by Angus Donald
The destruction of this beautiful object, however, the altar at which he had worshipped so long, had him gasping and snivelling like a little girl.
He bent and put a hand out towards a half-whole glass sphere, one he recognized by its yellowish paint as the moon. He felt an overwhelming urge to try to put it back together, to collect the strewn shards and somehow fix them back into position, to bring some order back into this shattered cosmos – to try to mend the breaking of the world. He withdrew his fingers at the last moment. There could be no remaking this. This man-made universe was destroyed, just as his personal universe was unmade by his expulsion from the Cockpit. All order had been turned to chaos. All of it. Chaos surrounded him, engulfed him, drowned him in black uncertainty. He sank to his knees, bowed his head as if in prayer and allowed the long-restrained tears to flow unchecked.
Sunday 21 May, 1671
Blood sat at the desk by the barred window in the prison chamber in the White Tower and sprinkled fine white sand over the letter he had just finished writing. It was a breezy note to his second son William, who was a steward aboard the frigate HMS Jersey, now cruising in the Caribbean, telling him that his father had some temporary difficulties with the law but that all would be well soon. He also mentioned, almost as an afterthought, the sad news that William’s mother had died. Blood looked at the note – had he struck the right tone? It occurred to him that perhaps he should have begun with the news about his wife’s death.
He shrugged. It was all one, he supposed. In truth he did not know if this son was even alive. He had not heard from him for more than two years and the Caribbean station was notorious for deadly fevers. He was writing to him now, he admitted to himself, because the shadow of the noose loomed large. His beatings had ceased more than a week ago and his body was on the way to recovery, his leg wound drying nicely, but the prospect of an ignominious end on the gallows had spurred him to write to all his children so that they should have some last communication from their father and might know that he loved them all before he was consigned to eternity.
He did not know why the beatings had stopped – although he was profoundly grateful for the fact – he assumed that either Wythe Edwards had finally admitted defeat in his attempt to make Blood speak or he had been recalled to his duty with the regiment in Flanders. Anyway, Edwards had not been seen for eight days now and apart from Jenny who visited him every day, and Holcroft who had come last Sunday, he had had no other visitors.
He folded the letter carefully, over and over, melted some of the blue wax in the flame of the candle, dripped it on the fold and pressed his gold signet ring into the spreading pool. At that instant the door to his prison chamber opened and the misshapen little gaoler looked inside.
‘A gentleman to see you, colonel.’
‘Thank you, Widdicombe. Please be so good as to show him in.’
Holcroft had left a decent amount of money with Blood on his last visit, his saved pay from his time in the Cockpit and some of his winnings at cards, and, since the end of his interrogation, Blood had managed to arrange his life in the prison so that it offered some comforts. Food was brought in from one of the many bake-shops to the west of the Tower and tobacco, wine and ale from the taverns there, too. He had managed to secure paper, quills, ink, a small folding penknife and sand; soap and a razor, decent bedding, several changes of linen and the services of a washerwoman. Life in the Tower was now about as civilized as it could be for a man who suspected that he was about to be hanged in the very near future.
Blood looked expectantly at the door. If his heart sank at the sight of Sir Thomas Osborne in the narrow doorway, he gave no indication of it.
‘Ah, Tommy-boy, what a joy it is to see you again!’ he said jovially. But the joke sounded stale even to him.
‘I’m glad I bring you joy,’ said Osborne, ‘for I have little else to offer you except bad news. A date for your trial has been set for Friday the twenty-sixth of May, at eleven o’clock, at the Old Bailey. That is in five days’ time. And I have more sad tidings: I am afraid that Sir William Morton will be the presiding judge.’
‘Old “Murderous” Morton, eh?’ said Blood, forcing himself to chuckle. ‘He was the fellow who ordered that dandyprat Claude Du Vall to be strung up, the French highwayman, you remember, despite the outcry against it. You have picked a right hanging judge for the task, Tommy, oh yes indeed.’
