‘Open the gate for the messenger!’
A single horseman clattered over the cobbles. By morning London would know that one of the great officers of state, who had helped steer Parliament to victory, and who knew more of its secrets than any other living soul, was dead. Only then did the enormity of what had happened strike me. It shrank our petty quarrels into insignificance. At the top of the staircase my father caught up with me, putting his hand on my arm. I pulled away. He grabbed me and shoved me against the wall.
‘Who is planning to kill the King?’
The question was so unexpected and so bizarre I began to laugh, stopping only when I realised how frantic Richard’s manner was, how unlike him, how out of control, as much pleading as threatening. Still I dismissed his questions, shaking my head in bewilderment, making my way down the stairs, until, as the servant opened the door for me, a thought stopped me. Like a drop of water striking a pool, it sent a chilling ripple through me.
35
It was nonsense, of course, the sort of conspiracy nonsense that seemed to infect the very air of that house. But I stood stock still, feeling the bruise on my cheek where Bennet had pressed the barrel of his gun.
‘Caught them spying,’ he had said.
I had a vivid picture of Bennet, in the firelight, polishing his gun, with its exposed spring and tubular sight. Mechanically, I followed my father into the reception room, where, as Lord Stonehouse had just described my last appearance, I had first coneyed myself in, five years before. The mourning was already up. It was dimly lit, the satyrs chasing nymphs across the oval ceiling looking like pale ghosts. Richard closed the door.
‘You know something,’ he said.
‘I know nothing.’
‘I saw it in your face! Tom, I believe it will happen soon. Tell me what you know.’
I hesitated. Nehemiah was a hothead and Bennet a killer, but I could not believe they would try to kill the King, an act that would plunge the country into an even more disastrous war. How would they get the opportunity? It was absurd. They were poaching, that was all. That was why Bennet had overreacted when we stumbled on them.
‘Is Cromwell involved? Ireton?’
‘Cromwell?’ I laughed. ‘It is the last thing he wants. He would be the first suspect. And he knows more than anybody how much the people want their King.’
‘Do you believe that?’
I remembered the cheering crowds during the freedom march, the rushes and green boughs strewn before him in villages, the hundreds of bonfires laid round Cambridge, before the Parliamentary force had stopped us. ‘Yes,’ I said shortly. ‘I do.’
Although there was a damp, clinging cold in that room, his forehead gleamed with sweat. First he had tried to kill me. Then he had used me. Now, for the first time, if what he was saying was true, he needed me. There must be some trick, some unexpected card he would play, but I could not think what it would be. He had got what he wanted. He had Highpoint, with its power and riches.
‘Tell me what you know,’ I said.
Now he hesitated, striding agitatedly round the room before, reluctantly, telling me about the Royalist network of spies. He gave no names, but disclosed enough to show he had infiltrated meetings at The Bull and Mouth. He knew about the shadowy, breakaway group that argued there was no point in negotiating with the man of blood, and that he should be brought to trial. I remembered the man watching Gun Press on the night Ellie and I first slept together, the feeling of being followed afterwards.
‘You’ve been spying on me?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s progress of a kind, I suppose. You spy on me not to kill me, but for information.’
I heard Anne’s voice in the hall, asking where I was, and got up. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. I took it to the light from a candle. It was addressed to the King at Hampton Court and marked ‘most urgent’. It was dated two days earlier and warned him that eight or nine agitators had resolved to kill him. It was signed ‘E.R.’
‘This is a copy.’
‘The original has information I cannot show you.’
Each of us was giving away as little as possible. He had inherited distrust from Lord Stonehouse. I shrugged and gave him back the paper. ‘Is that all?’
‘Isn’t it enough? Why do you think the King has withdrawn his parole? They cannot keep him safe there! Or will not.’
‘Cromwell has redoubled his guards.’
‘Is he safe from his guards?’
I could not talk to him. Cromwell had put his most trusted men at Hampton Court, who would guard him with their lives. I went to the door, hearing Geraldine say ‘Au voir’ and some horses draw up.
