The Prime Minister stared at him with slowly widening eyes. ‘Mr. Brook!’ he exclaimed. ‘Surely I cannot have taken your meaning aright? I find it impossible to believe that you intend to become a traitor.’
Roger shrugged, ‘Not that, sir. But many men born British subjects have made great careers for themselves in the service of other nations. For example, General Acton, who is Prime Minister in Naples, Admiral Sir Samuel Greig, who commanded Catherine of Russia’s Navy, the Scotsman General Macdonald whom General Bonaparte counts one of his most able lieutenants. There are too the hundreds of exiles who still cling to the Stuart cause, such as my own cousin, the Earl of Kildonan, who live abroad. Many of them now earn their livings by the sword in the service of France, Holland, Prussia, Austria and other countries.’
‘But your case is very different from theirs,’ retorted Mr. Pitt swiftly. ‘They are no more than beaux sabreurs who could have no influence on policy or events; whereas you, in the position you occupy in France and with your intimate knowledge of diplomatic relations, should you go over to our enemies could be of immense value to them.’
Again Roger shrugged, ‘You need have no fears on that score. At worst I might be called on in a battle to kill an Austrian dragoon, or have him kill me. You may rest assured that I should never give General Bonaparte, or others, any information or counsel that could be damaging to England. And, to be frank, sir, I am not prepared to make any further contribution to your war against France, the sole object of which has now become the restoration of a set of decadent Princes.’
For a further ten minutes the Prime Minister remonstrated with Roger, but in vain. At length he said coldly, ‘Very well then. Since you are determined to take this course I will send a message to my Lord Grenville informing him of it. At what hour do you intend to make your official adieux to him?’
‘I had intended to wait on him at the Foreign Office and ask for my passports at about four o’clock this afternoon, sir,’ Roger replied.
Mr. Pitt nodded coldly; Roger bowed and withdrew. Out in Whitehall he bought a news sheet in order to consult the column advertising the sailings of ships bound for neutral ports in the next few days; then he walked back to Amesbury House. There, over a bottle of sack, he told Droopy about his decision to remain in France and of his interview with the Prime Minister. When he had done, his friend said:
‘I can well understand his fears that you might prove an asset to the French; but I know you to be clever enough to give them the impression that you are an ardent Anglophobe without disclosing anything that might advantage them in their war against England. When he thinks upon it he’ll doubtless realise that to be a game at which long practice has made you proficient. As for your decision, I judge you right. Life as an aide to General Bonaparte can offer you far more than life could here.’
At a little before four o’clock Roger was approaching the Foreign Office. Drawn up outside it he noticed a coach with its blinds down and standing near it two officers who, from their uniforms, obviously belonged to the Brigade of Guards. As he was about to enter the building the shorter of the two, a Captain, called to him, ‘One moment, sir.’
Halting, he turned towards the officer who saluted him politely and said, ‘Mr. Brook, the Prime Minister ordered me to wait for you here and request you to accompany us.’ Then he opened the carriage door.
Considerably surprised at being summoned in this fashion, and wondering what new proposition Mr. Pitt intended to make to him, Roger got into the vehicle. Removing his tall bear-skin the Captain followed him, while his companion, an Ensign, marched round to the other side and got in there. As they shut the doors the coachman whipped his horse into a brisk trot and the Captain said with a bow:
‘Mr. Brook, it is my unhappy duty to inform you that you are under arrest, and that I have been ordered to escort you to the Tower.’
3
The Prisoner in the Tower
‘The Tower! Arrest! What the devil do you mean?’ Roger exclaimed angrily.
‘Precisely what I said, sir,’ replied the Captain calmly.
‘Dam’me! There must be some mistake. You’ve confused me with some other person of similar name.’
‘No, sir. The Prime Minister gave me a very clear description of you.’
‘God’s blood! You can’t do this! Show me your warrant.’
‘I have no warrant.’
‘Then you are illegally interfering with the liberty of a subject. And the law is still maintained in England. Either you’ll let me out or I’ll see to it that you answer for this act to a Court Martial.’
