“We’ve a slight acquaintance, sir.”
“I have strong reason to believe he’s a closet Royalist.”
Price let himself appear astonished, rather than appalled, as he was: how could Veech have found out about Devenish’s true sympathies? “Had he a role in the plot?”
“Oh, I doubt that. Intelligence suggests he may be mixed up in a quite different intrigue of the King’s. I’m laying a trap for him, but I won’t spring it just yet. So if you go visiting your cousin there, you be careful to give nothing away to Devenish.”
“I shall, Mr. Veech.”
Veech sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “So, what information have you for us about Mr. Beaumont?”
Price resorted to Beaumont’s advice: combine lies with the truth. “As promised, I went to Oxford – to Lord Digby’s offices. I claimed to be a friend of Mr. Beaumont’s from London.”
“Very bold of you,” said Veech, in a tone neither complimentary nor critical.
“I’d made sure beforehand that his lordship was out of town for the holiday, as was Mr. Beaumont. A servant of Lord Digby’s by the name of Quayle fell to talking with me. He hinted that I might soon see Mr. Beaumont in London again,” Price lied.
Veech glanced at Draycott, who was looking down fixedly at the remains of Veech’s breakfast, and then said to Price, “I’d like you to return to Oxford. I must know when Beaumont might be travelling here.”
“I’ll need funds, sir.”
Veech dipped a hand into his coat pocket. As he pulled it out, his sleeve rolled up a few inches. Price could not tear away his eyes: Veech’s forearm was even whiter than his hand and almost naked of hair, like a woman’s, in bizarre contrast to his weather-beaten face and thick brows. With a quick, instinctive gesture, Veech straightened his sleeve. “This should do you,” he said, counting out a pile of crowns.
“Thank you, Mr. Veech,” said Price, shovelling them into his own pocket. As always, the possession of money miraculously restored his self-confidence. He would tell Sue he was going to Oxford to collect his wages from Beaumont; and in Oxford, he would tell Beaumont of Violet’s arrest and Veech’s suspicions about Mr. Devenish. It was too late to help Violet, but Beaumont had taught him the art of concealing messages. He would send Sue round to Winchester House with a gift of a pie for Mr. Devenish.
III.
“What else could you expect, Beaumont,” Wilmot had said, of Isabella’s marriage. “She’s Digby’s puppet and dances to his tune. But why should you? He’s fucking you in the arse and he won’t stop unless you challenge him.”
“Not to a duel,” Laurence had said. “My paltry skills are no match for his.”
“True enough, they aren’t. So use your brains. Think of a way to quit his service for mine.”
As before, Wilmot tried to console Laurence by plying him with liquor and introductions to other women. He found himself strangely uninterested in the women, and in the case of liquor, he began to worry about the increasingly slanderous statements that flew from Wilmot’s mouth while they drank together at his quarters. “You ought to be more discreet,” he warned his friend, but Wilmot would not listen.
Every morning Laurence rode from Abingdon into Oxford, to call again at Digby’s offices, and at Merton for Seward. At last, on the ninth of January, he saw lights in his lordship’s windows, and Quayle answered to him, glum-faced. “His lordship has bad news, sir.”
Digby greeted Laurence by thrusting a newssheet at him. He had not finished reading when his lordship burst out, “You are responsible for Violet’s arrest. If you had followed my orders in October, instead of making yourself so conspicuous to Parliament, he would not have been left stranded, forced to work alone in his addresses to the City Councillors.”
“My lord,” said Laurence, annoyed by this revision of the facts, “I told you Violet was in danger of arrest. And your orders to us in October were to investigate that list of Radcliff’s, and Albright’s fate. You didn’t tell me about His Majesty’s addresses until some time after I returned to Oxford. And if I might remind you, I never approved of them.”
“We can only pray Violet is not tortured by that cruel spymaster, and that Mr. Price has eluded capture,” Digby ranted on, as though he would hold Laurence to blame for all this, also.
“Violet may be sharp enough to hold his tongue, but I’d have to concur about Price: if he’s arrested, he’ll talk about his visit to Winchester House, and the whole point of Major Ogle’s felicitous escape to Oxford will come out in Parliament.”
