‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Veal, sir. And this is my servant, Roger.’
‘What do you want?’
‘A word or two in private. Is that so very difficult? I tried to talk to you last week – if you remember, I sent Roger to you as you were coming back from your evening with your friend Mr Milcote. Poor Roger was most distressed that you would not come with him. Still – never mind that.’
Two boats were approaching Whitehall Stairs, bringing passengers across the Thames. I raised my hand and called out. ‘Here – a pair of oars, if you please.’
‘All in good time,’ someone shouted from the end of the landing stage. There was a rudimentary queuing system, jealously guarded, at Whitehall Stairs. ‘Wait your turn or you can swim for it.’
‘Don’t disturb yourself, sir,’ Veal said. ‘We shall find you a boat in a moment. But first you’ll be so good as to come with me. There’s someone who would very much like to talk to you.’
‘Your master?’ I said. ‘Would that be his Grace of Buckingham?’
‘Hush, sir. Come along with us. You won’t be the loser, I promise you. No man is so happy in his work that he would not better himself if he could.’
As Veal spoke, his servant nudged against me with his great belly, pushing me towards the doorway into the passage that led to the palace. He allowed his cloak to fall open, allowing me to see the glint of a dagger, a more discreet weapon than a sword. Did they mean to murder me?
I looked wildly in front of me, at the water below. It wouldn’t be deep, so close to the bank, though it was muddy and foul with the rubbish from the palace. If I jumped in, I wouldn’t drown. I wouldn’t even need to swim. All I would lose was my dignity. But Veal and his servant would still be here, waiting to help me out.
A boat bumped against the nearest pier. An elderly lawyer was clambering on to the landing stage. Men clustered around him, ready to take his place.
I acted on impulse, without thought to the consequence. I pushed Roger aside and jumped from the jetty. I landed in the boat, which rocked violently, nearly pitching me into the river. Water splashed over me. The waterman swore and raised an oar. There was chaos on the stairs, with men milling about like angry wasps, and shouting.
‘I’ll kill you, bumfodder,’ the waterman said. He swung his oar at me to knock me into the river.
I crouched, just in time, and caught the blow on my arm. I clutched the gunwale of the boat. ‘A pound for you,’ I gasped. ‘I have gold. Take me downstream.’
He paused in the act of raising the oar. I fumbled in my pocket and drew out my purse. Something hard – a stone, perhaps, or even a coin – hit my cheek and made me yelp with pain.
The waterman shrugged. He pushed off with his oar, swung the boat round and rowed towards the middle of the stream.
‘If you don’t give me that pound now,’ he said in a confidential voice that barely reached me because the breeze off the river snatched at the words, ‘I swear to God I’ll drown you.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CLARENDON HOUSE HAD changed since I had last been there. It had acquired a forlorn air, as though for all its grandeur it no longer mattered very much. No one had swept up the leaves in the forecourt. Even the crowd in the street had deserted it.
A distant clock was striking four when I arrived. The servants recognized me at the front gate. I mentioned Mr Milcote’s name and they waved me through, though without the civility they had shown on previous visits. I entered by the side door and asked the porter to send word to Milcote.
A footboy walked off with the message. The porter retired to his alcove, leaving me to stare at the busts of emperors and the paintings of the gods that decorated the hall. I paced to and fro beneath them. It was colder inside the house than out. There was a dead mouse in the empty fireplace. Above the mantelpiece the emperor Hadrian stared down at me with a disapproving expression on his face.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and Milcote appeared on the half-landing. He shook my hand warmly and led me to a closet on the ground floor. He closed the door, making sure it had latched securely. We stood by the tall window, looking down at the leaves chasing each other over the forecourt.
‘I am so glad to see you, sir,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve been at my wits’ end. It’s as if we’re standing on quicksand.’
‘Is there news of Gorse?’
‘Pray keep your voice down. There are eavesdroppers everywhere. And the Duke’s upstairs.’
‘The Duke?’ I stared stupidly at him, thinking that Buckingham had suddenly turned up in his enemy’s house.
