The King's Evil

by Andrew Taylor

  In the evening, there was supper to be prepared. Mangot read aloud from the Bible both before and after the meal. The evening ended with interminable prayers; the old man prayed as the spirit moved him, which generally led him to a detailed survey of the torments that awaited sinners in the next world. For Cat, it was drearily reminiscent of the later years she had spent under her father’s roof, when his religion had grown steadily darker in tone and had come to pervade every aspect of his life.

  There was one other part of the routine. Before supper, Israel Halmore would appear at the back door. He entered without knocking and kicked off the heavy boots he wore about the camp. He never came empty-handed. On Sunday he had brought a hatful of wizened, bruised apples whose flesh proved to have an astonishing sweetness; on Monday it was the rabbit; and tonight a large leather bottle that contained ale.

  When Halmore arrived, Mangot closed his Bible. Halmore kicked off his boots, gave the bottle to Cat without troubling to look at her, and sat down at the table. Cat brought mugs for the men and, at a nod from the old man, poured ale for them. The foul-smelling rushlights on the table cast an orange glow on to their downturned faces, making their features devilish.

  Serving as his maidservant was part of the price she paid for Mangot’s hospitality. It was an arrangement that suited both of them, for it gave a reason for Cat to be at the farm. While the men drank and talked, she turned aside to deal with what was left of the rabbit in the pot over the fire.

  ‘There’s more from the Bishop,’ Halmore said. ‘His man rode over to the camp today.’

  ‘His man?’ Mangot sounded aggrieved. ‘What man?’

  ‘A tub of lard with a big sword. Ex-trooper, I think. He was with the Bishop the other night.’

  ‘I didn’t see him.’

  ‘He came by the drover’s track along the stream,’ Halmore said. ‘Didn’t want to draw attention. He made an interesting proposition. He’s been going round all the camps, drumming up support for Buckingham. Imagine what would happen if all of us – all the refugees, all the poor, all the beggars – if all of us took it into our heads to march on London and rattle the railings of Clarendon’s house.’

  ‘More ale, girl,’ Mangot said suddenly.

  Cat came over to the table and refilled the mugs. Neither man looked at her. She was a woman, she thought, a servant; and to them she was scarcely a sentient being, let alone a rational one, any more than the bottle or the table it stood on.

  ‘This deserves a toast,’ Mangot said.

  ‘Aye.’ Halmore smiled. ‘That’s why I brought the ale. We’d tear down Clarendon House, stone by stone.’

  They drank solemnly to Clarendon’s downfall in this world, and then to his damnation in the next. The ale was strong; Cat could tell even by its smell; and when the first bottle was empty, Halmore produced a second from the pocket sewn into his cloak.

  By this time, the stew was simmering. Cat was about to ask whether Mangot wished her to serve supper, when she realized the old man had started to cry.

  Halmore patted his arm clumsily. ‘Hold up, master, you’ll see the knave in the gutter yet. The higher they climb, the further they fall.’

  ‘My son,’ Mangot said. ‘My son. How he would rejoice if he could hear us. He would be alive if it weren’t for Clarendon. Did I ever tell you the story?’

  ‘Aye, you did,’ Halmore began, ‘and a very sad story it—’

  ‘My son would be here!’ Mangot interrupted, banging the flat of his hand on the table with sudden violence. ‘At this table. Drinking with us, Israel. And this farm would be as flourishing as any in the county.’

  Cat lingered in the shadows while Halmore drank and the old man told his story. It was simple enough, and sad enough. Shortly after the Restoration, Mangot’s son, his only surviving child, had driven four cows to Smithfield Market. Afterwards, with money in his pocket, he had dined well at a tavern in the City, and perhaps he had drunk more than he should have. In the afternoon he had set off on foot for the farm. He had been knocked down by a rider and thrown under the wheels of a passing coach. The young man had been killed instantly.

