‘But Netty said—’
‘Enough!’ Elisabeth pounded the butter mallet down onto the table. Jane shot back away from her, hands shielding her bodice.
Elisabeth slowly raised the mallet. Underneath it, the punnet oozed broken yolks and shell. She lay the mallet down quietly and said, ‘If anyone calls, I do not want to be disturbed.’
‘Yes, Elisabeth.’
‘Yes, mistress.‘
Jane gave her a shaky curtsey. Elisabeth stalked away, feeling as though her heart was like those eggshells – impossible to put back together. Only when she was in her own chamber did she allow it to sink in. Inside her, something turned cold and angry.
Where was he? God help him if he was with her. After all he had said about it being finished, after everything they had been through. It wasn’t over at all. It would never be over, because for it to be over she would have to trust him. And she could not.
Elisabeth was unsurprised when Sam denied it all. He begged her to come to bed, but instead she huddled next to the fire, feeling the blaze scald her cheeks as her back froze. Sleep was impossible. She was exhausted with lying awake, night after night, picturing him with Deb, wondering what she could have done to make things different. Deb’s face with its cool eyes and enigmatic smile floated before her, tormenting her.
Elisabeth pushed the coal tongs into the fire and watched them heat until they glowed red. If she pressed them against her hand, maybe the pain would stop this pain in her chest. From across the corridor she heard a sound. She listened above the hiss of the coals.
A snore.
The bastard was actually sleeping. Her pain had affected him not at all. She grabbed the tongs and was across the corridor in two strides. She dragged the bed-curtain open and thrust the tongs inside. ‘You liar,’ she cried. ‘Liar! You never tell me the truth. Tell me where you were today.’
Samuel’s eyes shot wide-open now, and he scrabbled upright like a startled rabbit.
Elisabeth poked the red-hot tongs menacingly close to his face. ‘Were you with Deb?’
‘No,’ he said, shifting himself further away, ‘God’s truth I wasn’t. Put those things down. I’ve told you, I was with Mennes at the Treasury Board.’
‘You weren’t. If you were with Deb, I’ll—’ she stabbed the tongs towards him, but Sam parried her arm and after a tussle the tongs flew from her hands. A clatter, and there was the acrid smell of singed wool as the hot metal shrivelled the pile on the rug.
Sam fended off her flailing arms as she beat at him with her fists. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he said. ‘I give you everything a wife could need. Look at the house – new curtains, new rugs. Our portraits painted even! What is the matter with you?’
‘I don’t care about those things. I just want to know where you are. I want to know you’re not with her. You promised me. “No more,” you said, and I believed you. But they’re talking about us everywhere, Sam. The Mercers and everyone, they’re all telling tales about you and that—’
‘You mustn’t believe it all, it’s just gossip. Take no notice. It’s just words. Words can’t harm you. I swear to you, I was at the office. Come now, love, quieten down and get into bed.’
Elisabeth could not. She shook him off and stooped to pick up the tongs, now a dull grey. She stared at the scorch mark on the rug. ‘Ruined,’ she said. But it was not the rug she meant. She took the tongs back to her room, and later she heard Sam snore again, but her anger was spent, replaced with a dull despair.
In the small hours of the morning, aching for comfort, she climbed into bed next to him. He did not stir. What has happened to us? she thought. She reached out to touch the linen of his nightshirt, but his sleeping back was like a boulder, immoveable, impenetrable.
A wave of rage made her grit her teeth. She would like to get hold of Deb Willet, reach her fingers into her chest and pull out her heart, then maybe she would know what it was like to feel this way.
Hours later, Sam turned, fumbled to embrace her. ‘My own dear wife,’ he said. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’
She wept then, shameful tears. It happened whenever he was tender. Tenderness pierced through her resistance like a hot needle through wax. And she was ashamed that she let his words touch that deep place inside her again, the place he could so easily bruise.
After a while she let him talk her round with his soft, sly words; agreed that she had no evidence, no evidence at all, that he had done anything wrong. She pretended that she had forgiven him, because what else could she do?
