by L. C. Tyler
Pole is smiling. And he is reloading his pistol.
Endgame, Late Summer 1657
The rain is falling gently outside my window. I hear the soft taps on the sill as water drips from the roof. The casement is a little open, and a cool breeze blows onto my cheek. I am not entirely comfortable, however, and try to roll over onto my left side. A stab of pain reminds me that this is not a good idea. I think I already know this, because I have tried to roll that way before, but my memories of the recent past are not good.
‘What is the matter with you men?’ asks my mother. ‘First I have Mr Probert in this bed with a ball lodged in his right shoulder. Now I have you with a ball through your left shoulder.’
She implies that we had a choice in the matter. Perhaps we did.
I try to raise myself up, but the room reacts by spinning violently, and so I fall back again onto the down pillows.
‘How long . . . ?’ I say.
‘Three weeks,’ says my mother to save me the effort of completing the question. ‘Three weeks and one day to be exact. Mr Probert was up and doing after two days. But he is a very robust and active man. For his size.’
‘How did I get here?’ I ask.
‘Lord Pole brought you,’ says my mother. ‘He and Kit Mansell slung you over the back of your horse and brought you straight here by moonlight, whereupon I cleaned the wound, bandaged you and put you to bed. Roger says he kept a loaded pistol in his hand the whole way back – he didn’t know whether there were others out to kill you too. You would have died had they not acted so swiftly. You lost a lot of blood that evening.’
‘Pole?’ I say. ‘Lord Pole?’
‘Oh, Mr Pole, if you insist,’ says my mother. ‘For the moment at least.’
‘But he shot me.’
‘When you get those bandages off,’ says my mother, ‘you will observe – because, as you always tell me, you have studied these things – you will observe that the large wound you are looking at was made by a ball leaving your body. The smaller wound, by which it entered, is in your back. Dickon Grice shot you. Roger Pole shot him dead before he could reload and finish the job.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say.
‘Why don’t I explain it all to you tomorrow, when you are a bit stronger?’ says my mother.
‘Do you know everything?’ I ask.
‘More or less,’ says my mother. ‘I’ll draw the curtains now so that you can sleep again.’
‘No,’ I say. I haul myself up again. The room lurches to the right, but I stay sitting, and after a while the spinning slows down to a speed that I can tolerate. ‘I want to know everything and I want to know now.’
‘Very well,’ says my mother, sitting down on the edge of the bed. ‘I think you’ll find you don’t want to know everything, but I’ll tell you as much as you wish. You must say if I am tiring you.’
‘You won’t tire me.’
‘But just in case I do.’
‘You won’t.’
‘But just in case . . .’
‘Start,’ I say, ‘with Henderson’s murder. I have at least worked out that was my father, wasn’t it?’
‘Your father? Lord! Are you still feverish? Of course it wasn’t him,’ says my mother. ‘Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said? Oh dear, I suppose I’d better begin from the very beginning, hadn’t I? I assume Mr Morland will have explained that Henderson was sent to this village by Mr Secretary Thurloe to impersonate the Sealed Knot’s courier and gain what information he could. A scurvy trick, if I may say so. Henderson’s job was made easier by the fact that we were actually expecting somebody from Bruges to bring us news. So we assumed Henderson was he. You might say therefore that Henderson benefited from a lucky coincidence. But of course it probably wasn’t anything of the sort. Thurloe has his agents in Bruges and no doubt knew that a visit was intended. Anyway, Henderson had been told to lie low in one of Ben’s chambers. All of the Sealed Knot adherents were to meet him that night at the inn, but there was one small problem.’
‘Which was?’
‘You, dear. You insisted on drinking at the inn, and everyone knew you were no friend of the King’s. So you were bought drinks until you were too drunk to stand, and then you were packed off home.’
‘That must have cost them a bit,’ I say.
‘Not really,’ says my mother. ‘Then there was Ifnot Davies. Not a friend of His Majesty’s either. But he was sent away with some story about horses needing to be shod in the morning. Anyhow, once you had both gone the others were about to summon Henderson down when the real Sealed Knot courier arrived – the one I had been expecting all along. He’d ridden all day, and his horse was quite lame, poor thing.’
