‘It might be wise,’ says Chettle. ‘Tell him quietly that his attitude is noted.’ Chettle leans forward in his chair and speaks softly, despite the heavy walls and thick oak door between the two of them and the rest of the world. ‘The estates of clear royalists are being sequestered.’
‘My father is not a royalist.’
‘Is he not? He is not a supporter of Parliament. The time in which neutrality was an option seems to me to have long passed. I have said enough, Ned. I have a fondness for your family, else I would not have spoken.’
Ned thanks him, his thoughts spinning. He does not care about the money, or the house. They are material trappings. A pure soul is above covetousness. What does William Gouge call it? ‘A galling sin, which works in continual vexation.’ And yet. Have I not always assumed that I will be rich? Ned wonders. That it will all pass to me, and my soul will be untainted by the pursuit of riches, simply because they will shower on me anyway? Oh Lord, he thinks. Every day you find me more unworthy.
Into his confused thoughts comes Chettle’s voice again, this time loud and a little too careless. ‘If you see her, send my regards to your sister,’ he says.
‘Of course,’ says Ned. It is only afterwards, as he turns into Fetter Lane, that he notes Chettle’s words.
The lights are on in the windows, and the house looks big and comfortable in the darkness. A sedan chair pulls up, just as he reaches the steps, and Hen tumbles out, flurried by the sight of him.
‘Ned!’ she cries. ‘Ned!’
He kisses her, and then stands back to look at her. What does Chettle see? he wonders. To him, she has always been a funny, adorable freckled thing. She is smiling up at him, green eyes shining in the flickering light from the windows. She is, he realizes, quite beautiful, his little sister. Creamy skin and chestnut hair. Green eyes that shine with life and humour. It is the first time he has ever really noticed it. A strange, but not unwelcome, discovery.
‘Hello, Hen, little one. Where have you been?’
‘At the Birch house. Ned, it was so tedious I could have bashed my head on the wall a thousand times. I was to have stayed, but I begged off with a sore head. But where have you been, why are you here?’
‘We took Reading – did you hear?’
‘Yes! The whole town is talking of it.’
They are still standing on the steps and the sedan chair has trundled off.
‘Come,’ he says. ‘We’ll go in and I’ll tell all.’
Inside, they hear voices from the library. Looking for their father, they turn into the room and stop, disconcerted.
In front of them, frozen in a guilty tableau, stand Challoner and Edmund Waller. The expression on both faces is peculiar, and the silence that greets Ned and Hen’s unexpected arrival spins out across the room. Waller stands to one side of the table, and to the other is a lady. She is dressed in courtly fashion, with a low bodice and a deliberate lack of puritan sobriety. She is about thirty, and handsome. She carries that air of careless elegance that must be worked on and burnished regularly to appear artless.
On the table between the three of them lie piles of golden coins, arranged in stacks and mounds. The gold glitters in the firelight. Ned looks at it, and then back to his father.
Challoner speaks first. ‘Ned, we were not… That is…’ He stumbles to a halt.
‘I had business with the Committee for Safety. I thought to see you before returning to Reading in the morning.’
‘Of course, of course. Reading.’
There is an awkward pause.
‘Waller, you both know each other, I believe.’
The poet bows and murmurs: ‘Delighted.’
‘Lady D’Aubigny, allow me to introduce my son, Edward Challoner, and my daughter, Henrietta Challoner.’
Lady d’Aubigny sweeps into a low curtsy. Her hands twist nervously round a lace handkerchief, and her eyes dart from Ned to Waller and back again. Ned, though young, looks the soldier. He wears Essex’s orange sash about his waist, and his hand rests lightly on his sword hilt. His doublet is spattered with mud and deeper stains the colour of rust.
Challoner walks forward and, laying a hand on each of their arms, says: ‘Children, we have some business to conclude. Will you wait for me in the kitchen and have some food, and I will come for you?’
Ned shrugs off his father’s arm. ‘I will go now, I think, Father. Leave you to your . . . business.’
‘Ned, please.’
Hen and his father both look at him in mute appeal.
Stiffly, he nods.
‘Where is Sam?’ Ned asks, as he and Hen walk downstairs to the kitchen.
