Tapestry

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘Until tomorrow, dear. Rest,’ said Cecilia, although her little smile suggested she thought it might be the last thing on Winifred’s mind. Jane’s thoughts were suddenly arrested … no, no, that would not do. Surely she wasn’t going to have to lie back and think of England — or Scotland, in this case?

  Mercifully, William insisted she rest after Cecilia’s departure.

  ‘I am fatigued,’ she admitted.

  ‘No, you are beyond fatigue,’ he noted. ‘And I feel fever in your cheeks. It is time I took care of you again. You are an incredibly brave, clever woman.’

  Winifred asserted herself strongly, taking the response away from Jane. ‘William, I do not wish to ever let you go.’

  ‘Be assured. I am never letting go again. I love my faith, Winnie darling, but I know I will be forgiven for saying that I love you and our children more.’

  Excitedly sharing the evening’s events in whispers, they sipped from a single wine glass and ate sparingly. Neither had any appetite as, inevitably, the conversation moved to the men who had not been so lucky. Jane wanted to retreat, to become an observer, but despite Winifred’s determination to claim back her body she was not yet strong enough.

  ‘William, why here?’ Jane asked, her gaze roaming the damp, claustrophobic room. ‘I think your cell in the Tower was bigger.’

  He nodded. ‘I paced it out. It is indeed a larger space next door,’ he said, dryly referring to his cell. ‘Mr Mills had found a place in Smithfield, but I insisted that I needed to be close to Tower Hill.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ she asked carefully.

  ‘Truly, Win, do you imagine the Constable will think to look in the Tower Hamlets?’

  She shook her head with dawning understanding. ‘If you have even been discovered missing yet, he’s already lost hours. I imagine he will think immediately of the docks.’

  ‘Precisely. What’s more, I think Moseley will not discover me missing until the early hours of tomorrow, and then he will most likely not even bother looking for me. He’ll presume I’m already sighting the coastline of France.’

  ‘So we lie low here, you mean?’

  William nodded. ‘We can sneak out in a few days when the executions are past.’ He sighed, looking suddenly bereft. ‘Lord Derwentwater is so young,’ he moaned. ‘At least I had experienced life and love.’

  ‘He looked very composed during the sentencing,’ she said carefully.

  ‘That is because I suspect Derwentwater has more courage than all of us put together, save my darling wife. The worst is that he is not especially religious. He joined the rebellion on the anxious bidding of his wife and her family, who are pious to the point of being zealots.’ He gave a grimace. ‘His life was set, his future bright. Yet he threw his lot in with the Jacobites very likely against his better judgement.’

  Jane felt guilt tighten in Winifred’s throat. ‘I met one of his acquaintances on the journey.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘A man by the name of Julius Sackville. Lord Sackville, in fact. Have you heard of him?’

  William frowned as he thought. ‘I’ve heard of him, yes. Extremely wealthy man, I recall; our fathers may have known each other. I think Derwentwater mentioned he was hoping to see his friend, but Sackville was not allowed to visit. I gather he was at the sentencing — not that I know what he looks like.’

  ‘It is sad that I too did not get a chance to wish him well in London,’ Jane admitted, more to herself than to William Maxwell. ‘I believe that was the only reason he was headed to London, and it was how we met.’ Not wishing to discuss Julius any further, she looked to change the subject. ‘And Kenmure? How does he fit in?’

  William was easily directed away from the subject of Sackville. ‘Kenmure is in his fifth decade and deeply involved in the plot for a French invasion; he was the representative to Saint-Germain, carrying messages between France and Scotland.’

  ‘So he deserves to answer for his role?’

  ‘I do not believe any of us should have to answer in the way that the English king decrees! But Kenmure chose to be involved, desperately wanted to be a leader in the plot to overthrow the English throne and allow France its sway. Derwentwater was somehow innocent, almost childlike in his swash and buckle.’