‘Exactly!’ I say. ‘My rider! Henderson’s killer!’
‘Don’t get so excited, dear. You will break open that wound again, and it was difficult enough to dress the first time. Yes, your rider, if that’s how you like to think of him, but no killer now or at any other time. Well, that put the cat amongst the pigeons, as they say. There we all were, with the real courier down in Ben’s parlour and the false courier up in the best chamber.’
‘We? So, you were party to it?’
‘Since you had spent the whole evening at the inn, you can scarcely chide me for a brief visit myself. Yes, I was sent for too once the coast was clear. Martha was to tell you that I had been called out to visit a patient in the village – but that subterfuge proved entirely unnecessary. So, to return to the story, we all discussed what to do, and Dickon favoured prompt action. When some of us protested, he said that he wasn’t afraid to carry out his proposals in person. One or two walked out at that point, but most stayed.’
‘And Dickon killed him. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Only after a lot of tedious discussion. The leader of the Sealed Knot tried quite rightly to persuade everyone that we should let Henderson try his worst and then allow him to leave the village quietly and harmlessly. After all, nobody here would talk to Henderson once we’d let it be known he came from Thurloe. Some of the younger members of the Knot, however, are growing impatient with Hyde’s leadership – they want to side with this so-called Action Party. They favoured a shorter way.’
‘And then?’
‘Nell went up to Henderson’s chamber and told him that the meeting was now in the stables. When Henderson duly went to the stables, Dickon was waiting for him. I shouldn’t think it took long. I mean, I doubt if Mr Henderson suffered much or the poor horses were disturbed.’
‘Ben can’t have been too happy – about a murder in his stables, I mean.’
‘He was very unhappy,’ says my mother. ‘So was Nell. There was quite a tension between her and Dickon that you must have noticed. Dickon’s brothers had to carry Henderson across the meadow – fortunately, he was not a large man – and leave him by the roadside. They were supposed to leave the ring and take the purse so that it appeared he had been killed by footpads.’
‘And they got it wrong?’
‘Of course. You can’t leave anything to those Grices. Left the purse, took the ring. They took his knife too. It should have stayed with the body, but they liked the look of it. And they left his hat behind at the inn. But what can you expect? Only Dickon and his mother can read and write out of all of them. It was no surprise that they should make a mess of it. Oh, and his mother says that she never received those preserved cherries I sent – you really are as scatterbrained as they. Anyway, Ben went out early the following morning to check that all was well, but you’d got there first, so there wasn’t much he could do.’
‘Dickon in the meantime went home . . .’ I say.
‘Covered in blood. He decided the best thing to do was to slaughter a pig and blame the mess on that. Completely the wrong time of year for pork, of course; but, being a man and no cook, you probably wouldn’t have realised that. He woke everyone up with the noise. And the suit was ruined. He had to wear his old one, which was much too small for him, until he
could get a new one made in Saffron Walden.’
‘I just thought he was getting fat,’ I say.
‘So he was,’ my mother says.
‘But Jem saw the murder,’ I say.
‘Yes, silly boy. Ben told him that all he had to do was keep quiet and say, if anyone noticed it, that the blood was from a horse. That’s what I told him too . . .’
‘You went and saw Jem?’
‘Yes, I think I reassured him. But then you blundered in – he must have seen you and Dickon together and panicked. Fortunately, I’d already told him that he could trust Kit Mansell – a good Royalist but too level-headed for the Knot’s little games. I’m sure Jem wanted to tell you who it was but knew you’d never believe it was Dickon. He still trusted you enough to go to the Colonel by night, but we think Dickon had discovered where he was hiding.’
‘So Dickon killed Jem too?’ I ask.
