The King's Evil

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘How many live here?’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Nigh on a hundred? There were more. These are just the ones that are left. The poor damned souls.’

  ‘But what do they do?’

  ‘They wait,’ Mr Mangot said. ‘Everyone’s waiting in Woor Green.’

  ‘Waiting for what?’ I asked.

  ‘For death, master. What else is there to wait for?’

  He released the mare’s bridle and, without a backward glance, limped into the house.

  I rode slowly through the yard and into the field beyond. The mare picked her way around the perimeter of the camp towards the stream at the bottom. The refugees stood by their shelters and stared at me as if I were a being from another world, which in a way I was. They had their own dogs and these followed at a safe distance; they seemed as cowed as their owners.

  When I stopped by the stream, however, a tall, gnarled man came towards me and asked me, civilly enough, what I wanted.

  ‘Where is the young woman who came here the other day?’ I asked. ‘Who perhaps had a cloak sent to her by a pedlar who called here?’

  ‘A cloak, sir?’ he said, lifting his hat and scratching the halo of grey curls beneath. ‘I know nothing about a cloak.’

  ‘What about the young woman?’ I snapped, my frustration bubbling over. ‘She probably came here on Sunday.’

  In my irritation, I must have tugged at the reins. The horse took exception. She tossed her head and cantered back up the field, with me clutching at her neck. At the gateway to the yard, one of Mangot’s dogs made a run at her. She veered away along the back wall of the farmhouse. I shouted at the dog and waved my stick, which by a miracle I still had in my hand. Snarling, it backed away.

  But it was only a temporary respite. The other dogs of the camp, no longer cowed, were converging on me, and so were the human inhabitants. What made it worse was that none of them shouted or spoke, and the dogs did not bark. In silence, they advanced towards me and the mare. The tall man was at their head. He was carrying an axe. I tightened my grip on the stick and wished to God I had borrowed Sam’s pistol.

  A door opened behind me. I tugged the reins, trying to wheel the mare towards this new threat.

  ‘My dear sir, what in heaven’s name are you doing to that unfortunate animal?’

  I almost fell off the damned horse in my surprise. Cat came out of the farmhouse, took the mare’s bridle and patted her neck in a way that miraculously restored her to the placidity her owner had promised.

  At the sight of Cat, the refugees and the dogs lost their menacing air. It happened so subtly, so strangely, that I found myself wondering if I had imagined their hostility.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Halmore,’ she said. ‘Mr Mangot tells me this man is looking for me.’

  Halmore shrugged. ‘Just keep him out of the camp. He’s not wanted here.’

  Cat nodded. She led the horse, with me on her back, round to the yard, and brought her to a trough of water. The mare lowered her head to drink. I took the opportunity to slide from the saddle and landed with inexpressible relief on muddy ground.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Cat said. ‘And how did you find—?’

  ‘Have you heard?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Edward Alderley is dead. Almost certainly murdered.’

  Cat stared at me for a moment, her face perfectly still. In the last few days her complexion had darkened, though there had been little sun. Her hair was dressed differently and her eyes were very clear against the tanned skin. They seemed larger than usual, as though her face had shrunk around them.

  ‘Good,’ she said at length. She paused. ‘Yes – good.’

  Her face was unreadable. I felt the familiar frustration seething within me. Dealing with Cat Lovett would have been so much easier if I could understand her. But the more I knew her, the less I understood.

  She led me into the kitchen. Mangot was sitting at the table, apparently absorbed in reading his Bible. He ignored us. Cat drew me into a passage that led to the ruined part of the house. The sky was blue and clear over our heads, beyond the fragments of beams and posts and rafters.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ she said softly, ‘and no one will hear us. How did you find me?’

  ‘It’s a long story and it’s not worth the telling. You’re not safe here any longer.’

  Alarm flared in her face. ‘Why?’

  ‘The authorities are building a case against you for Alderley’s murder.’

  ‘I never touched him,’ she spat. ‘That’s God’s literal truth. Though by God I wish I had.’

  ‘In their eyes you had motive enough to kill him, and more. You had opportunity, too, for he came and went at Clarendon House, just as you were doing.’

  ‘Who told them?’

  ‘Someone laid information against you, accusing you of the murder. And when they came to arrest you, they found you’d fled – and for them that confirmed it. It’s another strand in the noose that will hang you.’

  She shrugged but said nothing. After a pause she changed the subject. ‘How did he die?’

  For a split-second I entertained the possibility of telling her the truth, that Alderley had been found in Lord Clarendon’s well. But there was still too much I didn’t know about this business, and I was privy to secrets that weren’t mine to share. Besides, she hadn’t trusted me, so why should I trust her?

  I said, ‘He was discovered drowned yesterday in a pond near Tyburn. His body had been stripped, and they say he had been beaten too. They think you hired men to do it for you.’