‘It is during the debates they plan to do it.’
I stopped with my hand on the door knob. ‘Putney?’
‘Yes. My informer heard one of them say Putney would be perfect.’
‘Why?’
‘I suppose because the top officers would be there. Distracted.’
‘When was this? Where?’
He described the meeting at The Bull and Mouth, the arguments. Much of it was lies, written to supply the Royalists with what they wanted to hear. It painted the Levellers’ sole aim as seeking to foment a rebellion in the army, rather trying to reform a rotten Parliament. The informer had clearly never been at the meeting. But he had picked up the angry explosions in the alehouse afterwards from people who disagreed with Wildman’s measured approach; the empty, violent threats fuelled by drink. There was one group, however, where the men were quieter, more purposeful. The informer heard them whispering about Hampton Court. The palace.
‘When they broke up one of them said that proverb “Time and …”’
‘Time and tide wait for no man?’
‘That’s it.’
I sat down and put my head in my hands, remembering Nehemiah’s negotiations with the boatman. A double crown? For a boat trip or a bit of poaching? He had suddenly become friendly. Because that was the mood that day? Or because he had decided what to do – the euphoria that comes from taking a decision? What had he said – we all want the same end? I broke into a sweat. Ireton had ridden past. He had seen me eating duck with Nehemiah.
‘What is it, Tom? Tom?’
My knowledge of places outside London was hazy, confined mainly to places I had fought over. ‘Where is Hampton Court?’
‘Just beyond Richmond. Half an hour’s ride and ferry from Ham House.’
‘Near the river?’
‘On the river.’
The lantern clock struck one. I jumped and stared at the tulips on the face of the clock, struggling to remember what I had heard by the camp fire. ‘Upstream?’
‘Of course it’s upstream! Are you involved with this?’
‘If you think that, to hell with you!’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but if you know something for God’s sake tell me!’
I almost spilled out what I had heard. But suppose I was wrong? It could be another of his tricks to get me to betray the Levellers to the Royalists.
‘I cannot. But I will ride with you to Hampton.’
‘No. No.’
There was something he was not telling me. There always was. Always. ‘That or nothing, Father. We go there together.’
‘Impossible.’
He went impetuously to the door, half-opening it, but stopped when he saw me staring at the clock. It had barely crept a few minutes past one, but it felt as if half an hour had passed. One o’clock. I struggled to remember the times they had mentioned, what the boatman had said about the tide. It turned downstream at eight, nine o’clock in the morning, was that it? The coming morning. They had to be there before it turned, in seven, eight hours’ time. Richard slammed the door shut and came over to me. I could not take my eyes off the clock, although it had only an hour hand, and was not visibly moving at all.
‘It’s tonight, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘A matter of
hours?’
‘It might be. I tell you I do not know!’
‘All right, all right. We go together.’
‘I’ll see to the horses.’
‘Better if we go by boat.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘There’s my father’s boatman. At Milford Stairs. The tide is with us.’ He held out his hand. ‘Ab imo pectore.’
I almost laughed out loud. The Stonehouse motto: Ab imo pectore. From the heart. I had seen precious little heart in him, but at that moment he stood so stiffly, and his grip when I took his hand was so warm and strong, I could not help wondering what life would have been like if we had been on the same side. I meant to say the words ironically, but could scarcely trust my voice when I muttered: ‘Ab imo pectore.’
Richard’s wife was in the hall, but not Anne. I had expected her to be there, full of recriminations, trying to seize the lawyer again and make a last-ditch fight for Highpoint. But Mr Cole told me she was incensed to find I was closeted with my father and had ordered a Hackney. While Richard talked to Geraldine, I went to the stable to get horses. Riding to the street, the thought struck me. It was a wild guess, but after believing I would inherit one moment, only to have it snatched away the next, Anne was crazy enough to do it.
‘Mr Cole. Where did my wife go in the Hackney?’
