Sea Change

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Colic does not put me or any man in the best of tempers,’ Walpole said in a gravelly voice. ‘Try me, sir, and you’ll regret it.’

  ‘I have no wish to try anyone, sir,’ said Spandrel.

  ‘Nor to be tried, I dare say.’ Walpole moved closer. ‘Though the Dutch authorities would like to try you, I’m told, for the murder last year of one of their more eminent citizens.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Save your denials for your Maker, sir. I’ll not hear them. You are William Spandrel?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The same William Spandrel who escaped from custody in Amsterdam in February of last year and still stands accused in that city of murder?’

  ‘Well, I …’ Something in Walpole’s gaze told him prevarication was worse than futile. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The United Provinces are a friendly nation. Surrendering a fugitive to them would be a common courtesy.’

  ‘I am innocent, sir.’

  ‘That’s for them to say. However—’ Walpole flapped his hand. ‘I didn’t have you brought here for the pleasure, if it would be one, of loading you aboard a ship bound for Amsterdam.’

  ‘No, sir?’

  ‘But I want you to understand that it can be done. It will be done.’ Walpole snapped his fingers so sharply and suddenly that Spandrel jumped. ‘Unless …’

  The pause grew into a silence that Spandrel felt obliged to break. ‘Is there something … I can do for you, sir?’

  ‘There is.’ Walpole moved to a circular table in the middle of the room and lit the lamp that stood on it. Then he unlocked one of the shallow drawers beneath the table, opened it and pulled out a book, which he let fall with a crash next to the lamp.

  Spandrel flinched at his first sight of the book. It was a plain, green-covered ledger, with leather spine and marbled page edges.

  ‘I see you recognize it.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I—’

  ‘I know everything, Spandrel. The whole squalid tale of scheming and double-dealing. Including your part in it. You do recognize this book, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you’re familiar with the contents?’

  ‘I …’ Spandrel strained to decide what it was best to say. Walpole’s own name was to be found listed within those green covers. If Spandrel admitted he knew how big a bribe Walpole had taken, he was surely a dead man. But if Walpole already knew he knew … ‘The contents made no sense to me, sir. I have no head for figures.’

  ‘No head for figures? A bold try, sir. Yes, I compliment you on that. What about Dutch widows? Do you have a head for their figures?’

  ‘I … don’t understand, sir.’

  ‘When I said I knew everything, that is exactly what I meant. Everything.’

  Spandrel gulped. ‘I …’

  ‘Do you still not understand?’

  ‘I do understand, sir. Yes.’

  ‘Good. The book was delivered to me a year ago by an acquaintance of yours, Mr Cloisterman, of whose safe return from Rome you’ll doubtless be glad to learn. Mr Cloisterman, incidentally, is now His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Sublime Porte.’ Catching Spandrel’s blank look, he smiled and added, ‘The Ottoman Empire.’

  ‘Mr Cloisterman’s an ambassador?’

  ‘Thus is assiduous service rewarded. Yes indeed. Cloisterman is sampling the pleasures of Constantinople, which are many and varied, so I’m told. I’ve never been abroad myself. You know that? You, sir, are a better travelled man than me. But not a better informed one. Before he left, Cloisterman made known to me every detail of the Green Book’s journey from London to Rome and back again. So, whatever lies you are tempted to tell, save your breath. I don’t care how you managed your own exit from Rome. It matters not to me. Here you are, though, home again. Like the Green Book.’ Walpole patted its cover, almost affectionately. ‘And ready to do my bidding, I rather think.’

  ‘How did you know … I’d come home?’

  ‘Sir Theodore Janssen alerted me to the repayment of your debt to him, which could only mean you planned to return, wrongly supposing you were no longer of interest to the likes of me.’

  ‘I did suppose that, sir, yes.’

  ‘An expensive mistake, as it turns out. You passed Westminster Abbey on your way here?’

  ‘I … think so, sir, yes.’

