The Road to Newgate

by Kate Braithwaite

  Finally, Nat says, “There is talk of a Popish plot but information is thin on the ground. There is a man, Titus Oates. He will speak to Parliament tomorrow and I’ll go and listen. It is probably all just bluster and flummery. Look about us. Most people are simply taking advantage of a change from the everyday routine, drinking too much, and stuffing their bellies with hot pies and chestnuts. Nothing to worry about.”

  I am not so sure.

  Soon enough, the funeral procession begins. The crowd shuffles back, and truly it is a sight to behold. The coffin, carried by six men, is draped in a fine cloth, decorated with armorial bearings. Upwards of seventy Church of England divines and hundreds of mourners respectfully follow its progress. We lose sight of William in the swell of humanity, and just when it seems we cannot possibly find him, he reappears at Nat’s shoulder. We melt into the congregation inside the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, ready for Dr. William Lloyd’s eulogy.

  I am no expert on funeral oration. I could count the number of funerals I have attended on the fingers of one hand, and none were as prestigious as this. But to my mind, Lloyd gives a tremendous performance. He’s a bull-necked, heavy-jowled, glowering preacher. He stomps into the wooden pulpit flanked by two thick-set clergymen who glare at the congregation, silently daring any man to make a move against their colleague. There is no time to ask Nat or William what they think of it all. My eyes are riveted on Lloyd. His scowl swoops and plunges over his audience as he leans forward and slowly raises his arms. His gaze withers us, drying up words, sealing lips. When we are all hushed and ready, he thunders.

  This must be what it is like to stand outside during a storm. His invective whips like the wind, his anger rains down until his outrage saturates my skin. He describes the death of a good, even a great man. His words conjure the clearest vision of a loyal servant to justice and his king, whose life has been stolen, ended in tragic murder.

  Godfrey was stabbed through with his own sword. Garrotted. Beaten. His body was thrown in a ditch. He declares that a heinous act of butchery has been committed on the streets of London. The ignominy and violence of Godfrey’s end is already a sensation. Spitting out every detail, here, in this church, Lloyd turns it into a cataclysm. If this can happen to such a man, the rest of us have much to fear. That fear is mirrored in the eyes of people all around me.

  Then Lloyd points the finger. There is no doubt about whom we must blame, despise, and now hunt down. Godfrey’s death is laid at the door of the Jesuits. Once again, those Catholic devils are plotting against our king and country, against our rights and freedoms, against our security in our streets and in our homes. But we can join together. Together, we mourn the loss of a man who represented all that was good in the City of London, a man murdered by those devils incarnate, the Catholics. If we stand together, they will not defeat us.

  The crowd sucks it in. People shuffle and nod. They clench their fists and thrust forward their jaws. Godfrey’s brothers and sisters nod fervently behind their handkerchiefs. William bites his lip. But not Nat. Nat has one eyebrow raised and his arms folded over his chest. He leans back on his heels and closes his eyes.

  The three of us are quiet as we walk back home across the city. Near Somerset House, we come upon another crowd. We halt, separate from the angry gangs of men and women who mill around beneath all those splendid windows. Many in the crowd wear silver medals or clutch Godfrey daggers. Their voices are raised, hot suspicions spiralling up, swirling around the Queen’s residence. Something cuts through the air above us. There’s a crash, the crackle of breaking glass, and the crowd sways back. Instead of frightening them, though, it brings a cheer. As quickly as they’ve moved away, the crowd presses forward again and a chant goes up: “Give us your priests! Give us your priests!”

  “This is what I hate,” Nat mutters. “Ignorant fools.”

  “They’re afraid,” I say.

  “Of what? A barren Catholic queen and her gaggle of clucking priests?”

  William says nothing. He’s looking around, not listening to us.

  “Well, no. But they have a point, don’t they? All Catholics have been ordered from the city, and yet everyone knows the Queen’s priests are still in there.”

  “Let’s keep walking.” Nat grips my elbow and steers. “It sounds like you’ve been listening to your father.”

