Chapter Forty-seven
ABIGAIL WOKE AT LORD BRUNCKER’S, late. Their evening at the theatre had been poignant, for she knew it was the last time she would sleep here, that soon she would be in France, with a new identity and a new life. She would sail with Berenger and his girl at dawn tomorrow. Lord B had kissed her, and she had clung to him a moment too long, so he huffed at her and pulled away.
Now he had already gone off to a meeting at the offices; he’d said he’d be with Mennes for luncheon at Saul’s and that he’d see her again in the evening. An engagement she would not keep, but would send an excuse – a headache perhaps. She had already told him she was going away for a few days on a theatrical tour. He had no idea it was one from which she would never return.
She drew the sheets up to her chin, savoured the feather-filled mattress, the satin embroidered coverlet, the bed-end carved with pomegranates. She would miss the safety of this six square foot of land, screened from the outside world by its velvet drapes, for tomorrow night she would be on a ship with a hard plank berth, an uncertain future ahead of her. Fortunately, she spoke French; her former husband, bastard though he was, had taught her the rudiments. After a few more precious moments in bed, she rose and dressed and opened her satchel. Inside was a sheaf of documents, mostly correspondence from Piet and from his lesser associates.
She lay them out on the table to check them. All were there: the information about the proposed plot in Chatham dockyard and the rebellion against the King. She owed it to Lord Bruncker to inform him of this. Another scandal of navy negligence, of English sabotage right inside the dockyard, would finish his career, and she could not do that to him.
It was intelligence for which she would not take a penny. It would be her parting gift to Lord B – little enough information considering the constant sly trickle that over all these years, had seeped out of his correspondence and through her pen.
Using a forged hand, she copied extracts from letters from Graceman and Skinner, the explosive suppliers. The correspondence mentioned Piet, under his pseudonym Mr Johnson, and a number of others, including the Dutchman Cornelis Tromp. They had trusted her to supply the plans of the docks. She was careful to leave out anything that might incriminate herself, or anyone that might lead to her.
And as for Piet, she could not risk betraying him to the English authorities. He would be only too willing to give them her identity, too, if she handed him over.
She dressed in her best clothes and took a sedan down Cheapside towards Dowgate and Cloak Lane. After so many years, she was leaving nothing to chance. She could have sold this information, she knew. She’d learned early on that goods were never as valuable as information. You could sell your goods, you could sell your body, but all these were subject to decay and the difficulties of limited ownership. Far better was to sell the invisible – it would never run out and would always retain its value.
But she was doing this for love. A word she could not even speak. She was surprised at how excited it made her to think Lord B would never know where the intelligence came from. She examined the address on the front of the letter: John Mennes, The Navy Offices, Sign of the Ship, Seething Lane. She could not take the chance of anyone seeing her with the letter, so when they arrived at Cloak Lane, and the General Post Office, she asked the bearers to wait, and she handed the letter to Poole.
‘Find a lad. The stupider the better. Give him a farthing to take it inside.’
Poole dipped her head, and Abigail watched her slide away into a back alley towards the laystalls and the docks. After a few minutes, Poole re-emerged with a barefoot lad of about five years old. She watched Poole bend to point out the way and hold out the coin on her hand.
Abigail watched her letter go inside the building. Good. Information about the plot would be on Mennes’s desk in the morning. She had chosen Mennes deliberately, because Lord B had told her he was an old fool who loved to gossip, and she calculated he was the most likely to panic and tell people. When Poole returned, she gave her the rest of the day off, told her there was no need to return to Whetstone Park until the following evening.
‘What ails you, mistress?’ Poole asked.
It was the first time Poole had ever asked a direct question. Abigail swallowed. Poole pinned her with a shank of a gaze that did not falter.
‘Nothing, Poole. I’ll see you tomorrow night.’ The lie stuck on her tongue. Tomorrow night, Poole would find the house empty. Except for the blood-soaked body of Deb Willet.
Poole caught something of her thought. ‘God keep you, mistress,’ she said, as she made a curtsey, but her tone was a warning.
