A Set of Lies

by Carolyn McCrae

  “And there’s more about their baptism.” Fergal made sure Carl was giving him all his attention. “The boys had one godmother, their Aunt Patience, who was present, and two godfathers, both absent, who were represented by Claude. The first was Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, who was, as you will be well aware Carl, the Prime Minister at the time.”

  Carl was silent. He had not expected that.

  “He was named at the christening of the twins Henry and William in 1822, though it was noted he was absent at the ceremony,” Fergal continued. “The other sponsor for the boys was rather less well known.”

  “Yes? Are you going to let us into the secret?” Carl prompted as Fergal hesitated.

  “Sir Robert Frensham.”

  “Frensham? Sir Robert Frensham?” Carl could not immediately place the name. “Is that supposed to mean something to me? You say it as though I should recognise it.”

  Skye didn’t like to say that the name rang a bell with her too, though she couldn’t think why.

  “I was able to check out the Frenshams,” Fergal added. “They had a property on the island though their main house was in Mayfair. Do you want me to investigate them any further?”

  “No need. I remember the name Frensham now.” Carl was smiling. “I have come across Lady Frances Frensham many times over the years. She was one of those mistresses of Arthur Wellesley’s who lasted rather longer than others. She not only lay with men of substance but was one of those rare women who could also get on with others of her sex. One of her better documented friendships was with Joséphine de Beauharnais. Lady Frances was, in fact, at Malmaison when the Empress caught a chill and died. She was then rumoured to be the exiled Napoleon’s mistress when she paid an extended visit to Elba in 1814. It was said of her that she spread her favours not widely but too well. I find it intriguing that she makes an appearance here.”

  “If Claude was who we think he was that must have been quite an interesting christening. Claude and Frances, assuming she was there, meeting up again after how long? And with her husband there?” Skye suggested.

  “Seven, eight years since he was on Elba,” Fergal confirmed.

  “It might have taken some explaining.” Skye smiled as she imagined the meeting.

  “Unless, of course, they all knew what was going on, then it could have been all incredibly civilised.” Fergal grinned back.

  The professor was not amused at their imaginings.

  “Fergal, you should know better than to romanticise. Skye has several times made the rather obvious point that we cannot know these people. You cannot think that any ideas you may have of their emotions, their circumstances or their motivations have any validity whatsoever.”

  “I know,” Fergal conceded, “but you can’t argue against the fact that these powerful men knew Sir Bernard and Claude. I mean, getting the Prime Minister to be godfather is something pretty special isn’t it?”

  “There’s something else,” Skye added rather sheepishly. “I haven’t really had a chance to show you.”

  “What?” Carl asked impatiently.

  “In the drawing room there’s a citation. Audrey was really pleased it was at The Lodge and not with her brother.” She looked across at Fergal with something approaching guilt. “Sorry. I should have shown it to you. But we can’t do everything at once. Anyway, it’s a beautiful, ornate document advising Bernard Lacey that he was being appointed Baronet of Oakridge for personal services to the Earl of Liverpool. I’m sorry. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t realise it might be important.”

  “Many baronetcies were created in the 1810s,” Carl said calmly. “There were the wars in India and in Europe where many men were rewarded for their military service, but here you say the reason given is ‘personal services’ to the man who was Prime Minister at the time, well, it is unexpectedly vague, and unexpectedly interesting.”

  “It could mean almost anything from saving his life to espionage to procuring prostitutes,” Fergal added.

  Carl nodded his agreement. “There was certainly more than one Prime Minister of that century who wasn’t averse to sampling the less savoury aspects of life but what is interesting is that this could be an early example of something that happens quite frequently today.”

  “Today?”

  “In Northern Ireland through the 70s, 80s and 90s, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, unknown men are given honours for ‘personal services’ to someone in government when their specific activities cannot be brought into the public domain. Basically they were agents of some sort, spies if you like.”

  “So you think Sir Bernard might have been a spy?” Skye suggested tentatively. She didn’t want to sound ridiculous.

  “That would make sense in our scenario wouldn’t it? It would explain why he was looking after Claude, keeping him close? Being his minder? Continuing any interrogation?” Fergal agreed with Skye.

  “It’s an avenue I have been considering,” Carl added. “There was a broad network of very clever people at the time and not just in the military. The authorities in England were paranoid about revolution spreading from France to these islands. We need to check out our Sir Bernard’s history very thoroughly. It could explain a lot.”

  “I know you said we shouldn’t be romantic but I really wish we could magic these people here. I mean, this was an inn even in those days, they might have sat in this very room. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a wormhole in time and ask them all the questions we need answered?”

  Skye looked at Carl and saw exasperation in his expression, and she looked at Fergal who shrugged and smiled.

  “Well if this were a film or an episode of Doctor Who that’s what they’d do,” she said in her defence.

  Carl was unable to cope with Skye’s whimsy. “Let’s call it a day. There’s another long one tomorrow.”

