The King's Return: (Thomas Hill 3) (Thomas Hill Novels)

by Andrew Swanston

  ‘Is that it, Thomas?’ asked Charles. ‘Nine years, and that’s really all you have to report? No affairs of the heart, no literary triumphs, no narrow escapes from the jaws of death?’

  ‘None. I fear that I’m really the dullest of men.’

  Mary refilled his glass. ‘Nonsense, Thomas. No gentleman who has saved my life twice could possibly be dull.’

  Thomas smiled. ‘You returned the favour, Mary, as I recall.’ He paused. ‘And what of Barbados? Does it still grow rich from its sugar?’

  ‘Much of it does,’ replied Charles. ‘We’ve been fortunate, although not as fortunate as some. You remember James Drax, I expect. His estate is now over a thousand acres and he makes as much from trading slaves as he does from his sugar. Extraordinary that an island with a population of no more than a tenth the size of London’s can generate such prosperity.’

  ‘And how is Adam, Mary?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘My brother is well. Fat and wealthy, and still unmarried. He did not care to leave the estate for the voyage. And he takes his responsibilities as a member of the Governor’s Council terribly seriously.’

  Once the dam had broken, conversation flowed freely and they talked until the evening of Barbados and London, sugar and land, king and Parliament, peace and war.

  Having been taken to Barbados by her brother at the age of twelve, Mary had never before visited London. She had spent the three weeks since their arrival for the coronation entertaining and being entertained.

  ‘I do so love the theatre,’ she declared. ‘Mr Moone was wonderful in The Traitor and so was Mr Betterton in The Bondman. Of course we have nothing like it at home. I would go to a new performance every night if Charles would escort me but, alas, the theatre is not to his taste.’

  ‘I can’t see the sense in boys pretending to be women. A fellow can hardly admire Ophelia’s bosom if she hasn’t got one. It was bad enough Mary dressing as a boy on the ship.’

  Thomas raised an eyebrow. ‘Mary, why did you dress as a boy on the ship? Or would you rather not tell me?’

  ‘All the passengers had to put on a little entertainment. I wrote a short play. Charles played my father and I his prodigal son. It went down very well.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll put on a second performance in London. I’d very much like to see Charles on the stage.’

  ‘Certainly not. Once was enough.’ Charles sounded horrified at the idea.

  Mary turned to Thomas. ‘Would you escort me to the theatre, Thomas? The Changeling is playing in Salisbury Court. I should like to see it.’

  ‘Of course, my dear. When would you like to go?’

  ‘Go on Thursday next,’ suggested Charles. ‘I am dining with Chandle Stoner. He wants to tell me how well our investment is doing.’

  ‘Then that’s settled. The theatre for us, Thomas, and business for Charles. Perfect.’

  ‘By the way,’ went on Charles, ‘I have invited Chandle and his sister to join us for dinner after the coronation.’

  ‘His sister? I did not know he had one.’

  ‘Neither did I. I gather Louise is married to a Frenchman and lives in Paris. She is in London for the coronation and Chandle asked if she might accompany him. I could hardly say no.’

  ‘Of course not. No doubt she is charming.’ Mary turned to Thomas. ‘Did I mention that we are giving a small dinner party after the coronation? Joseph Williamson, who has arranged our seats in the Abbey, is coming, and his cousin Madeleine Stewart. And now Chandle Stoner and his sister. I do hope you will join us, Thomas.’

  Thomas hesitated. Dinner with four strangers was not all that appealing but Mary might be offended if he made an excuse. ‘Of course. I should be delighted.’

  ‘Excellent. Joseph is an old friend of Charles. Not a great conversationalist but a man of influence. He has the ear of the king. I think you’ll find him interesting.’

  ‘I am sure I shall. And shall I find Miss Stewart interesting?’

  Charles stirred himself. ‘You might, Thomas, you might.’

  CHAPTER 3

  THE EIGHT YEARS since the new king had fled to France had been a strange time. While Thomas had been quietly establishing his school in Romsey, there had been no monarch, and for some of the time no Parliament, when the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, and his Council had ruled the land. By dissolving Parliament, the great republican had alienated some of his staunchest supporters, and had made himself doubly unpopular by introducing new taxes to finance his war with Spain and appointing major-generals to collect them. Not only that, but he had allowed himself to be addressed as ‘Your Highness’.