‘There can be no uncertainty about the outcome, I’m afraid.’
Blood and Osborne looked at each other soberly. Then the prisoner said: ‘And you know – yes? – and Buckingham knows, that if I am brought to the Old Bailey, in front of the crowds, that I shall say my piece about what truly happened – who put me up to this. You know that I shall reveal all the names involved including yours and Littleton’s and his brother right up to the highest in the land. You do know that, Tommy-boy, do you not?’
‘We were rather hoping that we could persuade you not to speak of any of these matters. We hoped that you would accept the inevitable verdict and sentence of Judge Morton without kicking up an ugly fuss.’
‘You want me to die quietly, like a gentleman, is that it? And why in the name of the Devil’s hairy arse-crack would I want to do that? To protect you, to protect Buckingham?’ Blood’s voice had begun to rise. He knew that his temper was fraying dangerously but he was unable to command himself.
‘Does the King know about this? I wrote to him, you know, and revealed your name. I made a veiled threat to implicate Charles himself, if necessary. I believe I have a good chance of receiving a royal pardon in due course. I may well write the King another letter. I might well write to that Muddiman fellow, the editor of the Gazette. So I may as well tell you now that I reject your offer of a quiet death – if I am to die on the gallows it will be as noisily as I can make it and I swear to you that before I dangle I will take down with me as many of you two-faced whore-sons as I possibly can.’
‘I rather thought you might say that. For what it is worth, I think Buckingham was a damn fool to have used you for this task. He has been increasingly careless in recent months. Yet I do not consider you as much of an imbecile as perhaps I pretend. I realize that you were brought low only by the merest chance – if that young officer, Edwards, had not turned up at the very moment you were engaged in your business, we might have had a much happier outcome – and everyone a good deal richer. However, it was a failure and it has left a hellish mess; a mess that I am required to clean up.’
Blood frowned at the man. He let his right hand fall on the open penknife on the desk, feeling the cool steel of its two-inch blade beneath his casual fingers. Surely Sir Thomas Osborne could not be thinking of trying to silence him in that old sanguinary manner. He’d never manage the job, man to man, not in a thousand years.
‘Let me tell you how it will happen,’ Osborne went on. ‘You will face trial, sentencing and death with all the fortitude and courage that I know you are capable of. Afterwards, you will be given a Christian burial and your name will be spoken of with respect across the land long after your demise. Three hundred years hence your story will still be told – and who then will remember Claude Du Vall? I will give you immortality in exchange for a quiet death. And during your trial you may speak or not speak to the court just as you choose, so long as, at any time, even alone in your death cell, you do not again mention my name, Thomas Littleton’s name, nor that of his brother James. You will certainly not mention the Duke of Buckingham’s role in this and, even more certainly, you will not mention the merest hint of a connection to His Majesty the King.’
‘That’s what you think is going to happen, is it?’
‘Yes, because if you do not do exactly as you are told there will be two men, not one, on the scaffold that day: you and your eldest son Tom.’
Osborne took a deep breath and called, ‘Widdicombe! Bring in the other prisoner.’
Blood rose slowly to his feet and looked on with horror as the dwarfish gaoler bundled a blood
-soaked, raggedy figure, manacled wrist and foot, through the doorway of his chamber.
Tom Blood looked up at his father from the cell floor: he was almost unrecognizable. It was clear that he had been beaten with an equal ferocity to Blood’s own ordeal and his face was a mass of livid cuts, dried gore and purple bruising.
‘I’m sorry, Father. I told them everything I knew. That soldier, he kept on beating me. Day after day. I couldn’t help it. I’m so terribly sorry.’
Blood smiled at his boy, but the tears were now spilling down his own bruised cheeks. ‘Never fear, lad. Never fear. I know how I can mend this.’
‘So you accept the arrangement?’ said Osborne. ‘A quiet death and Tom walks free. Otherwise, I’m afraid, ’tis two for the Tyburn jig.’
