But what is the ground we are to seek out, what is our mission? Hush, my dear underling, you shall know as much as is good for you when the time comes. Our mission is a delicate one and it should not be entrusted to babbling mouths.
I protested that I was a close man who could keep a secret as well as any, but he would tell me no more, until we met at dawn on the Horse-ferry on a Saturday where a waterman was waiting for us.
Why do we not take the Committee barge? I asked.
We don’t wish to be conspicuous, Will said, that is why we are going today when honest folk will be lying indoors. It is most convenient that the State should smile upon these long week’s-ends. In the traitor’s time, we were lucky if we had so much as a half-holiday on Saturday.
The single pair of oars took us through the silent misty reaches of Chelsea and Putney and on past the tapestry factory at Mortlake and round the great bend at Richmond where the fields were white with hoar-frost though the sun had begun to shine and our waterman’s face was dewed with sweat. As we left Petersham Meadows behind, I could imagine but one destination.
Is this true, are we going to –
Hush, Jem, or you’ll blow the gab.
We landed at a dusty alehouse before the next bend on the river, and Will gave the waterman fourpence for his ale and cheese and told him to wait for our return, even though it should be after dark. I hoped we also might refresh ourselves after the journey but Will said we were on State business and we must look sharp about it. I could see the waterman grinning under his black hood and I fancied he knew more about the business than I did and that Will’s hushing was for show. The waterman had dark brows and a raven’s beak and I thought I might have seen him in one of the taverns frequented by Thurloe’s spies, viz. the Horse and Cart in Old Conduit Street.
I shivered as I stepped ashore although the air was mild now and the sun was shining on the water. Will led me up the hill behind the alehouse which he told me was called Strawberry Hill for the strawberry field which girdled its lower slopes, although we saw no strawberries it being winter. As we came over the top of the hill, Will took my arm and with a grand gesture worthy of a tragedian exclaimed:
There, Jem, there’s our mark.
It was as I had begun to suspect. Far off beyond the oaks of the Royal Park lay the red towers and lofty battlements of Hampton Court Palace.
Think of it, Jem, he wheezed, for the climb had left him out of breath, being a short-winded man because of the hogsheads he consumed, we are to be the first servants of the State to survey the Palace since the execution of you-know-who.
But why are we proceeding in this roundabout hugger-mugger fashion? We could have landed at Hampton Court steps and saved ourselves the walk.
These are delicate matters, Jem. O.C. is most particular that he should not be thought a snatcher. He wants everything to be accomplished in proper form. When he is proclaimed Grand Vizier of All England, then he may enter upon his own, but he must not seem to be previous. Yet simultaneo he is anxious to secure the property and dust it off, for it has been left vacant four years now.
We went through a little wood and came to a gate which was the boundary of the park. Beyond the gate there was a man setting snares in a bosky warren. He gave us good-morning.
By whose authority are you setting those snares, sir? Will asked in his solemn official voice.
Why, sir, on my own. I bought the lease of the hare warren off Mr Casewell who had it off the goldsmith Mr Edmund Backwell, a warm gentleman in the City, who had it off the Council and, so they say, made a profit of five hundred pounds and more on the selling.
Make a note of this fellow’s name, Jem.
Tabbit, sir, rhymes with Rabbit. Are you from the Council? They were saying at the Palace that gentlemen from the Council were expected today.
Can no one keep any matter in this country private any more? Well, Tabbit, you will be hearing from us. Good-day.
Will was most put out, and he strode on so fast that I had a struggle to keep up with him as we dodged through the thorns and thistles of the unkempt fields. For in those brief few years nature had resumed her perpetual invasions and the meadows had become a wilderness. The grass was choked and the grazing was fit only for donkeys. Our path was many times blocked with fallen timber and the low ground was boggy so that we had to jump from tussock to tussock to keep our fine Spanish boots dry. I lost my footing none the less and splashed Will’s new canary coat with the muddy water beneath the broken ice.
God damn you, Jem, how shall we cut a proper figure in these negotiations if we look like drowned rats?