  Thankfully, Oliver’s successor, his son Richard, had quickly proved himself worthy of his nickname ‘Tumbledown Dick’ and had been bullied out of power and out of the country after a few months of dithering incompetence. But now everything had changed again. The new king would take his revenge on his father’s enemies and then, God willing, the country would begin to smile again.

  As if to reinforce this hope, St George’s Day, 23 April 1661, had been chosen as the day of the coronation, and high up in the scaffold built for the occasion at the north end of Westminster Abbey Thomas Hill and Charles and Mary Carrington watched Charles II being crowned King of England and Ireland. It was a long ceremony, very long, and Thomas’s attention at times wandered. He found himself comparing the day to the one just over twelve years earlier when he had heard the news of the execution of the king’s father while he was indentured in Barbados. On that day, he had been dragged to the Mermaid Inn in Oistins to hear Colonel James Drax announce the king’s death and had seen and heard the landowners arguing about what the news would mean for them. It had been a loud, rough meeting, fuelled by ale and rum, which had ended for his tormentors, the Gibbes brothers, when Charles Carrington had deposited both of them on the floor with no more than an outstretched leg and a helping hand. Thomas smiled. Even now, he enjoyed the memory.

  Westminster Abbey was rather different. As indeed was the new king. Unlike his limping, stammering, charmless father, the tall man in blue and gold who strode up the red carpet that ran the length of the aisle to a raised throne gave every appearance of being outgoing, relaxed and cheerful. The royal smile looked genuine enough, at least from where Thomas sat, as did the delight of the people in their new monarch. Like many, they had arrived at the Abbey to take their seats in the early hours of the morning. By the time the ceremony finished they had been sitting there with only occasional breaks for more than twelve hours. They watched courtiers, officials, lords, ladies, bishops and musicians proudly playing their parts in the spectacle, they listened while the king knelt to take the oaths and held their breath when asked if they knew of any reason why Charles Stuart should not be proclaimed King of England.

  Thomas strained to see the Duchess of York’s gown, sewn and embroidered by Lucy. He was too far away really to appreciate it, and consoled himself with the thought that it would certainly be more beautiful than the duchess herself. The daughter of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hyde, was not renowned for her looks.

  When at last it was over, they made their way through the cheering crowds outside the Abbey – Thomas guessed at ten thousand people – and hurried back to Piccadilly, while the king and his bishops and lords set about the feast laid out for them in Westminster Hall. Thomas had seen no sign of any demonstration against the new king. The die-hard Puritans and non-conformists must have wisely stayed at home.

  ‘Well, Thomas, what did you make of it?’ asked Mary, on their way back.

  ‘I found it impressive, if a little long.’

  ‘I do agree. Still, all those fiddlers will be able to tell their grandchildren about the day they played at the king’s coronation.’

  ‘Let us hope that he proves a more successful king than his father,’ said Charles. ‘Another war we do not need, nor indeed wars against the French or the Dutch or anyone else. Peace and prosperity are what we need now.’

  Thomas descended the Carringtons’ stai
rcase for dinner as their long-case clock struck six and an enormous clap of thunder erupted overhead. The gods, it seemed, having blessed the day of the coronation with fine weather, were about to demonstrate their impartiality with a huge storm. He heard laughter from the library. A guest must have arrived early. The library door opened and Charles emerged, grinning broadly, his arm around the guest’s shoulders.

  ‘Well, Chandle, things seem to be going splendidly. Well done indeed.’ Charles sounded delighted. He looked up and saw Thomas. ‘Ah, Thomas, perfect timing. Allow me to introduce my good friend Chandle Stoner. Chandle, this is Thomas Hill, about whom I have told you.’

  Stoner was a man of medium height, with an abundance of black hair, a sharp nose and a neat pointed beard. Thomas noted his dress – silk shirt and trousers and a short velvet coat embroidered with ribbons, all well in keeping with the spirit of the day – and wondered if he might himself be rather underdressed for the occasion. He had thought that a white shirt with black breeches and silk stockings would suffice.

