A Masterpiece of Corruption

by L. C. Tyler

I scarcely understand it myself, but as an alternative to having Aminta pursue me through the corridors of Westminster like one of her father’s bloodhounds, I tell her everything, from Sir Michael’s invitation to my meeting with Thurloe.

  ‘So you are not in fact going to kill Cromwell?’ she says.

  ‘You sound disappointed.’

  ‘John, the idea of your killing anyone, other than through boredom during an unusually lengthy summing-up, is improbable.’

  ‘Ripley and Thurloe both commented on my bravery,’ I say. ‘They clearly felt I had a certain devil-may-care recklessness.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Aminta, ‘but I know you better than they. As for Cromwell’s death by anyone’s hand, that would be unfortunate at a time when he may finally be receptive to our petition. It would be very inconvenient if he were to be replaced by some Anabaptist or Fifth Monarchy Man like General Harrison, who might be less sympathetic to the idea of returning Cavalier property. But you say that Thurloe wants you to uncover the true assassin?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But I hope it can be done without causing my father to be arrested.’ Then, remembering my mother’s embarrassment on this point, I add: ‘Of course, my father may be dead …’

  ‘Dead? He was alive and well in Bruges not long ago, when we were there, as I am sure you and your mother are aware. I have no doubt that he is now in Brussels, with the King.’

  ‘You know that much, then?’

  ‘Whatever we Royalist exiles lack, it is certainly not gossip.’

  ‘It might be better if you did not mention it to my stepfather.’

  ‘I’m sure your mother will have told him,’ says Aminta. ‘So, an informant of Ripley’s has told him that he overheard a conversation between your father and Hyde in which Hyde gave him some instructions, including that he should not make contact with the Sealed Knot when he was in London?’

  ‘Yes. That’s about it.’

  ‘Then the Sealed Knot sent your father a letter here, requesting that he should see them after all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, how would they have known to write to him here?’

  ‘They didn’t. They simply mistook me for my father. They sought news of somebody called Grey, newly arrived in London. They discovered I lived here.’

  Aminta considers this for some time.

  ‘And they overheard nothing of the purpose of your father’s mission? Nothing that would be of help to you?’

  ‘No. That is why I still fear he may have been persuaded to attempt to murder Cromwell.’

  ‘But surely your father would not act as an assassin?’

  ‘It is a while since I saw my father. I hope not.’

  ‘I am certain of it. There is nothing of the assassin in your father. My mother might be a whore but she’s no murderer’s whore. And I don’t say that simply out of love and affection for her. I think there is only one assassin that Thurloe needs to worry about.’

  ‘And he will do nothing until the Knot is certain that I have failed,’ I say. ‘We have time on our side.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. Didn’t Thurloe say that one attempt had already been made on Cromwell’s life? The problem with people like Ripley’s hireling is that they take instructions less willingly than you might imagine.’

  I smile. ‘And that is the sort of thing you know about?’

  Aminta ignores this. ‘What do you know about Ripley and Brodrick?’ she asks.

  ‘Very little – just what Thurloe told me.’

  ‘And Sir Richard Willys? The Sealed Knot freely come and go from his premises. Did Thurloe not find that odd?’

  ‘It would apparently be easy enough to gain access to his chambers in his absence,’ I say. ‘A porter could be bribed.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ says Aminta thoughtfully. ‘What really puzzles me is this: Thurloe must have dozens of men at court to ask questions for him. Why does he need you?’

  ‘Because the Knot trusts me?’

  ‘Thurloe has half of the Sealed Knot spying on the other half. He has no shortage of informants – most of them would be well trusted. He could ask any of them to do what you are doing.’

  I suppose this has worried me too. I am being sent to a place that I do not know and where I have few friends to help me. The Knot will be watching my every move. My father might arrive at any moment and inadvertently reveal me as an imposter. Why me?

  ‘Thurloe has confidence in me?’ I suggest.

  ‘Why should he have that?’

  ‘Perhaps he thinks that my abilities …’

  Aminta shakes her head.