‘A quiet death, then,’ said Blood without bothering to look at the Treasury man. Then, much louder, to Tom: ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, son. Just keep the faith, my boy, and we’ll all come up smiling yet!’
*
Aphra Behn was in her usual black habit. She was making the perennial pot of tea for them to share. Holcroft had been there almost a week now, sleeping on her floor at night and wandering the streets of London by day, racking his brains for some way out of the chaos he had found himself in.
He had no livelihood. His father would surely soon be condemned to die. His mother was already dead. His siblings were scattered across the world – maybe dead, who knew? He had two shillings and eight pence in his pocket and little hope of coming by any more. And he had squandered the finest opportunity he had ever had for advancement by chasing illicit riches.
When he had arrived unannounced on the evening of his expulsion from the Cockpit, he had swiftly explained to Aphra the situation and she had taken the terrible news with equanimity.
‘It could have been worse. Buckingham could have had us up before a magistrate, slung into the Marshalsea to rot for months, even years, before a trial – he could have had you beaten to death. In these situations, one has to count one’s blessings and move on.’
‘Yes, but what are we going to do now?’
‘We? We’re not going to do anything. The game is over. We lost. We tried to take Buckingham and failed. He proved to be the better player. There is nothing left for us to do but move along.’
Holcroft had said nothing. He had become accustomed in recent weeks to presenting a problem to Aphra only to have her reassure him, calm him and solve it. Now she seemed to have nothing to offer. He had gratefully accepted her offer of a place to sleep for a few days but since then he felt he had been existing in a void.
On this night, the seventh under her roof, he stared mutely at the boiling water in the pan. He had been sitting there for two hours, continually rocking gently back and forth on a stool. He was thinking.
Aphra possessed a robust and buoyant nature that was rarely disheartened by adversity. But she knew that Holcroft was adrift in the sea of life and, tough as she was, she was not dead to compassion. She put out a hand and snuffed out the spirit burner under the pan of water.
‘Listen, Holcroft. This is no time for mere tea. Let us go down to the Red Lion and order up a bowl of punch, maybe a slice or two of Madge’s pork pie. I think I can afford to treat you. We will have a chat about our future with a full belly. That will make things seem better. How about it?’
Holcroft said nothing. He continued staring at the spirit burner and the cooling pan of water.
‘Holcroft, come on. Let’s get out of here. Come on.’
Aphra went to him and gently lifted him up by the arm from the stool.
They made their way down the decrepit wooden staircase, the smell of cabbage growing stronger as they descended, and stepped out of the front door and into St Thomas Street. It was full dark now, not a soul out of doors, and the only light was a big, cheerful lantern hung outside the Red Lion on the corner of Drury Lane a hundred yards away.
To the west of Drury Lane, on the far side of the road from the inn, was the great sprawling, stinking mass of the St Giles slum. Holcroft, of course, was oblivious to the fine social distinctions of London’s neighbourhoods. Even had he understood the intricate hierarchy it is unlikely that it would have interested him. He had been thinking all day, for several days, in fact – and something, something was forming in his brain. A plan. He would need Aphra’s help, of course. And that of another friend. But it could work.
A dark lump detached itself from the porch of a house near the end of the street about twenty yards away from the walking pair, and resolved itself into the forms of two men. Holcroft could see that one of them held a long thin pole or maybe a horse whip, it was highlighted from behind by the flickering light from the Red Lion’s lantern.
‘Aphra!’ he hissed.
‘I see them,’ she replied.
They swung away from the two men, crossing the narrow street and making for the north side. The two men veered towards them. They were just yards away now. Holcroft stopped, turned to face them, standing in the middle of the deserted street. He could not make out their faces, with the lantern light behind them, but their shapes were familiar. He caught a flash of golden cloth in the darkness.
‘You’ve had this coming a long time, Blood,’ said the taller of the two, and he recognized Robert Westbury’s patrician voice. The second man spoke then: ‘And your pretty love-bird, your partner in infamy – maybe we’ll have a little fun with you, lady, when we’ve dealt with this scoundrel.’
