A Masterpiece of Corruption

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘So you do not?’

  ‘Of course not. Punch me and see for yourself. Do not fear the consequences: I order you to do it.’

  I draw back my fist and land what I hope is not too hard a blow at his chest. Then I double up in pain. I think I have bruised every finger.

  ‘Ha!’ he says. ‘Thurloe was right. That was bravely done but, as an honest man yourself, you are far too trusting. It is fortunate that was a feeble lawyer’s punch. If you were a soldier you would have broken your hand.’

  ‘So you do wear armour,’ I say.

  ‘But not on my back,’ he says. ‘Too uncomfortable for travelling. Perhaps you would like to punch me there? This time I may be telling the truth.’

  ‘Thank you, but no,’ I say, rubbing my hand. ‘I am happy to trust the word of Brutus.’

  For a while we travel in silence, broken only by the occasional chuckle from Cromwell as he recalls either my discomfort or some particularly amusing incident from the Battle of Dunbar. Then he leans forward in his seat.

  ‘The Royalists have faith in you, Mr Grey,’ he says. ‘Thurloe thinks their man, whoever it is, will approach you soon. Perhaps he will. You were told how disappointed he was not to share in the glory. I have faith in you too. You are, as Thurloe says, honest and frank. I think men will tell you things because they trust you. So talk to the other clerks. See what gossip there is. Talk to my doctor too. He’s called Bate – George Bate. He was the late King’s physician, but he’s mine now. A bit like Hampton Court in that respect. A bit like the whole country in fact.’

  Again he looks out of the window. We have passed through Chelsea and must be close to Hammersmith, though I do not know these roads well.

  ‘Here we are,’ he announces suddenly.

  I notice we are approaching a jetty and that a boat is moored to it. ‘We continue by river?’ I ask. That we should switch to a boat is entirely consistent with Cromwell’s way of travelling. It will be faster by water and the empty coach will doubtless continue, a second decoy.

  ‘No,’ says Cromwell. ‘I get out here. You will remain in the coach. Remember where the pistols are if you are waylaid. Point them and tell your attackers to desist. Your voice carries authority, Mr Grey, though perhaps you do not yet realise it. You may be a Judge one day, if you live long enough.’

  ‘But …’ I say.

  Cromwell laughs again. ‘You think I send you into a trap? But you are supposed to be a junior clerk in the service of Mr Milton. It would look odd if you arrived in the same boat as the Lord Protector, would it not? Or at least, your new Royalist friends might start to wonder how you have made such progress and, more to the point, why you have not already taken the opportunity to kill me. From here you are safer alone. Your driver will slip quietly into Hampton Court shortly after the arrival of the first coach. You will disembark equally quietly and find the chamber that has been allocated to you. You will tell people, if they ask, that Mr Milton has instructed you to attend him here, but you do not know when he will arrive. I will send for you again if I need you. In the meantime, you will be warmer in the coach than I shall be on the river.’

  And he is gone, striding down to the narrow wooden jetty. I look at the set of his cloak on his back. I see clearly that he wears no armour there. My driver waits long enough to watch him board the small boat and then, without consulting me in any way, whips the horses into a smart canter.

  I would enjoy telling Aminta of my journey with Cromwell, but it may be as well not to say anything to her for the moment because, it now occurs to me, I have spent some time in his company without once raising the question of Roger Pole’s title and lands, and I feel that she will think I should have cleared that up before proceeding to discuss the advantages of Republican government.

  I sink back into the leather seat and, my hand still throbbing gently, allow the coach to carry me onwards towards Hampton Court. It is more than two hours before the great red-brick building emerges from the river mist that hangs around it, first as a vague shadow, then a dull brown stain, then a mass of fantastical turrets and walls. Finally we reach the two long rows of heraldic beasts between which we must pass before gaining admission through the rose-brick gateway. Somewhere on the other side is Dr Bate, once the royal physician, now Cromwell’s, and the first man I must talk to if Cromwell and I are to stay alive for very long.

