Not that it would be easy, he thought; it would be like herding vermin. Even when they’d been small, Bart had never listened to a word he said.
‘All right, I’ll come,’ Jem said, ‘but I’m not promising anything.’
That evening Jem raided Dr Thurlow’s charity box, though it riddled him with guilt. He and Bart took turns to push the cart, loaded with a ragged heap of moth-eaten blankets, two sacks of oatmeal and a half-full barrel of dried peas. On the way they were joined by one of Bart’s down-at-heel friends, Thomas Player, a hosier. Jem was used to seeing the poorer areas of the city as part of his curate’s duties, but Lukenor Lane’s warren of filthy dwellings was worse than anything he’d ever seen in his parish.
He averted his eyes from a woman spreadeagled in the dirt, her arms oozing hideous sores.
At his grimace, Bart whispered, ‘Ratsbane. They put it on deliberately to draw our sympathy.’
Her rattling pan contained only a few pebbles and a single coin. Jem dug in his pocket but Bart shook his head.
Further down the road, the shocking evidence of Bart’s friends’ ‘high spirits’ turned out to be houses reduced to a heap of collapsed timbers and blackened walls. Some families still huddled inside them for shelter, emerging only as they saw them pass.
‘A bed-warmer, mister?’ called a scrawny young girl, one limp breast poking out of her bodice.
Bart kept his eyes fixed to the cart as Jem shook his head and pushed past.
‘I know how to please a man,’ the girl whined.
Sorry for her, Jem fished in his pocket again and brought out a coin and, ignoring Bart’s expression, he held it out. The girl grinned and reached out to put her arm across his shoulders, but he flinched away. ‘I don’t want—’
‘You’ve paid for it. Don’t you like me?’
‘No, it’s not that. I’m a man of the cloth. Of the church.’
‘Plenty churchmen been through here. Don’t you want it?’
He could do nothing but shake his head and race to catch up with Bart, who was straining to push the barrow by himself.
‘Come on, you’re lagging,’ Bart called.
Jem quickened his pace, closed his eyes to the suppurating piles of refuse and horse droppings in the street. The meeting Bart had hastily organised was in a tavern further out of town on the Ratcliffe Highway, so the few miles of pushing silenced their talk. The stench of tobacco and snuff hit them as soon as they opened the door. It was a tiny, cramped place, with barrels for stools and larger barrels for tables, and a smoke that made it hard to see through the gloom.
Pinch-faced Tom Player seemed to be the man in charge, along with a bold-featured woman called Mrs Cresswell, who looked like an overstuffed mattress and was, it transpired, a bawd at one of the brothel houses in Clerkenwell. She’d collected in all the donations and had them set on a trestle to be doled out to the needy. Jem helped Bart and Tom lug their contribution inside, taking great gulps of night air each time he went outside.
‘For God’s sake, keep it all under lock and key until it’s light and we can see what’s what,’ Mrs Cresswell said, ‘or there’ll be nothing left by sunrise, and a lot of thieving magpies with fat bellies. Talking of fat bellies, I’ve got a little scheme in mind,’ she said, with a wink, ‘to raise merry hell. How’s about we write a letter, a public letter, to the King’s whore, Mrs Castlemaine, asking her to side with us, her sisters. After all, she’s one of us, ain’t she?’ She raised an eyebrow and waggled her head so that the feathers in her hat shimmied in the light from the lamps.
Guffaws of laughter. The idea of the King’s whore was so entertaining it soon gripped the whole assembly. Everyone had suggestions as to what to write.
‘Gawd love her,’ said another younger woman in a disintegrating red bodice, ‘better warn the poor old cow to protect herself. Those sailors and apprentices might come to White Hall next and fire her bawdyhouse too!’
A smatter of clapping hands. Bart and Tom Player grinned at each other.
‘Tell her working conditions here are terrible, and ask her to change places with you, Ma Cresswell. Tell her you’ll sit outside her house until she can get her royal pimp to make your brothels as well appointed as hers!’ said Bart.