  ‘You think so. You know so. Don’t play the fool with me.’

  ‘We did pass the Abbey, sir. Yes.’

  ‘Are you acquainted with the Dean of Westminster?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘The Right Reverend Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester.’

  ‘I, er … have heard of him.’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘As, er …’

  ‘As a stiff-necked, silver-tongued Tory who was all for proclaiming the Pretender King when Queen Anne died. The Right Reverend Atterbury is a right renegade Jacobite.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And a plotting one to boot.’

  ‘I know nothing of such things.’

  ‘High time you learned, then. Certain papers have come into my possession following the recent death of the Earl of Sunderland. You knew his lordship had breathed his last? It’s been the talk of the town, doubtless even your neck of it.’

  The copy of the London Journal Spandrel had bought the previous day had been much given over to Sunderland’s sudden death. Spandrel had not bothered to read the reports, wrongly supposing that the deaths along with the doings of such men were none of his concern. ‘I heard, sir, yes.’

  ‘Those papers leave no room for doubting Lord Sunderland’s complicity in Atterbury’s plotting.’

  ‘Lord Sunderland?’

  ‘Yes. Lord Sunderland. Don’t look so surprised, man. Your perusal of the Green Book can hardly have left you with a glowing impression of your political masters’ capacity for loyalty.’

  ‘You’re very frank, sir.’ Walpole was being, in truth, disturbingly frank. Spandrel had felt safer being hectored than confided in.

  ‘I’m frank when I need to be. Your value to me lies in your attested knowledge of the Green Book. Tomorrow is St George’s Day. We can rely on Dean Atterbury presiding at evensong in the Abbey in order to lavish some patriotic prayers on the congregation. That’ll be his brand of patriotism, of course, not mine. You will attend the service and afterwards bring yourself to the Bishop’s attention. How you manage that is up to you, but manage it you must. Tell him you have something of in estimable value to the cause which you wish to discuss with him, something entrusted to you by the Earl of Sunderland.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing. He will rise to the bait. Sunderland’s death has him all a-quiver, fearful about what it means and what it portends. He will agree to see you in private. You will ensure he does. At that meeting, you will tell him about the Green Book.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Save your buts for a hogshead of ale!’ roared Walpole, suddenly reddening. ‘What do you mean by them, sir?’

  ‘It’s just that …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If the Bishop is in secret communication with the Pretender …’

  ‘As he is.’

  ‘Then he’ll know of my attempt to sell the book in Rome – and how it ended.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I, er, got myself off the hook by telling the Pretender I’d made up the story. I said the Green Book was seized and sent to London when Mr Knight was arrested. I said I was a South Sea Company clerk trying to swindle him.’

  ‘He believed you?’

  ‘He seemed to.’

  ‘Well, it’s reassuring to know he’s as big a fool as we’d always hoped. I suggest you make Atterbury believe that you were lying. Not difficult, since you were. Say Cloisterman made off with the book, leaving you to talk your way out of it as best you could. When you returned to London this spring, you were picked up by the Secret Service and taken before Sunderland. Sunderland had charge
of the Secret Service, damn his memory, until the day he died, so that’ll seem likely enough. Here’s the wrinkle. Cloisterman was acting for Sunderland, not me. It was to Sunderland that he delivered the book and through Sunderland’s influence, not mine, that he secured the Turkish posting. Well, Atterbury can hardly write to Cloisterman and ask him, can he? He’ll swallow it. You’ll say Sunderland seemed nervous, frightened almost, and threatened to have you sent to Amsterdam in irons unless you agreed to deliver the Green Book into Atterbury’s hands. The nervousness is a nice touch. It’ll play on the crazy suspicion that seems to have got about that I had Sunderland poisoned. His little son died last night, which only seems to have added to the rumours. You’ll explain that you weren’t supposed to reveal the source of the book, but, now Sutherland’s dead, there seems little point in keeping his name out of it. You’ll also explain that, now he is dead, you’re free to impose your own terms. How much did you ask the Pretender for? A hundred thousand, wasn’t it?’