He shook his head. I remembered hearing Geraldine mockingly say ‘au voir’, and asked her the same question. She gave a disdainful shrug, as if it was beneath her to register such things.
‘Répondez-lui!’ Richard snapped.
Geraldine muttered something about never understanding the English and said, ‘Drury Lane.’
Richard looked at me. ‘Your house is rebuilt?’
I shook my head and turned my horse round. ‘She has gone to tell Cromwell you are here.’
The name shook Geraldine out of her complacency. She poured out a stream of agitated French as Richard scrambled on to his horse. ‘I’ll stop her.’
‘You will make things worse. Leave it to me. I’ll see you at Milford Stairs.’
‘Pouvez-vous vous fier à lui?’ Geraldine cried.
Richard laughed. ‘She wants to know if I can trust you.’
‘Tell her you can trust me as much as I trust you,’ I said as I rode off down the street, past the house, which was now fully draped so that not a glimmer of light showed. Only the head of the falcon, peering through the shreds of fog, was visible.
At the bottom of Queen Street I jumped as a figure rode out of the gloom. It was Scogman.
‘Ellie thought you might need me.’
My suspicions about Nehemiah and Bennet grew real as I related them to Scogman on our way to Drury Lane. I had avoided the place since the fire. A superstitious dread filled me as I saw the burned-out shell. For the first time I fully understood Luke’s terror of George’s malignant spirit. The place had been boarded up, but vagrants had broken in and there was a heap of festering rubbish where my study had been.
We galloped down to Cromwell’s house, where the Hackney was standing, and I told Scogman to wait. The driver of the Hackney was dozing.
‘My wife’s inside?’
‘She raised them at the back.’
Anne was in the kitchen, where a kitchen maid was stirring the fire back into life. The maid gaped at me, knuckling sleep out of her eyes, struggling to catch the shawl she had wrapped round the underskirts she slept in. Somewhere in the house there was knocking and then a murmur of voices. From the rooms above, I recognised the deep, rising tones of Cromwell’s steward, Hugh Marshall, threatening to throw the servant out on the streets if he did not go away.
‘You’ve seen sense then,’ Anne said.
‘Sense? What the hell are you trying to do?’
‘What you should have done in the first place. Have him arrested.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘I have never been saner in my life. Lord Stonehouse wanted you to have Highpoint and you shall have it.’
‘By having my father killed?’
‘He deserves it.’
‘Do you want me killed as well?’
The kitchen maid was staring open-mouthed, no longer pretending to build up the fire. Even in her present state, Anne forced me think clearly. Telling her brought home, with sickening clarity, the dilemma I was in. I groaned out loud as I drew Anne away from the maid, knocking over a pile of dirty pans. I whispered incoherently how Ireton had seen me with the people I suspected. Anne stared at me as my disjointed gabble, like the rocking of a pan lid, came to a stop.
There was a moment’s silence before a thunderous roar came from Marshall upstairs. ‘What the devil is going on down there?’
The maid gave a whimper of fear and scuttled to pick up the pans.
‘Richard Stonehouse? Why didn’t you tell me?’
There were two thumps above us as Marshall levered his massive frame from the bed. The ceiling creaked and there was the sound of doors opening and more voices. I could not think, speak or even stand, lowering myself to a bench at the table, the maid darting between my legs to pick up the pans.
I heard Betsy Cromwell’s questioning tones, then: ‘Richard Stonehouse! Oliver needs good news. Quick, man!’
I closed my eyes. Once Anne had told them, that would be the end of it. All I wanted to do was sleep. I felt that strange kind of relief that comes when one realises there is nothing more one can do and, in a moment of lucidity that came with it, saw again Nehemiah and I embracing over the camp fire.
‘You taught me everything I know … Well, not quite everything,’ he had said.
I dropped my head in my hands. Not quite everything. I saw the gun, the polished barrel, the tubular sight. I was as certain then, as I have ever been certain of anything, that he was on a boat somewhere on the Thames with Bennet, being carried by the tide to kill the King.
‘Tom … I gather you have a prize for us.’
