“I should go to her now,” said Charles.
“You can’t,” said Louis. “But I…”
“Neither of you can,” said Marguerite, and both men glanced at each other before as quickly looking away.
“I shall go to her,” Marguerite continued, “and Kate, for she is well enough after her daughter’s birth. Weyland shall never suspect our presence. He does not know of us. He does not suspect us. Charles, you may write to the Earl of Bedford, and ask him to expect us to stay. A small house in Woburn village, perhaps, will do well for Charles’ mistresses and whatever of their children they bring with them. I am sure the earl shall be glad to comply.”
“Yes, majesty,” said Charles wryly, but there was no amusement in his face, and when he looked back to Louis, there was nothing shared between the men but desperate worry.
“It is time,” said Marguerite softly, “that the first of Eaving’s Sisters returns to her side.”
Three
Hoogstraeten, on the border of the Netherlands
“Majesty! Majesty!”
Charles’ racquet missed the ball, and he swore. He was on the tennis court at Hoogstraeten, deep in battle with Louis, and the interruption had just cost him a game.
“What is it?” he snapped at Sir Stephen Fox who by now was standing at the side of the court, breathless from his run.
“Cromwell is dead.”
Charles stared at Fox. “Say again, man?”
“Cromwell is dead. A fever, some say, although another rumour whispers poison. But what care we? Cromwell is dead!”
“I hope not poison, for the sake of your reputation, majesty,” said Louis, who had come to Charles’ side. Both men were sweating heavily, the linen of each one’s shirt stuck in patches to their back and chest, their breeches stained at groin and waistband.
“Cromwell is truly dead?” Charles said.
“Aye,” said Fox. “And aye and aye again. A week since.”
Charles and Louis locked eyes; there was a great deal which needed to be said, and none of it here, with other ears listening.
The news had spread. Men were running from the house towards the tennis court, cheers announcing their forthcoming joyous arrival.
“What do we now, majesty?” said Fox, a great grin splitting his face.
“We play it more carefully than ever we have before,” said Charles, and Sir Edward Hyde, who had just arrived, nodded.
“Aye, majesty. Now is not the time to put a single foot wrong.”
“No invasion,” Charles said slowly, and again his eyes met Louis’. Not this time. “We wait for the invitation.”
Hyde looked at Fox, and around at the other men who had gathered in an excited circle about Charles. Exile, finally, finally, over!
Almost.
“Cromwell’s son, Richard?” said Charles. “Has he been proclaimed Protector, do you know?”
Fox nodded. “On his father’s deathbed. The Council of State has ratified it.”
“That isn’t worth the hot air it took them to expel the blessing,” said Louis.
“Nay,” Charles said. “Richard must now prove himself, and I think he shall not have the nerve for it. My friends, the world turned upside down fifteen years ago, but now I think the mighty tide of revolution has passed, along with Cromwell. Rebellion has exhausted itself, and we, we, shall return on the ebbing tide of its strength.”
“Who, then?” said Louis. “Who holds the power? Who the key to your—” our “—return?”
Charles looked at Sir Edward Hyde.
“General George Monck,” Hyde said, and Charles nodded. Monck was the leading general in Cromwell’s army, controlling over half of its total forces. He was virtually the most powerful man in Britain at the moment; not in title, but in influence and might of weapons.
“But Monck has been ever loyal to Cromwell,” said Fox. “He has never said a word in your favour, majesty.”
“It is what he doesn’t want that is more important,” said Hyde, “and what Monck doesn’t want is for England to dissolve into chaos, which is what is likely with Richard Cromwell at its helm.”
“He is an astute man,” said Charles. “He will be amenable to…discussion.”
“Promises of titles? Lands?” said Fox.
“No!” snapped Charles. “That is just what we must not do. Hyde, de Silva, my private chamber, if you please.”
They reconvened within Charles’ chamber within the half hour, giving both Louis and Charles time to bathe and change their clothes.
Hyde had gathered several sheets of paper, and a pen and inkwell lay to one side of his right hand.
Charles sat down at the table, Louis also, setting down a large flask of ale and three cups. He filled the cups and passed them about.
“Lord God,” Charles said quietly, “pray I do not make a misstep now.”
“It will take time,” said Hyde. “Months, likely, if not longer.”
“I know,” said Charles. “I am a patient man.” He laughed shortly. “After all, I have had the time and the opportunity to perfect my patience.”
Louis caught Charles’ eye. More than enough time, eh, my friend? More than two lifetimes’ worth of patience.
“What steps do we take now?” said Louis.
“We approach Monck,” said Hyde, “quietly and gently and humbly. Your crown literally rests in his hand, majesty.”
Charles briefly wiped a hand over his eyes. Pray to all gods, Christian included, that Weyland doesn’t think of that.
“What should I say?” Charles said. “What words do I use to beg my throne back?”
“Use words of truth,” said Louis. “He is a general. He has no time for the dissimulation of courtiers.”
“Perhaps,” Hyde said, picking up his pen and dipping it into the inkwell, “after a general salutation, we might say something in the manner of: ‘I know too well the power you have to do me good or harm not to desire you should be my friend’.”