But, inside, the shame was like the grind of a millstone, turning, turning.
Chapter Forty-three
ELISABETH WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE who could not sleep. Night after night in the draughty house in Whetstone Park, Deb stared up at the cobwebs on the ceiling, not daring to close her eyes. The pressure of her life was beginning to take its toll. Every sound outside made her fearful she was being watched. The fact she had been followed once by the spymaster’s men and not caught sight of a soul had agitated her. When she went out, she wrapped her winter cloak around her as if swaddling herself tight would help make her invisible.
After Johnson had gone that first time, she had removed all trace that he had ever been there, washed and dried the ale cups, assiduously replaced the hair on the lock, opened the window wide in case a trace of his smell might alert Abigail. But still she fretted, all eyes, watching the doors and windows, afraid that he might return while she and Abigail were sleeping.
Living with Abigail was not what she had expected. Abigail was often out for days at a time at Lord Bruncker’s, but when she was at home she drooped into depression. Unless she was in a play, which was seldom, she did not bother to put on her public face, to dress her hair or paint her lips. The flamboyant actress had gone; she could have been anyone, in her drab house-dress. Deb saw in her the same unease, the same inability to rest, as she felt herself. Some deep, drowning sadness hung round Abigail too, like a miasma, and its dank emptiness filled her with foreboding.
Deb watched her, made surreptitious notes of where she went and the messages that passed through the house. When Abigail gave her letters to post, Deb paused at the trestle table in the post office to copy down the names and addresses of Abigail’s contacts and then she sent them to Piet Groedecker. She knew that was his real name, but it amused her sometimes to see the letters from Abigail addressed to ‘Mr Johnson’ at Noon Street, because she knew they were for Groedecker, and of course she often added letters for ‘Mr Johnson’ of her own.
The chill of February came and went, with iron-hard ground and frost stiffening their outdoor cloaks. Abigail treated her with the same indifference, not as a servant, not as a friend, but with her fake courtesy, learned from the stage.
A few of Abigail’s letters were for Lord Bruncker. The next time Piet appeared, again unannounced, he told Deb he was particularly interested in these, and to intercept any of this sealed mail and scan it for useful information. She became adept at gently breaking open the letters and then adding more wax to reseal them, and she forced herself to be immune to Abigail’s intimate and often bawdy exchanges with Bruncker. Bruncker seemed to be a man who wanted to put his ardour on paper.
One morning, Deb was watching Abigail through her open chamber door as she applied patches and rouge and fastened a large sparkling brooch at her throat.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ Abigail asked.
Deb went to lean on the door jamb. ‘That brooch suits you,’ she said.
‘No. You were examining me, like a chirurgeon. Don’t do that, it makes me uncomfortable.’
‘I’m just trying to learn from you, how you make yourself up.’
She gave a sharp rasping laugh. ‘I know what you’re thinking – that I’m putting on my public face, and that really I’m an old woman.’
‘You look well.’
‘It’s a front, as well you know. I’ve been an actress all my years and I can’t stop now.’ She applied some dro
ps to her eyes from a glass phial and blinked. ‘Making myself up. That’s a fine term for what I do. There is no real Abigail Williams, just a series of roles. Lord Bruncker is the only one who gets a glimpse of the real me.’
‘It must be good to have someone you can trust that way.’
‘Yes. He is the only one.’ She added dark powder to her lashes. ‘Except for Leo, and you, little Deb.’ She turned and pinned Deb with a look. ‘I can trust you.’
At the moment where their eyes met, Deb’s blood ran cold. She knows, she thought.
‘And I you,’ was all Deb said.
But Deb saw Abigail tie a hair on her chamber latch just the same.
The next day, Deb broke the hair on Abigail’s chamber and went inside to look through Abigail’s papers. She paused. A strong scent, like …? Lavender. She scanned the room for anything unusual, but could see nothing. A cry of frustration. Too late. A fine mist of face powder had been sprinkled over the floorboards just inside the door. Abigail must have done it on the way out. Crafty vixen. It was designed to catch her footprints, and she’d just stepped there. She froze, unable to move forward or back.
