by Angus Donald
‘Say your piece then, missy,’ Ormonde told her. ‘After which you can take your simpering, self-serving cunt-smile out of my sight and leave me to the tranquillity of my own fucking garden.’
It was a beautiful and no doubt usually tranquil garden, there could be no denying that. The sun had returned in full force, the rain clouds swept away by a brisk, cooling breeze, and the ornamental garden which had been created behind the imposing block of the main building of Clarendon House looked magnificent. Aphra eyed Ormonde closely without saying anything for a few moments. She saw him shift on the wooden bench, and wince as he moved the position of his grossly swollen feet in their too-tight leather slippers ever so slightly. She recalled what Holcroft had told her about the man, all that he had gleaned from his conversations with Jenny Blaine.
‘Move up a little,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to sit next to you.’
‘The Devil you are – say your piece, wench, and be gone!’
‘Move up and I will rub the soreness out of your feet.’ And as the duke reluctantly shifted a few inches or so along the wooden bench, Aphra sat down next to him and hauled his massive left foot into her lap. She peeled off the slipper and began gently to massage the swollen flesh.
‘Hhhhmmgh,’ said the duke, closing his eyes. The sun shone down from a perfectly blue sky. ‘God, woman, you’re a witch,’ he breathed. ‘You remind me of a red-haired strumpet I used to know. Oh, ah, oh, you have the Devil’s own skill in your fucking fingertips.’
‘You are a very rude man – somebody clearly spoiled you as a child, but I’m going to overlook that for now,’ said Aphra, working away with her hands. ‘Later, of course, you will apologise to me for all the ugly things you’ve said but for the moment just be quiet and listen to what I have say.’
‘Hhhhmmgh.’
‘I have a letter. It’s a fake, of course, but it purports to be a private message from you to the Prince of Orange. It contains treasonous indications, an offer of support for William, and suggests that you and other powerful men here would be willing to help him seize the throne of England by force.’
Ormonde’s eyes snapped open. He struggled to sit upright, but Aphra held firmly on to his left foot, squeezing a little, just to show that she could harm as well as heal. ‘Calm yourself, Your Grace, I shall give you this letter presently, I have it in my bag, and it is the only copy in existence. You are in no danger from me at all.’
‘What do you want, witch?’
‘For the moment, I want you to listen to me. Are you listening, sir?’
The duke said nothing.
‘This letter was in the possession of the Duke of Buckingham and he was part of a plot to use this letter to discredit you with the King. I came to know of this letter – it doesn’t matter how, and I will not tell you the exact details, save to say that the person who made the forgery is a very dear friend of mine – and I persuaded another friend of mine, a young man in the Duke of Buckingham’s service to take the letter from the Cockpit, remove it from Buckingham’s grasp. In doing so, however, my young friend was unfortunate enough to lose his position. We discussed what to do with this missive and decided that we should give it to you because—’
‘Blood,’ said the duke. ‘The young man in Buckingham’s service, your friend, is the younger son of Thomas Blood, is he not?’
‘I am impressed, sir, your sources are excellent,’ Aphra stopped kneading his foot. She was genuinely surprised. ‘I had not expected that you would know his name.’
‘I have people who tell me things. I heard the Blood boy was dismissed for gross ingratitude – but I can find out more if I need to. Keep on at your work, woman,’ the duke gestured impatiently at his engorged foot in her lap.
Aphra continued her massage and silently gave thanks that she and Holcroft had stuck closely to the truth when concocting this tale.
‘So, anyway, we decided that we would give the letter to you so that you might keep it, or destroy it, just as you wish – and with absolutely no conditions attached to the giving. All we beg, most humbly, is that you look kindly on Holcroft Blood, my young friend, who did you this great service at such great cost – and that you forgive his father Thomas Blood, now languishing in the Tower, for his many transgressions against your person. For myself, I only ask that you reconsider my proposal of some months past that you be the patron for my new play for the Duke’s Company at Lincoln’s Inn, a wonderfully fresh and witty comedy called The Amorous Prince.’