Jem nudged his brother in mock disapproval, but could not suppress his amusement, for everyone else was sniggering with glee at the thought of this missive arriving unannounced at Mistress Castlemaine’s door. Such good humour was infectious.
‘It will need to be carefully done,’ a quiet voice said from the back, ‘so that there can be no treasonous return on this. We must try to avoid specifically naming the King. After all, we want to gather more support for our cause, not turn people against it.’
Jem turned to see who had spoken. She was a woman of middling age, greying at the temples, her dress a modest, unassuming brown. He wondered if he’d met her before, because she looked somewhat familiar, but he dismissed the idea. He could know no one here.
‘She’s right,’ Tom Player agreed, ‘we need to be careful, or—’ He drew his finger sharply across his throat.
Paper and quills were fetched, and they gathered round the biggest table and began to draft the letter. Jem found himself contributing with the rest. The woman in brown was insistent that they avoided anything seditious, and passages that were uncertain, she wrote down, to check later.
Mrs Cresswell leapt on Jem’s suggestions for wording with enthusiasm. He knew he was a good orator and relished the chance to use his skills. His face ached from grinning. Yet beneath the women’s laughter burned an undercurrent of determination, an intent to improve their lot, a steely ambition that Jem admired. To his surprise, for the first time in his life Jem felt as if he was actually doing something useful.
Of course, underneath, the guilt ate away at him; that as a prospective man of the cloth, he shouldn’t be hobnobbing with felons and bawds. Mrs Cresswell, well, she might have fallen to the bawd’s trade, but it was mighty difficult to dislike her as a person. She’d treated him with such genial good humour, and it seemed to make no difference to her at all that he was a man of the church.
This was where he was needed, perhaps. Maybe God wanted him to preach to them and turn them from their sinful ways. Except that he could not imagine that Mrs Cresswell or the other lady would take the slightest notice of him. Dr Thurlow categorised the poor into deserving and undeserving, and in Dr Thurlow’s book, Jem was quite certain these would be the latter.
And yet was it not his duty as a good Christian to save all souls? Perhaps even more so those who had fallen away from the path like lost sheep. Excitement bubbled up inside him. Had he not preached about this very thing himself? Was it a sign?
He gazed across the smoke-filled room, let the voices wash over him. He could achieve much more, though, if he had a woman beside him as a helpmate. A good-hearted woman, one of unimpeachable character, who could act as a shining example in a place like this.
His fingers felt the square shape of the tiny prayer book in his pocket. He was already picturing Miss Willet. Her face rose up in his imagination, as she had listened to him in church, her grave grey eyes, the slight flush on her cheeks. Since the kiss under the mistletoe, he could not stop thinking of it; though he had not dared ask for another. He didn’t know what to say, how to broach it. A kiss was no use without an offer, and he had no living to give her yet, not till he’d finished his training. What would she think of him now if she could see him here? She’d be horrified. And yet she had a spark about her too, an underlying energy. It was tantalising.
What if she rejected him? Of course, he’d hoped she’d kiss him again, but that part of her had been put away, almost as if she was afraid of it. And worse, Mrs Pepys had got word of their meetings and forbidden Deb to see him again. A messenger had brought a short note from Deb to tell him, and it had given him much cause for soul-searching. He didn’t want to cause any trouble between Deb and Mrs Pepys.
It was temptation, he kne
w. To deceive Mrs Pepys by meeting Deb was to stray from the straight and narrow path he prided himself on following.
But still it haunted him, the feeling of her soft pink lips pressed hotly against his.
Chapter Nineteen
DEB FOLDED THE FIRST BATCH of sheets and smoothed the starched edges to make creases. The tip of one finger was stained with ink from copying out papers. She paused, licked it, and wiped it on the underside of her apron, thinking of Abigail. Over the past few months she had searched Mr Pepys’ study over and over but found no sign of a diary. Yet she knew it must be there somewhere, because Mr Pepys himself had said he was writing it. On Abigail’s insistence, she had searched the bookshelves again, but she had found nothing resembling a diary. In her mind she imagined a slim volume, like the white book she had taken earlier.