‘The Prime Minister’s personal order, sir, is warrant enough for me.’
‘You may think so, but even Prime Ministers are not entitled to order an arbitrary arrest. I demand that you take me to him.’
To that the Captain made no reply so, after a moment, Roger said:
‘Inform me, at least, of the charge made against me.’
‘I have no idea. Moreover my orders are to hold no discourse with you.’
While Roger seethed with silent rage the coach bowled along. For a few minutes he contemplated an attempt to open the door and throw himself out; but he was sitting on the back seat and the two officers were sitting facing him so it was certain that at his first movement they would lean forward and grab his arms. As the blinds of the coach were down he could not see the route it was taking but, by that time, he judged that it was probably in the Strand and approaching Temple Bar. Being aware of the ancient City privilege that no troops might enter it without the permission of the Lord Mayor he thought it just possible that, when they reached the Bar, there might occur a hold-up of which he could take advantage; but another ten minutes passed without the carriage being halted, so the chance of a Beadle opening the door and seeing the uniforms of his companions had by then gone.
When it did halt, the door was opened by a Guards sergeant at the entrance to the Tower. The Captain gave the password of the day then, as the coach clattered over the drawbridge, he put up the blinds. Roger caught a glimpse of the arches of the Middle and By ward Towers as he passed beneath them, and of Water Lane until, opposite Traitor’s Gate, the carriage turned left up a steep slope and drew up in the square beyond it outside the King’s House, in which the Mayor of the Tower had his residence.
After a short wait the Mayor, Colonel Matthew Smith, received them in his office and the Captain handed him a letter. Roger at once began a heated protest about his arbitrary arrest, but Colonel Smith sat down at his desk and, ignoring him, read through the despatch, then he said:
‘Mr. Brook, this is an order from the Prime Minister to me to detain you here during His Majesty’s pleasure. No reason for so doing is given and it is not for me to ask for one or to take notice of the protest you have just made. I am instructed to provide you with comfortable quarters and to feed you from my table; but you are not to be allowed to write to anyone and are to be held incommunicado; so your warders will receive orders not to enter into conversation with you.’
After a moment he went on, ‘Enclosed is a letter which you are required to copy in your own hand. It concerns the collecting and bringing here of your personal belongings.’ He then handed Roger the letter. It was addressed to Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel, and read:
‘Dear Ned,
Unforeseen circumstances have caused me to change my plans. Be good enough to have my belongings packed and handed to the bearer of this note. I will explain matters when next we meet. In the meantime my thanks for your hospitality.’
While the Colonel pulled up a chair for him and produced pen and paper Roger’s mind was racing. His arrest had been so managed that no-one had witnessed it. And no-one, other than Droopy Ned, would be aware of his disappearance so set enquiries on foot about him. If he copied the letter, that would put Droopy’s mind at rest, so it appeared evident that it had been designed for that purpose. Quickly he shook his head:
‘No, sir. I’ll not copy that letter and become a
party to concealing Mr. Pitt’s illegal and most extraordinary treatment of me. If I fail to appear at Amesbury House at latest by tomorrow Lord Edward will have the town scoured for me. There is a chance that he may learn the truth, and should he do so he’ll raise all hell to get me out of here.’
The Colonel shrugged, ‘I cannot force you to put pen to paper, Mr. Brook; but there is another passage in the Prime Minister’s letter of which I have not yet informed you. Should you refuse his request his instructions are that I should put you in an unfurnished cell and your fare is to be bread and water.’
Roger’s face went pale with rage, and he cried indignantly, ‘By God, this is intolerable! He cannot keep me here indefinitely, and when I get free I’ll see to it that he never hears the last of this. The stink made in Parliament when Captain Jenkins produced his ear that the Spaniards had lopped off will be nothing to the stench I’ll raise.’
‘With what you may do in the future, Mr. Brook, I am not concerned. We are speaking of the present. And I must warn you, do you prove adamant you will find life here as His Majesty’s guest most uncomfortable.’
