‘Well. Tha’s back. It’s Tom again, is it, my lord?’
‘It is.’
She nodded towards the house I had leased. ‘I gave it a once over.’ My heart gave a little jump. It was not Drury Lane, but it was one of those autumn days when summer seemed reluctant to leave and the place looked at its best. Sun sparkled on the open windows. The jetty leaned over the courtyard. From the windows of the garret you could see over to St Paul’s and beyond, for the City was not yet covered with its shroud of winter smoke. It was the best place in the world, I thought, for a child to hide and dream, and for me to tell stories to him, as Matthew once did to me. Across the courtyard, I could see Mr Black’s journeyman picking up his composing stick to set my copy.
‘Did Anne look at the house?’ I asked Sarah.
‘Glanced. Nights are getting chilly. Do you want me to light a fire?’
‘Lay it.’
‘Aye. Waste not, want not,’ she said drily.
I had got so used to rolling out of bed in Spitall and clambering down the ladder into the press shop that I had forgotten how dirty I was. I washed in the pail in the yard as I used to, but the ink was ingrained in my hands again. I had no desire to see Anne’s nose wrinkle at my appearance.
I saw Anne alone in her small apartment at Lucy’s. I went to kiss her. It was not that she recoiled, it was much subtler than that: a slight quivering of her lips, a tightening of her perfectly groomed hands, a glancing flicker at my ink-stained ones. She made me so conscious I had the stink of Spitall about me that my anger boiled over.
‘Two weeks you have been back. Two weeks – and not a word.’
‘I wanted to prepare Luke.’
‘For what? For his father? Does he not know me? If he is well enough to chase round Half Moon Court he is well enough to see me.’
There was more of this until my rage simmered down and I saw beyond her fashionable light blue dress with its bows and cobweb-lawn trimmings; saw with shock her thinness, emphasised by the tight lacing of the bodice, and the papery fragility of her white face.
‘Oh, Anne, you are not well.’
‘Well enough. I do not sleep much. That is all.’ Every word seemed an effort, as pale and ghost-like as her face.
‘All!’ I knelt by her. ‘We must stop this. It has not done you any good. Nor me. I have leased a house.’
‘A house. Yes.’ I told her that her dreams of becoming Lady Stonehouse were pure fantasy.
She smiled faintly. ‘And your dreams of changing the world are not?’
‘No. The world has changed. Cromwell is the most powerful man in England.’
‘And the King?’
‘Is playing bowls.’
She understood. That was the joy of being with her. When we connected we entered each other’s head. One word could convey a book of meaning. She was obsessed with the Stonehouse estate, but it was not only riches that infatuated her. It was power. We had that in common.
‘Until Parliament disbands it, Cromwell must listen to the army. And, before Parliament disbands it, the army will first disband Parliament.’
She was quite still, except for her eyes, larger and more liquid than usual in her pale face, in which I could see tiny reflections of myself, even down to my scar and the stains in my army jerkin. I told her the army had seen enough in five long years to know that Parliament was rotten. Not just the junior officers but colonels were determined it would be reformed.
‘Forget the estate. Lord Stonehouse is in disfavour.’
‘And you are in Cromwell’s favour?’
‘No. But there will be a new Parliament. And I intend to stand for it. With your help, I believe I stand a chance.’
I more than half expected her to laugh, to belittle me, but she said quietly, ‘Yes. I think you do.’
She spoke with such conviction I grasped her hands eagerly. ‘Mr Tooley is being reinstated. You can return to our old church …’
‘As Mrs Neave? When I married someone else?’
‘I have seen a lawyer. It can be easily arranged.’ It was true. Wildman had said it was possible. I did not tell her he had also said it was easier to reform a Parliament than a wife.
‘The house is not suitable.’
‘Not suitable! It is what I can afford and suitable or not, it is where we will live, madam. Pack your things.’
‘Will you give us a little more time? Please?’ She almost never pleaded, and she had such a wild, desperate air that I was on the verge of giving in. But I was afraid of her falling even more deeply under Lucy’s influence.