‘Probably in the counting house at the books, cursing your name. He’s wild to be a soldier, Ned, and I’m not sure he’ll obey Father for much longer.’
‘Does he know of…’ Ned looks for the word. ‘This thing, do you think?’
‘He has said nothing,’ says Hen. She notes Ned does not ask her. Just a girl. Just a girl who ferried those gold coins that sit, heavy and accusatory, on Challoner’s desk, from houses across the city. Just a girl who knows now to check if she is being followed, to take precautions. A girl who knows which barges defy the ban on travel to Oxford, and who sells the contraband pamphlets. A girl who has perfected an innocent face, and fought with her own conscience and won.
They enter the kitchen. Sally the cook and Nurse look up, startled. They stand and bustle forward, cooing over their Ned, sitting him down at the table. He unbuckles his sword and rests it against the wall. Wayneman, the house’s new boy, stands near it. His eyes are like saucers and his fingers twitch in their desire to touch its glinting edge.
‘Look at you, Master Ned!’ says Sally.
‘All grown up and a soldier,’ says Nurse. ‘I could quite cry at the sight of you.’
‘Do you mind us down here? Father has… guests.’
Hen notices the slight hesitation before the word ‘guests’.
‘Always welcome, Master Ned, always!’ Nurse and Cook compete to nod emphatically.
Ned looks around the kitchen and sees Milly in the corner. She is standing by the fire, stirring a pot, and that flush in her cheeks could just be the heat from the flames. He checks her belly. Flat, thank the Lord. She is not looking at him but stares fixedly into the hearth.
‘Milly, child,’ says Sally. ‘Leave that pot alone, and let’s fatten up Master Ned. I’ve some cold veal and a lovely cheese. Milly, get back to that stove, girl, and get going on a posset. Look at poor Master Ned’s hands, all cold and red, they are.’
Hen sits next to Ned and takes one of his cold hands, rubbing it between her own. She wishes they were alone to talk.
‘It is lovely to see you, Sally, and you, Nurse, and Milly. I have dreamt about this kitchen and the smell of it, lying on wet grass eating stale bread for my supper.’
‘Stale bread,’ says Cook, outraged. She stands from the table and bustles some more, stoking the fire and chivvying Milly, until at last the table is laden with food, and a steaming posset cup is laid ceremoniously in front of Ned. He drinks it up quickly, feeling its warmth. He will never take such a thing for granted, not since the field at Edgehill.
Don’t think on it now, Ned, he tells himself. Not now. In his mind’s eye a grey corpse lolls in an obscene pose. He closes his eyes, but it takes on Milly’s frightened face and leers at him.
Harmsworth comes into the kitchen, and Ned rises, thankful to be distracted from his thoughts.
Harmsworth greets Ned with grave formality. ‘We think of you often here, Master Ned,’ he says, ‘fighting in our Lord’s name.’
‘Thank you,’ says Ned, wondering what the pious and serious Harmsworth would make of the godly soldiers now, as they puke and pillage their way around Reading. ‘I brought you something,’ he says, fumbling in his bag. He pulls out a small, charred piece of wood. ‘Part of an altar rail we burned in a popish church. A token of our works, if you like.’
Harmsworth takes it and turns i
t over in his hands. He almost smiles.
‘I envy you, Master Ned. Out there, protecting the true faith. Smiting the Lord’s enemies. While I . . .’ He waves a hand around the kitchen.
‘I carry your words with me,’ says Ned. He reaches for some bread and then hacks a chunk of cheese into his plate. He feels strange, vibrant: the same sensation he gets before a fight. There is an added roaring in his head, a Milly-shaped shame tugging at him. It is fogging his thoughts, distracting him. He looks over to where she stands in the corner, her face in the shadows. He is mortified to find his eyes resting on her body, lit by the firelight. He wrenches his eyes away. His blood thickens at the thought of her naked.
As casually as he can manage, he asks Harmsworth: ‘Waller, and the lady with Father. Are they here much?’
‘Waller, more and more. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Tompkins, in the main. None that you would wish to be here, I am sure. As for her…’ He spits the word. ‘It is the first time.’
‘Did you see the bezoms on her?’ says Nurse.