‘For someone who says she is giving me a gift with absolutely no conditions attached, you ask a very great deal in exchange.’ The duke laughed, a rough barking sound. ‘So you’re the young person who wrote that silly play that Betterton mentioned to me. What’s your name again?’
‘My name is Mistress Behn. My friends call me Aphra.’
‘Well, then, Mistress Behn. I will take you at your word. No conditions. Now I will trouble you to hand over the letter to me.’
Aphra replaced the slipper over the duke’s foot. She got up, went to her big leather bag, which was lying on the gravel beside the bench, took out the forged letter and handed it to the duke.
‘Do my other foot, while I read it, Mistress Behn.’
They sat together in silence for a while, Aphra working the tender flesh of the right foot, the duke reading and then, when he had finished, sitting with the paper crumpled in his fist, his eyes closed and his head tilted back, allowing the late May sun to warm his face.
Eventually, the duke spoke: ‘I enjoyed the way you did that, Mistress Behn. No conditions. No quid pro quo. Nothing overtly demanded. But I did also note that you made a point of telling me that the fellow who wrote this fraudulent letter was a dear friend of yours. Which presumably means that you could easily get him to cook up another letter just the same. That was delicately done, Mistress Behn, and despite what you might think of me, my crudeness, my cursing, I do enjoy delicacy in little transactions like these.’
Aphra slid the slipper gently back on to the foot, lowered it to the ground and stood up. ‘I hope, then, that you will look kindly on the proposals I have made to you – concerning forgiveness for Holcroft’s father and, of course, the production of my little play.’
‘I’ll put up the money for your play. I think you have certainly earned that. As for Blood, hmm . . . That villain has plagued me for years and I am not the forgiving type. But I will consider it. Do not expect too much of me.’
‘Then I bid you good day and will take my leave.’
‘There is one more thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘I would like to thank you for your kindness this morning – the letter, my feet – and also to, ah, apologise to you for my ugly language earlier.’
‘I thought you might,’ she said.
*
The King stared at the vast tapestry on the wall of the red audience room. The woven image depicted himself as the Roman conqueror Julius Caesar, complete with crowd of adoring servants and a pack of playful dogs in the background. Charles’s own spaniels were locked in the adjacent room and the King could hear them whining and scrabbling at the door trying to return to their master. He longed to release them, and feel their unbridled affection, the joyful wagging of tails, but he needed to concentrate on the business at hand. He could not afford to be distracted by his darlings in the interview to come. He must be strong, regal, dominant: he had to resolve this awful situation before it became worse.
Caesar had it easy, the King mused. He told his legionnaires to do things and they instantly obeyed him. Capture this village, besiege that town, slaughter those rapacious Celts. Yet while he had his own Celt locked in the Tower, it now seemed unlikely that he could be summarily put to death despite the overwhelming evidence of his rapacity. That man had stolen the King’s crown, the very symbol of the monarch; he had offered insult to the King himself and yet somehow this Irish lout still lived. It was inconvenient that Charles had known about the robbery beforehand, that he had
, in effect, given the wretched escapade his blessing. But that was not the point here: the Celt had attempted to steal from the King. It was clearly lèse majesté. What would Caesar have done in those circumstances?
‘I came as soon as I could, Your Majesty,’ said the Duke of Buckingham, somewhat breathlessly ‘your man said it was something of an emergency. Now I’m here, how may I serve you?’
The King swung around to face him. The duke looked a little ruffled: his cravat was badly tied, his wig was slightly askew. His waistcoat, an indigo silk wonder with swirling dragons picked out in green stitching, clashed violently with the long red coat he was wearing. His sallow face was creased, pinched, almost crumpled on one side. The King had the distinct impression that the royal messenger had hauled him from his bed in the Cockpit to bring him here, as well he might. It was only four in the afternoon but he knew the duke kept strange hours.
Charles held up the letter that Barbara Villiers had given to him earlier that afternoon. He had not bothered to read it till an hour ago and now that he had digested its contents he was struggling to hold back his rising panic. ‘You, sir, can haul me out of the morass you have plunged me into!’