  ‘Well, why do you think he has employed me?’

  ‘If you are caught and executed by the Knot, what will Thurloe have lost?’

  ‘Why … nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing at all.’

  We both ponder this.

  ‘Do you know,’ says Aminta, ‘I’m beginning to think you may be rather brave after all.’

  ‘Really?’ I ask. ‘My main aim is to get out of this alive.’

  ‘And with good fortune you will,’ says Aminta, taking my arm affectionately. ‘But if you do meet with the Lord Protector, I should be grateful if you raised the question of Roger’s title and lands with him sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘If I meet him.’

  I am up betimes and hurrying through the dark but already crowded streets towards Westminster. I have not slept well, and only partly because Aminta has taken my bed and left me on a mattress in my sitting room. I find Aminta drifting fragrantly through my dreams. I awake happy, only for the lead to enter my soul again as I roll over and open my eyes to a grey dawn. We shall forever be on opposite sides of that bedroom door. And that is entirely my fault. While I dithered, as my mother would point out, Roger Pole snatched her from under my nose.

  I try to keep her out of my mind as I make my way through early-morning London. A coach driver curses me for almost being run over by him. I hear a shout of ‘Gardy loo!’ just in time to avoid a cascade of filthy dishwater from an upper storey. I try to find a short-cut down an alleyway only to discover that it twists and turns back on itself, ending up in a malodorous dead end. I am almost run over by another coach, which fails to comment on the fact in any way. I step in horse shit. It is, in short, a typical journey across London that deserves no comment or further description.

  A bell is striking eight as I arrive in Whitehall. But at the entrance to the Lord Protector’s offices I am detained by a lackey.

  ‘Mr Grey? I am instructed to inform you that you are required at Hampton Court this morning.’

  ‘Hampton Court?’ I say. Even if I set off now, it will take most of the day on foot, and I do not know the way. The lackey sees my puzzlement and indicates, with a wave of his hand, a coach that is waiting hard by. That then is my transport. I had scarcely noticed it as I ran up the road. It is far from new and painted a dull grey – people will not look admiringly in my direction as I pass by. Still, I observe as I examine it more closely, the leather straps that support the body of the coach are new and shining. The axles also seem to have had recent attention from the grease pot. The iron bindings round the wooden wheels are solid enough too. The horses that are to pull the coach are not well matched for colour, and their reins are of ordinary plain leather, but all four are glossy and powerfully muscled. The driver wears a capacious leather coat that covers his legs completely. He says nothing, but frowns at me as if to hurry me on.

  The lackey too is watching me, waiting for me to board. They could have lent me a horse if I was needed there soon. A coach is kind but a little too generous. Why am I chosen for so much good fortune?

  I cautiously open the door and climb in. The gloom of the day extends to the interior of the carriage and it takes me a few moments to notice that a man is already sitting on one of the seats on the far side. He is wrapped in a cloak and his hat is pulled down over his face. Immediately I sense a trap, but it is too late. The door slams behind me and the dri
ver whips the horses. We are away. I wonder if it is too late to open the door and jump, but we are picking up speed. Anyway, I do not wish to turn my back on the stranger in the cloak. There is something about him that is wholly untrustworthy. I wonder whether to tell him I am armed. It is a lie, but it may make him think twice about attacking me.

  Then he looks up and tilts back his hat.

  I open my mouth to speak but no words come out.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Grey,’ says Cromwell. ‘Now, tell me, how am I to be killed?’

  Cromwell

  ‘Your Highness!’ I say. ‘Forgive me, I did not see you.’

  Cromwell shakes his head. ‘I’m a plain man,’ he says. ‘Addressing me as my Lord will suffice.’

  ‘My Lord …’ I say.

  Cromwell laughs and punches me on the arm. (I wish people would stop doing that.)

  ‘You are clearly a man who loves a title,’ he says. ‘Some Quakers came to petition me last week. They insisted on calling me Friend Oliver – but they meant it well. What should we all call each other under a Republic, Mr Grey? Shall we put aside everything except our baptismal names that we were given before God?’