Fighting down his fury, Roger let his judgment get the better of his urge to resist further. As he had been spirited away without trace, even if Droopy did raise a hue and cry for him the odds were all against his whereabouts being discovered. Realising that he snapped ‘Very well,’ and plumping himself down at the desk scrawled a copy of the letter. Then, pushing it towards the Colonel, he said;
‘And now, sir, I demand that you send for an attorney, in order that he may issue a writ of Habeas Corpus on my behalf.’
Colonel Smith shook his head, ‘I have already informed you that you are to be held incommunicado. In any case, owing to the riots in the industrial centres brought about by agitators infected by the pestilence of the French Revolution, the right to issue writs of Habeas Corpus was among those suspended by the Government some considerable time ago.’
Picking up a hand bell on his desk he rang it loudly. A Sergeant of the Yeomen of the Guard entered. Clicking the butt of his pike sharply on the floor he stood stiffly at attention while the Mayor said to him, ‘You are to take this prisoner to cell five in the Laathorn Tower, and he will be known by that number. If he mentions his name it is not to be repeated. He is to send or receive no letters or messages and no-one is to enter into conversation with him.’
Realising that the Mayor and officers had only been doing their duty, Roger bowed to them and said, ‘Gentlemen, I pray you pardon me for my rudeness towards you. It was caused by my having become somewhat overwrought from the shock of learning that my arrest had been ordered, for I know not what reason, by one whom I have always accounted a friend.’
All three returned his bow and Colonel Smith replied, ‘You have my sympathy, sir, and may rest assured that I will do my best to make your stay here as little disagreeable as possible. ‘The two officers then saluted and took their leave; after which Roger followed the Sergeant out and, escorted by two other Yeomen who were waiting in the hall, was taken to the Laathorn Tower.
The chamber into which he was locked was lofty, spacious and reasonably well-equipped with oak furniture of a considerable age, most of the pieces having the names or initials of past prisoners carved on them. The early winter dusk had already fallen and three candles and a tinder box had been left for him. He lit two of them but the light they gave made only a pool in the centre of the gloomy room and, as he moved about, threw grotesque shadows of himself on the bare walls. On examining the bed he found it far from soft but he had slept on worse ones when in camps or passing a night at poor inns. Lying down on it, he stared up at the vaulting of the stone ceiling and considered his position.
When he had declared that he did not know the reason for his arrest he had been telling the truth; but, while sitting silent in the semi-darkness of the carriage on the way to the Tower, he had already made a fair guess at it for, preposterous as it seemed, he could think of no other. It was that Mr. Pitt looked on his decision to follow a career in France as one of Bonaparte’s staff officers as so fraught with danger to the interests of England that he had resolved to detain him forcibly. In one sense it was a compliment, but in another a gross slander on his loyalty to the country of his birth; and he resented it intensely.
The more he thought about the circumstances of his arrest the more shocked he became at the Prime Minister’s action. He had broken no law, yet here he was as good as in a dungeon. Since he had not been charged with any crime he was denied the right to a trial at which he might defend himself. Still worse he was being held incommunicado, so he could not write to friends asking their help to secure his release, or even to Mr. Pitt asking for an explanation. He had been picked up without warning, incarcerated in a fortress from which he knew it was impossible to escape and orders had been given to keep him there during His Majesty’s—or what amounted to Mr. Pitt’s—pleasure.
And this was England. The boasted Land of the Free. Not France in the days of the absolute monarchy when, at the whim of a King’s mistress, her Royal lover signed a lettre de cachet consigning indefinitely to the Bastille some wretched scribbler who had lampooned her. But that was precisely what had happened to him.
It was said that at times such unfortunates had been forgotten and left for years in prison until they died there. But Roger endeavoured to console himself with the thought that such a fate was most unlikely to be his. It seemed reasonable to assume that Mr. Pitt had simply taken prompt action to prevent any possibility of his leaving London in a ship that was sailing on the night tide. Having insured against that the Prime Minister must think again, and produce either a bribe or a threat which might deter him from carrying out his intention of returning to France.