  ‘Does Kenmure have family?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. His tragedy is that he was appointed commander of the lowland forces when he had no military experience behind him. He was doomed to fail, and leaves behind a wife of just five years and four young bairns — three sons and a daughter.’ William sighed. ‘I wish I could —’

  ‘Do not utter it, William,’ she forbid. ‘I do not even know where the other peers are lodged.’

  He nodded. ‘Mayhap their wives simply do not love them enough,’ he said, trying vainly to lighten the misery threatening to settle around them. ‘Come, let me sleep next to you once more, darling Winnie, so I can reassure myself this is no dream.’

  They lay down together, fully clothed, in the tiny single cot, somehow finding a comfortable position as only those in love can. Not even the smell of boiled cabbage wafting up from the bowels of the tenement spoiled Winifred’s and William’s pleasure at being together, and out of the axeman’s reach.

  They rested in silence for a few minutes before his deep voice whispered to her. ‘I must say, Win, my love, I had no idea you had an ear for such colourful language,’ he said, recalling her anger of earlier that evening. The bed began to shake with their laughter and Jane wondered if poor Winifred would ever live down her guest’s vulgar tongue.

  Minutes later, Jane felt Winifred lose consciousness, drifting into exhausted sleep. She was glad of the silence, thrilled by the rhythmic breathing of handsome William next to her and the feeling of his hard, strong body curled around Winifred. She imagined longing to be back in Will’s arms and hated the way the image that flashed into her mind was of Julius Sackville’s hard, strong body curled around her in bed. Filled by guilt, Jane gave up all attempts to remain awake and succumbed to Winifred’s deep slumber.

  William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale, woke, startled, to the sound of a mournful bell tolling, and recalled as best he could the curious dream he had experienced. He had been drowning, or drowned. He thought he had been lying on a riverbed … seabed, perhaps? He had believed he could see light from the sun refracted and the water shifting above. He had been in darkness, but the more keenly he tried to reach it, the more the light he sought had beckoned to him from above.

  The detail had already fled. Had he seen a hand reach down from the sky? Had someone urged him to grab it? His mind was too blurred. He thought he might have clasped the hand and sped, ascending at breathless speed, to break through the water’s mirror-like surface. And throughout it all he had heard a rhythmic noise. He couldn’t recognise it, had never heard a sound like it previously: a persistent, shrieking beep!

  And as his eyes had snapped open, fearful, his lungs gasping silently for breath, he had turned, relieved, to see a familiar shape. Darling Winifred. The dream was gone already, slipping from his thoughts like tendrils of mist disappearing beneath the sun’s warmth. And the sound he could hear was the distant toll of a bell.

  Robin glanced at his watch without breaking stride and Big Ben, as if hearing his thought, chimed the hour. Time in that moment instantly aligned, as he had known it would. He smiled into a restaurant window that he passed by and his reflection, rather than showing a smallish, spare man in a striped designer scarf, actually showed a laundrywoman of centuries previous. He glimpsed Robyn looking back at him, and as the clock tolled, he knew the two William Maxwells had woken.

  At the stroke of the hour, Will Maxwell found awareness. He thought he had heard a bell tolling mournfully; he reached toward it, and it felt as though he were pushing through water, searching for something. What was it? What was he seeking? His first thought was, It’s sounding my death knell. But then he swam to full consciousness.

  He was too scared to open his eyes initiall
y. There was a sudden overload of sensory information. The bell he thought he’d heard was the insistent beep of a machine! Around him were muted voices, busy, as though working. He knew he was lying down and the bed was uncomfortable. Light was coming from his left, but it too was dulled, like the voices. And even they had become silent now, as though the people had stepped back.

  The murkiest, most distant of thoughts rode away too. He thought he heard himself whispering the name Winifred. But that disappeared as a louder voice murmured close to where he lay. ‘Here he comes. Hello, handsome.’

  Will Maxwell opened his eyes on a new year and an unfamiliar face.

  ‘Will. I’m Ellen, your nurse. Welcome back. Your family’s here.’

  The gorgeous smile of a stunningly pretty nurse moved away, to be replaced by someone he did recognise.