By now we had reached the sunken ditch, or haw-haw as they call it now, which divides the park from the inner avenues and pleasaunces of the Palace, and as we were hitching ourselves up over the ditch, we were met by a richly dressed gentleman who was walking his black spaniel.
Good-morning, gentlemen, you look distressed, may I take you to my apartments and offer you a towel? You are from the Council of State, I presume? I am Edmund Backwell, lessee of these policies on the eastern side. Mr Phelps, who owns the manor and royalty of the Palace, is waiting for you in the State apartments. You will find them disagreeably mouldy, I fear.
In the face of this magnifico, Will began to muster his accustomed dignity. And after Mr Backwell had entertained us to a dish of coffee in his lodging next the old tennis court and his man had rubbed us down with a Turkey towel, we began to look more the part as Mr Backwell escorted us round the river-side of the Palace to the gatehouse.
But lord, there never was a more melancholy sight. All along the river the meaner sort from Kingston and Hampton Wick had fenced off portions of the ground for their pigs and cattle and chickens. There was scarce a blade of grass left on the long avenue, and the stench was intolerable. The bushes and shrubs which had been planted to make pretty walks for the late Queen and her ladies were all pulled about and half-eaten, and the parterres were trampled into mud. I chased off a mangy cur that was lifting its leg against the Italian statue of a goddess by the doorway that took us into the great court. A low busy personage in a coat of Genoa velvet came bouncing out like a puppy to meet us. This was Mr Phelps’s man of business who had a bundle of papers for us to con.
Leases, sir, and contracts and assignments. When you have perused these, you will know the lie of the land from the attics to the drains and subterranean watercourses of the premises.
We are simply here to inspect and examine the State’s property. We may come to these legal matters in good time, Will said, pushing these dusty papers away with a gesture which I thought somewhat lordly.
What was the State’s property, sir. Matters have galloped on in the past twelve months, at a pace that would astonish you. Had you come here a year ago, I could have shown you whole ranges of the Palace buildings, its purlieus and its policies that were indeed the property of our most glorious State, but now, well, there is a verdurers’ cottage or two in the corner of Bushey Park that has not yet been leased out, but as for the rest, this is a busy country, sir, a merchant’s country, we do not loiter.
But the State apartments – Will bleated like a lost sheep.
Intact, sir, quite intact, too much so for there is a coat or two of dust on them.
Where is your master?
I am afraid Mr Phelps is not at liberty to see you today. He sends you his most profound apologies, he is engaged upon most urgent business with his cargoes from the Plantations. But he has asked me to show you everything and to let you have any particulars in regard to price that you may have need of.
Price?
Yes, sir, price. The man of business looked startled. You are here to repurchase certain items, are you not, on behalf of the State and of His Highness Oliver Cromwell?
You move too fast. We are here merely to survey the present conditions of the Palace and its purlieus.
Well sir, have it as you will. And the little man in Genoa velvet, much put out of his countenance, led us up the gr
eat staircase which was covered in dust and mould, ditto the windows, and there were bat droppings in the corners and old swallows’ nests under the cornice.
Mr Phelps and his household do not come this way, having their own private entrance over towards the knot garden.
If the staircase was grimy, the great presence chamber was worse yet. The brocades were all torn, with dark patches where the King’s Italian pictures had once hanged, and the dogs had got in and left a stink behind them and the wind was coming in through a cracked pane. The next room was no better, nor the one after it. But it was the emptiness and the sound of our echoing footsteps that made us reflect upon the damage that four short years of neglect could perform on so great a palace.
At the end of the range of great rooms, the little man in velvet unlocked a door for us and led us into an array of smaller chambers.
We are now in Mr Phelps’s private apartments, that were the Queen’s but are quite fitting for a private gentleman being of moderate size and well furnished.
And so they were. Every bedpost and chimneypiece was polished to a gleam, and the hangings of fine old brocade had not a hole or loose thread. The air smelled of beeswax and lavender and there was a fire blazing in every grate.