Before Buckingham could reply, there was a knock at the door and Sir Thomas Osborne came into the red audience room.
‘I was told you needed me, sire,’ he said, advancing towards the King and the duke, and making his bow. ‘What is amiss?’
In contrast to the duke, Thomas Osborne was well-groomed, even polished, attire immaculate, face glowing with health and youth.
‘That bastard Blood is still threatening me, or rather this time his son – one Holcroft Blood – is, on his behalf, asking me to grant his father a personal audience so Blood may plead his case and explain his actions.’
‘I must confess that Holcroft Blood used to be one of my confidential clerks,’ said the Duke of Buckingham. ‘An ungrateful little viper, malicious and dishonest. I dismissed him from my service for trying to cheat me out of a large sum. Tell me, Your Majesty, of the nature of his threat against you.’
‘I . . . I cannot say.’ The King looked down at the silk bows on his shoes. ‘It concerns the Treaty of Dover that you so deftly arranged last year, Buckingham. But I do not want to say more. Somehow your ungrateful viper has managed to find out something about the treaty. Something that would be most damaging to me personally, were it to become widely known.’
So that little bit of duplicity has come back to bite you, has it? thought Buckingham. Serves you right for going behind my back.
Instead he said, ‘What does Holcroft Blood say he will do?’
‘He says he will send copies of a pamphlet revealing the true story about the treaty to every parish in the land, and have them nailed on ten thousand church doors from Inverness to St Ives. He says he’ll put one on every table in every coffee house in London; he’ll give pamphlets to passers-by in the streets in every town in England, Scotland and Ireland.’
‘So . . . it seems we cannot stop him telling the whole world,’ said the duke. ‘What exactly does Holcroft want for his silence?’
‘I told you: he wants me to meet his father here at White Hall, listen to his plea and, by implication, graciously grant him a royal pardon.’
‘Why not just agree to that, then?’ said Buckingham.
‘Because, Your Grace,’ the King’s voice had risen in pitch and volume, ‘I would look like the fool of the world. A man breaks into one of my royal palaces, assaults my keeper of the jewels, makes off with my own regalia, precious, irreplaceable items worth thousands of pounds, and I just say, “Oh well, never mind,” and forgive him? They would say I was mad – or afraid of him. And what would be worse would be having this Blood fellow wandering around London, with his pardon in his pocket, telling all and sundry that I was the one who secretly hired him to undertake this theft? You said you would mend this, Buckingham. You gave me your word. It is entirely of your doing – I told you that I did not care to be embarrassed. And what have you done? Nothing.’
‘The only thing I can suggest, sire, is that you meet Blood, listen to him, pardon him, and swear him to silence,’ said Buckingham. He looked old and careworn, exhausted by life. ‘I can make some dire threats, if you like, to make him hold his tongue.’
‘Might I say something?’ asked Sir Thomas Osborne. Both of the older men looked at him. ‘I have a man in my service. A useful man, a soldier and a man of his hands, and I believe he could help us in this matter, if we do not mind being utterly ruthless. I’m suggesting a permanent solution, sire, with the ends justifying the means. Do you understand what I mean by that?’
‘I do not care what you do,’ said the King. ‘I only want someone to make this problem go away, and go away for good.’
‘Then I propose that we send a message to Blood and tell him that you will see him personally, Your Majesty, on Friday, the day after tomorrow. The trial is set for eleven o’clock in the morning; I suggest you tell him that you graciously agree to an audience with him at nine o’clock. We’ll tell the boy Holcroft to be here then, too, to witness your royal clemency. This capitulation should allay any suspicions Blood might have, and keep his wretched son from spreading his foul pamphlets all over the Three Kingdoms. I will arrange for my man to take care of Blood the night before the meeting. When the son presents himself here at the appointed hour, he can be seized and swiftly tried and executed for sedition. That Aphra Behn woman, the playwright, is his ally and she should be taken up and given the same fate. The other son Thomas is a known highwayman, quite apart from his role in the Tower business, and he can be dispatched at our leisure.’