  “I won’t see you, Skye, I’m off to the archives in Newport first thing, then probably back to Oxford.”

  Disappointed as she was, Skye was pleased that Fergal had, on this occasion, explained that he would be away.

  *

  Ten minutes later, as she drove home in the dying light, Skye was thinking of all the things that had happened in the five days since Fergal’s first phone call.

  “Frensham.” She said the name out loud. “Frensham!” Now she realised why she had recognised the name.

  When she had been researching Fergal on the internet she had seen a copy of his family tree, created by the television company when his mother was a subject on a family history programme.

  Sir Robert Frensham had been the name at the top.

  As she drove along the familiar lanes she wondered why he had said nothing about the connection.

  Chapter 6

  1822 to 1832

  Ten-year-old Henry Lacey stood beside his twin brother William in front of their father’s desk in his study in Oakridge Court. They stood with straight backs and hands clasped behind their backs with a dignity that belied their age.

  Both were remembering being summoned to their father’s study five months earlier when they were told that their mother was unwell. From the look on their father’s face, and having been unable to ignore the sounds of the night just ended, they both knew what their father was to say to them.

  “You should know that your dear mother has passed on to the next life.” Sir Bernard looked down at his desk, unsure what to say and how to say it. The man who had been comfortable in the company of Princes and Dukes was at a loss when dealing with his own children.

  He had loved them as much as any father would and had spent time teaching them to ride and shoot, but it had not been his concern to see his sons through the trials and tribulations of being children. Overseeing the nursery had been Constance’s task and her delight, up until the past five months.

  He could hardly bear to look at his sons as they stood in silence before him. He thought perhaps he should leave the safety of his desk and walk round to take them in his arms
to comfort them, but they did not seem to require comfort.

  They stood unmoved. “Yes Father, we know.” Henry spoke with a hint of arrogance. There was no more emotion in his voice than showed in his face.

  “We are very sorry Papa.” William’s voice was softer, more immature than his twin’s.

  Perhaps, their father thought, they were just, each in their own way, being very brave.

  Henry was the elder of the two boys by an hour and Sir Bernard had never forgotten the sheer dreadfulness of that hour, brought so vividly to mind in the night just past.

  When Henry had entered the world, a little over ten years before, there had been joyful moments as Sir Bernard was introduced to his son. His satisfaction was ended abruptly as Constance had let out a scream of pain and the woman who was attending her shooed the new father out of the room. A few minutes later she had opened the door to see him anxiously pacing the corridor.

  “There’s another one in there,” she had said in her brusque, matter-of-fact way, but Sir Bernard had an idea that that did not augur well.

  “And?”

  “Well she’s having a bit of difficulty with it. It seems not to be quite lying right. She’s working, sir, she’s doing all she can but she’s already worn from the other. It’s going to be hard.”

  “Hard? What do you mean, woman?” he had asked with rather more sharpness in his voice than he had intended.

  He was not comforted by her words as she turned her back and returned to the bedroom. “They are in God’s hands, sir.”

  Sir Bernard had seen battlefields and had heard the cries of the wounded begging for their mothers as they faced their God. But nothing approached the dread he felt at hearing those screams of his wife as her body fought to expel the second child.

  When the sounds ceased he feared the worst. No man, however strong, could have survived the agony she must have been going through, let alone his gentle Constance.

  “You have another son,” the woman told him quietly. “You want both, sir?” The midwife was aware that in families of a certain level of society complications arose when there were twin sons but she soon realised Sir Bernard had no idea what she was suggesting and said no more.

  “And my wife?” he could barely dare to ask.

  “Exhausted, but still with us.”

  “I must see her.”

  “Give her time.”

  Two hours later Sir Bernard sat holding his wife’s hand, his two sons, one on each breast of the wet nurse, within both their sights.

  “Oh my dear, you have done so extraordinarily well.

  “Boys.”

  “I think Henry for my heir and William for the younger.”

  He was rewarded with a slight nod and a tired smile.

  In the days that followed the birth the previously serene house was filled with bustle and noise. The doctor who had been brought over from London dictated a two-month period of lying-in to enable Constance to recover her strength.

  Every day Patience would walk to Oakridge Court from The Lodge and sit with her sister after spending time organising the unexpected and essential expansion of the nursery.

  Allowed to do nothing to help either his wife or his sons Sir Bernard spent many hours alone in his study pondering his past life and worrying about the future.

  “Did you feel this with the birth of your Josephine?” Sir Bernard ventured onto serious ground as he set off on one of his regular walks with his neighbour. Their perambulations had been restricted by bad weather but this was one of the rare dry and sunny days of that wet summer.

  “Feel what, my friend?

  “This fear for the future.”

  “I have never feared the future. It will bring what it will bring.”

  “I am not afraid for my own self. I dwell on my age. What will happen to Constance and to my sons when I am gone?