Mr Phelps is eager to assist the Commonwealth as far as may be in his power and has instructed me to strike the fairest price for any paintings or tapestries that belonged to the late Charles Stuart and ought by rights now to adorn His Highness’s lodgings. Thus, this Young Woman with Goliath Head, fifteen pounds; this Herodias with the Head of the Baptist, from the hand of Titiano, one hundred and fifty; and this Burning of Rome by Nero, a Dictator, by Giulio of Rome, twenty-four. He jogged up and down the paintings and tapestries (which were very fine) like an auctioneer crying up a sale of goods.
Will, however, was set upon continuing in his severe vein.
I presume you have proof, sir, that your master came by these pictures honestly?
The little man went red as a turkey-cock. We have bills of sale for every item, sir, and if you would care to consult your own records at Whitehall, I dare say you would find copies thereof.
But Will was unmoved.
This close-stool now?
You mean the antique commode, sir. Note the fine red velvet, Genoa workmanship of course. It stood once in the King’s apartments, so it did, and Mr Phelps had it from the Trustees for five pounds.
Did he? Well, we shall have it back for the same – and to my amazement Will went over to the commode and lifted the cover of it and pulled down his breeches and sat upon the close-stool.
There now, this close-stool shall have the privilege of entertaining the buttocks of three great men: Charles Stuart sometime King, Oliver Cromwell shortly to be Lord Protector, and in between Will Symons, Clerk to the Great Council. Fear not, sir, I have left no work for the groom of the stool – and he buttoned himself up with an expression of the utmost solemnity.
The little man stood, gaping-mouthed. He could neither speak nor move until Will led him gently by hand into the next room. It was the first time I ever heard the expression Lord Protector, for Will already knew the style that our master was to take, though it were not yet gazetted. Will knew everything. No sooner were we in the next room than Will started back through the door to the close-stool he had just quitted and took out one of the tickets that he had prepared for the purpose and pinned it to the velvet lid of the commode. Reserved for His Highness, it said.
But that is Mr Phelps’s property.
Temporarily so, sir, temporarily so. I am sure we shall come to an accommodation. The ticket will serve as a memorandum for the valuers. You will not object if I attach another to this canvas of Giulio’s. His Highness has a fine connaissance in matters of Italian art.
So we tramped on through the apartments affixing our tickets to likely articles until some of Mr Phelps’s rooms looked as though a snowstorm had passed through them.
But that table is especially dear to Mrs Phelps. She plays at cards with her daughters upon it.
Do not fret, sir, the State will pay a fair price. There are other tables in this world.
Will was airy, almost monarchical in his demeanour. By the time we had finished, the little man was quite downcast, the bounce had gone out of him.
Yet as we came down Mr Phelps’s private stairs and out into the knot garden, our business done, there was to be a reversal of fortunes.
Ah, there is Mrs Phelps now and some of her friends.
A stout lady with a high colour advanced upon us shouting even before we had come up with us: What do you mean by it, sir, you are robbers, rogues, you have no business here, take yourself off, begone, etc., etc.
We dodged round the yew hedge, tipping our hats to her en passant, for we saw no profit in holding conversation with her. And her friends appeared to be of a hostile disposition, waving sticks at us and uttering oaths of a foulness not to be expected of persons associated with a former royal residence.
Nor were we free of harm when we came out into the front court of the Palace, for there was gathered the other rabble, composed of those commoners who kept pigs and cattle and had squatted like hungry beasts upon the fields along the river where they had pasturage and water for free. They besieged us with their cries of sir, sir, please certify my lease, I fought for the Good Old Cause, I lost an arm at Worcester, sir, sir, this land was my father’s, he had it of the Commission, sir, etc., etc. They clutched and pulled at us and belched their foul breath in our faces, and we could go neither forward nor back, and in my desperation to be gone I knocked over a weak little poxy man, with a bald head and he fell and cried that he’d broken his ankle. And the crowd said that I had trampled on him purposely. I said no no I meant him no ill, but I began to fear for my life, for I had heard how other of the State’s servants bound upon unpopular business had been set upon and had not returned alive.