  The coach had been Clarendon’s, though he had not been in it at the time. At the inquest, a witness had said that the coachman was drunk, and that this contributed to the fatal accident. The coachman swore blind that he had been as sober as a baby. The coroner, unwilling to disoblige a man as powerful as the Lord Chancellor, had chosen to dismiss the evidence and the witness had subsequently changed his mind about what he had seen.

  Since then, Mangot had let the farm decay, for he no longer had a reason to work. The witness was dead, so was the coroner, and so was the coachman. The only person left for Mangot to blame for his son’s death and the ruin of his own life was Lord Clarendon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I RETURNED TO my lodgings in the Savoy and told Margaret I would have supper early. I called Sam to attend me in the parlour.

  ‘I’ve another job for you,’ I said. ‘I want you to go out and be my eyes and ears.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘In this weather.’

  ‘You need a boy to run all these errands, master.’ He added, with a touch of satire, ‘You could dress him in your livery and have him attend you at Whitehall. It would look very well indeed.’

  I ignored his attempt at wit. ‘You know Henrietta Street?’

  ‘Where Mistress Hakesby lives,’ he said, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Of course I do.’

  Both he and Margaret had taken an inexplicable liking to Cat when she had nursed me after I was injured in the fire. I sometimes thought that they treated her with more respect than they showed me.

  ‘There’s a warrant out for her arrest. Mr Hakesby is already in custody as a possible accessory. She’s gone to ground and I don’t know where.’

  He whistled. ‘And the charge, master?’

  ‘Murder. Keep all this to yourself.’

  ‘God love us all. Who did she kill?’

  ‘They think she killed her cousin. A man named Edward Alderley.’

  ‘Money, was it?’ He tapped his nose. ‘It usually is, when it’s family business. Root of all evil, master. Says so in the Bible.’

  ‘It was more than that. He’d treated her as badly as a man can treat a woman.’

  He moistened his mouth and glanced at the fireplace. He was resisting the temptation to spit in it. ‘Good riddance then.’

  ‘She may not have killed him. There are other possibilities.’

  ‘I always said she had spirit. I—’

  ‘Listen to me for a moment, will you? There’s a draughtsman who works at the Drawing Office in Henrietta Street. Red-haired fellow with a sharp little face. His name’s Brennan. It’s just possible that he knows something. I want you to follow him this evening and tomorrow. Talk to people. See if you can find out anything that might give us a clue to where Mistress Hakesby is. Maybe have a word with the porter at the house.’

  ‘But it’s raining harder than it was, master. Could I wait until it goes off?’

  ‘No.’ I took pity on him. ‘There’s an alehouse opposite the Drawing Office if that’s any consolation.’ I took out my purse. ‘One more thing. A pedlar brought Brennan a letter this afternoon – he insisted on giving it into his hand, and he knew Brennan had ginger hair; he wouldn’t leave it with the porter. I’d be interested to know where the letter came from. He was a scrawny man with a squint, and he had a horse with him that had a pack on its back.’

  I gave Sam a couple of shillings so he could pay his way. I listened to him clumping down the stairs to the kitchen, to tell Margaret he was going out, and why; and no doubt he would add some unflattering comments about me.

  I sat beside the empty fireplace and struggled against a sense of futility that rose over me like a tide. As the silence in the parlour grew heavier, I tried to distract myself by thinking of something else. But it didn’t help. The longer I sat there, the more apprehensive I became about the dangerous
and unpleasant job that awaited me at Clarendon House tonight.

  Meanwhile the rain beat against the window panes and the light slipped away from the evening sky.

  The three of us stumbled and slithered up the cart track that meandered from Piccadilly to the Oxford road. It was still raining, though less heavily. The clouds were low, masking the moon and the stars.

  Gorse was in front, carrying our only light, a dark lantern, with the reins looped over his other arm. The horse plodded between Milcote and me. Milcote was armed with a sword and pistol. He had offered to lend me a sword but I had refused.

  The long canvas-wrapped bundle was slung over its back. I had the legs on my side. Every now and then the horse would sway towards me when it encountered an irregularity of the ground, and Alderley’s heels would brush against my arm.