‘You could not miss them,’ says Sally. ‘I crept up to have a look,’ she says in an aside to Hen. ‘I could scarce credit how low her bodice is cut.’
‘I had to clasp my hands behind my back to save me going over and wrenching it upwards, a little nearer God and decency,’ says Nurse.
‘I thought she looked lovely,’ says Hen, belligerent.
Nurse frowns. Only Ned’s presence makes her hold her tongue, and Hen takes a petty pleasure from the knowledge that Nurse will be bubbling with fury inside.
‘So elegant,’ Hen continues. ‘Such poise and grace.’
The door to the kitchen opens and Challoner stands in the doorway, filling it. Not looking at Ned, Henrietta stands. She walks over to her father and kisses his cheek.
‘Mrs Birch bids me to send her love. I came home early. With a headache.’ She knows his eyes are not on her but look above her head to where Ned sits, glowering and quiet in the corner.
‘I smell a posset,’ he says.
Milly quickly moves to dole some out of the pot.
‘Ned, Henrietta. Come and drink this with me by the fire in the library.’
In the library, empty of its visitors, Challoner pokes at the logs, setting a fresh flame ablaze. He sits in his great chair, leaning back. Hen kneels at his feet, her arms folded. Ned stands, waiting.
‘A fine posset, this,’ says Challoner.
Ned grunts, impatient. He is still keyed-up, close to boiling over. ‘Are we not to mention what we saw?’
‘And what did you see?’
‘Gold, and guilt.’
‘Guilt?’ Challoner speaks the word as if he is testing the sound in his mouth. He rolls it around. ‘Guilt?’ he says again, the interrogative stronger this time.
‘Pudding cat,’ he says to Hen. ‘What did you see?’
‘Just Waller. And a lady.’
‘Just so.’ He turns to Ned.
Ned gestures angrily. He paces the floor, but it does not take the edge off the furious energy rising in him. ‘Do not play me for a fool, Father. We know that merchants are smuggling gold out of the city to Oxford. That woman in her whore’s weeds had courtier writ large on her. And Waller – we know where he lies.’
‘And if you are right, Ned? What then?’
‘You are paying for the guns which point at me, and my fellows. What would you have me do?’
‘I would have you at home, in peace, in a land which is no longer sliding towards chaos. I left you free to follow your conscience, yet I am not free to follow mine?’
Hen watches the sparks fly between them. Challoner is growing angry, his face red and his knuckles white where his hands grip the side of the chair.
‘I fight with honour,’ shouts Ned. ‘Sword in hand. I do not skulk inside, dealing in Judas coins with fops and whores.’
‘You have said enough, boy. Enough.’
‘And so, sir, have you.’
Ned turns to leave and, as an afterthought, holds his hands to Hen. She jumps up and kisses him.
‘Ned,’ says Challoner. They turn to look at him. ‘Go, then. But do not speak of this. It is between us.’
Ned doesn’t reply; he can’t. He thinks he might be sick, all the nervous tension and the fury spewing onto the floor. This breach feels irreparable. A chasm has opened up between them, too wide to cross. Hen is crying quietly into his shoulder. He grasps the hilt of his sword for courage. He looks at the old man’s face and can see only a traitor’s mask.
‘Father,’ he says quietly, ‘the devil is talking to you. He is in your heart, and in your head, and in those piles of gold. He is in Waller’s tongue and that woman’s eyes.’
The door sounds loud as it swings shut behind Ned. Hen and Challoner look at each other, stricken.
Will opens the door, and Ned watches with relief as a smile spreads across his friend’s face. He did not know where else to go.
‘Sorry to come late,’ he says.
‘Nonsense. Come in!’ The room is lit by one guttering candle, by which Will is reading. Ned sits down on the bed as Will bustles around, laying a fire and unearthing some ale and a mouldy-looking cheese.
Will waves a hand at his bare room, and the pathetic fire catching in the grate. ‘Much like Oxford, you see, Ned. Father’s allowance doesn’t stretch far.’
‘Still, brother, you’ll be a lawyer soon.’
‘Aye, so the bastards tell me.’
‘I’ll swap you for being a soldier.’
‘No fear, Ned. I’ll not go for a soldier.’
‘Can you stay out of it?’