Charles grunted. “Are those the kind of words a general would wish to hear, my friend?” he said to Louis.
“They are truth, and they are straight,” said Louis. “He will accept them, and not think you the weaker for speaking them.”
“Then perhaps some words stating my desire above all else for peace and happiness for all Englishmen,” said Charles to Hyde. “I am sure you can find something suitable to express my meaning.”
“Make sure also,” said Louis, “to ensure Monck knows that should he hear anything to the contrary, then it be a falsehood. The king desires peace for his country, nothing else. He does not send this missive with a sword in his hand.”
Hyde nodded, intent on his scribbling.
They passed to and fro some more suggestions, then Hyde had a suitable draft before him. “How should I end it, majesty?” he asked.
Charles sipped his ale, thinking, then dictated: “’I must say, I will take all the ways I may to let the world see that I have an entire trust in you, and as much kindness for you as can be expressed by your affectionate friend, Charles R’.”
Louis grinned. “A final flourish, majesty, to let him know the courtier is not quite dead?”
“‘Affectionate friend’?” queried Hyde. “He was Cromwell’s man, after all.”
“Monck was not one of the men who signed my father’s death warrant, Hyde. He was not one of the murderers. He came later to Cromwell’s cause, and then worked with him for England’s sake. If his had been one of the signatures on my father’s warrant of murder—” Charles shuddered “—then what I have just written would damn me. I would rather invade than grovel to one of my father’s murderers.”
Louis and Hyde exchanged glances. No one who had put his name to that warrant would live long once Charles was firmly on the throne of England.
“How shall we send it to him?” said Hyde. “If we send it directly we may well endanger Monck. We cannot know the full subtleties of the situation in England at this moment.”
“He has a brother, a clergyman in Cornwall, I believe. We can send the communication to him, and he can pass it to his brother.”
“Very well,” said Hyde. “I shall retire and write this more neatly, and without these schoolboy blotches.” He rose. “If I may have leave to retire…”
Charles nodded, and Hyde left the chamber.
“England!” Louis said, emotion rippling through his voice.
“Aye. Finally.”
“Noah…” Louis said.
“Marguerite and Kate left yesterday, and my letter to Bedford asking him to house them a few days before that. They are better placed than I’d thought, with this welcome news. Bedford now cannot refuse me. Not his probable future king. Ah, Louis, Noah is my life. I wish I could be going to her now.”
“I know,” said Louis, gently. “I know, Charles. At least, now that Cromwell has died, it should not be too long before I can be with her.”
Charles shot him a dark look.
Four
Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire
Lady Anne sat, her face ashen, staring at Noah Banks who at least had the grace to keep her eyes downcast to her hands folded in her lap. The countess flashed a look at her husband, and noted that he looked as shocked as she felt herself.
“I had not thought it of you,” Lady Anne managed, her eyes once more on Noah.
Noah inclined her head, which could have meant anything. In counterpoint to the Bedfords, she was looking radiant.
“Who is the father?” Lord Bedford said. Noah at last raised her face. It was very calm. “A man I love very much.”
“Patently,” said Bedford, “to have so lost your virtue to him! Who?”
Noah kept her eyes steady on the earl, but she said nothing.
“John Thornton,” said the countess. “It must be. He and Noah have ever had an affection for each—”
“No,” said Noah. “The father of this child is not John Thornton.”
“You have dallied with another?” Lady Anne said.
Noah lowered her face again.
There came the sound of a horse’s hooves outside, although no one in the gallery paid it the least mind.
“You cannot stay here,” said Lady Anne. “My daughters…”
“I have not in the least harmed them,” said Noah. Now, when she raised her face to look Lady Anne directly in the eye, there were two visible patches of colour in her cheeks. “It is not as if I have poisoned them with this pregnancy.”
The earl opened his mouth to speak but was prevented by the arrival of a footman, carrying in his hand a sealed letter.
“My lord,” the footman said, bowing. “This has just arrived. The courier said it was most urgent.”
“It can wait,” said Lady Anne, but the earl, who by this point had the letter in his hand, and had seen the handwriting, waved her to silence.
“No,” he said, “it can’t.” He nodded the footman a dismissal, waited until the man had left the room, then looked at first his wife, then Noah.
His wife’s face was a muddle of confusion and hurt, but the earl was shocked at what he saw on Noah’s face. She was staring at the letter, and there was both wild hope and joy in that face.
A man I love very much, she had said, and the earl felt his chest tighten at the logical connection of that remark and her expression at the sight of this letter in his hand.
But the pregnancy…how? How?
“It comes from Hoogstraeten,” the earl said slowly. “From the king.”
And how much more the king, eh? A bare week ago Cromwell had caught a fever, and died within the day. A bare week ago the earl might have been able to dismiss this letter. Not now.
Never now.
His hands trembling very slightly, Lord Bedford broke the seal and read the contents of the letter slowly.
Twice, to make sure he understood it.
Then he looked back at Noah. “It seems you have a very powerful protector,” he said.
“Husband?” said Lady Anne. “What is it? What does the king wish of us? And what does this have to do with Noah?”