‘The Duke of York. He’s in conference with my lord. They saw you arriving. You are to go to them, so we must hurry.’
‘And Gorse?’
‘He’s been seen in Leadenhall Street. My servant tells me he encountered a man he knew in the street, and treated him to wine. He said he had a new master, and that he was more prosperous than ever before, and like to be more so in a month or two. Apparently he was wearing a new beaver hat that must have cost at least fifty or sixty shillings.’
‘Who is this new master?’
‘He wouldn’t say.’
Leadenhall Street. The name set off an echo in my memory. I said, ‘When was this?’
‘Saturday. I tried to find you at once, but your servants said you were out of town. Where have you been?’
‘An errand for the King,’ I said. Leadenhall Street was not that far from Botolph Lane, where Cat had seen Milcote. It was in the eastern quarter of the walled city, near the Tower, and was one of the few streets that had escaped the Fire. ‘Did you go there to look for Gorse?’
He shook his head. His handsome face was haggard. ‘I thought it better to wait for you. Besides, I hardly know that part of town at all.’
‘Is there talk about Gorse here, in the house?’
‘Less than you would think. The servants have other things on their mind. A score of them have left, and no doubt there will be more.’
At that moment, with a sinking sensation, I remembered why Leadenhall Street was significant.
Milcote glanced towards the door. ‘Come, sir, we really must go. They’re waiting for us.’
The Duke of York was a tall man, like his brother the King, though better looking. But I found it hard to imagine him laughing. There was a marmoreal quality to his stiff, regular features and upright bearing that fitted well with our austerely tasteful surroundings in Clarendon House.
He received me in the Earl’s private closet, which was uncomfortably warm from the fire. I bowed low to His Highness and then to his father-in-law, Lord Clarendon. Both men were seated. Clarendon had his bandaged legs up on a cushioned footstool. His face was drawn with pain.
The Duke glanced up at Milcote with something approaching a smile on his face. ‘Leave us for a moment, George. But stay within call.’
Milcote bowed and left the room. I remembered that he and the Duke had served together in the French wars.
‘Well, Marwood,’ the Duke went on, ‘so you are safely returned from your errand in Cambridgeshire. What happened?’
I was in a quandary. I could talk frankly on this subject only to the King and Chiffinch. But I could hardly refuse a direct request from the King’s brother.
‘I accompanied my Lady Quincy to a village named Hitcham St Martin, sir. We brought back a child to London. Mistress Frances.’
His hands fluttered about his neck, sketching swellings. ‘She has …?’
‘Yes, sir. Scrofula.’
‘Is it very bad?’
‘I’ve had little experience with the condition, sir, but it is certainly noticeable.’
Clarendon stirred in his chair. ‘Was there any difficulty? Either with the Warleys or on the road? Any … undue attention?’
I hesitated. Without the King’s leave it might be unwise for me to mention the details of what had happened in Cambridge. I said, ‘Mistress Warley was reluctant to be parted from the child.’<
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‘She had no right to have an opinion on the subject,’ the Duke said, glancing at Clarendon. ‘She has been paid handsomely enough for her services.’
‘And we were followed, sir, by two men,’ I went on. ‘They tried to find out where the child slept in the Warleys’ house, and I believe we foiled an attempt to kidnap her.’
‘It’s as I feared,’ Clarendon said.
The Duke glanced at him. ‘He can do nothing without …’
Clarendon nodded and pressed his lips tightly together.
He can do nothing without … Did they mean Buckingham? But what was this thing he could do nothing without?
‘Where’s the child now?’ the Duke asked.
‘At Lady Quincy’s, sir, as far as I know.’
‘She’ll be safe enough there,’ he said to Clarendon. ‘My brother will see to that. He has his own reasons to make sure that the house is secure.’
He glanced at me and frowned, as if he wished he had not spoken so frankly in front of me. There was silence in the room, broken only by the settling of the coals on the fire.