‘I keep my head down; no one bothers me. I have perfected the art of the non-committal nod.’ He demonstrates, and Ned laughs. ‘I find that it serves. If I am quiet, and nod, people are easily persuaded I agree with them, and leave me to my own thoughts. My master is convinced I am puritan to the soul, as he is.’
‘And what are you?’
‘Ah, you see, only you know me well enough to ask directly, and even to you I cannot be candid. Because the truth is I don’t think on it much. I have enough to think about.’ He waves at the stack of books balanced precariously against the wall. ‘And those,’ he says, grinning, pointing to a far smaller stack sitting forlorn in a darker corner, ‘are my law books.’
‘The country is at war, all our souls are at risk, and you are content with the stars.’
‘Yes. I am too simple to understand my own soul, let alone anyone else’s.’
‘I envy you.’
‘You do not.’ Will smiles at his friend.
They settle down in front of the fire to talk quietly and companionably about friends and acquaintances. There is a reckoning of who has joined which side, and who has lost limbs or life for the sake of King or Parliament. Ned tells Will about Brentford and Reading, and the searing horror of an army loose on the rampage after a battle. He tells him a little, too, of the night spent in the field of corpses after Edgehill.
‘It’s different now, already. That first battle was strange, Will. It was as if both sides were boys playing at soldiers, then one drew blood and both ran home crying. Now, enough has passed to make it bitter and personal. We are harder, and tougher, and angrier.’
‘Aye, but to what end? Where can it end? If he wins, you are a traitor, a marked man. If you win, he will still be king. The king will always be the king.’
Ned turns the sentence round in his head. He can’t find a hole in it.
Will says: ‘Let us talk of other things. How is your family? Your sister?’
‘Well enough. Poor Hen sat there while we fought tonight. She’s a good girl. I think Oliver Chettle has a sweetness for her.’
He notes the sudden stiffening of his friend, a subtle recalibration of the room’s warmth. ‘You too, Will?’
‘You didn’t know?’
Ned thinks of his grandmother’s bony finger pointing at Hen, telling her she will die a maid. He wonders at his own blindness
and Grandmother’s mistake. He remembers, suddenly, that he never passed on Chettle’s warning. But you can’t creep back in after you’ve slammed a door in anger, not without losing pride. Chettle is over-worried, he convinces himself. He has a fancy for Hen, yet can’t marry the daughter of anyone uncommitted to the side of God and Parliament. That is all. That must be all.
‘No,’ he says, touched by the look of misery on Will’s normally guileless face. ‘I didn’t know.’
Later, head to toe in Will’s narrow bed, Ned cannot sleep. He thinks over the scene he witnessed earlier. How far has it gone? Where does my duty lie? If my father is funding my enemy, does he not become my enemy too? He can tell that Will is not asleep either; he lies there with the too-still mien of a man awake but conscious of his bedfellow. He’s probably thinking about Hen.
Hen. What will happen to her if their father’s scheming is laid bare? Should her fate inform any decision? He wishes he were alone, to toss and turn as the thoughts jumble in his head. He lies still, and turns to his God. Oh Lord, show me the light. Show me the right path.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
May 1643
THEY COME AT DUSK. A CLATTER OF SOLDIERS BURSTING into the house, separating into pairs and running at the stairs, barging through doors and shouting. Hen is in the library, reading by the open window. She has been relishing the warm spring air and the quiet that falls on the city between the end of the working day and the start of the evening jaunting.
The roaring of the soldiers breaks in on her dreaming. She struggles to understand it, at first. The crunch of their feet and the bellowed orders make no sense. The house is unused to these sounds. Then she realizes, with sudden desperation, why they are here. She grabs a fistful of papers from the royalist pamphlets pile and shoves them up her skirt, wedging them fast in her stays. She spots the pile of newsbooks, including the Mercurius Aulicus, on the table. They are smuggled from Oxford on the rare barges that make it down the Thames, and Hen buys them at three times the cover price from a bookseller’s desperate widow who lurks in St Paul’s churchyard.
Hen scoops them up and bundles them under the cushions of the window seat, sitting down on top of the lumpy fabric just as the door bursts open and two soldiers tumble in.
Treason's Daughter Page 18