“Might I remind you that you agreed to send him to Mr. Devenish.”
“Yes, and it was a mistake. But you would have sent him, anyway, over my objections.”
They glared at each other across Digby’s desk. Then Digby said, in a malevolent voice, “I believe you and Lord Wilmot are jealous of the prestige that will accrue to my father, to me, and to Prince Rupert, when Aylesbury and Windsor are handed to the King.”
“I don’t give a damn about prestige, nor do I see why you should accuse Lord Wilmot of such pettiness.”
“Oh no? In your moments of drunken fellowship with him, has he not confided in you how much he loathes me, and resents my trusted status with the King? How he yearns to discredit that unlicked cub, Prince Rupert, his main rival in our Council of War?”
Laurence felt a tightening in his stomach. “I must have been too inebriated to recollect, my lord.”
“He is a sot, an ambitious wretch who would sell his own mother to enhance his reputation,” shouted Digby, and slammed his hands on the desk.
“He’s an officer of great courage and talent who is loved by his men.”
Digby’s cheeks coloured an apoplectic red. “Why do you love him?”
“Love is not the term I would choose.”
“Why do you respect him, if you prefer.”
“My lord, I respect anyone who can drink me under the table.”
Digby’s expression altered with unnerving speed, and he started to laugh. “I do enjoy your sense of humour, sir. Oh, by the bye, I have decided to terminate my lease of that house off the Woodstock Road, as it seems you are not living in it.”
“I didn’t consider it mine but Isabella’s. I haven’t spent a night there since we parted.”
“Do you still have your key?”
Laurence hunted in his pocket and placed the key on Digby’s desk. “Will that be all, my lord?”
Digby picked it up and examined it thoughtfully. “Why have you not asked me about her? Do you not want to hear about the work she is undertaking for the King?”
“No, my lord, to be honest I don’t.”
“Nonetheless,” said Digby, “I must insist on telling you.”
——
“Thank Christ you were home, Seward, or I might have stormed back to his offices and punched him in the jaw. So, talk to me,” Laurence begged, as he stretched out his legs to the hearth. “I want your opinion: has he gone completely mad?”
Seward filled his pipe and lit it with a spill from the fire. “He definitely put Mistress Savage at risk when he gave her those bags of sulphur and saltpetre to smuggle into London.”
“A minimal risk compared to the quantities that he plans to ship in next, in her husband’s wine barrels, to await a Royalist march on London. He’s dreaming if he believes they’ll be spared from search because of Sir Montague’s friendly relations with Parliament.”
“He did tell you that Sir Montague has continued to sell wines to whoever will buy them, and has not changed his practice of exporting full barrels to Oxford and receiving them again empty. It is possible they might avoid detection.”
“After the exposure of this late plot, all cargo from Royalist territory will be inspected with a fine-toothed comb. And if it’s not discovered by Parliament, the powder may well spoil long before the King can attempt to retake the capital. Digby told me everything on purpose. He knew I’d be alarmed. Wilmot’s right about him: he is fucking me i
n the arse.”
“Or rather, he would like to but he can’t,” said Seward, with his crusty chuckle. “He is envious of your friendship with Wilmot and your passion for her.”
“I suppose you mean that if not for her dubious paternity and the horrible episode in her youth, he might have married her,” Laurence said, although he could not picture Isabella and Digby as husband and wife.
Seward laughed so hard that he choked out a cloud of smoke. “My eyesight may be dim, but sometimes you are as blind as a bat. He does not love her in that way. He is in love with you.”
Laurence blinked at Seward. “Are you suggesting that he shares your proclivities? He’s a contented married man, with children.”
“Pah, what does that signify. He loves you and he is testing you: as to whether you will remain obediently in Oxford, or venture upon a suicidal errand.”
“To fetch her out before the barrels arrive?” Seward nodded, puffing on his pipe. “If he’s so enamoured of me, why send me to my death?”
“Where his passion in concerned, he is like a selfish child: if he cannot have what he desires, he cannot bear for anyone else to have it. He would rather see it destroyed. It takes a man such as I am to recognise these feelings. Sorry to shock you, Beaumont,” Seward added.