Even Buckingham was a little shocked at the casual way in which Osborne disposed of four subjects of the realm in so few words. But neither he nor the King said anything to check him.
‘With your permission then, sire, I will set things in motion. Will your people issue the formal invitation to the royal audience to Blood and his son? On Friday, at nine?’
The King nodded mutely but he could not meet the younger man’s eye. As Osborne bowed and excused himself from the chamber, he thought: What can it be about the Treaty of Dover that is so bad that our King would sanction the murder of three men and a woman to keep it quiet?
Thursday 25 May, 1671
‘A visitor to see you, colonel,’ said Widdicombe, pushing wide the door of the chamber and admitting William Hunt with his hat pulled down low over his eyes but a big crooked smile adorning the lower part of his scarred face.
‘William!’ said Blood, rising from his chair at the writing desk. ‘You are a sight for sore eyes. Come in. You’ll take a gage of bingo, won’t you? Good French stuff. My boy Holcroft brought in a wee cask for my comfort and there’s a bottle already decanted.’
‘Thank you, colonel, I will,’ said Hunt, removing his hat and travelling cloak, hanging them on a wooden peg by the door and accepting a small measure of brandy in a glass from Blood’s hand.
‘What cheer?’ he said, taking a sip.
‘Excellent news, Will,’ said Blood. ‘The best I’ve had in months. I received a note from the King’s chief bum-wiper, Sir John Grenville, inviting me to an audience with His Majesty himself tomorrow morning at nine. I think he will listen to me, and I have high hopes of securing a royal pardon. Would that not be splendid?’
‘Splendid indeed, colonel, indeed most splendid.’
‘Well, we mustn’t count our pardons before they are signed, Will. I’ll have to work the old magic on His Majesty, but I think he’ll finally listen to reason. Cheers! Here, have another drop!’
Blood came over to his old friend with the brandy bottle.
‘But tell me what happened to you? You heard about poor Parrot and the raid on the Blue Boar, I suppose? The jewels recaptured. Tom was taken – he’s in a chamber on the floor above me. I can hear him pacing up and down, up and down, he’s a nervous fellow, and little bits of dust and debris come sprinkling down on my head. There now, look, h
e’s doing it now, look, look up there!’ With his left hand he pointed up at the corner of the ceiling behind Hunt’s head.
Quite naturally, Hunt turned his head to look. Blood hit him with the bottle; a cruel, full-strength blow to the side of the head, which immediately laid Hunt out on the floor in a puddle of brandy, shards of glass and blood.
Blood knelt beside him and flipped his slight unconscious body over with ease. He undid his linen cravat and used it to tie Hunt’s unresisting hands behind him. Then he hauled his old friend over to the wall and propped his back up against it. While Hunt was groggily coming to, Blood searched him, pulling out two small pistols, primed and loaded, one from each coat pocket and a foot-long dagger shoved down inside his breeches.
‘You are uncommonly well armed, Will, for just a friendly visit to an old comrade in the durance.’ Blood placed the weapons on his writing desk and came back to crouch down next to Hunt. ‘A man might conclude that you had bloody violence in mind, with an armoury like that on your person. And, you know, Widdicombe has orders to search anyone who comes to see me: it’s to stop me receiving the means to make a mad break for freedom. So you coming in like that, armed for a scrap, well, that has to have been sanctioned by somebody – somebody very high up in the chain of command. So what am I supposed to think, Will? When you come to me like this? What should a rational man conclude?’
Hunt was now conscious again, although still bemused and muzzy. ‘What did you do that for, colonel? I meant you no harm.’
‘You see, Will, old friend, old comrade, I don’t believe you.’
‘I slipped the gaoler a few shillings to let me in with the ironmongery, sir. I was planning to help you make a run for it,’ said Hunt eagerly. ‘We can still do it, too, loose my hands and we’ll fight our way out together. It will be just like the good old days. It’s right dark out there and there’s only a couple of simpleton buffcoats between us and our freedom.’