Devil take it. Her heart thumped as if her blood had turned to glue. She’d been right; Abigail knew she was watching her. She remembered Piet’s warning and stepped back hurriedly, looking down at the tell-tale footprint in the powder.
Apprehensive in case Abigail should return to check on her, Deb cleaned the floor and her boot with a wet cloth, then had to wait for it to dry before she could replace the powder. She searched Abigail’s room for the lavender powder but could find none. Curses, she must have taken it with her. Deb found some powder of her own and put the pot up to her nose. A scent of something sweet; roses? Not lavender anyway. But it would have to do. Carefully, she tapped out a fine cloud of rose powder. It hung in the air before settling onto the floorboards in a grey sheen. Please God, let her not notice the difference in smell. Then she teased a hair from Abigail’s hog’s-bristle hairbrush and retied the door.
A few miles away, Jem Wells had just come home and was pouring out more small beer for his brother and his friends who had descended on the house for a meeting. Bart had decided that since the public’s interest in the poor whores’ petition was waning, it was time to stage another protest for sailor’s pay.
The table was littered with tankards and the remains of an eel pie. As usual, Bart had brought his hosier friend, Tom Player, along with Joseph Bolton and several other sailors Jem recognised. But this particular day there were two new friends of Bart’s: Graceman and Skinner. Jem didn’t much like the manners of Graceman, who had ignored him and sat in what should have been his chair at the head of the table.
‘Will you join us?’ Skinner asked Jem. ‘We need to muster as many men as we can. There’s men from York and another group will be making their way from Ireland, but we’re desperate for more city men.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Jem said. ‘All these others, are they sailors?’
Bart looked sheepish. ‘No. But we’ve broadened it out now. We’ve got so much support we thought it would be good to ask other men to join us. All those old soldiers of Cromwell’s that have been deprived of their position or livelihood and are for our cause.’
‘Soldiers? But it will be peaceable, won’t it?’
Jem saw Skinner and Bart exchange glances. ‘There’s been enough talking,’ Skinner said. ‘It’s time for action.’
‘But I thought this was to be a peaceful protest,’ Jem said. ‘Once soldiers are involved it could turn into a battle. We don’t want that.’
‘It’s our chance, Jem, don’t you see?’ Bart caught hold of his wrist where it lay on the table. ‘We’ve got the whole country behind us. There are pockets of men all over England that feel the way we do, men who want rid of the King for good.’
‘All we have to do is organise them,’ Skinner said. ‘That’s what Mr Graceman is doing. We’ll march on White Hall and they won’t know what’s hit them.’
Jem withdrew his hand, bewildered.
‘Mr Skinner, here, he’ll set a diversion, something that will occupy Parliament while we go to take the King hostage,’ Bart said.
‘What?’ Had he heard them aright? ‘You’re talking about a rebellion.’ Jem stood up, disgusted, looked down at the eager faces looking up at him. How could he have been so stupid not to see it before? He turned on Bart. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this was what you were planning?’ He looked at his brother’s lowered eyes and suddenly saw it all. His stomach dropped. ‘They’ll be armed, won’t they?’
‘It’s time, Jem. Time to birth a new world.’
‘No. Not with fighting! Not with more bloodshed and more families mourning their dead.’
‘Then how else? Tell me that? Didn’t you go yourself to talk to the Treasury Board and get nowhere?’
‘If Mr Wells will not join us, then we should not press him,’ Graceman said. Then he turned slyly to Skinner and said, ‘But we will remember who our friends were once it’s done, won’t we boys?’
Jem was taken aback. ‘Get out. All of you! I’ll have no dealings with lawlessness and fighting.’ The men were reluctant, but Jem bellowed, ‘Out.’ They got to their feet with surly expressions, picked up their hats.
Jem turned on Bart. ‘How could you? I’m a man of the church. A curate in training! You knew I could not condone this, yet you think to bring them here.’
‘But, Jem—’
‘Get out!’ Jem shouted at the men hanging around his door.
