by Angus Donald
‘What about him?’ said Holcroft, indicating the unconscious form of Robert Westbury. ‘He will surely tell them you killed Arnold and bring the magistrates to your door. Then they’ll hang us.’
‘You make a good point.’
She went over to the still body in the golden coat and knelt beside him for a moment, the squat knife glinting in her right hand.
‘Wait! Stop! What are you doing?’
‘You know what I’m doing. And now it’s done.’ Holcroft watched, frozen, as a pool of fluid began to trickle and form beside Robert Westbury’s shadowed neck, ever-growing in size, gleaming black in the lantern light from the Red Lion. He saw that now she had her hands deep in the senior page’s pockets.
‘Search that one for valuables. And be quick about it,’ said Aphra, nodding at Arnold’s corpse. ‘A pack of St Giles cutthroats would not leave a dead man with so much as a thin farthing. Get to it, Holly.’
*
Half an hour later, a dazed Holcroft was sipping hot tea from a bowl in Aphra’s garret – she had laced it with a splash of brandy but Holcroft could barely feel the spirits working on him at all. He looked at the table, where a small stack of stolen gold and silver coins seemed to throb and glow in the candlelight. Beside the money was a package of dog-eared playing cards tied up with string, and Holcroft could see the cool, amused face of his very own queen of diamonds peeking at him from the top. It steadied him. She understood the plan he had made – all of it. And she approved.
‘We made more in one night as footpads as we ever did as forgers and fraudsters,’ said Aphra, smiling. ‘Perhaps we should choose that as our new vocation.’ She laughed a little. She seemed to Holcroft to be perfectly ordinary, just the same old Aphra, kind, sweet, understanding. He could hardly believe that less than an hour ago she had cut the life out of two men.
‘Aphra, we need to talk about something . . . about everything.’
‘There is nothing to talk about, Holly. Don’t concern yourself. If it comes to the worst, I won’t let them hang you. I’ll admit the whole thing. Take the blame entirely on myself.’
Holcroft looked at her. ‘It’s not that, Aphra. I’ve had an idea. I know how we can get our reward from the Duke of Buckingham.’
‘I think we are done with all that false letter nonsense, Holly. We need to move along. Find something new.’
‘It has nothing to do with selling Buckingham that letter – although I do have a use for it. It’s much more simple than that. I know, too, how I can help Father, maybe save his life. But I will need your help. Pass my fardel, over there, Aphra, and listen. I’ll tell you what we must do.’
Tuesday 23 May, 1671
Holcroft stood outside the arch of the gatehouse that marked the entrance to the Palace of White Hall. He looked at the two sentries in their splendid uniforms and remembered his initial feelings of joy and wonder at seeing them the autumn before. He was a different boy now, he knew that – indeed, he felt he had finally become a man. He had made more money on the turn of a card than he had seen before in his life; he had witnessed the deaths of two men, men he knew well, seen their black blood flowing between the cobbles. He recognized the lusts that seethed in men’s hearts – and women’s, too; he had seen the King and learned that his court was a place of debauchery and treachery, of lies and deceit; he had become part of that deceit himself and been disgraced and expelled for playing the White Hall game badly. For it was a game, he now knew – and he had played it badly. But it was time for a change. He would play his own game: Holcroft’s game. He would not meekly accept his expulsion from this place, he would return to the table and this time – knowing what he now did – he would play with all his heart and mind, with all his cunning. He would play to win.
First, however, he needed an ally. He needed a friend. He turned his back on the soaring arch of the White Hall gatehouse and marched over to the Foot Guards’ House on the north side of the street. There was a single sentry on the door there, standing in a little upright wooden box not much larger than a coffin. He gave the name of the man he wished to see and was admitted, walking through the gates and into the old Tilt Yard with the soldiers’ barracks on his left. He turned right and headed across the parade ground, past the guard hut where the duty officer sat outside drinking wine in the weak May sunshine, and trotted up the steps of a large white building with a row of Grecian pillars making a shady colonnade along the front.
