The King's Evil

by Andrew Taylor

  We approached the church, which was raised on the mound of graves surrounding it. Opposite it was a larger house, built mostly of brick. To one side was a wall with a gateway set in it. We rode through and entered a stable yard beside the house. The ground sloped down to a group of farm buildings.

  ‘Nothing much has changed here since my grandfather’s time,’ I heard Warley saying to Lady Quincy. ‘When it is mine, I shall pull the place down and rebuild it on the higher ground beyond the church, removed from the smells of the midden. Mr Hakesby has agreed to draw me a plan of a gentleman’s house, a mansion both elegant and modern. Do you know of him, madam? He’s one of the architects we have working on our new chapel at Jerusalem.’

  She inclined her head, a gesture which meant nothing. Warley dismounted and helped her from her horse. I summoned the postillion and lifted Stephen down to him.

  I sensed that someone was looking at me. I turned towards the house. An old woman dressed in widow’s black was standing in a doorway. She was scrutinizing us with a look of distaste on her face. Her hand was resting on the shoulder of a small girl.

  Lady Quincy swept into a curtsy, as graceful as a swan. ‘Mistress Warley. Your servant, madam.’

  I heard a gasp. I glanced down. Stephen was staring at the girl, and she was staring at him. They were much of an age probably, I thought, no more than eight or nine. The girl’s features were teasingly familiar, but I could not understand why.

  Both children raised their hands at the same time, as if they were reflections of each other, and touched their swollen necks.

  The manor house at Hitcham St Martin was damp and inconvenient. The family took their meals in a stone-flagged hall that was open to the rafters and smelled strongly of damp. The windows were small, the fireplace was huge but lacked a fire, and the rats rustled and scrabbled behind the fraying tapestries on the wall.

  Our dinner was a fish stew with yet more eels, which were found everywhere in the Fens. There was nothing to wash it down but small beer. While the five of us ate, the house was alive with invisible movement – with footsteps crisscrossing the rooms overhead, with raised voices and the scraping and bumping of furniture. The arrival of Mr Warley with two guests and three servants had thrown the household into confusion.

  We were waited on by a single maidservant, little older than Frances. The latter sat at the old woman’s elbow, her eyes on her plate and her presence inhibiting conversation as perhaps Mistress Warley intended. Warley was on her other side.

  Even before the King’s Evil had blighted her appearance, Frances could not have been a pretty child, being chubby and clumsy, with regular features, small watchful eyes and a sallow, spotty complexion. I knew nothing more about her – she had curtsied clumsily to us when Mistress Warley had told her to, but I had not heard her say a single word to anyone since our arrival. I could not rid myself of the curious idea that I had seen her somewhere before.

  It was not a sociable meal. The only one who talked at length was Mr Warley. The old lady listened to his account of Dr Burbrough’s accident, though with little appearance of interest. She had lost most of her teeth; as a result she sucked rather than ate her stew, and the sounds of this punctuated her grandson’s story.

  After this, Warley went on interminably about Jerusalem and about the Warley estate at Hitcham St Martin. It was only towards the end of the meal that I wondered whether he talked to fill the silence or because he was on edge. Perhaps Burbrough’s escape from near death and our presence here in his home had unsettled him more than I realized.

  Lady Quincy was unusually silent. I noted how her eyes would drift time and again towards Frances, and then veer suddenly aside as if an invisible force had repelled her interest. At least, I thought, I now knew the reason for her interest in scrofula, the reason for our meeting at the Banqueting House while the King was touching the sufferers, and for the presence of the African boy in her household. It hurt me that she had not confided in me earlier – even yesterday evening – but had left Frances’s condition to reveal itself to me directly. She was a woman, I suspected, for whom secrecy was a habit of mind; perhaps it had become its own justification.

  There was a lull in the conversation and I asked whether the causeway was the only way to approach the village.

  ‘Yes,’ Warley said, ‘and we become an island when a flood sweeps it away, as sometimes happens in the storms. We are quite cut off.’