  “And what if I had?” I yank my arm from his grasp and we glare at each other. I’m aware of what he thinks of my family, that the difference between their world and his – ours – is vast. I can only imagine the range of insults he has in mind. “Well?”

  “I simply don’t believe that all these people – people we’ve shared our city with for years, in toleration if not in trust – have suddenly put their heads together and decided to overthrow the King.”

  “But there are cannons outside Whitehall, Nat. They searched Parliament for gunpowder the other day. How can that be? Only a fool would think there was no truth in it.”

  “So now you’re calling me a fool?”

  “No! I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “But if I don’t agree with you, that’s what you’ll be thinking.” His face is transformed. The way he’s looking at me is hateful.

  “I—” The breath is locked in my chest.

  “Well, that’s just wonderful.” He steps away. “Bloody wonderful.”

  “Nat—” I stretch out a hand. Tears smart at my eyes.

  “No, don’t bother,” he says, stepping back from me. “But ask yourself, what do we know, what does anyone actually know about this threat? Little enough. Yet suddenly, half the population is baying for the blood of the other half. Stones are being thrown. Thrown by neighbours, thrown at people they’ve lived beside quite happily for years, speaking to, buying goods from, nodding and waving as they passed each other in the street. I am not the one being fooled. Do you hear?”

  This is a new Nat. This Nat is loud. He jabs a finger at me, his face is twisted, he is openly scornful. Then he turns his back and walks away, leaving me standing alone in the street, with tears sliding down my cheeks. The face of that woman at the fair fills my mind. She said her name was Mary Twyn. She told me that Nat had killed her husband.

  I whip out a handkerchief and sniff hard, clamping my teeth together, dragging up some composure. I’m about to leave – not to follow Nat. No, I’m going as far as possible in the opposite direction, but when Nat yells William’s name I turn back.

  Soldiers surround William. Orders are shouted. His arms are pulled behind his back and a sword is levelled at his chest. A broad, ugly man in uniform reads something in a loud voice, but the words don’t make sense. Nat pushes his way into the group around William, only to be shoved back. The soldiers manhandle William and take him away. I step toward Nat, who shakes his head. William is dragged from my sight and Nat disappears after him.

  For a few moments, I just stand and stare. Then I go to find Henry.

  Chapter Five

  Nat

  The next morning, I wake with my head on my desk and my lip spit-tacked to an open book. I think first of William, and then of Anne. William was taken to Newgate and charged with sedition. There is no man less likely than William Smith to be involved in an attempt to launch a rebellion, but that does not help him any. We must play a waiting game. Henry will be in touch with his contacts in Whitehall again today, to see what can be done; which leaves me with Anne to think about.

  I stayed out all night and drank way too much. I don’t even remember coming up to my office instead of crawling home. I could head there now. It is early enough that she will still be asleep, and I see myself slipping under the covers, letting the heat from her skin warm mine. The prospect is sweetly tempting – assuming we are on speaking terms, that is. But as I sit up and blink in my surroundings, I’m overwhelmed by the work I need to do. With my livelihood in danger, I need to make money while I still can.

  My office is a square, whitewashed room lined with bookcases. Once it was orde
rly, but I have taken up the hoarder’s habit of never throwing anything away. Now my shelves are crammed with letters trussed up in ribbon, fistfuls of crinkled old broadsheets, folded pamphlets and stacks of books, bound, unbound, read and – all too frequently – unread. A large desk squats in the middle of this chaos, piled with all my current manuscripts and letters. There is only a bare hollow left clear at the centre where I work on my own writing or, as in the current case, sleep.

  No. I don’t have time to go home. I certainly don’t have time for another pointless argument. Instead, I send a boy with a bland message. Then I read, make notes, and read some more. In all, I shuffle papers for five solid hours. When I finally head out, the cold assaults me. It is a typical, squally November afternoon. I make my way through narrow streets, munching on a hot pie and minding my feet for turds and turnips. My destination is Parliament. Dr. Titus Oates is due to edify the Members with his terrific tales of treason today. William – William, of all people – has been arrested on this man’s say-so. I need to take his measure.