The approach to the hiring stables was wet; a fine drizzle made the streets misty, and the bearers’ feet splashed in the puddles as they went. She climbed from the sedan and ordered a coach and two horses to collect her and a trunk the hour before dawn and take her to the London Docks. She should be able to dispose of Deb Willet at night while she was sleeping. By the time Poole found the body, Abigail Williams would no longer exist and ‘Mrs Taverner’ would have sailed in her place.
Now she needed a drink. Dutch courage. The irony of the name made her smile.
Chapter Forty-eight
BART SLAMMED THE DOOR as he went out. He had argued with Jem again and was angry that Jem refused to see things his way and insisted on trying to tell him what to do. His brother’s solicitous concern over his welfare only irritated him and made him want to do the exact opposite. The wind gusted an icy blast, nearly removing his hat, which he held on to with one hand as he made his way to meet the men at Player’s house for a final check through the plans.
Still, it would soon be over and Jem would see that he had been right. A whole new order was coming, and he, Bart, was at the heart of it. His father had fought for this; he and all the other good men who had been lost in the Civil Wars – the ‘great shaking’ that had brought England’s aristocracy begging to its knees.
Bart walked briskly, still feeling a discomfort in his chest from the rift with his brother. The two of them had just crossed wordlessly on the threshold, unable to breach the gulf that had arisen between them. So far, Bart had not moved out. He tried to keep out of Jem’s way and avoided being in the house when Jem was there, though Jem had laid in wait for him to give him another lecture nearly every day. Bart deliberately kept what he was doing a secret. Jem would try to stop him, and it was far too late for that. Everything was planned, right down to the quantity of gunpowder, which they had obtained with difficulty and at considerable expense through Graceman, who was the foreman at the gunpowder factory.
A squall of rain made him wipe his forehead as he made his way towards the alleyway by the bank of the Thames where Tom Player lived. He went over the arrangements in his head as he walked. There was to be a meeting point at the Black Boar tavern close to the city gates, and Skinner was to muster one cohort of men to the north at Charterhouse Square before Graceman would co-ordinate the main march of men down to Aldersgate. The groups from the south would either come up by boat with Tromp’s Dutch schooners or muster in the Bear Garden near the old ship Liberty, forming up on the other side of the river before crossing the bridge. Bart, along with Bolton and a man called Rigg, was to be in charge of the actual sabotage of the ship at the docks.
The street where Player lived was busy with night hawkers, being close to the Old Swan Stairs, so Bart slipped into the alley unobserved. A sharp knock and the door swung open to let him in. The men were sitting around a small table by candlelight, maps and plans spread out before them, weighted down with their tankards of ale. It was going to be a long night, and no sleep whilst they made their last-minute preparations. Bart nodded to Tom Player and Joe Bolton, but he could see they were restless. The draught from the wind outside made the candles quake and flicker. Bart sat and removed his cloak, noting that Graceman and Skinner had not yet arrived. He was anxious to know how many men Graceman had recruited, and whether the word had yet arrived as to how many were a
ssembling at the Irish docks.
Mr Johnson’s woman had supplied them with a good map of the layout of the docks, and along with intelligence from one of the mast-makers, they knew the interior layout of the ship. They had procured fine doublets and breeches to make themselves look like gentlemen, paid for by the Dutch. Papers from Berenger the printer proclaimed that they were bona fide inspectors for the navy. Tomorrow, Monday, they would arrive late in the day at the usual inspection time and ask to look over the ship. The satchels they carried would contain the fuse. The mast-maker was to set the barrels in advance. It was straightforward, but all knew the penalties, and the delay was making them nervous.
‘Any word from Johnson?’ asked Bolton.
‘A runner came to say Dutch ships are ready in Ireland for Graceman’s men. Two more as escorts wait in the mouth of the Thames. They will move once they see the Irish ships and fire a shot to time the explosion. I told him you should be able to see the smoke from White Hall, there’s that much powder!’
‘Where are they? Graceman and his lackey? We’ve been waiting an hour.’ Tom Player voiced everyone’s thoughts. ‘I hope nothing’s happened. If the authorities have wind of us, we’ll all be in trouble. I say we give them another half-hour and then send someone to ride out to Skinner’s, see what’s afoot.’