  Stoner bowed low and smiled widely. ‘Mr Hill, a pleasure. Charles has indeed told me much about you and I look forward to hearing more.’

  Thomas returned the compliment. ‘And he has spoken highly of you, sir. I trust we shall soon be well acquainted.’

  Charles was in a jovial mood. ‘Excellent, excellent. Come into the drawing room, gentlemen, and let us take a glass while we wait for the other guests. Mary has taken Louise upstairs to attend to her hair. They will be down shortly.’

  Fortified by Charles’s French brandy, the three men talked amiably while they waited. They spoke of the new feeling of hope in London, theatres and taverns reopening, dancing no longer banned, and their new king. They agreed that Charles II showed none of the debilitating lack of confidence of his father and shared the hope that he would soon tire of bloody reprisals. They were optimistic for the future. With Charles in such good humour and Stoner a man of easy charm and wit, conversation flowed and Thomas found himself warming to his fellow guest.

  Mary and Louise soon appeared. They could hardly have been more different. While Mary was as striking as ever in pale blue silk and silver slippers, Louise was a plain woman, a little plump, with mousey brown hair and a sallow complexion. Her dress and shoes matched the colour of her hair. When Mary introduced her as Chandle’s sister, Madame Louise d’Entrevaux, Thomas bowed and took the proffered hand with a polite ‘Enchanté, madame.’ He was favoured in return with the thinnest of smiles and a slight inclination of the head. On first acquaintance it was hard to believe that she was Chandle Stoner’s sister.

  When the other two guests arrived, they were both a little bedraggled by the rain now beating down, which must surely have put paid to the fireworks. Joseph Williamson was no more than thirty, tall, with dark eyes and thick eyebrows. He wore a long black wig to his shoulders and a fashionably long silk coat over his shirt. An indoor man, thought Thomas; probably never sits on a horse and seldom sees the sun. It took him a while to realize that Williamson’s left eye did not move as it should, which gave him a disarming way of peering at people. He greeted Thomas and Stoner courteously enough but of Stoner’s natural charm he too had none.

  No one could have said the same about his cousin Madeleine Stewart. One look at her and Thomas knew at once what Mary was up to. Slim, with a face too angular to be conventionally pretty – it would take a Rembrandt to do justice to its planes – thick brown hair piled high on her head, china-blue eyes and modestly dressed in cream and pink, Madeleine Stewart would have turned heads in the grandest of circles. Only the fine smile lines at her eyes suggested her age as more than twenty. When she offered her hand to Thomas, she looked directly into his eyes and said something about the pleasure of meeting Mary’s brave friend at last. Thomas’s educated nose caught the fragrance of roses. He managed a feeble bow.

  At dinner Chandle Stoner dominated the conversation. He alluded once to his ‘dear late wife’, but offered no information about her. He described himself as a financier and philanthropist and spoke earnestly of the importance of integrity and discretion in business. He was clever and witty, if a little self-important, and vague on what exactly he financed or to whom he was philanthropic. Charles clearly held him in high esteem and when he rose to propose a toast to all those present and ‘even greater prosperity’, it was to Stoner that he raised his glass.

  Stoner’s plain sister, however, made no effort to contribute, confining her conversation to monosyllabic replies to Charles’s gallant efforts to draw her out. She said only that she lived in Paris and was married to a Doctor of Theology at the Collège de Sorbonne. Thomas was lucky that Joseph Williamson sat between them, although he too was no Ben Jonson. Other than to confide that he worked in the office of the secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas, on matters of security, Williamson too revealed little about himself. It was only when Mary mentioned Thomas’s skill with codes and ciphers that he became animated. He asked how Thomas had come to have an interest in such matters and what he knew about them. Thomas allowed himself to be drawn on his methods of decrypting intercepted parliamentary despatches when with the late king at Oxford and how he had found a way to break the Vigenère square. And at Mary’s prompting, he confessed to having used his knowledge to decipher a despatch from Sir George Ayscue to Colonel Thomas Modyford, which alerted the governor of Barbados, Lord Willoughby, to Modyford’s intention to desert the cause of the king and join Ayscue’s invading force.