“Charles has a request of us,” he said. “A small one, he says. Two dear friends of his, the Mademoiselles Marguerite Carteret and Catherine Pegge, as well as what children cling to their skirts, are returning to England within the week. They wish to stay in Woburn village—they do not wish to impose on us at the Abbey—and Charles asks that we provide them with a comfortable house. He says the ladies have the means by which to pay us for the privilege.”
“Carteret? And Catherine Pegge?” Lady Anne said. “Aren’t they among—” She broke off suddenly, colouring.
“Among the king’s many and varied mistresses?” Lord Bedford said. “Yes. And the children they bring undoubtedly the king’s many and varied bastards. What these women—” he said that word with a disdainful twist of his lips “—could possibly want to do with Woburn I have little idea save,” again he looked at Noah, “the ladies wish that Mistress Noah Banks stay with them as their companion.”
Noah’s face broke into a broad smile, and in all the years he’d known her, the earl thought he’d never seen her look so joyous.
“Charles writes,” Lord Bedford continued, his words very measured, his eyes never leaving Noah’s face, “that Marguerite and his Kate, as well as Mistress Noah, are highly important to him.” His eyes dropped to the letter, and he read a section of it: “’I would you do this favour for me, my Lord of Bedford, which I shall greatly remember, and much favourably, when circumstances allow’.”
Lady Anne stared at her husband. “He hadn’t heard of Cromwell’s death when he wrote this.”
Bedford checked the date. “No. This predates Cromwell’s death by several days.” Whatever power lay behind any directive Charles asked for before Cromwell’s death was ten times as potent after Cromwell’s death. Charles had not yet been proclaimed king in this land, but Bedford had every expectation that he would be before very much time had passed. The Protectorship had passed to Cromwell’s son Richard, but he was nothing more than a weak seedling grown in the shadow of his father’s strong stem. Richard Cromwell would never be able to hold England together.
Everyone who had any interests at all to protect in England would now be aligning themselves very quietly with the exiled king.
“What is Charles to you, Noah?” Bedford asked.
“A most loved lord and king,” she replied.
“And this…Marguerite Carteret? And Kate Pegge?”
“Women who I love as sisters.”
“Who is the father of your child, Noah? Charles?”
“How can this be, my lord? My king is in exile, many miles distant, and I have never left Woburn in all my years here.”
“Save for accompanying me to Hampstead,” said Lady Anne. “How far gone are you?”
“Three months, my lady.”
“Then that child was conceived at Hampstead!” said Lady Anne.
“But not by our lord king,” said Bedford, “unless he has powers of trickery we are unaware of.”
Noah’s face stayed perfectly expressionless.
Bedford sighed. “I cannot see how we can deny Charles, my sweet,” he said to Lady Anne, “and it does solve a dilemma for us.”
“The house two from the village church stands vacant,” said Lady Anne. She looked at Noah. “You may remove yourself there as soon as these ‘ladies’ Carteret and Pegge arrive.”
The stone hall had vanished, and the girl led the two imps through a bewildering maze of alleys and laneways. Houses and warehouses reared to either side, blocking out the sun, and the three had to pick their way through piles of refuse and worse, the girl delicately holding her nose against the stench.
“Where is this?” asked one of the imps.
“Your new home,” said the girl. “Eventually.”
The imps glanced at each other. “We like it better where we are,” one said.
“You’ll not stay there,” said the girl. “You�
�ll get your freedom, soon enough. Then…this awaits you.”
“There’s no freedom. You’ve won us,” said an imp.
“True enough,” said the girl. “But what if, besides your loyalty, I earned your love?”
“How?”
“By giving you true freedom,” said the girl. “Now, pay attention. Do you know who I am yet?”
“Our enemy,” said one of the imps, and the girl laughed.
“Oh yes, your enemy indeed. But your liberator as well. I have the power both to trap you and to free you. I have done the first. Do you want the second?”
Five
Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire
“They arrived late last night, and have sent word this morning they shall come to collect you in the hour before noon.”
Lady Anne, standing with Noah in the great entrance hall of the abbey, wondered at the sheer joy the woman didn’t even attempt to disguise at this news. Had she no shame? Carrying a bastard child herself, Noah was happy to house with two of the most notorious women of English gossip? A product of a strict disciplinarian upbringing herself, the countess simply could not understand why Noah had thrown away everything she could have had—John Thornton, for instance—for some light, immoral tumble.
“I find no sin and no shame in this child,” Noah said, one hand on her still-flat belly and her eyes steady on those of the countess.
Lady Anne’s jaw tightened. “You are packed?”
“Yes. I take little with me. My lady, may I farewell your children? They have meant much to—”
“No. I forbid you to have contact with them.”
“I am no danger to them!”
Lady Anne did not reply to that. Not verbally, but the anger and distress in her eyes was response enough.
Noah sighed, then she turned away and walked up the great staircase towards her chamber.
Within moments, one of the servants announced that a coach approached down the long road through Woburn Park, and the countess, still greatly disturbed by her exchange with Noah, settled herself on a chair near the fire in the gallery and requested that her husband join her to greet the arrivals.
Darkwitch Rising Page 15