‘We’ll be at the Black Bull,’ Bolton shouted over his shoulder. Jem slammed the door behind them.
‘You fool.’ Jem stood in Bart’s way. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Those men are villains. I can see it just by looking at them. Do you want to get yourself killed?’
‘It’s you who’s a fool. Why did you have to do that? Ordering them about like a lord of the manor?’ Bart was flushed with anger. ‘I’ll never live it down! You’ve humiliated me in front of my friends.’
‘It’s treason. I’ll not have them in this house.’
‘Don’t I pay equal rent? I have a right to bring in whoever I choose.’
‘I’ll not have plotters or criminals under my roof,’ Jem said.
‘They’re not criminals.’ Bart snatched his hat from the table and put it on. ‘They’re fighters for justice and freedom.’
Jem sat down, put his head in his hands. ‘Oh, Bart, why? Why must you do this? It’s asking for trouble.’
Bart thumped his fist on the table. ‘Because I’ve still not been paid. It’s all right for you with your fancy stipend and Father’s bloody backing. But I’ve got creditors from here to Wapping, and they’re short on patience. And yes, I know, we tried pamphlets and soapboxes, and even the poor whores’ petition and it got people’s attention, but nobody could do anything. Graceman’s got a scheme that could work, and I’m sick of waiting. I’m going to help him.’
‘Not from this house, you’re not. I won’t have those wretched dogs over the threshold again.’
‘It’s all right, your perfect holiness, you need know nothing about it,’ Bart said bitterly. ‘Now you’ve thrown my friends out of my own house, I’ll join them at the Black Bull. They’re the ones who actually care enough to do something, instead of just spouting their mouths like gargoyles from the pulpit. Don’t wait up.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Jem said to Lizzie. ‘They’re firing each other up, stirring up the old grievances.’
It was a few days later, after the poor whores’ school had finished for the day and the last child had just grabbed his cap and run bare-footed down the stairs.
‘There’s nothing you can do.’ Lizzie shrugged, and she started to collect and stack the slates. ‘If I were you, I’d just keep away from the whole business.’
‘But shouldn’t I warn someone?’
‘Who? The King?’ She smiled, carried on stacking.
‘Ha, ha. No, of course not, but I
can’t just watch it happen.’ He began to straighten the new benches into neat rows.
‘It would put Bart in danger if the word got out. I’d just keep quiet.’
‘I suppose so.’ He stood up from the bench he was lifting. ‘It’s just all the innocent people that don’t know what’s coming.’
‘London’s survived worse. Look at the last few years. War, plague, fire. And still she rises from the rubble.’
‘There could be bloodshed.’
‘Bart strikes me as a man who can take care of himself.’
‘No, not Bart. I need to warn someone. I mean …’ He stopped, thinking of Deb Willet, felt himself redden.
‘Who?’ When he didn’t answer, Lizzie paused, leaning forward, her hands on the teacher’s desk. ‘Ah. I see. There’s a girl, isn’t there? Someone you’re close to.’
‘No.’
‘I had a feeling there might be someone. Is it anyone I know?’
‘No. Well, there was a girl I was fond of – once.’ He shrugged. ‘But we had a disagreement.’ He sat down, stretched his heels away from the low bench. ‘And I feel I should warn her, tell her to get out of London, but I don’t know how to … well, how to tell her what I know.’
‘Just knock on her door and explain. She’ll understand you’re not like Bart.’ She sat down beside him. ‘Where did you meet her? What’s she like?’
‘She used to come to my services at the church. She’s cultured and well bred, and well … in short …’
‘She’s pretty, and you found yourself smitten?’ He saw her repress a smile.
‘I suppose so. But we had a disagreement. I mean, I’d hoped she’d be able to see why I come here, how necessary my work with you is. But she’s an entrenched Royalist. She thinks our pamphlet to Lady Castlemaine a travesty.’
‘Is that what you argued over? Our pamphlet?’
He shook his head. ‘You know, I thought she would be of my persuasion.’
‘And it shocked you to discover a woman might have her own opinions?’
Pleasing Mr. Pepys Page 28