Laurence patted him on the knee. “I’ve never been shocked by you, Seward, even when I was a boy of fifteen and you gave me that first sultry appraisal in my father’s library. I am a bit surprised at Digby, however.”
Seward regarded him more gravely. “Then do not go to London. I can tell by the look on your face that you are considering it.”
“I’ve already decided to go.”
“My dear boy, you suspect Lord Digby of madness, but that would be sheer insanity.”
“My insanity once saved your life.”
“So it did,” Seward acknowledged.
“Now,” said Laurence, “I may be about to dice with mine, but not with my Arab stallion or my French flintlocks. I’m leaving them here. Should something happen to me, Ingram can have them, as a belated wedding gift.”
IV.
“They sound like hounds baying for blood,” Antonio said to Don Alonso; they were peering down at the rioters in the street below the Envoy’s window.
“They will judge every Catholic in London a traitor, and every foreigner a priest or a spy, if not both,” Don Alonso murmured, as a clump of hardened dung smacked against the windowpane.
“The army should disperse them.”
“Oh no, sir: they are enjoying one of the few entertainments not proscribed by the authorities. We should step back. They often aim more dangerous projectiles at my house, though they will tire by the hour of curfew.” Antonio went and threw himself into an armchair; he was equally tired of the Envoy, and the Envoy’s house. “It is a pity for you that the plot should be blown open now,” Don Alonso said next.
“Please explain,” said Antonio.
“A friend of mine in the House of Lords told me that a Lord James Beaumont sat in the House during the King’s Parliaments, prior to the war. He and his wife, Lady Elena, have two sons and two daughters. Their estate lies in Gloucestershire, some thirty or forty miles from Oxford.” The Envoy hesitated, eyeing Antonio. “Around the middle of December, I addressed a letter to her ladyship on your behalf. I have had no reply.”
“You knew since the middle of …” Antonio battled rage. “Your letter may have been lost. This time, I shall write to her myself.”
“I cannot permit you. If I worried earlier that correspondence dispatched from my house would be intercepted by Parliament’s spies, it is now a certainty. And the name Beaumont will attract immediate suspicion. Lady Elena’s eldest son is Lord Digby’s chief agent, and a wanted man in London. So you are a captive here, Don Antonio, unless you wish to face the baying hounds,” Don Alonso said, looking as gloomy at the prospect as Antonio felt.
The hounds did slink off at curfew, and he and Antonio ate their supper undisturbed. When a messenger came with a diplomatic packet, Don Alonso bade Antonio goodnight and disappeared to work in his chamber. Antonio retired to his, to digest the revelation: this eldest son, the gypsy’s lover, the reprobate, the deserter, the coward, was also a spy.
Diego was as yet unaware of Juana’s existence on God’s earth, so Antonio simply repeated to him what the Envoy had said. “Don Alonso was miserly with the facts, Diego. We have been at his house for a month, and he probably knew from the day we arrived where Lord James has his estate. That dishonesty cancels my debt of gratitude – and my promises. I will not stay another night. We shall head to Oxford.”
“Qué locura,” exclaimed Diego. “We’ll be captured by the militia before we ever get out of London. I implore you, Don Antonio, have some sense.”
“Oh shut up, you craven fool, and pack our bags.”
“How will we find Oxford? We have no map.”
“We’ll ask directions, in our marvellous English. You’ve spent enough time chattering with the servants. What’s our best way to escape from the house?”
“You may escape and go to your death,” said Diego stubbornly, “but I’m staying.”
Antonio hauled him up with both hands around his neck, and started to squeeze. Diego flushed beet-red, gulping for breath. “Either you come, Diego,” Antonio said, “or I leave behind your strangled corpse. I ask you once more: how do we escape?” He relaxed his grip a little.
“By … by two or three of the clock, all his servants will be abed,” Diego stammered. “The easiest way is through the kitchens, but the servants’ quarters are in the same wing. The slightest noise and we shall be undone.”
“Have faith in God, and in my Toledo blade, which I will put through your guts if you betray me.”