  ‘How did—’ Spandrel bit his lip. ‘Yes. It was.’

  ‘You’ve learned from your mistake. Your price now is twenty thousand.’

  ‘You want me to … try to sell it?’

  ‘I want you to persuade Atterbury that it can be bought. The price is neither here nor there. I want him to believe this … bookful of gunpowder … is within his grasp. Then …’ Walpole smiled. ‘A letter to Rome, asking for instructions, or boasting of what the book will do for the Pretender’s standing here – its publication as a prelude to a rising. It doesn’t matter. But something, anything, to incriminate him. That’s what I want. And that’s what I mean to have.’

  ‘I …’ Spandrel’s heart sank. There was no way out. He would have to do this. And that was not all. He was a pawn. And pawns tended to be sacrificed in quest of a bishop, especially pawns who knew too much. Perhaps Atterbury’s involvement in his murder was just the kind of incrimination Walpole had in mind. ‘I’m not sure I …’

  ‘Do you want to be hanged as a murderer?’

  ‘No, sir. Of course not.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘I, er …’ Spandrel tried to look as if he meant what he was about to say. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘So you will.’ Walpole slipped the Green Book back into the drawer, locked it and dropped the key into his waistcoat pocket. ‘And you’d better pray your best is good enough.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘No-one else knows where the book really is, of course, apart from Cloisterman, far away in Constantinople. No-one but you and me. We make a strange pair to share such a secret, don’t we? Of course …’ He fixed Spandrel with his gaze. ‘Should anyone else find out, I’ll know who must have told them, won’t I? That’s the beauty of it.’

  ‘I won’t tell a soul, sir.’

  ‘Be sure you don’t.’

  ‘And, er, when I’ve, er … accomplished the task?’

  ‘How can you be sure I won’t hand you over to the Dutch authorities anyway? Is that what’s worrying you?’

  ‘Well, no. I mean, not exactly.’

  ‘I rather think it is. And, if it isn’t, it should be. But the answer’s very simple. You have my word. As a gentleman and a statesman.’ Walpole treated Spandrel to a broad but fleeting grin. ‘I can’t say handsomer than that, now can I?’

  Spandrel was left to make his own way back to London. Night had fallen and, as the lights of the Royal Hospital fell away behind him, darkness closed in on every side. Only his own footfalls and the mournful hoots of an owl somewhere to the north kept him company. He could not recall feeling so miserably desperate since his escape from Amsterdam. He should have left his debts unpaid and his mother unaware that he was still alive. Perhaps that was still the answer: to flee while he had the chance. But he could not abandon his mother so soon after re-entering her life and promising to transform it. There had to be another way out of this. There had to be. For if not …

  He pulled up his collar against the deepening chill of the night and pressed on towards the city; and towards the task that awaited him there.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A Worm on the Line

  THE MOVE FROM Cat and Dog Yard to Leicester Fields was accomplished with fewer difficulties than Spandrel’s mother seemed to have anticipated. Her meticulous oversight of the removal man’s work suggested that she half-expected some disaster to intervene before she could lay claim to being mistress of a respectable household at a reputable address. But, as the removal man muttered at one point, ‘Nobody’s going to make off with any of this,’ nodding towards a cartload of their pos sessions. ‘I’ve seen better stuff dumped in the Fleet Ditch.’

  If Mrs Spandrel had overheard such insolence, she might have boxed the fellow’s ears. Spandrel, for his part, would probably have told him to button his lip, had he been less preoccupied with a disaster whose proportions threatened to eclipse his mother’s worst fears. ‘Don’t look so miserable,’ she rebuked him as they stood together in their new and sparsely furnished drawing-room. ‘I’ll soon have this fit for the Princess of Wales to take tea in.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Ma,’ Spandrel managed to say. And sure he was. But that did not make him any less miserable. ‘Happy St George’s Day.’