But at that moment the crowd was driven apart as though by a spear and through the evil-favoured rabble came a man with a black hood and a raven’s beak and behind him two men whom I took to be constables.
I thought you might stand in need of help, sir, said our waterman in his strange formal mode of speech, so I took the liberty of coming up to the steps.
Quite right, take us out of here before we are destroyed.
Our dark escort brought us down the steps under the bridge and rowed us out into the middle of the river where we were out of reach of the rabble’s grasping hands although not of the stones and cabbage-heads they threw at us. And their oaths pursued us down the river as they ran along the path taunting and abusing us. But in the end they wearied of the pursuit and the afternoon was growing dark.
We sat in silence for a while with no noise but the waterman’s oars and the mallards crying and the flap of their wings as they took off at our approach.
’Tis a grimy business, Jem.
Someone has to do it.
Do they? Does O.C. really need that place?
I suppose he was not born to it.
No, he was not. And if he needs pictures, can he not buy them elsewhere? There are plenty more Giulios and Titianos in Italy if he must plaster his walls with such gewgaws.
He is willing to pay for them.
He is not to pay for them. It is you and I, Jem, who are to pay for them. He is no more than a cloddish upstart and I do not see why we should risk our necks for such a –
This outburst was interrupted by a cough from the waterman. It was a harsh cough, as harsh as his raven’s face, yet his voice was soft and courtly.
I doubt, sir, whether this conversation be well advised.
But we are alone on the river . . .
You place me in a difficult position, sir. I would rather not be compelled to –
Oh you mean, Mr Thurloe . . .
Just so, sir. He is most particular in these matters.
He will want an account of our voyage?
I fear he will, sir. A full account.
Well, Will
was silent for a full minute by Richmond clock which I could just make out on the darkling hill above us.
He shall have it, by noon tomorrow.
I was talking of my report, sir.
Ah yes, well, no doubt we ought to compare our notes, that the two accounts may be fully reconciled. That would be desirable, wouldn’t it?
Yes, it would, although I fear it may prove a costly business.
Costly? Costly to whom?
To you, sir, for a waterman’s time is precious to him, it’s his only stock in trade, as you might say, and if I’m to go about reconciling and recording and whatever, I shall lose hire, a considerable deal of hire.
You’re not Welsh, are you?
No, sir. I thought something in the nature of a reconciliation fee might smooth out our difficulties.
A reconciliation fee?
Of five pounds, sir.
Will held out five sovereigns which glistened in the twilight before they disappeared under the raven’s hood as though they had been grains of corn going into his crop.
We spoke no more. As we came below Putney Hill where the Ranters and Levellers and the rest of the trash had held their seditious debates (though what is sedition in times when there is an utter Revolution every six months), the waterman began to sing. It was a low song, of love, I fancy, though I could not catch the words.
Would you mind greatly not singing? Will asked.
No, sir, I shouldn’t mind at all, if that is your wish.
My head aches.
Then I shall refrain from the refrain, sir, if I may put it in that fashion, though my singing is admired. My wife likes me to sing to her in bed.
I am not your wife.
No, sir. There’s no disputing about tastes, is there?
He too fell silent although once he repeated to himself ‘refrain from the refrain’ and chuckled.
I fancied that Will and I were seized by the same melancholy fit. What were all our labours to bring settlement and sober government worth, if we were at the mercy of an ignorant and fearful peasantry on the one hand and an overweening general on the other? Could England ever be made safe for such as we? Decent people of the middling sort who wished no harm to anyone – I don’t say godfearing people, for Will and I were not alone in having supped our fill of conformity and nonconformity, of oaths sworn or not sworn, of prayer-books and orders of service and quarrels about rubrics and vestments and Lord knows what else. We wanted only a church that would be peaceable, make no commotion and have no taint of popery nor yet of zealotry. Yet how were we ever to escape from the fanatics?
Jem (and Sam) Page 7