How gullible she’d been at first, to think Abigail wanted to be her friend. All servants were prey to their betters, she knew, even when the word ‘betters’ was the last word to describe them. She was annoyed with herself, because she prided herself on her judgement. In one way, she was not surprised that Abigail was working for the King. His Majesty was well known for his insistent dalliances with attractive women, particularly actresses. Maybe he was tiring of Nell Gwynn, and Abigail Williams had caught his eye.
Deb stretched out the last bedsheet and held it under her chin as she snapped the edges together. Balancing the pile of sheets on the crook of her elbow, she opened the linen press and pushed the sheets inside. She paused to stifle a yawn and rub her eyes, because late-night copying was tiring.
She had never imagined she would become a spy. For this was what she was, she realised. In the absence of the diary, she was still making copies of naval documents: whatever she could easily ‘borrow’ from Pepys’ office. The papers fascinated her, though, and she often wrote out excerpts twice so that she could study them herself after delivering them. The fitting out of warships was a complicated business.
Voices below alerted her to the fact that Mr Pepys was home for his supper, with his clerk, Will Hewer. She shut the linen press door with a bang.
She leaned over the banister to eavesdrop on the burble of conversation, but disappointingly could make out nothing of the words. Since Abigail’s assignment, all Mr Pepys’ movements seemed suspiciously anti-Royalist. She wondered how she had failed to notice it before, how much Mr Pepys would make mockery of the King.
Still, she reassured herself, it was clear Mr Pepys was a dissenter, and so she was doing the right thing in passing on his papers to Abigail and the King. Trouble was, a niggle of doubt remained, like an uneasy itch that needed to be scratched.
‘Deb?’ Elisabeth’s voice.
Her company was required. She pinned on her best smile, reminded herself of her duty to the King. She must try again to find that diary.
That night, after playing cards with Elisabeth, Sam and Will Hewer, Deb left them early to clear away the supper things, and hearing their voices still engrossed in the game, she took a chance and tiptoed into Mr Pepys’ study.
There was a naval chest bound with iron and she pulled it open. It was stuffed full of books and she knew she had already been through each one. Nothing new here. She heard footsteps on the landing. Deb shut the chest quickly and crouched to the hearth with the brush in her hand as if sweeping the hearth. But Elisabeth went past without looking in.
When she’d gone, Deb stood up. From her kneeling position she saw the corner of a small tea chest, pushed right to the back under the table. Just a chest full of discarded linens. She had looked there once before. Still, she should look again. She got down on her knees and pulled out the chest, which was covered in an oilcloth. She peeled it back and opened the chest to see a pair of old curtains neatly folded. As she thought, the old drapes that Elisabeth had taken down from the parlour.
Still, she pulled them out. This time, she was determined to be thorough. Beneath was a thick pile of leather-bound books. She flipped one open.
A ruled page, covered in Shelton’s shorthand. She could read enough shorthand to know what it said. “January, the Lord’s year sixteen sixty-eight.”
She was motionless a moment, just staring. Could this be it?
She dug deeper into the chest, feeling the weight of paper. Book after book, pages and pages of it.
But there was so much! And it had all been there, under the desk all along.
Carefully, she slid out a book from halfway down the stack, replacing the top book and the old curtains so that any cursory glance by Mr Pepys would reveal nothing amiss. A shiver of anticipation, mixed with a tinge of guilt sharpened her senses. Scared of being caught, she pressed the volume tight to her chest and scurried across the landing.
Elisabeth and Will Hewer passed the bottom of the stairs on their way to the parlour to fetch the music and instruments. ‘Deb, the pastry dishes are still on the table!’ Elisabeth called.
Heart pounding, Deb flattened herself back against the wall with the book behind her back. ‘Yes, Elisabeth, I’m coming.’ She raced up to her chamber and thrust the book between the sheet and the mattress.
All of a fluster, she was clumsy helping Jane clear and wash the pots, knocking the salt crock flying. Vigorously, she applied the dustpan and brush, impatient to get back to Pepys’ papers.
Finally, her chores were done and the company departed. Before anyone could demand anything more, she shot upstairs, wiped her hands, prised up the mattress and took out the book.