  ‘Well, it’s a happier one than I thought I’d ever see again, I’ll say that.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Then put a smile on your face, boy. And help me unpack.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to go out.’

  ‘I might have known. Why?’

  ‘Let’s just say …’ He put together some kind of a smile. ‘I have to see a man about a dragon.’

  Whether the congregation for evensong at Westminster Abbey that afternoon was larger because it was St George’s Day Spandrel had no way to tell, since he had only ever been a reluctant churchgoer at best and then only on Sunday mornings. Evensong, especially in the august surroundings of Westminster Abbey, was for him a strange experience. His atheistical tendencies would not have made it an agreeable one in any circumstances. The circumstances that had led to his attendance, how ever, were such as to override religious scruples. What would have been merely disagreeable became instead an ordeal.

  The nave was well filled with worshippers and Dean Atterbury made his entrance only after the choir had filed in. Spandrel caught a glimpse of an erect, sombre-faced figure in flowing robes soon lost to him behind a pillar. Even a glimpse was subsequently denied him by the Dean’s position in the choir-stalls in relation to Spandrel’s own beyond the screen.

  But the Dean’s voice was denied no-one. It tolled sonorously, like a bell, echoing in the vaulted roof. ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.’ What did Atterbury consider lawful and right? Spandrel wondered. Who was the wicked man? ‘Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and weaknesses.’ Sins and weaknesses. Yes. They were what had brought Spandrel to this pass. And very possibly the Dean too. ‘Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness, and live; and hath given power and commandment to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins …’

  ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.’

  ‘Amen.’ Evensong was at an end, after nearly an hour of psalms and lessons and prayers. Most of the congregation was still kneeling, but the Dean was already leading the choir out. Spandrel’s long-awaited chance had come, a chance he had no choice but to take. He had deliberately sat at the end of a pew and now rose and walked rapidly and unnoticed across the south aisle to the door that led out into the cloister next to the Deanery.

  There was a pearly early evening light in the close. The choir was progressing roun
d the cloisters towards the school. But the Dean, attended by a flock of chaplains, was bearing down on Spandrel, or rather on the side-entrance to the Deanery, next to which Spandrel had emerged from the Abbey.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, standing his ground. ‘I must speak to you.’

  Atterbury stopped so abruptly that several of the chaplains carried on past him, only to have to scuttle back when they realized what had happened. One of them advanced menacingly on Spandrel, as if intending to remove him from the Dean’s path. But Atterbury held up a restraining hand. ‘One moment, Kelly.’ He examined Spandrel through cool blue eyes. ‘Well?’

  ‘It is a matter of the utmost importance, my lord. Affecting … a subject close to your heart.’

  ‘What subject?’

  ‘I cannot … speak of it openly.’

  ‘Can you not?’ Atterbury thought for a moment, then said, ‘Deal with this, Kelly,’ before sweeping past Spandrel and into the Deanery.

  ‘But my—’

  Kelly’s broad black-robed back was suddenly between Spandrel and his quarry. The Deanery door slammed shut. The Dean and his retinue were gone. Save only Kelly, who slowly turned and gazed down at Spandrel from a considerable height, before cocking one bushy eyebrow and baring a fine set of teeth in what might as easily have been a snarl as a smile. ‘Your name?’

  ‘William Spandrel.’

  ‘Your business with the Dean?’

  ‘Is, begging your pardon, sir, with the Dean alone.’

  ‘I’m the Dean’s ears and eyes.’

  ‘Even so—’

  ‘I’ll not bandy words with you, sir.’ Spandrel was suddenly seized by the collar and hauled onto tiptoe in an unclerically muscular grasp. ‘I am the Reverend George Kelly, confidential secretary to my lord the Dean and Bishop. What you tell me you tell him. And tell me you will.’