The tension in the room seemed to increase with the whistling of the wind. They were ready, primed like matchlocks ready to be fired, but there was still no sign of the other two men. The clock candle flailed until it had burned down another notch.
‘I can’t stand it. I’ll go to Skinner’s, see what’s happened.’ Bart leapt up.
‘I’d better stay here in case they come,’ Taylor said. ‘But there’s a hiring yard at the end of the road. You’ll need a nag. Skinner’s in Cateaten Street.’
‘I know it.’ Bart found the hiring yard, paid twopence for a hired horse and heaved himself up. Clapping his heels to its sides, he rode as fast as he dared in the dark towards Skinner’s house, a brick-and-timber built monstrosity that had unfortunately survived the fire. There was a light burning there. Bart cursed. So the devil was in after all.
He threw himself down and hung the reins over a post. Had Skinner forgotten the time? He couldn’t have, surely?
He thumped hard on the door. Nothing. A movement in the window alerted him. Someone had snuffed the candle. ‘Skinner?’ he yelled. ‘Graceman? Are you in there? Open the door.’
Had they turned lily-livered all of a sudden? Bart tried the door, but it rattled against its bolts. Frustrated, he strode around the back. All was locked up, but he’d seen a candle burning, hadn’t he? He pulled on one of the shutters at the downstairs window, and to his surprise it gave. A hard tug and he saw that there was only a leather curtain to keep out the weather and not glass. The window was narrow and he assessed it. He might just be able to …
A few moments later and he fell head first onto the floor of the kitchen. Some pans clattered from the table as his cloak brushed past. By the time he stood up, Skinner was there, a candle held querulously before him.
Bart pushed him backwards until he was against a cupboard nailed to the wall. ‘Where’s Graceman? You’ve kept us all waiting. What are you playing at?’
Skinner’s eyes looked left to right looking for escape. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he whined.
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘Graceman. He’s gone.’
Bart grabbed him by the shirt and almost lifted him off the ground. ‘Where? What is all this?’
‘He’s run away. He didn’t do anything. He let us down.’ Skinner wrestled himself free. ‘There’s no men, nothing. He led us all a merry dance, puffing himself up, pretending he had all these contacts. It was all nonsense, the lot of it. He couldn’t organise shit in a stall. So now he’s gone.’
Bart let go of Skinner’s shirt, the feeling in his chest so much like a physical pain that he could hardly stand, let alone speak. ‘No. I don’t believe it.’ Seeing his face, Skinner backed away. Bart looked wildly round the room. ‘Bastard. Where’s he hiding?’
‘When he didn’t come here, I did what you did – I went to his house and found his wife there, distraught. He’s got debts, mountains of them. She knew nothing about any rebel troops, nothing about any of it. He took the final trunk of money, from Tromp. Left her there with nothing. Loaded all the trunks of coin into a carriage and went.’
‘When?’
‘Last night. He could be anywhere by now. She told me he’s an inveterate liar. He does it everywhere he goes. Half the country’s after him.’
‘But you said—’
‘I know, I know. I believed in him, and now I feel such a fool. And I was too afraid to come and tell you …’
Bart sat down heavily on a kitchen stool, his head in his hands. ‘No soldiers from Ireland?’ He looked up, beseeching.
Skinner shook his head. ‘Nor from the north. And no arms. I told you. He’s done nothing. Except talk,’ he said bitterly. ‘He was always a fine one for that.’
Bart stood up. ‘Are you still with us?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you still stand for our cause? I’m not giving up, Graceman or no Graceman.’
‘You can’t. What will you do?’
‘Do it alone, muster who we can. The barrel’s already set, we’re ready for it. We’ll take the King ourselves.’
‘It’s madness. Suicide!’
‘There’s fifty men I know by name.’
‘But not enough to take London.’ Skinner was backing away.