  ‘Edward dead,’ she said. ‘I still can’t believe it. Are you sure? Are you truly sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I snapped. She seemed more inclined to rejoice at her cousin’s death than fear for her own safety. ‘But that’s not why I am here. They took Brennan for questioning yesterday. If they haven’t cracked him open yet, it’s only a matter of time. And when he does …’

  She looked momentarily guilt-stricken. Then: ‘He won’t talk. He wouldn’t betray me.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  She glared at me. I had a better idea than she did of what they could do with suspects at Scotland Yard. True, the bad old days of physical torture, of the rack and the thumbscrews, were gone. But the interrogators had other methods of making their prisoners talk, especially men like Brennan who had no one to speak for them in the right places. The draughtsman had struck me as having a hard shell, but I suspected that he was like an egg, thin and brittle on the outside; he would break easily under pressure, and the yolk of the man would spill out among the fragments.

  ‘And Mr Hakesby?’ she asked. ‘How does he take this?’

  ‘Your betrothed? Not well,’ I said, too angry to be kind. ‘They arrested him on Monday. He was in a bad way when I saw him yesterday.’

  Cat turned away and plucked a shoot of willow herb growing from the floor of what might once have been a pantry.

  ‘We must leave here,’ I said. ‘And we must leave now.’

  She wheeled back to face me. ‘Is that what your friend Lady Quincy told you to say? Have you seen her again, by the way?’

  ‘She has nothing to do with this.’

  ‘In any case, I won’t go.’

  ‘You will.’

  Her eyes were bright with anger. It seemed to me that our wills were in balance, one against the other, so finely equal that the weight could not fall one side or the other.

  ‘I’ve only your word for all this, after all,’ she said with her nose in the air. ‘And Brennan is made of sterner stuff than you think, and so is Mr Hakesby.’

  ‘The last time I saw Hakesby, he was lying on his bed with his face to the wall and trembling like a child.’

  She said with less assurance, ‘I need time to consider what to do for the best. It’s my safety at stake, not yours.’

  With an effort, I kept my voice calm. ‘It’s not just your safety. It’s Brennan’s and
Hakesby’s, too.’ I paused. ‘Besides, you’re wrong. If they find out what I’ve done to help you, I wouldn’t give a groat for my safety, either.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE JOURNEY TO London was exquisitely uncomfortable in more ways than one. At first I offered to walk, leading the horse, while Cat sat on it. She told me not to be a fool. Instead, we rode together. Fortunately it was a pillion saddle, uncomfortable in itself but capable of carrying more than one person. Mr Mangot gave us directions which led us across country and allowed us to avoid the high road.

  Cat rode side-saddle behind me, with an arm around my waist. The horse plodded placidly along byways dense with the dusty, straggling vegetation of late summer. The animal was behaving better, probably because she was aware that Cat was on her back, and that Cat would stand no nonsense from her. I might be holding the reins, but that was a mere technicality.

  My thighs ached with the unaccustomed exercise of their muscles. I was hungry and thirsty, but there was nowhere to buy food and drink. In any case, even on the high road, it would not have been wise to advertise our presence any more than we had to.

  There were other reasons for discomfort – not least the fact that Cat and I were forced so close together, trapped in an unwanted intimacy, aware of each movement the other made. It seemed to me that since I had first met her a year ago, her body had lost its boyish contours and grown fuller and softer. The discovery unsettled me.

  She was irritating me, too. Although we hadn’t exactly quarrelled in the ruined farmhouse, we had come close to it. She had been unreasonable, I thought, in not following my advice immediately and in not appreciating the risks I had taken to track her down and warn her. As we rode on, I began to suspect that she hadn’t wanted to be rescued at all, by me or anyone else, and that of course irritated me still further.

  For several miles, we did not exchange a word, except to debate which way we should go. (We often disagreed about that, as well.) But we couldn’t sulk in silence all the way to London. We had too much to discuss.

  ‘We must talk about where you go,’ I said over my shoulder.

  ‘I thought you would have decided that for me too, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I’d better take you to my house. But you can’t stay for long. It’s too dangerous for both of us.’

  ‘Then I’ll find somewhere myself.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish. I want to help you. It’s a question of knowing how best to do it.’

  Her body seemed to relax against mine, and she said, with one of those sudden changes of mood that touched her sometimes, ‘I know you do, Mr Marwood. Though God knows why. But truly I don’t want to be a burden to you or to anyone else.’

  We went on in silence, but a slightly more comfortable one than before. Nothing had been settled, but my mood was lighter, if only by a fraction of a feather’s weight. But, for all the apparent thaw between us, I couldn’t trust her.

  ‘Do you recall a servant by the name of Gorse at your uncle’s house?’ I asked.

  ‘Matthew Gorse? Yes – he used to serve at table sometimes.’

  ‘Did you know he was working at Clarendon House?’

  She shifted on the saddle. ‘No.’

  If only I could see her face, because so much hinged on this simple question. Gorse would have recognized both Cat and Edward Alderley. Any servant remembered the faces of the family he had once worked for, particularly one of such standing as the Alderleys had been. He might have told Edward Alderley that Cat was working in the pavilion – or he might have told Cat that Alderley was visiting Milcote at Clarendon House. It was even conceivable that he had told them both, and been paid twice for his pains.

  It was vital that I find Gorse. If I was to negotiate a safe path through this thicket of intrigue, I must first establish the truth.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said suddenly, hoping to surprise the truth out of her, ‘what happened on Saturday evening?’