The room was dark, but she lit a candle and a watery moon shone a pale glow through the window. Deb put her back to the moonlight so it might shine over her shoulder, to help the flicker of the candle.
Below, she could hear the faint tune of Mr Pepys humming a madrigal.
She opened the book at a random page. It was written in his familiar shorthand, but she was more confident now with translating, and the first words came to her easily.
“there I walked.”
For the next half-hour she struggled to translate it. When she got to a word she could not fathom, she took out the Shakespeare sonnet and set to work, using the sonnet as a key, one letter of shorthand at a time, and scribbling down words as she recognised them. At one point she was stumped and could go no further. She worried at it for another hour until she had a sudden realisation. The words were in French. At the end of the first paragraph she could barely swallow. She paused to re-read.
“there I walked to visit the old castle ruins, which has been a noble place, and there going up the stairs I overtook three pretty maids or women and took them up with me, and I did ‘baiser sur mouches et toucher leur mains’ and necks to my great pleasure.”
So it wasn’t just the events of the day as he had said. The lying rogue.
Her hand came up to her mouth. He was so candid, so frank. His whole life must be there. She felt faint; her head swam with his words. She sat down heavily on the bed, dizzy with being inside Mr Pepys’ mind; the voice rang in her head just as if he was speaking to her. She read the passage again, unable to take it all in.
Other pages might have her name on them, she realised. The idea filled her with revulsion; that she might be set down through Mr Pepys’ eyes, for other people to read. She knew from even these few pages that it would be a travesty of herself, that to him she would be something quite other.
She would have to go through it all, see what he had written about her. And Elisabeth. What if Elisabeth were to find it? His writing his deeds in French would hardly help, considering Elisabeth spoke it fluently, as did she. How could he be so arrogant and so unfeeling as to leave these lying in his office? But then, she guessed, perhaps Elisabeth could not read shorthand? She flipped a page and began to translate furiously, scrawling in her haste.
“called on board Lord Bruncker and Sir John Mennes, onto one of the East Indiamen at Erith, and find them full of envious complaints for the pillaging of the ships. But I pacified them, and discoursed about making money off some of the goods,
and hope to be the better by it.”
So here it was. The prize goods from captured vessels. The King was right to be suspicious. Underhand transactions were going on in the Navy Office, and this diary could be the breaking of Pepys. The further she read, the more she saw it with utter clarity.
Deb could hardly breathe. She read on, checking back over each word to make sure she had it right, and eventually fascination with the underhand goings-on at the Navy Treasury overcame her revulsion at the contents. Here was the evidence the King sought. Calmer now, she settled herself down with quill and ink to make a fair copy for Abigail. Should she translate it from the shorthand? Better not, she thought. Best leave it as it is, with him condemned by his own words. She penned each symbol precisely, blotted it.
The door behind her suddenly opened. An involuntary cry escaped her lips. She shot up, and thrust the book under the papers in one deft movement, her heart leaping in her chest.
‘You made me jump,’ she said, with a false little laugh.
Elisabeth frowned at her, a candlestick in her hand. ‘Are you unwell?’ she asked. ‘When I went to let little Fancy out just now, I saw a light burning in your room. It seems very late to be up.’
Deb placed herself before the table where she had been working to mask the papers from Elisabeth’s curious stare.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Deb said, her back rigid, certain that something in her eyes must surely give her away.
‘What are you doing?’ Elisabeth asked.
‘Writing to my sister.’
Elisabeth took a step nearer the table, but Deb placed her hand over the symbols on the document.
‘I hope you are not writing anything bad about us,’ Elisabeth said, the smiling jest belied by her probing eyes.
‘No,’ Deb said, ‘just news.’
Elisabeth did not look convinced, but Deb could see that she could not bring herself to be so impolite as to ask Deb to show her the letter. Elisabeth’s mouth puckered in disapproval and she stood a moment, obviously unwilling to leave. ‘Well. No wonder we’re going through so many candles. You can write to your sister in daylight hours, surely? I don’t want to see lights burning again at this time of night.’
Pleasing Mr. Pepys Page 14