  Dr Bate

  Dr Bate is a man of medium height, plump and not entirely unhappy with the way that things have gone. He has outlasted his old master and gained a new one. He has good financial and professional reasons for keeping this one alive as long as he can.

  We are walking together along a path by the Thames in the fast-fading light. Away to our left stretches a knot garden, its carefully pruned lines of box running north to south and east to west in a strict rectilinear pattern. Here and there, bedraggled lavender peeps over the top of the low hedging. Beyond is the long, crenellated red-brick wall of the Palace, softened by the mist and glowing with blurred candlelight from its many windows. On our right, where yellow vapour clings to the river, the countryside begins. The Thames here flows smoothly and darkly. The opposite shore, perhaps a hundred yards away, can be made out, but only just. Beyond this dark brown streak of riverbank and the skeletal willows balanced on it, there is nothing visible. We are several centuries away from London. The constant stink of sea coal is absent, as is the incessant calling of tradesmen and the rumble of their carts. The smells and sounds here are the ones that I grew up with in rural Essex. The bells I hear are from a single church, far across the water, not a multitude on every hand with parish crammed onto parish.

  Dr Bate and I have walked some way. I check again that we are completely alone.

  ‘His Highness recommended that I should seek your counsel,’ I say. ‘As his doctor, you know him as well as any man …’

  Bate looks over his shoulder before replying. ‘I know him better than he knows himself, for I see beneath his skin and into the very guts of the man. He is growing older than he believes. His health has not been good. That is no secret.’

  I nod.

  ‘I also know him well enough, Mr Grey, to be sure that he has asked you to sound me out on my loyalty.’

  ‘I must protest he did no such thing.’

  Bate laughs. He knows Cromwell. ‘He trusts nobody, Mr Grey. We all spy on each other. It is more than likely he will ask me tomorrow if you are to be relied upon. But I shall do my best to reassure you – and him. I was informed you were coming. I think we need to work together. I gather there is yet another plot?’

  ‘Is that what His Highness told you?’

  ‘No. But there is always another plot. You look surprised. Let me tell you of a few of them. Last year, one Thomas Gardiner was arrested in Whitehall with two loaded pistols, for which he could not account to the satisfaction of the magistrates. He claimed he always carried pistols and that his question to a passer-by about whether the Lord Protector wore armour was entirely innocent. But a fellow lodger said he’d always been suspicious of him, which was regarded as proof enough of treason in these times. Before Gardiner there was Venner and before Venner there was Miles Sindercombe – that didn’t go so well for Thurloe.’

  ‘Why for Thurloe especially?’

  ‘Because the authorities were slow to act and Thurloe was blamed for it. Sindercombe shouldn’t have got close to succeeding. First he hired a shop in King Street from which he was going to fire on the Lord Protector as he passed. But then he discovered he’d hired a shop without a back door – no escape route. So he dropped that idea. Then he recruited one of the Lord Protector’s own Life Guards – Toupe, he was called – who was to help him attack Cromwell when he changed from his horse to his coach, but that came to nothing either. Then he hired another house at Hammersmith – you’ll have driven past it today. He had acquired a great gun from Flanders that could fire twelve bullets at a time. Twelve! I mean, one of them would have found its target. But in the end he went for
setting fire to the chapel at the Palace of Westminster in the hope that the whole thing would burn down. A guard smelled the burning fuse and put it out. Another three hours and there might have been quite a nasty fire, according to Thurloe …’

  ‘A three-hour fuse?’

  ‘Assuming it hadn’t already been burning for two, in which case it was a five-hour fuse.’

  ‘It had to be discovered,’ I say. ‘It would be madness or incompetence to set a fuse that long.’

  ‘Mr Thurloe was doubtful about Sindercombe from the very beginning because – and there is no polite way to say this – Sindercombe appears to have been a complete idiot. When Thurloe was first told – this was in Sindercombe’s King Street days – he simply advised his informant to write to Brussels for further information.’

  ‘Thurloe didn’t believe in it, then?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And from what you say, nor do you?’

