveal the names of his accomplices and their present whereabouts. Deeply frustrated, he had asked Wythe Edwards to come from his father’s bedside to aid him with the interrogation.
A bucket of icy well water, hurled by a zealous gaoler, revived Blood and he looked blearily out of his streaming face at Wythe, who was glaring at him with unconcealed hatred. Behind the soldier stood Sir John, looking shocked by the brutality of his companion, but apparently lacking any desire to restrain him. Wythe massaged the red and swollen knuckles of his right hand with his left. ‘My father is like to die because of the way you served him, both gut and lung are punctured, head near stove in, and I should like you to know that as a result of his injuries I do not have any qualms about using the most extreme methods o
f persuasion. To speak frankly, I do not care if I have to beat you half to death to get to the truth. You hear me?’
The prisoner looked at him and smiled, a thin dribble of blood running out of the corner of his half-open mouth.
‘Who were your companions?’
Blood shook his head.
Wythe punched him, a hard jab with his right fist, smashing Blood’s head back, but the young man had evidently damaged his own finger bones with repeated blows against the prisoner’s hard skull for he grimaced, sucked in a breath and cradled the injured hand against his belly.
‘Who was with you when you robbed my father’s house? What are the other miscreants’ names?’ Wythe lashed out with his boot and cracked Blood on the shinbone, his wounded leg sending a bolt of agony up his spine. The prisoner grunted then, incredibly, began to laugh, a horrible wet bubbling sound.
‘You will talk to me. Do you think we will not make use of the rack, the hot irons, the water torture, if we have to?’
Blood straightened up as far as the ropes and chains would allow him. He said something unintelligible, speaking thickly, gore running from his shattered mouth. Wythe leaned in to hear him. Blood spoke again: ‘I will give an account of myself only to the King.’ He was gasping with the effort of speaking. ‘Bring me before the King . . . in a privy manner . . . and I shall answer anything His Majesty chooses to ask. I shall speak to no other man.’
‘You are mad. You are a moon-crazed imbecile if you think His Majesty would sully his eyes with the sight of a wretch like you.’ He raised his fist to strike, thought better of it, and lashed out with his foot again, catching Blood on the kneecap and knocking the bound man and the wooden chair over. Blood’s skull thumped hard against the wooden floor.
*
‘I do not like this; I do not like this at all,’ said Holcroft. He was sitting at the rickety table in Aphra Behn’s attic, sipping a bowl of lukewarm tea by the light of a single candle. ‘If we show him a letter written by you or me, he will know for sure it is false. He must know Ormonde’s hand well; they have corresponded often enough – he certainly knows mine. And he will not part with any money at all unless he has the letter in his grasp.’