  “You have many years ahead of you.”

  “I am unconvinced by platitudes, Olivierre, especially from you. Please don’t insult me with banal sentiments. I am sixty-two years old. I will be gone long before my sons are of age.”

  “You will do all that you can do, my friend. You will keep your affairs in order, you will provide for your dependents. That is all that is necessary.”

  “And what of you? What will happen when I am no longer here to protect you?”

  “Who has any interest in a man called Claude Olivierre, my friend?”

  “You have no idea how many there are. While the prisoner was alive it was essential to the scheme to keep you safe. You were a necessary player as insights only you could have had were fed into memoirs, words only you would use were supplied for inclusion in letters. Now he has been dead for a year there are those in Whitehall who feel you are an expensive and dangerous liability.”

  “They say that I am no longer essential for our charade? I have outlived my usefulness? Is that what they say?”

  Sir Bernard shook his head ruefully. “I fear there are those who would prefer to see the end of you.”

  “The Duke amongst them?”

  “I’m afraid he is as keen to brush our conspiracy into the dust of history as anyone. When I die I fear you will be abandoned despite all the assistance you have given and the promises that have been made to you.”

  “It is always dangerous to believe the promises of politicians. One should never put one’s trust in them.” Claude spoke without irony. He had never considered himself to be a politician.

  “It will not simply be the termination of your funds, my friend.”

  “You suspect it will be worse than just cutting off my income?”

  “On every visit to London I argue your case. I emphasise the gains, feed bits of information they have not yet had. I have eked out the intelligence—”

  “You fear that now I am of no use I will be disposed of.”

  “You are what any old soldier fears the most, a loose cannon.”

  “And it’s not just generals who fear that. I suspect there are men in your intelligence services who would like to close the file.”

  “I fear what will happen to you and our ladies and our children when I am no longer here to argue for you.”

  When Bernard returned to Oakridge Court he shut himself in his study and began to write.

  *

  It was more than a month before another sunny day allowed the two friends to continue their conversation.

  “When last we were able to talk without the presence of women or servants we talked of death and of endings. We should be talking of beginnings.” Claude started the conversation on a buoyant note. “You have your two sons, and I have my Josephine. They are the future. We should talk of life, not of death.”

  Sir Bernard had thought of little else but death in the days he spent in his study whilst avoiding the women’s business that seemed to have taken over the house, and on the still regular but increasingly frustrating trips to Whitehall.

  “Death is inevitable, Claude, we must face up to it,” Bernard continued in similar mood to that which had prevailed in their previous private conversation.

  “We have both seen enough of it.”

  “Did you ever consider the men on the battlefield you sent to their wretched deaths?”

  “The Emperor would prefer the word ‘glorious’. Death was the means to an essential end. Without men dying on the battlefield there could be no victory.”

  “Did you never consider what the Duke would call ‘the butcher’s bill’?”

  “Never.”

  “Not once?”

  “Never.”

  Sir Bernard found it increasingly difficult to see the ruthless man who had terrorised Europe and caused many tens of thousands of deaths in the wars he had waged in his gentle and thoughtful friend.

  “What the Emperor did was for his people. They died willingly for him.”

  “Did the Emperor ever consider the possibility that he might die on the battlefield?”

  “Not for one moment.”

>   Sir Bernard was surprised by the vehemence in Claude’s voice and it took a few moments before he responded.

  Speaking gently, he embarked on the conversation he had rehearsed many times. As he had begun to write his diaries he had felt the need to share something of his life story with his friend, as he could not with his wife.

  “I know so much of you but what do you know of me? Are you not curious to know from whence I came and who I was before our paths crossed?”

  “I know very little and need to know even less. You have been my guardian and my friend these seven years. I know you as you are and have no need to know who or what you were in your past.”

  “But if I wished you to know so that, one day, when the time comes, you will be able to pass my history on to my sons?”

  “You are still thinking morbidly, Sir Bernard? Yes? Then I will listen.” The two men reached the bench overlooking the lake in Oakridge Park and Sir Bernard motioned to his friend to sit.

  For a few moments he stared out over the rippling water and the pair of swans still nesting on the bank before beginning his story.

  “For many years my life could have ended any day. From the age of fifteen until my retirement here on the island there were very few days when I was not in danger of my life being cut short. But in all those years I did not care whether I lived or died. The success of my schemes was more important to me than my life. I had no family, no possessions, nothing to lose.” He was quiet for a while, a silence only broken by the cawing of the rooks in the trees behind them. “There is so much you don’t know about me, and as I write my story, so much that I am only now learning about myself.”

  “Sometimes it is possible to think too deeply and worry too much.” Claude tried to offer support but Sir Bernard appeared not to hear.

  “Just as you, I was not born in the country I have served.”

  Claude said nothing but was intrigued. If he had thought about it at all he would have assumed Sir Bernard to have been an Englishman born and bred.