He was stopped there by a pair of guards in crimson coats and blue turnbacks armed with muskets and, once again, he said the name and was allowed to pass. A soldier-servant showed him into a salon at the rear of the house, where a dozen officers were at tables playing cards or writing letters or were seated in deep leather armchairs reading the Gazette or drinking wine or coffee. Over by the empty fireplace, lounging in a chair with his long legs a-spraddle, reading a small leather-covered book, was the elegant form of Ensign Jack Churchill. His friend.
The servant led Holcroft over to him and they stood for an awkward moment before Churchill noticed and leaped to his feet.
‘I do beg your pardon, Holcroft, I was miles away,’ he said, shaking his hand. To the servant, he said: ‘Bring us two cans of cooled ale, if you please. Some of those hazelnut biscuits, too.’
After he had settled Holcroft in a chair, and sat down again himself, he said: ‘I do hope you don’t feel that I have been neglecting you, Hol. I’ve been with my father in Dorset these past few weeks – staying away from court and London, I’m sure you can guess why – and I’ve been so busy with his affairs, the farm and lands, that I haven’t had much time to write. How are you? I heard you parted company with the Duke of Buckingham. I’m so sorry to hear that. Do you need money? I’m rather short myself, as always, but I’m sure I could manage to lend you something – a few shillings to see you right for a little while.’
‘I don’t need money, Jack. But I do need a favour. Then I want to discuss a mutual venture. An extremely lucrative mutual venture.’
‘A favour, yes, ah, of course, ah, anything I can do – within reason,’ Churchill said slowly. He looked warily at his younger companion. Holcroft, oblivious to any shades of meaning, was moved by his friend’s generosity.
‘I need you to give this letter to Barbara Villiers, for her to give to the King. She must put it into his own hands – no one else’s. Can you do that?’
He pulled out a folded square of thick white papers, tied with a ribbon and sealed with blue wax, and handed it to Jack.
Churchill took it, with some reluctance. ‘Hol, I’m sorry but I’m not sure I can get in to see Barbara. It is, ah, a bit awkward these days. If the King found out that I was visiting her—’
‘It is vitally important. My father’s life hangs in the balance. I would not ask otherwise.’
Churchill frowned. ‘Hol, I am truly sorry. I know that you love him, just as you should, but I cannot approve of what your father did. It was robbery pure and simple. The man set out to steal from the King. I would rather not risk my position here, and my prospects, bleak as they are, to help a notorious thief. Ask me something else, I beg you.’
Holcroft looked around the room, there was no one within earshot: ‘Listen, Jack, and I will tell you how it is with my father. He is the Duke of Buckingham’s hired man. He has been so for years. He was paid in gold by the duke to undertake the robbery at the Tower. It was one of Buckingham’s schemes to find money for the King.’
Holcroft considered telling Churchill that the plan had the consent of the King but chose not to strain his friend’s credulity.
‘There is something else that I must tell you too about Buckingham.’ Now he could not meet his friend’s eyes. ‘It was I who betrayed you to the King when you were with Barbara that time. I am heartily sorry for it. I cannot tell you how ashamed I am but Buckingham squeezed me, he forced me to it: he said that if I did not tell when you were meeting her, he would dismiss me from his service. I had no choice. He promised money, too.
I hoped to make amends by warning you in time – but that did not work out. Forgive me, I beg you.’
Churchill stared coldly at him. The soldier-servant chose this moment to bring two tankards of ale over to them and, in the long, horrible silence, he laid down both pewter pots, already beaded with condensation, and a small plate of biscuits on a tiny round wooden table that he set between them.
When the man had finally left them, Holcroft forced himself to look directly at Churchill and said: ‘Buckingham is the man responsible for your fall from favour. He urged the King to visit Barbara when you were there. Buckingham hoped to bring about her downfall – he cared nothing for you. But know that he is our enemy. Yours and mine. And I have a way that we can bring him down and gain a recompense for our troubles. We can best him, Jack, we can punish him, but only if you will help. Will you help me?’