  ‘Hi, son.’ For perhaps the first time ever, Will saw his father’s prominent jaw tremble with emotion. He also saw that his father had aged.

  ‘Where’s Mom?’ he croaked.

  ‘Right here,’ she cried, and he turned his head slowly to regard his mother. She too looked a decade older; her hair was not teased up, and her make-up was minimal and tear-stained.

  In the distance, beyond his mother, stood the nurse, who smiled again at him and dabbed away a tear. He could just read her badge.

  ‘Hello, Ellen,’ he said, and winked.

  She giggled and touched her heart, tapping her hand against it to show him it was pounding slightly faster just for him.

  Will Maxwell grinned.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Jane woke to the sound of a voice and realised Winifred felt gluey-eyed and disoriented, blinking several times in panic, first at the unfamiliar ceiling and then, as reality asserted itself, at the emptiness of her tiny cot.

  ‘William!’

  ‘Here, my darling,’ he said, suddenly at her side. ‘Our loyal landlady sent up some fresh water.’ He offered her a cup. ‘Have a drink. You must be parched.’

  She sipped, still rubbing away the sleep, and watched his lean figure, stripped to breeches and shirt, move back to where he’d presumably been standing by the narrow turret window. Jane felt Winifred shiver and she reached for the cloak beneath which she’d slept, the one in which her husband had escaped. She put it on, knowing it dragged slightly on the floor, also looking around for the chamber pot. How far had she come that she not only considered a chamber pot thoroughly normal but was also happy to consider spending a very urgent penny in front of a man?

  ‘Over there.’ He grinned, noticing her urgency, and pointed to the corner, where a small screen stood.

  Jane soon joined William at the turret’s single window, made up of small grimy panes that slightly distorted the view. She linked Winifred’s hand in his. She was a little frightened to follow his fixed gaze, knowing precisely where he was staring. Digging for her courage, she unearthed it again, and bit her lip hard to remind herself that she could do this. She’d already seen plenty of dead men on this journey. The pain flashed brightly, waking her fully, and she looked down from their all-too-horribly-clear vantage point onto Tower Green, where a mob had already gathered.

  She leaned helplessly against William, her composure suddenly lost. He reached a long arm around his wife’s shoulder, pulling her as close as he could, and kissed her head with reassurance.

  And yet it was Jane who felt the need to offer comfort. ‘You must not feel guilty,’ she murmured.

  ‘I have to admit to having woken with anything but guilt. And that is what is making me feel shame. Am I despicable in feeling relief that it is to be them and not me?’

  She shook her head, sickened at the thought of what he might have faced. ‘Natural rather than despicable. But had you woken within your cell at the Tower rather than here, I know you would have rallied the last of your courage and faced your executioners bravely.’

  He sighed. ‘I hope I would have remained stoic to the end. What if I had not? What if —’

  ‘William, stop! You are here, not there. You cannot change it. And you cannot change the outcome of their destiny.’

  ‘That was my destiny, though,’ he persisted gloomily.

  ‘I adjusted it,’ Jane pressed. ‘Let it be. That someone has cheated the executioner’s axe is a triumph.’

  He nodded. ‘I hope the other lords see it that way.’

  ‘We shall not have this discussion again. We all made choices, me included.’

  He brushed his lips against hers, then looked away, distracted. ‘Yes, but as much as this will gall you, I must bear witness to their suffering.’

  ‘Why?’ Jane asked, shrinking back into Winifred.

  ‘It is right to do so. They were brave at Preston, stoic at the trial and now must find still more courage for a grisly death. I can surely show similar mettle for them from a distance.’

  She swallowed. It was obvious he expected her to do the same. She nodded. ‘I am not sure I can bear to.’

  ‘We both must.’

  The King’s secretary arched a dark eyebrow. ‘He has been in a fearful rage.’

  Though his mouth was already uncomfortably dry, Sir George Moseley, Lord Constable of the Tower, could not raise even a fleck of spittle to ease the lump of shame that sat like an internal accuser at the back of his throat. He gave a small, parched cough. ‘I take full responsibility, of course.’