‘But it’s not the child that really matters, is it?’ the Duke burst out as if he could no longer restrain himself. ‘It’s—’
‘Hush, sir,’ said Lord Clarendon. The old man winced, as if from a sudden stab of pain. ‘The child is nothing as she is, or very little. But …’
‘She could be everything,’ the Duke of York said. ‘If …’
If what? Something clicked in my mind, as if a cog had turned by some internal mechanism, permitting a new line of thought. I remembered the mysterious box I had found broken open in Alderley’s rooms. Perhaps that was where the answer had lain.
After my interview with the Duke of York and his father-in-law, I asked Milcote if I could have a word with him in private. He escorted me downstairs and through the huge reception rooms on the ground floor to the terrace overlooking the garden, where there would be no danger of eavesdroppers.
‘I noticed that the protesters are gone from Piccadilly,’ I said.
‘For the moment.’ Milcote shrugged. ‘But I’m sure Buckingham still has spies watching who comes and goes here.’
‘Talking of Buckingham’s men,’ I said, ‘have you seen any more of the two who were there before among the protesters? The ringleaders?’
‘The tall one in the brown coat and his fat friend? No. Not for a few days.’
‘Will you send word to me if you see them?’ If Veal and his servant reappeared in Piccadilly, I thought, perhaps I could persuade Chiffinch to speak to the King and have them arrested. To be frank, they had terrified me this afternoon: not only their actions there, but the fact that they had been so confident in their powers that they had tried to kidnap me in Whitehall itself. ‘It’s a matter of some urgency.’
Milcote must have heard an unusual note in my voice, for he frowned and glanced at me. ‘Of course, sir. You may depend on me.’
As we walked along the terrace, I glanced at the pavilion where we had found Edward Alderley’s body. One of the windows in the upper room had been left open. Outside the door, the canvas covering a pile of old bricks had worked its way loose and was flapping in the breeze. A wheelbarrow had been abandoned on a heap of sand, now sodden with rain.
Milcote read my mind. ‘It’s hard to believe it will ever be finished, isn’t it? It would have grieved my lady to see it in such a condition.’
‘What was Lady Clarendon like?’
‘Formidable in her time. But age and illness had done cruel things to her.’
I nodded, thinking that the description could also be applied to her ladyship’s cousin, Mistress Warley.
Milcote added softly, ‘As they do to my lord.’
I glanced at him. ‘I know Lord Clarendon is pained by the gout – but is he ailing in other respects?’
‘No – or not in body. His mind seems as vigorous as ever, but he has had so many trials in these last few months and he has lost so much ground with the King that I cannot help wondering if he will ever be the man he was. His friends abandon him on all sides. If Buckingham and his other enemies in Parliament have him impeached, then what’s left for him? Unless the King intervenes, even his life may be forfeit.’
‘And you, sir?’ I said. ‘If the worst happens to Lord Clarendon, what will you do?’
Milcote gave me a smile of singular sweetness. ‘Me? I’ve no fears on that score. The Duke of York has promised me a position in his household, and I know he will keep his word to an old comrade. I saved his life at the siege of Arras, and he does not forget those who have done him a service.’ We walked on for a moment and then he added, in a softer voice: ‘But I fear for my lord.’
When I left Clarendon House, I walked in the park for half an hour or more, trying to tease apart the tangled threads of this business. Of this at least I could be sure: it was all somehow connected, from Alderley’s drowning in Lord Clarendon’s well to the child hidden away in the Fens, from the robbery at Jerusalem College to the King’s Evil. Veal – why was he known as the Bishop? – was clearly acting as someone’s agent, and that someone was almost certainly the Duke of Buckingham. Both Lady Quincy’s daughter and the missing contents of the silver box were crucial elements in this intrigue.
But the nature of the intrigue continued to elude me. What did Buckingham and Veal desire to gain from all the dangers and the expense of this? Veal was pursuing me, though I didn’t know why. Did he hope to corrupt me and bring me to their side? Or did he merely mean to silence me for ever?