  ‘That we are a Republic does not eliminate distinctions of rank,’ I say. ‘Nobody could wish all men equal.’

  Cromwell nods. He thinks so too. Cromwell was once overheard to say that he hoped to live to see not a single nobleman in England. But he has not said that for a long time.

  ‘You are right. It is a fine thing, is it not, to be a citizen of a republic, answerable to no petty tyrant king? One hundred, two hundred, three hundred years hence, men of the English Republic as yet unborn will look back on us, just as the Romans of the Golden Age looked back on Brutus and Lucretius. And they will wish that they had had the good fortune to live in our time.’

  ‘The advantages, sir, lie entirely with Republican government,’ I say.

  He frowns. Should I have called him ‘my Lord’ after all? But that is not it.

  ‘Not entirely,’ he says. ‘If I were to be assassinated, what then? What happens to our Republic? A king may sleep easy knowing that, if he dies, his son will succeed without demur. A blow to the monarch, however hard, is no blow to the State. So who will feel it worthwhile to make the attempt on his life? And if he has two sons …’

  I am not sure what he means. Cromwell does indeed have two sons – the amiable Richard and the efficient Henry. But our last King had three. And he is as dead as you could wish. His Highness seems to be rehearsing some argument in front of me – testing ideas that are still half-formed and might yet be re-shaped.

  ‘Could you not argue,’ I say, ‘that a republic is more secure because it has tens of thousands of sons who might succeed? Anyone could rule a republic.’

  ‘Anyone?’

  ‘I am sorry, my Lord, I did not mean—’

  Cromwell laughs. ‘There are many who think they could do it.’

  ‘Then I concede a monarchy is more secure,’ I say cautiously.

  ‘And a secure State is a blessing for the people,’ says Cromwell.

  ‘Indeed,’ I agree quickly. ‘A great blessing.’

  ‘But were I to make myself King … The Roman republic endured four hundred years between the fall of Tarquin and the rise of Augustus. Is our own republic to last a lousy ten? Am I to be Caesar as well as Brutus …’

  Again he stops in mid-sentence. He looks at me keenly, as if I might know how he intends to end it.

  ‘There is also much to admire in the age of Augustus, Your Highness.’

  ‘True,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘There is much to admire.’ This time, he does not correct the way I have addressed him. He has grown more used to this appellation than he believes. I suspect that, most of the time, he scarcely notices what people call him. ‘But Augustus had only to answer to the Roman Senate and people,’ he continues. ‘Senatus Populus Que Romanus. I, on the other hand, have to answer to the Lord God of Israel. I have to divine His purpose. What is that, do you suppose?’

  ‘His purpose must be the good of the English people,’ I say.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘He wishes us well above all things. We are His Chosen People. He is on our side. How else would we have defeated the Scots at Dunbar?’

  I had assumed the Scots had simply been out-gunned, but Cromwell was there and I was not. He’d know.

  He gazes out of the window for a while. We are now passing through the suburbs of London. Some snow still lies by the sides of the road and on the roofs of houses. We see the same road and the same roofs, but we see them differently. I am not charged with the safety of their occupants. Perhaps in a moment he will speak again but in the meantime, there is something almost sacred about the silence that now reigns. Cromwell is deciding the fate of the nation. The coach continues to roll along on its well-oiled wheels, while Cromwell decides whether he wants to be King. Soon, I think, we shall be at Chelsea. This is not the fastest way, but that is the point; the fastest way is the way others will expect him to travel.

  He turns back to me. ‘We make good time,’ he says.

  ‘Do you always travel like this – with no guard?’ I ask. For it strikes me that we are alone on the muddy road. At any point we may have to slow as the horses wade through the mire and melting snow. Time enough then for a man to fire a ball through the open window.

  ‘A coach with a guard of twenty dragoons left Westminster ten minutes before us. The blinds were drawn and the troopers had instructions not to disturb me because I was suffering from an ague and would sleep. If the coach is attacked, I fear they may feel obliged to defend it with their lives, but it would be a prescient assassin who let that ostentatious crowd thunder past and waited to attack this modest and wholly innocent carriage.’