‘No. You have had enough time. More than enough. You will go to the country again. I do not know what you will do. I will give you an hour. I will order a coach.’
She lowered her head resignedly. ‘Will you explain to Luke where we are going?’
‘Of course I will. I will be glad to. Where is he?’
She picked up a bell on the table by her side.
I had seen it so often in the army, so I was prepared, yet not prepared. I knew, but did not know. It was the way Luke came into the room. Sidled. He had adapted, as all people do, to what had happened to him. He knew where the light was and instinctively turned the good side of his face towards me. I instantly rebuked myself – ‘good side’? All of him should be good to me!
Jane came in with him and gave him a little push towards me. He turned angrily towards her and I saw the burned side of his face. It had not healed well. Curds was a generous description. It had a red, lumpy rawness, as if scraped by a farrow. I learned later that some fool of a surgeon, claiming an infallible cure for burns, had made things worse.
Almost instantly, he turned back so the scarred cheek was in shadow. I tried to prevent it, but he saw the instinctive beginnings of my look of anguish and tilted his chin defiantly, dismissively. I wanted to take him in my arms but that, of course, is not what fathers do. In fact, in a curious way, the meeting so disorientated me it was as if he was the father. He was a little Stonehouse. His hooked nose was a perfect replica of his grandfather’s. The eye that I could see had an arrogant gleam. When I had last seen him he had been in skirts. He was now in britches, fashionably wide over red silk hose. We stood there like strangers, him defiantly staring up at me, robbing me of speech.
‘Why … you are a man, Luke,’ I managed at last.
‘I should hope so, sir. Mama wanted to keep me in skirts,’ he said with disgust.
‘Well, you are a little young for britches –’ Anne began.
‘Older than my years, Aunty Lucy says!’ Paradoxically, he plunged his head in his mother’s skirts.
‘Well, perhaps, perhaps,’ Anne murmured indulgently, caressing the love-lock that was growing from his dark curly hair, in which there was not a trace of red. All the while Jane was gazing fondly at him. When he dropped his handkerchief from his cuff, she picked it up and tucked it back. I could see that, in a household of three women, Luke ruled the roost.
I coughed and cleared my throat. I suppose that sounded gratifyingly like a father, for he sprang up and pushed his mother away, as if she had entwined him, rather than the reverse.
‘Did you ride in the country, sir?’ I asked.
‘A little.’ He scowled. ‘The stable boy insulted me.’
‘Insult –’ I stopped when I saw Anne, behind Luke, frantically patting her cheek. Jane’s alarmed face and clenched fists were an equal warning.
‘But I got rid of him,’ Luke said.
‘Did you,’ I said faintly. ‘Did you.’
‘I did,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘He went above his station.’
Emboldened by this, and seeming less conscious of his scarred face, he came up to me to give me a closer scrutiny, his eyes travelling wonderingly up my battered boots to my stained jerkin and grubby shirt.
‘You have been fighting, sir?’
‘Fighting?’
‘In some battlefield.’
‘No, no, no. In some printing field.’
&nb
sp; He frowned, suddenly looking quite old as he struggled with this, suspicious I was making game of him. I could not bear the distance between us and knelt and put out my arms to him and smiled. ‘I am come to take you home, Luke.’
He backed away. ‘Home? Home? I am home.’
‘This is Lucy’s home, isn’t it?’
He said nothing, but darted a glance to his mother, who smiled encouragingly.
‘I have taken a house opposite Grandfather Black’s, in Half Moon Court. You like that, don’t you?’
He grew very still. He put his thumb in his mouth. Jane took a step towards him but was stopped by a look from Anne.
‘Does it have a cellar?’ Luke brought out each word in odd jerks.
‘It does. You can hide in there. And a garret, where I can tell you stories about battle –’
He ran to his mother to hide in her skirts again, but she stopped him and tried to calm him, telling him he must listen to what I had to say. Then he ran to Jane and when she said the same began hitting her until she caught him by the hands.
‘Stop that!’ I yelled at him.