I paced up and down, my spirits sinking lower and lower. It was bad enough that the King expected me to do so much in the affair for his own interest. What made it infinitely worse was the fact that I was secretly sheltering Cat Lovett from the authorities. If it all went wrong, I faced more than losing my clerkships and my income for failing to carry out the King’s wishes. I faced arrest, and perhaps a prosecution that might lead me to the gallows.
In the end, I decided I must do something – anything – or my own thoughts would drive me mad. I walked to Charing Cross and went by water into the city, as far as Old Swan Stairs by London Bridge. It was a place that brought back unhappy memories to me, and I was glad to hurry into the streets of the City, or rather what was left of them.
The quay and the docks that lined the river were crowded with shipping, and their spars and rigging made broken spiders’ webs against the grey sky. Thames Street was almost as busy as it had been before the Fire, despite the temporary nature of so many of the structures.
I was going east, in the direction of the Tower. I passed the entrance to Pudding Lane, where the Fire had started last year, and then came to Botolph Lane, which ran parallel to it, as did Love Lane beyond. Between the two was a network of ruined buildings with deep, brick-lined cellars roofed over with scraps of canvas and timber.
There were people everywhere, milling about, carrying on their business, or simply staring at the world around them and the wide grey river on the far side of Thames Street. Most were men – building labourers at work or men employed at the docks or merely the idlers and vagrants that pass endlessly to and fro through the streets of London.
By and by, I realized that there was another category, too. Little knots of sailors, many in their best clothes and as drunk as a man could be. I also saw more respectable citizens – some were clerks or artisans on a holiday; others might have been merchants, or belonged to one of the professions. Most of these men weren’t drunk, but they had a furtive air.
I passed a doorway. A woman was standing within, her bosom exposed. Her cheeks were pockmarked but she was comely enough, and handsomely built. ‘God bless you, your honour. Looking for a little amusement?’ She touched my scarred cheek. ‘Ah – I like a gentleman who’s been in the wars. I wager you know a thing or two about gallantry and brisk assaults.’
I shook my head and hurried on, but her wheedling voice pursued me down the street, promising me a foretaste of heaven’s raptures
for a mere trifle. I was still enough of a puritan, still my father’s son, to find such trade in flesh both repulsive and enticing. The Fire had burned Fleet Alley, where so many of the pimps and brothel keepers of London had congregated, and most of their other haunts nearby. They and their whores had been forced to ply their trade elsewhere. Where better to buy and sell this shabby apology for love than among the ruins of Love Lane?
At least that was one small mystery solved: the reason for Milcote’s presence in this part of town and his desire to conceal it. He was not the first gentleman to take his private pleasures in such places, and he would not be the last. Lord Clarendon was reputed to be a prude: he would not approve of lecherous behaviour in a senior member of his household.
I turned up St Mary’s Hill, quickening my pace. I was tempted to tell Cat what I had discovered. But, with my transaction with Lady Quincy so fresh in my memory, who was I to set myself up as a judge of morality?
In Leadenhall Street I walked up and down, looking into coffee houses, alehouses and taverns. According to Milcote, Gorse had been seen in Leadenhall Street. But I had another reason to be here. Among the taverns was the Golden Ball. On the last day of his life, Alderley had sent Bearwood’s boy, Hal, here, with a letter for the Bishop, Mr Veal.
I strolled through the public rooms but saw no one I recognized. Not that it meant anything – there were private rooms here, as there were in most taverns of any size. Besides, since the Fire, the untouched streets around Leadenhall were more populous than they had ever been.
Was it really so much of a coincidence that Veal had dined in a tavern here, and that Gorse had been seen nearly two weeks later in the street? By any rational yardstick, I knew, and in normal circumstances, it was the sort of coincidence that happens every day. But there had been nothing normal in the circumstances of my recent life. There was nothing rational about my dry mouth, my clammy skin and my overwhelming need to keep looking over my shoulder. Since Veal had waylaid me at Whitehall today, I was scared.
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