  ‘But if they did …’

  Cromwell reaches into a pocket in the door and pulls out a pistol.

  ‘Do you know how to use one of these?’ he asks.

  ‘In principle,’ I say.

  ‘Then, should we be attacked, leave me to do the fighting. If by some ill chance I am shot and close to death – and I shall inform you very clearly if that is the case – there is a second pistol in the pocket of the other door. Aim it at somebody close by and pull the trigger. Use both hands, for these guns kick like a mule. Or surrender and take your chance.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  I notice that he told me of the second pistol only once I had admitted that I had no idea how to use it. I also notice that he still holds the first pistol in his hands, stroking the grey, polished barrel. He takes no risks with strangers, even ones that are vouched for by the head of his secret service.

  ‘Now,’ says Cromwell, ‘let us return to my first question: if I get safely to Hampton Court, how am I to die?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I say. ‘Only that there is a plot by somebody close to you.’

  He smiles. I wonder if he is close to anyone now: Ireton is dead. Lambert and Fairfax are estranged. His circle of friends grows smaller and smaller.

  ‘But you don’t know who?’

  ‘The Sealed Knot are behind it.’

  ‘They like to think they are behind everything. You have no more information than that?’

  ‘Do you know who it might be?’ I ask.

  ‘I have upset General Lambert,’ he says. ‘He feels slighted. But I have also upset a great number of other generals. General Fairfax feels that I have treated his new son-in-law unfairly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I have ordered his detention.’

  ‘And they would kill you for that?’

  ‘No. Not for that. But if they view me as Caesar …’

  ‘… encompassing your death would be a noble act?’

  ‘A noble act? That is how you see it? These words are treason, Mr Grey. They will send you to the gallows!’

  ‘No, my Lord!’ I exclaim. ‘I intended to give no offence.’

  ‘I jest, Mr Grey,’ says Cromwell, as if I have disappointed him g
reatly. ‘I merely jest. And I wouldn’t hang you just as a joke. Or probably not.’

  I swallow hard. It is easy, it would seem, to become a traitor. I am not sure whether I prefer Cromwell’s humour or Thurloe’s lack of it.

  ‘But of course,’ I say. ‘A jest. But surely neither my Lord Fairfax nor my Lord Lambert would contemplate your murder? I mean, however much you had offended them, they would not strike the blow themselves?’

  ‘I think not. But if they were plotting with the Sealed Knot to remove me – if they were aiding some assassin hired by Sir Edward Hyde or recruited by the leaders of the Knot here in London … They know me well. They have, after a fashion, access that other men do not. As this man Ripley said to you, it has to be somebody with access to me, somebody whom I would not suspect.’

  ‘But there must be many who have such access?’

  ‘Those who wish me dead are too many to name. Those who could get close enough are fewer. It won’t be Thurloe anyway. He knows which side his bread is buttered on. And Thurloe says I may trust you. He says you are honest.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It wasn’t a compliment. Not from him. And you need not suspect my doctor. If he was going to kill me deliberately, he could have done so years ago. I expect him to kill me eventually in the normal course of his ministrations, but not yet. And you may trust my son Henry because he knows he still lacks the experience to rule. And you may trust Richard because he loves hunting and good company and doing nothing – and he knows he will have little of that if he succeeds me.’

  ‘Is there anyone else whom we may trust?’

  Cromwell shakes his head again. ‘I tell others that I trust them,’ he says. ‘I tell them and they believe me.’ He smiles at me as if he had made some great joke. I think he trusts nobody at all. Perhaps not even Thurloe. Certainly not me.

  ‘It is true. I could stab you now,’ I say.

  ‘If you wish.’ He carefully places the pistol back in its holster and opens his arm wide, as if inviting me to strike.

  ‘But of course,’ I say. ‘You wear armour under that cloak.’

  ‘Ah, that old lie,’ he says. ‘Punch me in the chest and prove if that is true!’