At the appointed hour they stole out, carrying their boots. Diego went in front, loaded down with their baggage, and with Antonio clinging to the hood of his cloak. They tiptoed past the Envoy’s reception room into the servants’ domain; there was no noise, save for the scuttling of mice, and the kitchen flagstones were icy beneath Antonio’s stockinged feet. He felt exhilarated to be in charge again, and worthy of the name he had acquired in battle: El Valoroso.
Diego whispered, “We’re at the door.”
Quietly they put on their boots, then Diego shot back the bolt with a hideous grating squeal.
“Open and run,” hissed Antonio, and they tumbled out into the back lane and sprinted away like a pair of thieves.
The streets seemed to belong to a city abandoned. Moon and stars were obscured by cloud, and a wet snow drifted down. Antonio could not tell north from south, or east from west; and Diego was staggering and panting from the weight of their bags.
“We’ll stop a moment,” said Antonio, and they sheltered in a doorway. “We can’t be far from the river.”
“Houses and more houses, Don Antonio, and not a soul abroad,” Diego moaned. “I should have let you strangle me.”
“Hush.” A rider was approaching. As the clip clop of hooves grew louder, Antonio unsheathed his sword. “When I step out, seize the horse’s bridle.”
The man was alone, trotting his mount steadily in their direction. Antonio saw the dull glimmer of a breastplate on his chest. Leaping from the shadows, Antonio slashed deep into the flesh of his thigh, and next into his sword arm. The man screeched and put spurs to his horse, but Diego had a firm grip on the bridle. Unable to go forward, the horse reared, and when it plunged back onto all fours, the man lost his balance. Antonio grappled for his wounded arm and leg, and dragged him to the ground. He wore no helmet, and Antonio heard the crack of bone as his head hit the cobblestones, where he lay splayed and immobile.
“Hurry,” urged Diego; he had soothed the agitated beast, and was slinging their bags over its saddle. Antonio was about to drive the point of his sword into the man’s exposed neck. “Don Antonio, we must fly.”
Antonio sheathed his weapon and sprang into the saddle. He pulled Diego up behind him, and they s
et off at a gallop, the wind tearing at their cloaks. The moon had begun to glide from amid a dense mass of cloud, and ahead, Antonio saw rippling water. The Thames, he thought jubilantly. “God is with us,” he shouted back to Diego.
V.
Laurence had bought a brace of pistols to replace his flintlocks, and a sturdy, thick-pelted nag that would carry him about fifteen miles a day. The armies were still regrouping after Christmastide, and as he had expected, few travellers had braved the appalling cold. On the fourth morning of his journey, he set the nag loose near the village of Acton; a gift horse for whoever might pass by. He continued east on foot. By the edge of Shepherd’s Bush Green, a regular stop for agricultural traffic into the City, a carter had left his wagon full of hay unattended outside an alehouse. Laurence wriggled in among the tightly packed bales, grateful for the warmth and shelter. At the fortifications near Tyburn Road, the carter drew up his wagon to exchange pleasantries with the guards; he was on his way to Smithfield Market, and they let him through unsearched. As he paused again at St. Giles in the Fields to breathe the oxen, Laurence extricated himself from the hay and jumped off the cart. He drew the hood of his cloak over his face, slung his saddlebag over his shoulder, and walked south along St. Martin’s Lane to the Strand, swerving left at Long Acre Street to avoid the busy Covent Garden Piazza, and then down Bow Street.
Everywhere was evidence of the anti-papist riots: a litter of debris on the ground, broken windows, burnt-out shops, and parties of militia, one of them blocking Laurence’s route to the Strand. He sneaked into the small laneways, and emerged at Temple Bar, near the top of the Strand; soldiers and armed servants in livery were on guard in the street, to protect the mansions of the rich from looters. When he inquired of a lady and her maid where he might find Sir Montague Hallam’s house, they pointed to a brick edifice and hurried away as if he had the plague. Since he could not stroll up the steps to the house and bang at the door, he moved on, lightheaded from hunger and fatigue, towards Fleet Street, and on to Ludgate Hill.
The Licence of War Page 21