  ‘You exaggerate, Richard,’ said his grandmother. ‘We still have punts. We always have punts in the Fens. I don’t hold with this foolish mania for drainage. It brings those wicked foreigners here, those Dutchmen. Besides, God made the Fens as they are for a purpose. Would you argue against our maker’s design for us?’

  He smiled, bobbing his head, though his expression made it clear he did not like being contradicted. He gave me a sharp look. ‘Strangers rarely take us unawares.’

  Afterwards, Warley murmured a few words to Mistress Warley. She nodded and told the maid to clear the table and then leave us to talk.

  ‘You too, Frances. Go and learn the Collect for the day. I shall hear you recite it after Evensong.’

  ‘May she find the blackamoor?’ Lady Quincy said suddenly, breaking a long silence. ‘A child of her own age might amuse her …’ She turned and spoke directly to Frances, ‘If you like him, my dear, you shall have him for your own, as a present from me. He is a slave boy, you see, and I may give him to whomever I wish.’

  For the first time, I think, the child looked directly at her. There was a spark of emotion in her face, instantly repressed.

  ‘A slave boy would not be a suitable gift for a little girl,’ Mistress Warley said. ‘Far too expensive and most impractical. And, Frances, I’ve told you time and again that a spoilt child is not pleasing in the sight of God. Still, you may thank Lady Quincy for her kindness. Then leave us.’

  Frances gave Lady Quincy another wobbly curtsy, made another to Mistress Warley, muttered her thanks and withdrew. When the four of us were alone, Mistress Warley turned to Lady Quincy. The old woman seemed not entirely human; she put me in mind of a lizard, for she had a narrow head with a long jaw and skin marked with smallpox. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, which was surprisingly pink in comparison with the yellowy, wrinkled face that surrounded it.

  ‘When I wrote to Lady Clarendon,’ she said, ‘I wrote only to inform her of the child’s illness, and to seek assistance for it, whether from a physician or from the King himself.’

  ‘You knew it was scrofula then?’ Lady Quincy put in.

  ‘I’ve seen the King’s Evil before. It’s common enough in the Fens.’

  ‘Then why should you object if we take Frances to London? There are the best physicians in the country there. And of course – most importantly of all – there is the King himself. He is God’s anointed. God himself has granted him the divine power to cure this affliction.’

  Mistress Warley shook her head. ‘I explained all this to Lady Clarendon. I begged that the King would permit us to bring Frances to him when he is next at Newmarket for the horse races. It is not far from here, and it would distress the child less – and it would also make it possible to manage the matter far more discreetly. I’m sure if my lady were alive, she—’

  Warley cleared his throat. ‘Madam, forgive me, but it would hardly be fitting for us to oppose the King’s wishes in this. Lady Quincy brought me a letter in his own hand commanding us to surrender Frances to Lady Quincy. Her ladyship has come all this way to fetch her, and at great expense. It shows the King’s great kindness for Frances – and it’s surely a sign that he has her best interests at heart.’

  Mistress Warley threw him a glance, and the tongue appeared once more. ‘Just as you have yours, Richard. You would not be at Jerusalem if it were not for the King. Since Dr Burbrough is so ill, I wonder who will act as Vice Master there? A man who has the King’s support, perhaps?’

  Her grandson flushed and looked away.

&n
bsp; ‘Madam, pray don’t distress yourself,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘Your concern does you much credit. Frances may well be back with you in a week or two, or perhaps a little longer. While she’s gone, she will write to you, and so will I to tell you how she does.’

  ‘The child has a delicate constitution,’ Mistress Warley said, spitting out the words as if they were missiles. ‘She is not accustomed to strangers, or to strange places. We are all the family she has ever known. To snatch her away from everything she knows would be cruel. She was entrusted to me, madam, and I will not permit her to be removed from this house. You may tell the King that I would be obliged to him if he would heal her at Newmarket. As I originally asked.’

  She snapped shut her mouth. With sudden vigour, she pushed back her chair. She rose to her feet, leaning on the table and pushing away Warley’s hand when he tried to help her.