  The chamber of the House of Commons, viewed from the public gallery above, resembles nothing so much as a stew-pot bubbling and turning; a human soup. Noise rises up like steam, and little of what is said has any real substance. Tempers flare, men spark with anger and then subside in their turn as debate flows back and forth across the floor. Attendance is irregular, but on this occasion, there’s nowhere else to be. Bewigged, be-robed, befuddled, bemused, belligerent, and bellicose: all our great men are spread out before us.

  I stretch forward in my seat and catch my first glimpse of Titus Oates. He’s swathed in clergyman’s silks and sports a gloriously rich russet periwig that falls to his shoulders in two soft, spaniel’s ears. He’s a tall, broad-shouldered man who, at least from this perspective, appears to tower over the Members of Parliament tightly packed into seats on both sides of the Commons chamber. Oates’s face is not unknown to me. It has been impossible to be alive in London and not see the strange features of this self-proclaimed ‘Saviour of the Nation’ flapping on the newspapers and engravings that hang from bookstalls across the city. Nor is it a face easily forgotten. He has a notably short brow – barely two fingers’ width of flesh separate his hairline and eyebrows – and his eyes are deep-set, hard for me even to see at such a distance. He has a large nose over a surprisingly small mouth, but it is the chin that draws all eyes. Like a fat toad on a lily pad, Oates’s chin squats on his white surplice, absorbing whatever neck he might once have possessed. His puffed-up cheeks are red (with the good living of Whitehall, I suspect), and surely his head is swollen with his new-found prominence in the world. He stands, head bowed with apparent humility, until the rabble falls silent.

  “I have been instructed,” Oates declares, “to lay out a little of my own history to you, so that you can understand how I have been able to uncover a most horrifying litany of treachery and rebellion.”

  He is an ugly man and he has an ugly way of speaking; his voice is almost as extraordinary as the face from which it issues. It is nasal and surprisingly soft, with a hint of a lisp. There is a feminine quality to it, quite at odds with his large frame and ox-like demeanour. And there is something peculiar in his pronunciation. When Oates produces a vowel, it’s pulled out of him, almost unwillingly. Somewhere between a stammer and a hesitation, he holds onto each vowel for just a second too long, lengthening his words. At times he must have been ridiculed for his strange looks and absurd speech, but no-one is laughing now.

  “I am, as my garb declares, a clergyman. I am a Doctor of Divinity, having gained my degree from the University of Salamanca in Spain. Returning to England, I spent some years in a good living in Sittingbourne, but in time I felt a young man’s urge for a more exciting existence. I became a chaplain at sea and saw out some of the fiercest battles of our Dutch wars. I had the honour of voyaging with men of real worth; Sir Richard Routh, to name but one.”

  It appears that the Members can forgive Oates his ugliness and attune their ears to his bizarre nasal delivery. Many are nodding. I think of William and grit my teeth.

  “Throughout my voyages and adventures,” Oates says, “I met many men and heard many whispers that began to cause me great concern.” He frowns as if the memory leaves a bitter taste on his tongue. “I heard,” – here he sucks in an audible breath – “the whisperings of the Catholics.”

  From both sides of the House comes an answering rustle, a flapping of wings.

  “Over time, my dear sirs, I became persuaded that it was my duty, my destiny even, to pursue these hints of treason, these murmurs of rebellion and revolt. In brief, I determined to get at the truth. I risked my own person for my country and for my King. I decided, to convert.” Oates pauses and raises both hands as though warding off an assault. Very dramatic.

  “In my heart and in private I have remained a true Anglican,” he says. “I tell you this exactly as I told the King and Privy Council, under oath. But to all outward appearances, I became a Catholic and devoted myself to infiltrating their most ardent and extreme membership. I refer, of course, to the Society of Jesus.”

  He nods sagely, his chin bulging against his clerical collar, and folds his hands over his chest.