  It was a slow and agonizing journey. None of us spoke. Occasionally we stopped to listen in case of pursuit behind or sounds ahead. I had my warrant, which if need be would serve as a safe conduct, but I didn’t want to use it. It identified me. I could imagine what Chiffinch would say if I were later linked to Alderley’s corpse being found near the Oxford road.

  As the lane went north, it veered to the north-west in the direction of the road to the east of Tyburn, where the gallows stood. Together with half of London’s population, I had gone there to see the disinterred and rotting corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw hanging in chains after the King’s restoration.

  We stopped a good hundred yards short of the highway. Gorse unlatched a gate and led the horse into a field. The going was easier here – the field was used for hay, which had recently been cut. By this time, my eyes had adjusted to the near-darkness. I made out the gable of a house on the side of the field nearest the road, with the low dark oblong of a barn at right angles beside it. There were no lights in the house, but a dog began to bark in the distance, and it set off others.

  ‘Quick,’ Milcote whispered. ‘Those damned curs will wake the neighbourhood.’

  We came to the pond. Milcote cut the ropes that tied the corpse to the horse. Now began the worst part of the evening. We laid Alderley on the ground. Gorse held the lantern while Milcote and I unrolled the canvas. The body was clad only in its shirt. It had been unwieldy in the pavilion yesterday, but in the darkness, with the dogs barking and the growing fear of discovery, it was ten times worse. It was as though the inert flesh that had once been Alderley had become charged with blind malevolence.

  Milcote suggested it would be easiest to put the body in the pond if he and I took the legs, and Gorse the head and shoulders.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, wiping the rain from my face. ‘We must take off his shirt.’

  ‘We haven’t time for that,’ Milcote said; there was a hint of panic to his voice that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘Yes, we have.’ I pawed the body in the darkness, trying to find the bottom hem of the shirt. ‘Help me. It’s a linen shirt worth good money. He’s lost his other clothes. If he’d been picked clean that thoroughly, the robbers would never have left the shirt on his back.’

  ‘I’ll have it, sir,’ Gorse said. ‘I know someone who’ll take it and ask no questions.’

  I was surprised at the servant’s tone, which I thought impertinently assured, as if he had decided he would have the shirt, and he would brook no argument about it. But Milcote didn’t reprove him. No doubt he was right to hold his tongue – we could not afford to quarrel among ourselves at this point. Besides, we were all wrought up, and our situation was so strange and so terrifying that none of us was behaving as he usually did.

  We tugged the shirt together, yanking so hard that I heard a seam give way. At last we got it off. The three of us lifted the body, which seemed even heavier than before. Our boots sunk lower into the mud. Water seeped into mine.

  ‘One,’ I said. ‘Two. Three.’

  We swung the body over the pond as far as we could and let go. There was a great splash. A spray of water hit me. I staggered back, colliding with Gorse, who swore.

  ‘Quickly,’ Milcote said. ‘Let’s be gone.’

  We made much better time on our way back to Clarendon House. Before we reached the stable gate, we stopped. Milcote murmured something to Gorse, and the servant’s deeper voice replied. I heard the chink of coin.

  Milcote whispered to me across the horse’s rump: ‘Gorse will take the horse by the stable gate. It will be better if you and I go in by the front. Perhaps we should find a tavern and warm ourselves first.’

  ‘I shall leave you here,’ I said. ‘Better that way.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  We waited in silence while Gorse led the horse away. I heard the gate open and close. When Gorse was safely inside, Milcote let out his breath in a sigh of relief.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, drawing even closer to me. ‘My lord desires to see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Would you call on him in the morning at about ten? Perhaps we might talk afterwards. Among other things, we must advise about what to do with Alderley’s clothes.’

  ‘If I can,’ I said.

  ‘And there’s so much we still don’t know,’ Milcote said. ‘How did Alderley get there? How did he fall in the well?’

  I bade him a curt good night and walked by myself down to Piccadilly. It was dangerous to be out on the streets so late, especially alone, and for a moment I wished I had accepted Milcote’s invitation. I made my way warily down to Charing Cross, where I tagged on to a party of law clerks who chanced to be leaving one of the taverns. I walked in their company to the Strand.