Churchill looked at his friend for a long time without speaking. Finally he said: ‘I suspected all along that it was you who informed on me but I did not like to admit it to myself. Only you knew that I was with Barbara at that time. Then when you turned up suddenly, bursting in on us, moments before the King arrived . . . But I have two things that I must tell you, while we are indulging in this most uncivilized candour: the first is that I lied to you just now – I must confess that I have been avoiding you since that day. I chose not to continue our friendship. I think it was because in a fashion, at some remove, I always knew you were the one who betrayed me.’
Holcroft looked hard at the plate of biscuits. He could feel his vision blurring, a fat, immoveable bolus forming in his throat.
‘The second thing I must tell you is that when we first met, I thought of betraying you. You told me your father’s name and I immediately thought of the handsome reward offered by the Duke of Ormonde for his head. I made friends with you, partially, I admit, because I thought that you might one day let slip something about your father’s whereabouts, and that I might profit from it in a most shameful manner. So I say this to you now: neither of us is unblemished in our loyalty to the other – and if you can find it in your heart to forgive me for my avaricious designs when we first met, then I shall forgive you for succumbing to Buckingham’s pressure. What say you?’
Holcroft could not at that moment say anything at all. His whole being was focused on penning back the tears that threatened to gush from his eyes and utterly unman him. He did manage to grasp Churchill’s outstretched hand and shake it hard while smiling mutely and blurrily at his friend.
‘So, we forgive each other,’ Churchill said, taking a biscuit. ‘Good. And we have a score to settle with my Lord Buckingham. Well . . . I will risk seeing Barbara – in truth, it will not be so difficult to be discreet – and I will ask her to deliver your letter to the King. Now, tell me, what is your plan of action? You used the word “lucrative” – which I confess is one the words I like to hear best.’
‘Actually, Jack, I said “extremely lucrative”,’ said Holcroft, sniffing wetly and cuffing his smarting eyes.
Wednesday 24 May, 1671
Aphra Behn walked slowly up the slight hill of St James’s Street towards Piccadilly. She was tired and wet and not in the mood to be trifled with by a hostile masculine world. Before her, at the top of the hill, she could see the massive gold-painted gates of Clarendon House and the figure of the porter in his moss-green coat, seated in his lodge through the window.
It had been a fine morning when she set out from her St Thomas Street lodgings, a few clouds and a brisk wind, but with the sun – indeed a hint of coming summer – definitely in evidence. She noted, as she passed the spot near the Red Lion at the end of her street, that there was now no sign of the two dead bodies she had made: scholars of anatomy, she knew, were avid for corpses, and many of the denizens of St Giles were happy to procure fresh meat for the medical men, no questions asked. So she was feeling quite calm and contented as she set off along Drury Lane. But, by the time Aphra had reached Charing Cross, purple clouds had come racing in from the west and a short, vicious rain shower had drenched her travelling cloak and hood, and transformed the street beneath her feet into a black river of filth.
She had bunched the cloak and her skirts in her hands and walked with them lifted above the flood. Her beautiful blue velvet shoes embroidered with white silk roses were in theory protected by a pair of galloshios; stout, backless leather overboots mounted on wooden blocks that lifted her three inches above the cobbles. But a particularly large wave of filthy water, gaining momentum and size as it ran down St James’s, had washed over the tops of them and soaked her best shoes, her stockings and her feet in a pungent solution of old urine, fresh dung, mouldy food scraps and other repellent types of street waste.