  The secretary managed to raise the same eyebrow even higher, so it appeared as a small arrow pointing to his wig, which was powdered and combed back viciously from his furrowed forehead. ‘He is convinced that this event could not have occurred without connivance.’

  Moseley baulked, and could not find the words within him to express his surprise at such an accusation. The secretary saved him the trouble of searching for them, making a calming gesture to dampen down the Constable’s rising outrage.

  ‘Sir George, your loyalty is not in question, but you are required to face His Majesty and give your explanation. I recommend you say it in as few words as possible. You know the King does not like to converse in English. I shall translate for you into French.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you,’ he said, covering his feeling of disdain at having to use French in the English court by lowering his head in a polite bow.

  ‘Follow me.’

  He was led into the sumptuous chambers of the King’s closet and his gaze immediately picked out the man, wearing a long, grey wig that towered so high above his head it added inches to his otherwise short figure. He was positioned near the fire, but bore a stance that suggested he was indifferent to its warmth. His flabby cheeks were certainly aflame, but with fury. Apples of bright colour punctuated a pale, powdered face with a distinctively broad, straight Hanoverian nose. The fleshy, normally cherubic mouth looked pinched at this early hour of the morning, long before even the first birds were thinking of welcoming the dawn. An imperious glare radiated from eyes like two dark pebbles, smaller than usual, partly from fatigue, but mostly from anger — and all of it directed at Sir George, who blinked beneath this barely disguised wrath.

  The King said nothing. He did not need to. The question was already posed, already waiting for Sir George’s answer; it sat like a tethered monster, straining at a leash held by the King.

  Moseley dropped into a reverential bow, eyes facing the parquet floor. The secretary attempted a tight smile that lifted the corners of his mouth slightly, but fell just as quickly, as if like the weight of a man on the end of a noose. ‘Sir George,’ he began, his voice laden with tension. ‘Perhaps you’d like to give His Majesty your account.’

  It was a relief to finally be permitted to speak. Moseley cleared his throat, refused himself the cowardice of glancing around and instead found the courage to fix his gaze on the angry man before him. He spoke precisely, recounting the events as they’d been reported to him by the head yeoman, pausing only while the secretary swiftly translated into French.

  At no time during this translation did the King’s penetrating
stare leave Sir George. The room was still, pregnant with rage, the only movements seeming to be the dancing flames behind the King and the lips of the secretary opening and closing.

  His Majesty fired something back at the secretary in rapid French, his tone filled with disgust.

  ‘The King demands that the five warders on duty be relieved of their positions and not permitted to set foot in the Tower of London again in any capacity.’

  Sir George considered the families of the men he would now be condemning to poverty unless he could help them find other work. He was particularly sad at the loss of Hugh, his head yeoman — a genuinely good man, who treated prisoners with respect. While the secretary and King shared a few muttered words that were not translated for him, Moseley totted up in his mind that the men being dismissed had nearly a century of service to the Tower between them. It would be a grave loss of important experience and loyalty.

  None deserved to lose their positions. Lady Nithsdale had schemed more admirably than any man, in his opinion. Her plan, so simple — comic, in fact — had fooled his men because she had seemed so helpless from the outset. A reticent woman who, though stoic in her emotions, had not showed even a speck of the cunning that she brought to the Tower behind her gentle, indeed fragile façade. Perhaps he should have guessed at her mettle, knowing of the journey she had made from north to south in conditions that would have sent most men scampering for the closest inn.

  In fact, now that he considered the Countess, he could not help a vague feeling of wonder. Who could not admire her under the circumstances, especially as she’d managed to mock the king who had treated her so discourteously?

  The two men had finished their murmurings and throats were being cleared.

  Sir George nodded to the secretary. ‘Please inform His Majesty that I, of course, formally tender my resignation.’

  The King surprised him by replying to him directly, and in English. ‘That will not be necessary,’ he said in a mellow voice, which was disconcerting because his expression was still shaded with anger.