  Warley and I stood up. With her stick tapping on the flagstones and her skirts brushing the rushes underfoot, she made her way towards the door. She didn’t lean on the stick. She merely used it to make her presence felt.

  No one spoke. I opened the door and bowed to her as she passed. She did not look at me. It was a withdrawal, not a capitulation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  AFTER DINNER, WARLEY detained me for a moment in the hall. ‘I regret my grandmother’s obduracy, sir,’ he said. ‘You will tell the King it was none of my doing, won’t you? I’ve done everything I can to assist you.’

  ‘This house is yours, sir,’ I said curtly. ‘Aren’t you master here?’

  His mouth twitched uncertainly. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then why can’t you insist?’

  ‘My grandmother has ruled the roost here for so long that it is difficult to cross her, either in the house or in the village. She’s a law unto herself. She is determined to keep the child with her, and you would need a court order and the King’s sergeant-at-arms to change that.’

  ‘This is an absurd position,’ I said. ‘We’ve come all this way, and at so much expense; the King desires only to help the child, and God knows she needs help – only for us all to be thwarted by the whim of an old lady.’

  I had spoken bluntly and he winced. ‘If I could change matters, sir,’ he said, ‘believe me, I would.’

  ‘What if you told her about the robbery in your rooms and the attack on your servant? Other people are concerned in this matter, and they don’t come from the King. Their interest is hostile; they won’t be as polite as us. That might change her mind.’

  He shook his head unhappily. ‘You don’t know my grandmother, sir. She won’t listen to reason. Not where Frances is concerned.’

  On these unsatisfactory terms we parted. I went up to my bedchamber, a garret under the eaves which I was to share with Stephen. I sat by the open window, looking down on the garden, scratching the more accessible of my gnat bites and trying to collect my thoughts. It was a sunny afternoon, warm for the time of year. The window overlooked an orchard, and the scent of apples drifted into the room.

  This journey had become a nightmare. First the robbery at Jerusalem, then Burbrough’s accident, and now the further complication of Mistress Warley’s obstinacy. The old lady was in her own place, and surrounded by her own people. We could hardly take her to court to force the issue. Besides, we lacked the authority; the King had chosen to make a request to the Warleys, not given them an order. Frances’s ambiguous status didn’t help. She was a nobody who had arrived at Hitcham St Martin by the agency of Lady Clarendon; and Lady Clarendon was dead.

  At least the wider picture was clearer. The King had sent Lady Quincy to collect Frances. The child had originally been entrusted to Mistress Warley by Lady Clarendon, presumably acting on behalf of the King, who in return had advanced the career of Richard Warley, and who to some extent was still acting as Warley’s patron. The identity of the child remained a mystery, though I thought it most probable that she was an unacknowledged bastard of the King.

  Given Frances’s age, and what Lady Quincy had told me last night, her conception or birth must be linked to the court’s stay in Bruges during the King’s exile on the Continent. Lord Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, had been at his side, his chief adviser. The Duke of Buckingham had also been there, at least for part of the time; he must have known of the affair, I thought, and he was seeking to use it to gain political capital, particularly in relation to his continuing campaign to crush Lord Clarendon. To that end, the Duke had sent his two hirelings after us, the man known as the Bishop and his servant.

  That was, if not clear, at least visible in shadowy outline. But there was much I did not understand. Did Buckingham intend to harm the child, even to have her killed, or did he merely want control of her? What had been the role of Edward Alderley in this? Could his murder have somehow been connected to the sad, clumsy girl I had seen at dinner? What had the Bishop been looking for in Alderley’s apartments? What of Gorse and his disappearance? To make matters worse, Alderley’s murder was tangled up with Cat Lovett, and I didn’t know how. Questions and theories, fears and doubts swirled in my mind like those wretched Fenland gnats.

  I heard distant laughter and looked up. For a moment I couldn’t work out where it came from. Then a movement on the other side of the orchard caught my eye. I looked more closely. More movement, and then a glimpse of brown, a glimpse of white.

  The two children burst out into the clearing. Frances in her brown dress was pursuing Stephen, who had lost his coat and shoes. She was half a head taller than he was, and more strongly built. I thought how pleasant it was to see the children playing together, particularly two such as these.