‘I suppose so,’ says my mother with a sigh. ‘If so, it was entirely on his own initiative. I was there when Ben accused him to his face and Dickon denied it. The village might have excused Henderson’s throat being cut as youthful high spirits, but Jem’s throat was another matter entirely. The charcoal burners would have lynched the killer if nobody else did. But who else could it have been but Dickon? Dickon knew the woods as well as anyone in the village. He knew which way Jem would have to go, and he knew all of the points where the wall into the Park could be climbed. And I think Dickon’s mother knew. She persisted in saying that it must be you. We exchanged some harsh words over it. I may have called her a witch.’
‘I told Dickon all he needed to know,’ I say. ‘I told him Probert was close to revealing the murderer, and I told him where to find Jem. I told Dickon all he needed to know to kill me as well. I said that I knew exactly who the murderer was and that it was somebody very close to me. I thought it was my father – somebody returning after a long absence and skilled in the use of a knife. Somebody that you knew well. Dickon thought I meant him . . .’
My mother looks at me despairingly. ‘I feel sorry for Dickon in some ways,’ says my mother. ‘I mean, the murder of Henderson was actually quite well-intentioned. As for Jem . . . Well, he wasn’t from these parts. Dickon had no idea whether he could have been trusted. And Dickon wouldn’t have been the only one to hang for Henderson’s murder if Jem had informed on them. There were plenty of others at the inn that night, including all of Dickon’s brothers. The whole family might have gone to the gallows together. I think, you know, that it is sometimes possible to do the most evil things for the very best of reasons.’
‘But Jem’s death didn’t make him safe either,’ I say. ‘He realised Probert or I might still discover him.’
‘Fortunately, Dickon wasn’t a very good shot,’ says my mother. ‘He’d have been better using a knife, but perhaps after Jem he’d had enough of knives. You can understand that, can’t you? Anyway, two attempts at a clean kill with a gun, and both end up in the shoulder. And in your case he must have been only feet away. Well, that’s what Lord – Roger – Pole says anyway.’
‘Did the Colonel know what had happened?’
‘Roger told him what he knew, but Colonel Payne didn’t have a really good first-hand account until I told him.’
‘At least the Colonel wasn’t at the inn with the rest of you. Most of the village seems to have been involved in this conspiracy.’
‘Well, about half the village perhaps – though having only six muskets would have restricted us a little had there actually been a rebellion. The Colonel, as a magistrate, really couldn’t be a member of the Sealed Knot. It might have amused Sir Felix to get involved in a rebellion, but Aminta absolutely forbade it and tried to prevent him finding out more about the murder than was good for him. Ifnot would have had religious scruples even if he had approved in principle. It was different for me . . . I mean, none of us quite knows how all of this will turn out, do we? We all have to try to ensure that whoever rules in the end, we come out of it reasonably well. So, the Colonel, as you know, was in correspondence with General Monck in Scotland, though the General himself is not yet certain for which side he has been devoted all his life. He seems favourable to a return of the King when the time is right. The Colonel will declare himself for King Charles when Monck does.’
‘So Clarges was carrying messages?’
‘Of course. What else would he be doing here? That’s why the Colonel was not too pleased to have a dead Parliamentary spy on his hands. Clarges wanted to come and go without being noticed, which was difficult in a village swarming with Thurloe’s agents. The Colonel was cross with Will Cobley for not keeping him better informed – he felt that, as Constable, he might have at least told him where the body had been dumped. And he certainly did not appreciate your accusing Roger Pole of the murder. He was very angry about that for a long time. Of course, I was quite cross myself when Colonel Payne issued the warrant for your arrest. So unnecessary.’
Unnecessary? My mother just for once understates her case.
‘It was very sudden,’ I say. ‘As if he had stumbled on new evidence.’
‘Dickon had informed on you the afternoon that you fled. Then he told you that you were to be arrested, so your hurried departure simply convinced the Colonel he was right.’
‘And the note? And the ring?’ I ask despairingly. ‘Was that Dickon too?’