  “Of my early trials – the difficulties of carrying out such a masquerade; of suppressing my own true beliefs; of participating in practices which are naturally offensive to me – I will say little. Suffice to say that I was true to my purpose and soon in the position of being asked to carry letters for Thomas Whitbread.”

  As he says the name, Oates looks studiously off into the distance. The Members stir again, more noisily than before. Whitbread is the Jesuit Provincial, probably the most prominent Catholic in England. I scribble down his name.

  “Carrying letters was the most efficient way of obtaining information without being suspected, and I have reported my discoveries in a series of eighty-one articles. This is the evidence I presented to the Privy Council, evidence originally held by that poor martyr, Sir Edmund Godfrey. There is no doubt in my mind that the day I took what I knew to Godfrey, he became a marked man.”

  Again, Oates pauses, letting the connection between himself and the murdered man settle in the Members’ minds.

  “Did you copy the letters you read?” One Member half-rises to his feet to call out the question.

  “Very few. I was rarely alone with the correspondence for long enough. I wanted to do everything in my power to discover the terrible danger facing our nation. Had I been found copying letters, my opportunity to gather information would have been lost.”

  Several friendly nods and a murmur of approbation clearly please him. He clears his throat and thrusts out his barrel of a chest.

  “And so now,” booms Oates, “I will tell you all that I have learned, as well as I am able. First, rebellion in Scotland.”

  ***

  “I had to admire his fluency.” Henry and I are at the table in our little dining room, spooning warm broth from two bowls squeezed into the gaps between the piles of paper I deposited there when I got home.

  Anne is perched on a high-backed chair over by the window, bent like a lily, toward the light as she sews. We’re acting like strangers. She has not asked me anything and Henry was here when I arrived, so I assume she knows that William is still in Newgate. At least they are in charity with one another. I take another mouthful of soup and plough on.

  “First, he explained about various plots in Scotland, Ireland, England, and France. He said he’d opened letters detailing a plan to promote a Catholic uprising in Scotland; a country, in his words, well-recognised as a haven for violent, intemperate plotting. He explained that as part of his so-called conversion, he was sent abroad to study his new faith at Valladolid – the English college in Spain – but instead he devoted himself to uncovering treason. He says he read of a plot to poison the King unless Charles agreed to restore the Catholic faith in England. More, should Charles’s brother James fail to fall in with Jesuit plans, h
e would be similarly dealt with. Never mind that’s he’s one of their own.”

  “It’s incredible,” says Henry.

  “So you might think, but you should hear him. Hear how glibly he recalls dates and quotes from his written articles. He constantly referred the Members to the deposition lodged with Godfrey. He said Father Whitbread was promised large sums of money by the Spanish if he would arrange the murder of Charles II. Apparently, they’ve already made repeated attempts upon the King’s life and have assassins preparing to shoot him as he walks in St James’s Park, or stab him at Windsor. This Father Whitbread has numerous accomplices. And Oates is not afraid to name names.”

  “He learned all of this in Valladolid?”

  “No. Oates said he also spent some months in the Catholic college, St Omer’s in Flanders. While he was there, he read letters revealing French willingness to finance Jesuits working to destroy Protestantism, root and branch. Oates claims he learned of significant French support for an uprising in Ireland, with the threat of an army landing to support the Irish cause. He says there is a plot to muster an army of 20,000 French and Irishmen, and five thousand horses. They could invade England with only ten days’ warning.”

  “And what was the response?”

  “What do you imagine? The place was in uproar. Several times the shouting and cursing at Catholics interrupted him, and he had to wait for calm before he continued. It was as if he swelled in stature and confidence before our eyes.”

  “So, you admit Oates is convincing?” Anne puts down her embroidery. I squint but cannot read her expression; the light from the window hides her features.

  “Oh yes. There’s no doubt about that. But then it’s easy to convince, when everyone is hearing their worst fears brought to life. And he has a talent for delivery. He mixes up his evidence, interchanging broad plots of uprising with overheard slander against the King, misfired assassination attempts, and vast sums of money amassed by fanatic Jesuits across four countries. Many a sensible fellow might not see through it.”