‘Then we’ll just blow up the King’s ship—’
‘You’re mad! What’s the point?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t bloody care! All I know is, we’ve got to do something. Are you with us or not?’ Bart put his hand on his sword. ‘You’d better be, after causing all this trouble, or I swear to God I’ll run you through.’
Skinner stared, wild-eyed. Licked his lips.
‘Speak, man.’
‘With you.’ His voice was a croak.
‘Then fetch your cloak. You can explain to the rest of the men where Graceman is.’
Chapter Forty-nine
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN by the time Deb heard a carriage draw up. A wave of apprehension made her nauseous. As she heard the door open and Abigail’s footsteps creak on the stairs, she pushed the razor in its ivory case deeper into the hanging pocket under her skirts.
‘Such a day!’ Abigail said, throwing down her bag onto the table as usual. Her eyes flicked left and right around the room.
Deb detected the smell of liquor. ‘Have you been at the theatre today again?’
‘The theatre?’ A pause. ‘Oh. Yes, but Lord B was not feeling well, so I will be staying here tonight.’
This information made Deb’s throat tight. She would have no excuse, then, for not doing as Piet had ordered. ‘What ails him?’ she asked.
‘A stomach upset. Nothing to worry about. But it will be nice to sleep in my own bed for once. He snores so. It’s a wonder I get any sleep at all.’
Deb watched Abigail take off her gloves. Her hands shook a little; Deb wondered if she was cold. ‘How was the play?’
‘Oh, it was good. Well done.’
Deb cast about for normal conversation. ‘What did you see?’
Another pause. ‘The Mock Astrologer. That one. It’s on again.’
The conversation stalled, and Deb sought something else to say. ‘Shall I ask Poole to cook us something? There are eggs, I believe, and a meat pasty.’
‘I dismissed Poole. I did not think you’d need her, as I am here, so I gave her the evening off.’
The fact that Poole was not to be in the house made Deb even more uneasy. She wasn’t hungry but went to fetch food from the larder all the same. Abigail did not eat, but she sliced the pasty into smaller and smaller pieces, pushed them round the plate. Now Abigail was in front of her, the whole idea of killing her seemed fantastical. She was
so much here; besides, it seemed inconceivable, the fact that she was offering food, giving life with one hand knowing she was about to snatch it away with the other.
Finally, she decided she would retire to bed, and Abigail, too, yawned. Was it her imagination, or was the yawn just a little too long and forced? Abigail went to her room and closed the door. Deb’s hands were hot and damp. Through her skirt she felt into her pocket; the ivory of the razor case was smooth and cool against her fingers.
For distraction, she tidied away the supper dishes and wiped down the table, and after blowing out the sconces in the hall, locked the front door and the parlour door as they always did at night. Just as she was about to go to bed, Abigail appeared again in her nightdress, candle in hand. ‘Did you bolt the doors?’ Her words gave Deb a start.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The parlour door needs oiling again.’
In her nightclothes Abigail looked smaller, more vulnerable. Her hair, unpinned from its careful arrangement, showed grey at the crown where the dye had grown out; without powder and paint her face was pinched and wan. Deb swallowed, almost pitied her. She knew then that she could not kill this woman, not while she was sleeping.
‘Make sure to blow out your light,’ Abigail said. ‘There was another house burned in Sackhall Street – someone knocked over a lamp.’
‘I will. Goodnight, Abigail.’
‘Goodnight.’
Deb took the candle into her bedchamber, slid the razor from her pocket and opened it, but just the sharpness of the edge made her head swim. Abigail seemed to be no threat in her nightdress, but Deb remembered Piet’s words and knew not to trust her. She placed the razor under her pillow. Still, sleep was impossible, and her ears strained for any little sound. She could not do as Piet asked – too many fears gathering like crows: fear of blood, fear of God, fear of seeing someone die.
Her heart sounded too loud, the thump of it too close to her throat. Maybe she would hear Abigail leaving. She imagined the scrape of the trunk being moved, the relief of hoof beats trotting away. Then she could convince Piet that she had tried but been too late. But there was no sound, only the late-night screech of an owl, the hollow pealing of the single bell as one o’clock came and went.
Pleasing Mr. Pepys Page 31