At another time Marshall, who still had his nightcap on, and whose nightgown barely closed round his fat belly, would have looked ludicrous. But from hurrying downstairs, he breathed heavily and his eyes gleamed, like a rider in a hunt close on his quarry. Resignedly, I opened my mouth to tell him. Perhaps there would be some way of warning the King – if they believed me.
‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry …’ Anne was weeping. It was the first time I had seen her cry since the fire. I jumped up and held her. She tried to speak, but her tears only redoubled.
‘My dear,’ Betsy Cromwell said, ‘I know Richard Stonehouse is your father-in-law, but Tom is doing the right thing.’
‘It was not Tom who saw him. It was me – thought I saw him,’ Anne said with a sudden ferocity.
‘Thought?’
‘I, I was upset at Lord Stonehouse’s death and –’
‘Lord Stonehouse dead?’
‘I left. Without Tom and, and … in the coach I must have fallen asleep. I had such a nightmare I thought I saw Richard …’
There was more. Her whole body shook against me. Although it was damp and cold, she was feverishly hot. I began to believe what she was saying, let alone Betsy Cromwell, who murmured to the disgruntled Marshall that Anne had not been the same since the fire. It was true. It was as if all that had happened since then had been wiped away and we were together again. She clung to me as I helped her out to the coach. Betsy Cromwell stood in the porch, anxiously offering us a bed. I thanked her, but said it would be better if I took Anne home. Home! I held her tightly and she buried her head into me.
Only when the door closed behind Betsy Cromwell did she pull away, her body taut, her eyes blazing. ‘It is true? You are involved in a plot to kill the King?’
‘No! Not involved. Not knowingly. But people might think so.’
‘Not knowingly. God help us, that is you, Tom, that is you.’ She leaned forward and kissed me.
36
It was all part of Anne’s feigned madness, an act. Of course it was. But the soft pressure of her lips, th
e trembling of her body, stayed with me as I rode with Scogman to Temple Bar. I exulted in the sanity of her madness, in her quick wit. Even though it was an act, it brought back to me everything we had been to one another.
‘I thought you were over it,’ Scogman said.
‘What?’
‘Love.’
‘I am,’ I said curtly.
‘Ellie thought you might need this.’
Scogman threw me a leather jacket.
Ellie. The jacket smelt of her, a weird mixture of herrings and printer’s ink. My life seemed like the muddle of mean streets we were edging through, which, in the fog, seemed to lead endlessly back into themselves. We only found our way by stopping the horses and listening for the lapping of water. No bells sounded. The weather was too bad for boats. A sudden burst of laughter made us both jump and control our horses as cobbles suddenly gave way to a muddy bank.
I slipped from my horse, signalled to Scogman to tether it with the others, then squelched through the mud and on to the cobbled go-down that ran from a warehouse. Through the sooty smell of the fog I caught a pungent odour of tobacco. Across a yard were the lights of a boathouse where the laughter came from. The oiled paper it had for windows was too greasy and misted to see much more than the edge of my father’s cloak.
‘It’s a damnable thing this has happened,’ someone said. He spoke with an accent I thought I recognised.
‘Not at all,’ my father replied. ‘Couldn’t be better.’
A pebble I had dislodged flew from my boot toe and skidded along the ground. I froze.
‘How so?’ the man asked.
My father disappeared from the window. ‘I can do something I have wanted to do for a long time.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Go into action with my son, not against him.’ The door was pulled open abruptly, blinding me with a yellow light. For a moment I could see nothing and it was all I could do to keep my hand away from my dagger.
‘Hello, Tom.’ My father gave me such a warm smile, I was ashamed of my suspicions. ‘I thought I heard you.’
He held out his hand. I shook it while my eyes adjusted to the light. On a small table, a bottle of Dutch brandy weighed down some charts of the river fluttering in the breeze. A waterman whose enormous hand dwarfed the pot he was holding leaned against the wall, weighing me with his eyes, as he sniffed and took a swallow of brandy.
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