  I felt Cat move away from me. ‘Was that when Edward was killed?’

  ‘Perhaps. Because he was last seen on Saturday.’ I misled her by omission. ‘But, as I told you, he was found dead in the pond yesterday.’

  ‘I wonder what he was doing up there? Was he robbed and murdered on the high road?’

  ‘I don’t know. But … But I am commanded by the King to investigate the circumstances.’

  ‘You? Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not privy to the reasons of princes.’

  She made a sound like breaking wind, puncturing my pomposity.

  ‘All right.’ I couldn’t help smiling. ‘I can speculate about the reason. I had some slight acquaintance with your cousin last year. Perhaps that was part of it. And the King can issue his orders to me by a private channel – through Mr Chiffinch and the Board of Red Cloth – and perhaps it’s convenient for him to conceal his interest in this affair. These are uncertain times. There are changes afoot in the government and at court.’

  ‘You have your fingers in so many pies, sir,’ Cat said coldly. ‘Lady Quincy. Mr Chiffinch. The King himself. These great affairs of state. Where does all this end? A knighthood, I hope, at the very least.’

  ‘I make my living as best I can,’ I said, my good humour gone. ‘And I do my best to help you, as well.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice was harsh, like a lawyer on the attack in a court of law.

  It was a good question but I didn’t reply. I knew guilt was part of it, for the dangers I had exposed her to in May. There was also the strange bond that links together the survivors of a great peril, particularly those who have been able to survive only because of the exertions of each other.

  ‘On Saturday evening,’ I said, ‘you supped with Mr Hakesby and Brennan at the Lamb. Brennan walked back with you to Henrietta Street. But the porter said you went out again a little later.’

  ‘What if I did?’

  ‘He told me you said you were going to a friend, and that you might spend the night with her.’

  ‘In fact I was doing exactly as you advised me to do when we met at the New Exchange last Saturday,’ she said coldly. ‘I’d turned your advice over in my mind and I’d decided to take it. And now you interrogate me as you would a criminal.’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘I made arrangements to leave Henrietta Street. I didn’t tell Mr Hakesby – I thought it better not.’

  ‘You asked Brennan instead.’ I found I had raised my voice. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to – to—’

  ‘To shout at me? To browbeat me, as if you were a judge and I before you in the dock?’

  ‘I’m merely trying to establish—’

  ‘Yes, I asked Brennan for help,’ she interrupted. ‘His Uncle Mangot had business in town, and he was going back to Woor Green early the next morning. Brennan took me to him – he lay at the stable of an inn, along with his horse and cart. We arranged the matter there and then.’

  ‘A strange choice,’ I said, without adding that what I found strange and unsettling was the fact that she had gone to Brennan, and he had helped her.

  ‘Why? Going to Mangot’s Farm? I went there because it seemed the best course available to me. A refugee camp, where people come who have never met each other before. Somewhere near London but not too far.’ She turned her head. ‘I didn’t do it just because you advised it, by the way. I did it because I wanted to spare Mr Hakesby trouble.’

  ‘In that case you were unsuccessful.’

  Cat dug her elbow into me. ‘That was unkind, sir.’

  She was right, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her.

  ‘Have you talked to Mr Milcote at Clarendon House?’ she said after a pause. ‘We deal with him over the pavilion and he must know all about Gorse, too.’

  Was she trying to change the subject? I said, ‘He and I have already talked a great deal.’

  Her arm tightened around me. ‘He’s an able man.’

  For a moment, I wondered if she entertained a liking
for Milcote; a handsome fellow like that might catch the fancy of most young women; but Cat was not like the general run of young women.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on after another fifty yards of plodding and swaying, ‘Anyway, what’s the point of all these questions? What are you trying to find out? If I killed my cousin?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Thank you for that, at least. How did you find me? Was it the letter?’

  ‘What letter?’ I said irritably.

  ‘The one I sent Brennan.’

  ‘Yes – that and the cloak and the wall-eyed pedlar.’ I half-turned my head. ‘Why did you write to him?’

  Cat answered my tone rather than my words. ‘He’s not my sweetheart, if that’s what you mean. No, it was because there was talk at the farm about my Lord Clarendon and his house. The tall man – the one you met – says the Duke of Buckingham intends some great attack on my lord that will ruin him utterly. I heard yesterday that the Duke’s men are bribing disaffected men to march on Clarendon House. Men like those refugees, or at least some of the wilder ones among them.’

  ‘What did you want Brennan to do about it?’

  ‘Tell Hakesby, and persuade him to pass on the warning to Mr Milcote or my lord himself.’ Cat paused. ‘Lord Clarendon has been a good client to us, and I wouldn’t like to see his house damaged. Or the pavilion we’re working on.’

  I almost laughed. She cared so much for someone else’s house that she would risk betraying her own whereabouts to her enemies in the hope of preserving it.

  ‘Do you think he passed the message on?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Mr Hakesby was already held for questioning when the letter came, and now they’ve taken Brennan too. He can tell the men who interrogate him, I suppose.’