  He did not mention that in the one case he had prevented the queen and her unborn child from being captured and held to ransom by Parliament or that in the other he had helped avert what would have been a catastrophic battle on a small island. Williamson listened carefully, then asked about the latest developments in cryptography and whether Thomas had retained his interest in it. When Thomas assured him that ‘once a cryptographer, always a cryptographer’, he nodded wisely.

  On the other side of the table Stoner turned his charm on Madeleine Stewart, and in between answering a question from Williamson on the analysis of the relative frequencies with which letters of the alphabet typically appear and another on the use of mis-spellings and nulls, Thomas wished that she would stop smiling at the man and turn her attention to him. Why had Mary placed him beside the educated but dull Williamson and not the lovely Miss Stewart? Was it one of her tricks or had he been mistaken? Cruel woman. He would have words with her later.

  After an eel and oyster pie and an enormous shoulder of mutton, the diners talked of rising levels of crime in the city. Despite a general mood of relief at the end of the dreary republic, the news sheets were full of reports of robberies, housebreakings and assaults. And the brutal murders of Matthew Smith and Sir Montford Babb, both respectable gentlemen, had caused widespread alarm in coffee shops and salons all over town.

  ‘I know Lady Babb,’ said Madeleine. ‘Montford was such a kind man. It was a dreadful thing.’

  ‘It certainly was, my dear,’ agreed Mary. ‘An elderly gentleman attacked, robbed and killed in the street, and all for the contents of his purse. Let us pray it is not a sign of things to come or we shall be wishing for Cromwell to return from his grave to restore order.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Charles, ‘though that part of the city, so I’m told, is singularly nasty. I can’t imagine what either of the victims was doing there.’ He looked around the table. ‘Did you know them, Joseph?’

  ‘I knew Smith.’

  ‘I knew Sir Montford,’ said Thomas. ‘The Babbs once lived near Winchester. The murders were foul affairs, by the sound of them. What about you, Chandle?’

  Stoner stroked his beard. ‘I may have met them. It’s hard to be sure. One meets so many people in the course of business. In any event, I don’t remember them. The crimes were robberies, weren’t they?’

  ‘The coroner thinks so,’ replied Williamson, ‘although the man’s about as much use as a piss-pot with a hole in it, so I doubt we’ll ever know.’

  Mar
y pretended to be shocked. ‘Really, Joseph, it’s not like you to say such a thing. Can he be that bad?’

  ‘He can. Seymour Manners has always been incompetent. Now he’s a hopeless drunk as well.’

  ‘Don’t you think they were robberies, Joseph?’ asked Charles.

  ‘I daresay they were, and by the same man. Both found in Pudding Lane and both with their throats cut. But if there was some other motive for either of them, the murderer would still have taken his victim’s purse, just to make it look like a robbery. That wouldn’t have occurred to Manners.’

  Thomas heard something in Williamson’s voice that hinted at more than he was saying. He was searching for the right words to enquire further without giving offence, when Stoner chimed in.

  ‘Oh, come now, sir, Manners cannot be that bad, and in Pudding Lane after dark what motive could there be other than robbery? Why Smith or Babb was there I could not begin to guess, but robbery it most certainly was.’

  They were about to tackle a large cheesecake and an even larger bowl of fruit when Smythe came in carrying a letter on a silver tray. He looked embarrassed. ‘Excuse me, Mr Carrington, this letter has just arrived for Mr Williamson. I was reluctant to interrupt you but the messenger said it was most urgent.’

  ‘Then you had better give it to Mr Williamson,’ replied Charles with a frown.

  Williamson broke the seal and unrolled the letter. ‘My apologies, Mary. I always let the duty clerk know where I am in case of some emergency. He would not have sent this unless it was important.’

  ‘We quite understand,’ she replied, with the tiniest hint of disapproval.

  He read the letter quickly. ‘You must forgive me. There has been another murder. A man named John Winter who worked for me. I must go at once.’

  All four men were on their feet. Charles spoke first. ‘Smythe will fetch your carriage to the front door, Joseph.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Madeleine. ‘Another murder. And of one of your own men. How dreadful.’