As he half turned to the light, Holcroft saw that the shorter, broader man was Arnold Smith the Cockpit porter.
‘Go back to the house, Aphra,’ he said, giving her a gentle push on the arm. ‘Lock the door. Barricade it, if you have to. I will speak with these two gentlemen alone.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. Out of the corner of his eye, down low by her right thigh, he saw a metallic gleam of reflected lantern light.
Holcroft sensed rather than saw the fist coming out of the darkness from Westbury, but his reaction was as swift as could be. He got his forearm up and deflected the punch past his left ear. At the same time his own right shot out and connected solidly with Westbury’s chin. His opponent was knocked back a step but did not fall. Arnold swung the horse whip at Aphra, and he heard the sharp smack as it struck her shoulder. He had no time to intervene. Westbury came boring in with left and right hands punching wildly, the blows looping in one after the other. He still can’t fight, thought Holcroft. He ducked the first right, blocked the next left with his elbow. Then he cut through the flurry of arms with a hard straight jab to the nose, feeling the cartilage snap, and smashing Westbury’s head back. He was aware that Arnold had seized Aphra from behind, was now pinning her arms and holding her tight. He seemed to be whispering something into her ear.
Westbury was punching at him again. Very late, Holcroft felt the first acid rush of real anger, a sourness in his belly, a kind of roaring in his ears. His eyes felt clear and sharp, his head icy cool, his limbs infinitely powerful. He took one hard blow to the mouth and tasted blood, felt it wash around his teeth. He batted Westbury’s flailing arms out of the way, stepped in, and smashed his forehead hard into the bridge of his opponent’s nose. Westbury reeled. Holcroft hooked a fist deep into his belly under the ribs, and then another in exactly the same place. The man went to his knees, and Holcroft chopped a right into his jaw, a left into his cheekbone, then took a step back, lifted his knee and kicked him in the face, flipping him over on to his back. He walked to his side, looked down at the dazed and bloodied visage, raised his foot and stamped once, hard, on Westbury’s cheekbone. He heard a loud crack and saw the eyes flutter and roll up into his skull.
Then he turned to deal with Arnold.
With the light behind him, Holcroft clearly saw what happened next. Aphra, firmly gripped from behind by the porter, jerked her head backwards, the rear of her skull connecting solidly with the porter’s mouth. He cried out, arms loosening their hold. She raked her boot down the side of his
shin, then stamped with her sharp heel on the toes of his right foot. Arnold released her with a roar of fury. She spun around, fast as a top, her right arm licked out, a fluid slash, and a red line appeared under the porter’s chin; a line that expanded, filled and soon gaped blackly, pouring gore from below his astonished face. He fell to his knees, dripping hands scrabbling at his throat while the blood welled and poured down his body, spattering on the cobbles.
Holcroft watched in disbelief as Arnold’s life flowed through his fingers. He whispered: ‘You killed him. You murdered him.’
‘It’s not murder in my book,’ she said grimly. ‘He would have forced me if he could, maybe killed me too. Not murder – merely self-defence.’
‘They will hang you anyway. They will string you up just like my father.’ The shock was making him loquacious. ‘They will know it was you. They will hunt you down and hang you. Me, too. Oh God protect us both.’
Aphra came over to him. She looked him in the eye and put a white hand on his arm. ‘Nobody is going to be hanged. See that over there.’ She pointed to the low, dark irregular mass of St Giles. ‘There are bodies discovered every morning around here with their throats slit. No one questions it. No one will know it was us.’
‘Buckingham must have sent them . . .’ Holcroft’s mind was still whirling with horror.
Aphra thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. He could have easily killed you in the Cockpit, if he had been so inclined. Besides, he would have sent a dozen men or more if he had wanted to take us alive. No, these two were after personal revenge, I would say, or a bit of vicious amusement.’