For a while Roger speculated on what form Mr. Pitt’s approach would take, but his treatment of him and the aspersion on his loyalty made him more than ever determined to return to Bonaparte’s service.
At seven o’clock a supper of cold meat and apple tart, with a bottle of passable wine, was brought to him and, not long after he had finished his meal, his valise arrived. Having unpacked it he was glad to find that it contained a book he had been reading; so he went to bed and read until close on ten, then he snuffed out the candles. For a while he mused on the extraordinary situation he was in, but he was no longer particularly troubled by it as he felt confident that Mr. Pitt would send for him next day; so he soon fell into a sound sleep.
But Mr. Pitt did not send for him next day, nor the next, nor the next, and gradually his anxiety about what the future held for him increased. His routine each day never varied. Every morning he was taken out for an hour’s exercise and for the rest of the day he remained locked in his room. The meals brought up to him were plentiful but plain, so he thought it probable that the Governor fared much better at his own table. Moreover the food lost much of its attraction from the fact that, having to be carried a long way from the kitchen, it was nearly always no more than luke-warm when it reached him; but the Governor sent him half a dozen books, for which he was duly grateful.
Several times he attempted to start a conversation with his gaolers, but they obeyed their orders in refusing to reply to him. In vain he racked his brains for a way in which he could communicate with the outside world. From the narrow, barred window of his room he could look down on the Pool of London. In it there lay scores of tall-masted ships, any one of which might have carried him to freedom, but he was as remote from them as though he were standing on the Moon; and, even if he had had writing materials, an appeal for help dropped out of the window would only have fluttered down inside the outer wall of the fortress.
Another three days dragged by. In vain now he endeavoured to concentrate on reading. For hours he restlessly paced his chamber cursing Pitt and vowing that he would get even with him. There were other long periods when he tossed restlessly on the bed endeavouring to gain freedom in sleep from his tormenting anxiety. Sometimes he dropped off for an hour or two, bu
t that made it more difficult for him to get to sleep at night. And he found the long dark evenings almost insupportable. The shadows of the big gloomy chamber seemed to close round him making a prison within a prison and emphasising his utter isolation. Mr. Pitt, he knew, had a thousand matters to engage his attention; so it now seemed to Roger quite on the cards that by this time the Prime Minister had forgotten him. If so it might even be many months before the thought would recur to him that on an impulse he had had his once most trusted secret agent arrested. Meanwhile Roger must continue to fret away the seemingly endless hours pacing up and down between the stone walls; for there was no way in which he could bring an end to his captivity.
He had been confined in the Tower for exactly a week when, now to his surprise and sudden resurgence of hope, the Mayor sent for him. Fighting down his excitement he followed the Beefeater Sergeant, with his swinging lantern and bunch of big keys, down to the Mayor’s office. In it were the Captain and his Ensign who had arrested Roger. Colonel Smith greeted him pleasantly and said with a smile:
‘Mr. Brook, these two gentlemen have brought me an order for your release. I hope that it may prove a permanent one. But you must consider yourself as still under arrest while they escort you to the Prime Minister, who has asked that you should be brought to him.’
Roger smiled, ‘I thank you, sir, for your good wishes, and for your fair treatment of me while I have been your prisoner. I hope that when next we meet it will be in happier circumstances.’
Five minutes later he was in the same coach that had brought him to the Tower, sitting facing the two officers. The blinds were again down so he saw nothing of the darkening streets through which they passed until the coach pulled up outside 10, Downing Street. They were admitted to the house and, after standing silent in the waiting room for some ten minutes, the Groom of the Chambers came to them. Bowing, he asked Roger to follow him, and requested his escort to remain there in attendance. With a firm step and a smile that had no trace of humour in it, Roger accompanied the servant upstairs. He was shown in to Mr. Pitt and the door closed behind him.
The Wanton Princess Page 4