  Then Frances flung herself at Stephen. Her weight threw him to the ground, on the bank of the stream that formed the border of the orchard on that side. She knelt over him, pinning him down and pushing his face into the earth. Then she scooped up a handful of mud and rubbed it into his hair.

  Not as pleasant as I had assumed. Frances shrieked with laughter – where was the grave and silent girl I had watched at dinner? – and dug up two more handfuls of mud. Stephen wriggled from under her and tried to stand. This threw her off balance, and most of the mud ended up on her skirt.

  Stephen scrambled up and ran into the trees, pursued by Frances. I listened to her cries of rage until a woman called angrily, and she fell silent.

  If Frances were indeed the King’s bastard, I thought, why in God’s name did he not acknowledge her as he did all his other bastards? After all, what was one more among the crowd?

  I could think of only one reason for his silence, and for all this secrecy: because Frances’s mother was married to someone else.

  Both children were soundly whipped – Frances by Mistress Warley’s maid and Stephen by Lady Quincy’s postillion. It was partly because of the mud, Mistress Warley said, and partly because of so much unseemly mirth on the Lord’s Day.

  Mistress Warley asked Lady Quincy and myself whether we would attend evensong with the family. Both of us declined, which earned us a disapproving look. Frances did not have the luxury of choice. The maid took her away and dressed her in a thick grey gown that hung on her like a sack.

  Mr Warley escorted them to the church on foot. I hoped that their absence might mean that Lady Quincy and I could talk together. But she retired to her room with her maid to attend her, leaving me to my own devices.

  I walked about the garden for nearly an hour instead, half-heartedly slapping the gnats as they sucked their fill of me. At the back of the house, the ground sloped down to a stretch of brackish water, with the empty fen stretching beyond. Waterfowl were on the wing, and their cries were unearthly.

  The more I thought about yesterday’s events, the more convinced I became that Burbrough had not fallen into the mill race by accident. For some reason he had cooperated with the Bishop or whoever had broken into Warley’s rooms at Jerusalem. But the news of the attack on Smith, his old college servant, seemed to have angered him: he had gone to remonstrate with the men
at the inn by the mill; perhaps he had threatened to expose them; and he had been mangled by the mill wheel for his pains. I could prove nothing but the scraps of evidence pointed towards this sequence of events.

  If I was right, it showed beyond doubt the ruthlessness of the Bishop and his colleague. But they would not find it easy to reach us here. The Warleys – or rather Mistress Warley – dominated Hitcham St Martin, and the only way to the village was by the causeway. This was not a place that people passed through on the road to somewhere else. Strangers would stand out.

  By chance, I found Stephen in the orchard, idly throwing twigs into the stream. I had forgotten about him – and so, it seemed, had everyone else. He was an anomaly, poor child, a lady’s toy who did not belong with the rest of the servants, any more than he belonged with the rest of us. He was like a little dog, designed for petting or showing off to one’s friends, but of no practical value. Now his charm was spoiled: no lady of fashion would want a pet with scrofula.

  The swellings clung to his neck like giant barnacles on a scrap of rock. Would Lady Quincy keep him? If she did, what sort of life would he have in her household? I hoped for his sake he wouldn’t find himself under the same roof as Frances for very long. If the scene I had witnessed in the orchard were any guide to her character, his life would be a misery.

  When Stephen saw me, he rose to his feet and bowed. He had been well trained by his previous owner, the lady who had discarded him when the King’s Evil had made him a pretty boy no longer.

  ‘Stephen,’ I said, ‘I want you to be on your guard. I believe that two men may be following us. They are dangerous. I don’t think they mean us well, or Mistress Frances.’

  He caught his breath. ‘Who are they, sir?’

  His voice took me by surprise. It was a clear, high treble. If you closed your eyes, he could have been any English boy.

  ‘There’s a tall man – middle-aged; the last time I saw him he was wearing a brown coat. And his servant, who is fat. They both wear swords. They are almost certainly travelling on horseback. I don’t know either of their names.’