I suppose that is what he expected from a father because he stopped immediately. His voice was curiously high-pitched, like that of a child in a choir. ‘Is this to punish me?’
‘Punish you?’
‘For my face?’
I was too appalled to speak for a moment, and he ran to Jane who picked him up. ‘No, no, no, Luke. I am to blame, Luke, not you. Listen to me.’ But his back was towards me, his face buried in Jane’s bodice. ‘What have you been saying to him?’ I flung at Anne.
‘Saying to him? How can you think that? You suppose I got him to say that? Is that what you mean? Now you know what we have been doing, why we went to the country, why –’ She took Luke gently from Jane, and rocked him until he took his thumb from his mouth. He whispered in her ear with a sidelong glance at me. She told him ‘no whispers’, but they murmured together with remonstrances from her to ‘be a soldier’ and, from him, ‘well, why doesn’t he come and live here?’
Finally, when he had quietened, she became firmer and said he would have to ask his father those questions. She set him down on the carpet in front of me and he stared up at me, questioning me like a little lawyer.
‘Did the man who burned my face live in Grandfather Black’s house, sir?’
‘He did once. Yes.’
‘Did he lock you in the cellar?’
I gave Anne a bewildered glance. She was twisting her hands in anguish. ‘That was a story, Luke …’
‘It was not true?’
‘Well, yes, but …’ I squatted down in front of him. ‘Luke, he is dead. I killed him.’
‘You said that before,’ he cried, in a rising panic. ‘When he killed my sister –’
‘No, no, no, I said I would kill him – and he did not kill Liz, not, not exactly –’
The more I tried to get through to him, the worse it got. He seemed to believe that, even if George was dead, his spirit was waiting for him in the cellar at Half Moon Court. It was as if I had somehow transferred my childhood terrors to him. The more I struggled to reassure him, the more he seemed to pick up that troubled part of myself, until sweat broke out on his forehead and his scarred cheek took on a livid aspect.
It struck me, with a bitter irony, that our one point in common was this fear. Thinking, at least, that I might use this, I put out my arms to him. ‘Come, Luke. We will fight him together.’
‘You said he was dead!’
‘I mean –’
I tried to hold him. He struck out at me, screaming. I caught his flailing fists, then snatched him up, holding him tightly to me, but he thrashed and kicked in increasing distress. Anne held out her arms and took him. He slipped from her, still screaming, and Jane tried to quieten him. I stood impotently until I saw Anne’s mute appeal for me to go.
I stood outside, unable to leave until, mercifully, exhaustion turned Luke’s screaming into crying, then sobbing, then silence, then the first coherent words.
‘Has he gone?’ he said.
Whether he meant me, or George, or whether I had become George to him, I did not know. The footman, who must have been standing there all the time, seemed to come out of the wall.
‘The Countess would like to see you, sir.’
I scarcely heard him. All I wanted to do was to get out of that place, but as I stumbled down the stairs, Lucy came out of the gallery. Her face bore the signs of something I never expected to see there: age. She was not made up, and her skin was like crazed porcelain.
‘Tom … You must go back to her.’
‘I have not left her! I came to fetch her. You heard …’ She waited but I could not go on.
‘You must come back here. For her sake, as well as Luke’s.’
‘Luke’s? He only calmed down when I was gone. He is terrified of me!’
‘He is terrified of where you might take him. It will pass. He needs to get to know you. Do you realise how little he has seen you? I mean not just now, but all his life. And you need them. Look at yourself.’
She drew me to Cromwell’s picture. It was so dark the glass acted as a mirror. I was shocked when I saw myself. I was used to a youthful, impish face looking back at me. My cheeks were just starting to slacken. Tiny frown lines were sketched in above the aquiline nose. Aquiline? Yes, it really did look eagle-like in this weathered, more austere face. Previously, saying I was a Stonehouse was a prediction. Now it was a fact. Only my flaring red hair was a gesture of defiance.
I turned away. Anne’s grief and concern were genuine. But I could not stop the thought creeping into my mind that she and Lucy were using it to draw me back. And if I came back here, it would be as a Stonehouse.