  The strain was telling on me. I was aware that I was wet, tired and irritable. It seemed to me that both Clarendon and Milcote expected me to jump at their bidding. I wondered how far we could rely on Gorse to keep his mouth shut. I thought Milcote had been too ready to trust the man.

  Trust. It all came down to that. Whom could I trust in this business?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN I WOKE on Wednesday morning, the memory of the previous night flooded into my mind, along with my attendant doubts and fears. I shouted for Margaret to bring my hot water. It was Sam I heard climbing the stairs, however, always a slow, laborious process. He pushed open my bedroom door with his crutch and came in, spilling some of the water. He set down the jug on the washstand and turned to face me. The puffiness around his eyes told its own story.

  ‘Well, master,’ he said. ‘What’s he doing with a woman’s cloak, eh? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That Brennan, course.’ There was no mistaking the smug expression on Sam’s face. ‘I did as you ordered, watched his door in Henrietta Street from the alehouse over the road. This woman came along with a bundle.’ Sam spread his arms wide. ‘Big, heavy thing. She knocked on the door, left it with the porter.’

  ‘What’s this to do with Brennan and Mistress Hakesby?’ I said. ‘Or with that letter he had?’

  ‘I’m coming to that, master, first things first. The woman came over the road, didn’t she, thought she’d have a drink to keep out the cold. Mulled ale. And I happened to fall into conversation with her.’ He favoured me with a wink. ‘Not a bad-looking wench, all things considered, though of course I’m a married man, I’m not one to let my hands or thoughts stray where they shouldn’t, as you—’

  ‘Get on with it,’ I said.

  ‘She says to me, after we’d been talking for a while – she works for a woman up the road, you see, sells second-hand clothes – anyway, she says what does that Mr Brennan want with a woman’s cloak? He’d come early in the day, asking for a woman’s winter cloak, nothing fancy, she said, good plain wool. He paid on the nail but the hem needed a touch of work, so there she was delivering it.’

  ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Maybe. She said Brennan wanted it wrapped in canvas as he was sending it out of town tomorrow by carrier.’

  ‘Did he indeed? I don’t supp
ose he mentioned where it was going, or the carrier’s name.’

  ‘No, master.’ Sam glanced up at me, his eyes bright and cheeky as a robin’s. ‘But I watched him leaving the Drawing Office yesterday evening, and he didn’t have the bundle with him. I take my oath no one else took it out of the house. So he left it there overnight.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Which means …’

  ‘You’d better get over there now.’ My spirits were rising. The cloak was almost certainly for Cat. ‘Keep watch all day if necessary.’

  Sam coughed. ‘I’ll need more money for that.’

  ‘But I gave you two shillings yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘It soon goes, master.’ He grinned at me. ‘A man can’t just sit in an alehouse and take nothing to eat and drink. And I had to give the woman something for her thirst. Just to be civil.’

  I gave him another two shillings. In return Sam made an obsequious bow, no easy thing when leaning on a crutch, and left the room before I could change my mind.

  On my way to Piccadilly, I called in for breakfast and news at the coffee house on the corner of Bow Street. The talk was mainly of the Duke of Buckingham’s return to favour at Court, and what it might mean to ordinary men, here and in the City. There was mention of Lord Clarendon, too – in particular a rumour that he was to be impeached before Parliament, where Buckingham had many supporters. If Clarendon’s enemies were successful, the King might be compelled to sign the death warrant of his chief councillor. But there was no news of a body found in a pond near Tyburn.

  After I had breakfasted, I walked to Clarendon House. The sky had cleared overnight and the sun was already warm. There wasn’t a crowd outside the gate this morning – perhaps it was too early for them. The guards recognized me and waved me through. I walked across the forecourt towards the door I had used previously.

  Milcote must have been watching, for he came out to greet me. ‘All well, sir?’

  ‘Well enough,’ I said. ‘I called at a coffee house on the way here, and there was no news worth hearing.’