  ‘You are a wise and learned man, Mr Grey. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Why would anyone hire a shop without checking whether it had a back door, if that was its most important feature? And why set fire to the chapel on the off-chance that it would spread to the rest of the Palace and that the one person who wouldn’t escape would be the Lord Protector, who would certainly have had a guard at his door who would have hustled him out on smelling the first whiff of smoke?’

  ‘And the Lord Protector thought so too?’

  ‘You would have thought that, as another wise and learned man, he would have done so, but that was not the case. Cromwell was furious with Thurloe. I’ve never seen him so cross. That’s why I say, whatever Thurloe’s plan was, it didn’t go quite as he intended.’

  ‘What happened to Sindercombe?’

  ‘Thurloe interviewed him personally. Nobody else was allowed to go near him. He refused to talk, they say, but Toupe didn’t. Toupe was quite helpful. Sindercombe was found dead in his cell on the morning he was to be executed. What a shame he never got to make a final speech on the gallows.’

  ‘And Toupe? Was he executed?’

  ‘He was working for Thurloe when I last heard. Funny old world, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you saying that Thurloe had Sindercombe killed?’

  ‘I’m told you are a lawyer. What do you think?’

  ‘I think I’d like to hear all of the evidence before I made up my mind.’

  ‘I doubt if anyone will ever get to hear that. Of course, Thurloe can’t arrest people until they have done something – which means he often has to leave them until they have lit the fuse – or he has to get somebody to light it for them. I’m pleased my own job is so much simpler. You know where you are with a leech.’

  ‘But you don’t know who might be plotting the Lord Protector’s death now?’

  ‘You need not question my leeches,’ says Bate. ‘I’m happy to answer for them. Otherwise the whole court is open to your scrutiny, Mr Grey.’

  ‘Did you know that somebody had tried to cut His Highness’s saddle girth?’

  ‘I’d heard. He could have had an unpleasant fall. What you have to understand, Mr Grey, is that most of the plots we have uncovered are so ill-conceived and futile that they are scarcely worth Mr Thurloe’s notice. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the malign and the merely unfortunate. Undetectable murder requires real skill and application. Somebody who’s not afraid to use a knife.’

  ‘Do you know a Sir Michael de Ripley? Or a Mr Allen Brodrick?’

  Bate’s attention seems to be wandering. He is looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Ripley? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do you know who Sir Richard Willys might be?’

  Bate shakes his head. I have perhaps tried his patience too far. Then he says: ‘Willys? A common enough name. But Sir Richard Willys … no, I don’t think I have ever met him.’

  ‘He practises law in London.’

  ‘Does he? Then you’d know him better than I.’ Bate suddenly seems anxious to leave. He is finding this tedious. Or perhaps it is simply the coldness of the evening. ‘I am acquainted with few baronets, I am afraid. As a mere doctor of medicine I do not move in such elevated company.’

  ‘Not in elevated company? You are close to the Lord Protector himself.’

  ‘That is another matter entirely. Good evening to you, Mr Grey. I think that must conclude our discussion for the moment, but I am at your service if you need me again.’

  I am left with the feeling that Bate has not told me everything. I believe he does know Willys. He certainly knows he is a baronet, and I did not give him that information. But what I am to make of that is for the moment uncertain.

  I realise it would be better to continue such thoughts in a different place. One where nobody can creep up on me in the mist. In the knot garden I can no longer make out the individual rows. Above me, the moon is no more than a pale yellow glow behind the gloomy clouds. It provides little comfort. I know I should have already returned to the safety of the Palace, whose lights still flicker in the distance. Then I hear a footstep behind me, then another, then a gentle cough. I turn suddenly.

  It is Ripley.

  Sir Michael de Ripley

  ‘Well met, Mr Cardinal,’ he says.

  ‘Good evening, Sir Michael,’ I reply.

  Where has he been during my recent conversation? Which words did he hear and which were blown away on the evening breeze? Did Dr Bate see him before I did? Bate certainly left quickly enough.

  ‘You have obtained a post?’ he asks.