Lucy was sitting, as usual enjoying the impact she had made. Or so I thought.
‘You seem suddenly very concerned about my welfare, madam.’
Her words came out raw and bitter, without the usual conversational preamble. ‘You think I have no heart for anything but politics. It never seems to occur to you that, after my child and my husband died, I had no heart left for anything else. I do not want to see that happening to you.’
She spoke with genuine feeling, but I could not entirely dismiss the feeling I was being manipulated. I walked restlessly about the gallery.
‘I suppose I owe you for things. That dress must have cost –’
‘She pays for everything with her own money,’ Lucy said coldly.
‘Her own money? She has none. She returned the money from my army warrant. Her own money? Where does she get it from?’
‘I have no idea,’ Lucy said with increasing coldness.
I went halfway up the stairs to Anne’s apartment from which came a murmur of voices. Then came a sound I did not expect to hear. Luke was laughing. Anne wanted him to give her something, and he wouldn’t. I almost had my hand on the doorknob when he said, ‘I heard him.’
‘Luke … he’s your father. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’
‘I heard him!’
His voice took on that note of rising panic that had led to his previous attack. I could not bear putting him through that again and returned to Lucy.
‘What is happening?’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t know? You seem to know as little about what is going on as I do, madam.’
She leaned forward urgently. ‘That is why you must come back here. I cannot reach her.’
I stood irresolutely, looking up the stairs. There was another peal of laughter. This time it was from Anne.
‘Well, I certainly cannot reach her,’ I said.
31
I became impossible. I shut myself off from everyone, unless it was to do with work, which I pursued with a ferocious zeal. From thinking about Anne constantly, I never thought about her at all. Nor about Luke, although he invaded my dreams, in which I became George trying to thrust him into the fire. I would awake sweating, burning hot, although winter cold had clamped hard on the attic. Th
en I would wander downstairs and correct a proof, or oil the press. Several times I nearly trod on Ellie, sleeping like a dog at the foot of the ladder. I kicked her out, yelling at her to go back to Matthew, but she would always return, always under my feet, ready to run with a pamphlet, or putting a pie on my desk, which I would take a bite from then forget.
The Case of the Army, the pamphlet arguing for Parliamentary reform, had sold out in the bookstalls and we were doing a second printing when Wildman came in, full of excitement. Cromwell had agreed to call a meeting of the Army Council to discuss it at the end of the month. The Army Council did not consist only of senior officers like Cromwell, Fairfax and Ireton. Two officers and two soldiers from each regiment sat on it. Many soldiers and a few officers supported our arguments. Wildman was to present the case for these arguments at the meeting.
I helped prepare his speech. Because Wildman would not reject the King, Nehemiah, who called Wildman ‘a smooth-talking cove’, was always trying to discover what we were planning. He would wander into the press room on some pretext, with Bennet, the marksman from my old regiment. Now there was no fighting to be done Bennet had gone to seed, drinking with the watermen with whom he used to work, contributing little but listening to Nehemiah and agreeing with him.
One day I had to go out urgently. Ellie swore she would keep an eye on the press room until I returned. When I did, she was not there but Bennet was. He claimed to be looking for Nehemiah. He seemed to have taken nothing, but when he left I searched through my chest and could not find notes of a meeting with Wildman. When Ellie came in from the privy outside I was frantic.
‘Couldn’t you wait?’
‘No! Do you want me to soil myself?’
‘You’re coarse as well as stupid. Now he knows what we’re planning. You’ve ruined everything!’
‘I will ruin everything!’ she screamed at me. She picked up some quoins, blocks of wood that held type in place, and flung them at me. For good measure she added the inkwell, spraying my jerkin with ink. Then she burst into tears and fled.
I was picking up the quoins and retrieving papers not ruined with ink when I remembered. I searched a shelf where galleys were stored. Underneath a pile of them I found the notes I had convinced myself Bennet had taken. I had worked such long hours the previous night that, dizzy with fatigue, I had forgotten I had put them there.
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