She blamed Holcroft. She was undertaking this foolish errand for him, or rather for his ne’er-do-well father’s sake – and she did not quite know why. It had amused her, more than anything else, to include Holcroft in her operation to gull the Duke of Buckingham: he was so very much the lonely outsider, so obviously in need of a friend, that the secret agent in her had had no difficulty in charming him and swiftly recruiting him into her scheme. At the time, she had no genuine feelings for him at all, just a mild interest in his extraordinary bluntness and the cold knowledge that he could be very useful for her purposes as her man inside the duke’s household. But since that scheme had failed, she did not understand what now bound them together. And yet here he was, sleeping on the floor of her already cramped garret and asking her to run errands on behalf of his villainous father. She had no tenderness for him in the amorous line, although she could see that he was a handsome lad, well made in the body, with a lovely smile. He aroused no desire in her and she knew that he had no carnal feelings towards her either. So what was the bond? Was it maternal? Perhaps a little: he had a child-like innocence that aroused a surge of protective feelings in her. More accurately, she reflected – as she trudged up the hill, her footwear squishing in time to her footsteps, her heavy leather bag banging against her thigh – her feelings were sisterly. But they shared no ties of blood, kinship or affinity and given their differences in age, experience, skills and outlook, it was a stretch to call them friends – if men and women could truly be friends. So why then was she stepping out on this miserable day on his behalf, soaking her one good cloak, ruining her lovely shoes? Because he needed her. The bastard.
Aphra presented herself at the gates of Clarendon House, a somewhat bedraggled creature, but she lifted her chin and rapped imperiously on the iron bars with her small white fist and called out loudly demanding entrance. The lodge-keeper, a veteran of the wars called Brooks who was enjoying his usual morning nap, woke suddenly, full of fear and confusion. He leaped to his feet, believing himself to be under attack by hordes of Parliamentarian troops, knocking over the table on which lay his pot of ale, his pie and his pipe, as he blundered forward, tripping over the scattered debris, tangling his own legs with the table’s before lurching out of the lodge at a full run, shouting out a warning about oncoming enemy cavalry and crashing his bald head noisily and painfully against the gilded iron bars.
If Aphra was surprised to see an elderly man in a moss-green coat rushing out of the lodge with a roar of fury and throwing himself face-first into the gate, she did not display the emotion. She said calmly: ‘Good morning, sir, if it pleases you I should like to be admitted to see His Grace the Duke of Ormonde. I have something of great value to give to him.’
Brooks gathered himself; he stood upright, wiped a trickle of blood from his forehead and said with all the grace he could muster: ‘Can’t do it, miss. The duke’s left orders: no visitors for him on any pretext whatsoever.’
Aphra drew herself up to her full height. ‘I am a personal friend of the duke. He would be most angry with you if you left me standing out here in the cold for any longer than necessary.’
‘Personal friend or not. The duke is not seeing any folk today. Can’t let you in, miss, sorry. He’d have my skin off.’ The porter
seemed genuinely apologetic and he was also now bleeding quite heavily from his split scalp.
Aphra wiggled her cold toes inside her wet stockings, she felt the gritty filth of the street-water between them. She was not going to meekly walk home with her mission unfulfilled. She smiled at Brooks, a beautiful smile, one of her best. She fluttered her long lashes.
‘Truth be told, sir. It’s not really the duke I wish to see. I honestly do know him, for sure, we talked about him providing the funding for my new play. But, the truth is, I met a handsome young fellow the other day in the Bull’s Head Inn, who told me he was the duke’s private secretary, quite the charmer he was, a very well-set-up young man, tall, dark hair, lovely brown eyes, and I was hoping that I might take this chance to make his acquaintance again. James, his name is, James Pratt. Do you know him, sir?’
‘Oh, I know old Jemmy Pratt,’ the old man was beaming now and mopping at his bloody forehead with a filthy kerchief. ‘But he’s no secretary – senior page, is he. If you want him, you’d best go round to the side entrance. Down that street over there; there’s a little red door a hundred yards on the right. Back of the kitchens. Knock there and say that I sent you – Brooks is the name – tell them you want Jemmy and they’ll see you right.’
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you most kindly.’
*
‘Warburton at the Blue Boar says you are never to come to him for another favour again. He doesn’t know what happened that day, doesn’t want to know, all he recalls is that there were suddenly armed men everywhere in the parlour and running up the stairs and next thing poor Parrot was dead. Tom, as you know, jumped out the window, tried to flee on foot and was knocked on the head by a cavalryman waiting in Hounds Ditch.’