  ‘Clerk to Mr Milton,’ I say.

  Ripley whistles through his teeth. ‘To gain such a post is a masterstroke – obscure yet close enough to Cromwell. You have exceeded my hopes. Well done, Mr Cardinal.’

  I try to look modest, which is not difficult since the appointment was none of my work. Still, nobody is likely to tell Ripley if I don’t.

  ‘And you travelled here so quickly,’ he purrs. ‘Achilles himself would not have overtaken you this morning. Our man says that you were there one moment, in the middle of Whitehall, and gone the next.’

  I am not deceived by these velvet tones. There is something that Ripley does not like.

  ‘There was a carriage travelling empty to Hampton Court,’ I say. ‘I was able to obtain a seat in it.’

  ‘Completely empty? How convenient.’

  ‘I was fortunate. It was a decoy, to divert attention from Cromwell’s own coach.’

  It is inconceivable that the Sealed Knot is unaware that such things are done, and a good lie is often built on a little truth.

  ‘That would have involved some danger to you – if the coach had been attacked, I mean.’

  I smile. Soon laughing in the face of danger may be second nature to me. But smiling is a start.

  Ripley ignores this. I am not commended on my bravery. ‘It was just you in the coach then?’

  Would Ripley’s informant have seen Cromwell? I have no idea. I certainly didn’t see him until I boarded. I am pleased that, in the dark of this Hampton Court evening, Ripley cannot see my expression.

  ‘Nobody else needed to travel then,’ I say.

  ‘Again, how very convenient. A whole carriage to yourself. Your cousin has influence indeed. And you came straight here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You stopped nowhere?’

  ‘The driver stopped somewhere near Hammersmith,’ I say. ‘A problem with the reins, I think. But we did not tarry long.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Not for long.’

  Close by where we are standing, the Thames still flows silently by. The dark surface looks smooth and untroubled but many currents doubtless contend in its muddy depths.

  ‘You are fortunate indeed,’ says Ripley. ‘We must hope your luck continues.’

  ‘Is there any reason why it should not?’

  Ripley smiles as if I have made some choice jest. ‘Was Dr Bate advising you on which poison to use?’

  ‘No,’ I s
ay truthfully. ‘Dr Bate has no knowledge of my real purpose here. We spoke in general terms of threats to His Highness’s life.’

  ‘There’s no need to call that upstart farmer any sort of Highness in my hearing,’ says Ripley. ‘He’s not the Duke of York or the Duke of Gloucester. He’s not even one of His Majesty’s royal bastards. He’s no prince of any description – unless he has changed his mind about accepting the crown?’

  ‘If he has, he’s said nothing to me about it.’

  I smile but this time Ripley does not. ‘You’ve spoken to Cromwell?’ he says.

  ‘Don’t you think I’d tell you if I had?’ I say.

  Ripley’s expression is difficult to gauge in this light. But he is not happy.

  ‘So it was only you in the carriage?’ he says again.

  ‘And the driver,’ I say.

  ‘And the horses, presumably.’

  ‘Yes. Four, though not well matched.’

  Ripley can press me as many times as he wishes and employ as much sarcasm as he likes. All I have to do is to repeat that I was alone in the coach. He cannot prove otherwise – unless the coachman is in the pay of the Sealed Knot. That cannot be ruled out. In which case I’m as good as dead anyway.

  Ripley looks towards the river. It’s close enough that you could throw something from here and it would land in the water. Not something as big as a man, of course. You’d need to stab him first and then drag his body ten yards or so and finally give it a good push as it teetered on the edge, then flopped into the murky stream, drifting slowly away towards Putney, leaving a thin trail of watery blood. But it wouldn’t take long. And you wouldn’t hear the splash. It’s really much more easily done than Dr Bate implied.

  ‘Can I be honest with you?’ he asks.

  It’s not a question that you can really answer ‘no’ to.

  ‘If you would do me that honour,’ I say.

  ‘Brodrick thinks you’re a scurvy piece of shit,’ says Ripley.

  A chill wind blows across the back of my neck.