‘Of course,’ says my mother. ‘Poorly written. Clumsily planted. It wouldn’t have taken most people in. I think Dickon concealed the ring round that feather the evening when you were ransacking Ben’s chambers – when Dickon was all alone downstairs with Roger’s hat. Later he sent you out of the room to look for Jem, then slipped the note under your tankard. Roger says that even then you failed to find the ring and Dickon had to do it for you. You should hear how he tells the story! Roger really can be quite amusing about you sometimes. I think Dickon should have decided to inform on either on you or Roger though. Trying to make you both culpable was never going to work. But Dickon never liked Roger.’
‘Because Dickon and Roger Pole had fallen out over leadership of the Sealed Knot?’ I ask.
Again my mother shakes her head. ‘Roger Pole was asleep in his bed when we killed Henderson. He was never a member of the Sealed Knot, let alone leader. He was far too concerned about getting Parliament to restore his estates. Writing all those letters to Cromwell . . . It was more that Dickon had always been in love with Aminta, and then Roger came along . . . That’s another reason why you were in danger from him. I think that if the opportunity had arisen, Dickon would have killed you in London. But Pole was watching your back in a way that Dickon never did.’
‘But why?’
‘Aminta asked him to,’ says my mother. ‘She was quite active on your behalf. She got Ifnot to write to his Quaker friends in the City. She also sent Kit to London regularly to seek news and he obviously met up with Roger there, which meant that you had two people watching over you. They both rode after you as fast as they could when they discovered you’d fallen into Dickon’s hands. When he shot you, Dickon had no idea how close Roger and Kit were – Dickon probably thought he could leave your body there in the woods and later blame it on Roger. The two of them arrived none too late, did they? So you have Aminta to thank for your life as well. Did I tell you she was always very fond of you?’
‘You know I betrayed her to Thurloe?’ I say. ‘At least, I allowed him to believe she was in correspondence with Hyde.’
‘Yes, thank you for that,’ says my mother. ‘That was very kind of you. Please don’t think I am ungrateful.’
‘I could hardly have Thurloe learn that my own mother was writing treasonable letters and signing herself “472”.’
‘Is that my number? I can never remember whether I am 472 or 274 or 742. I have asked Sir Edward for a better number, but he hasn’t given me one yet.’
‘So, if it isn’t Roger Pole, who is the leader of the Sealed Knot in Essex?’ I ask.
‘Me, of course. Don
’t look so surprised. I’ve known Sir Edward for years. A very dear friend. And rebellion is, as I may have observed to you before, a perfectly respectable family tradition.’
‘You should be grateful that it was not one I wished to see continued.’
‘Yes, we have dabbled a little too much in treason over the years. As I say, I am not ungrateful for what you did. I’m sure Aminta would have done the same.’
‘Would she?’
‘Didn’t you notice that she was providing you with information that would have cleared Roger and convicted Dickon Grice? With good reason, I might add – but she was less than honest. I wonder what you would have achieved if you had worked together and trusted each other a little more. Of course, from my point of view it was as well that you didn’t.’
I think back. Had it not been for Aminta, I might not have taken the path across the meadow. Had it not been for Aminta, I would not have searched the stable. She too had understood the significance of the deep puncture on the right-hand side of the wound. She too would have been looking for left-handed killers and must have worked out it was Dickon well before I did. That business of passing him her basket at the stables; I was supposed to notice which hand he returned it with. I suspect she might have deciphered Letter Number 9 before I did too if I had shown it to her. Above all, she knew not to go into the woods and then turn her back on Dickon. Yes, working together would have been a good plan.
‘Cruel necessity,’ I say.
‘What?’ asks my mother.
‘It is what Cromwell said when he viewed the body of the late King after his execution.’
‘And you would apply that to Aminta’s fate as well?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Confinement in the Tower seems cruel enough.’
‘Denouncing her to the government was certainly an unfortunate thing for you to have done if you had hoped to marry her,’ says my mother severely. ‘Women can be quite unreasonable and unforgiving in some ways. As for the Tower, I doubt she’ll make that mistake. No, she and Sir Felix fled to Bruges shortly before the soldiers arrived to arrest them.’