The Last Protector

by Andrew Taylor

  Ferrus is chilled to the bone when he wakes. It is still dark. He lies there, huddled against the dog’s flank, and pulls his cloak more tightly around him. He listens to the cocks of Whitehall and Westminster crowing on their frosty dunghills. His teeth are aching again but he ignores the pain as best he can. He is hungry. He is almost always hungry. Sometimes he is tempted to eat the food they put out for Windy; but he knows that if he does that, Windy will tear out his throat.

  Despite the pain, the cold and the hunger, he likes this time before the light, before the world stirs. He likes its emptiness. He stares at a pinprick of light in the eastern sky and listens to the cocks. He waits for the dawn when it will all begin again.

  The first I heard about the duel was on the day itself. I was one of the very few who were aware of it beforehand. My master, Mr Williamson, summoned me into his private room at Scotland Yard shortly after nine o’clock in the morning. He told me to make sure that the door was closed. The door was made of close-fitting oak and the walls were thick. Even so, he beckoned me closer and spoke in an undertone.

  ‘My Lord Shrewsbury has challenged the Duke of Buckingham.’

  Startled, I said, ‘Won’t the King stop them? Does he know?’

  Williamson stared at me, and I knew that I had overstepped the mark. ‘The King will do as he pleases, Marwood. And you will do as I please.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

  ‘They are to fight this afternoon. It’s likely to be a bloody business. My lord has decided that the duel will be in the French style, so he and the Duke will both be supported by two seconds.’

  Three against three, I thought, slashing at each other with their swords in the name of honour: not so much a duel as a pitched battle. Anything could happen in such a mêlée, anyone could be killed. What worried me was why Williamson was telling me such a dangerous secret.

  ‘Who are the seconds?’ I asked.

  ‘My lord has his cousins, Sir John Talbot and Bernard Howard, Lord Arundel’s son. The Duke has Sir Robert Holmes and a man called Jenkins, whom I don’t know. He’s an officer in the Horse Guards.’ Williamson paused. ‘And a former fencing master.’

  In that case, Buckingham had chosen carefully. I had never heard of Jenkins, but his qualifications were obvious. Holmes was well known as a ruthless fighter. He had served as both a soldier and a sailor in his time. On the other hand, Talbot and Howard were both reputed to be fine swordsmen. Talbot was an MP; he frequently attacked Buckingham and his allies in Parliament. He was a close ally of Lord Arlington, Williamson’s superior.

  ‘Can’t it be stopped, sir, if so much is known about it? Perhaps the King—’

  Williamson frowned at me. ‘If that had been possible, we would not be having this conversation.’ He went on in a more conciliatory tone: ‘Of course the reason for the duel is obvious enough. The only wonder is that my lord has put up with the injury he has suffered for so long.’

  As all the world knew, Lord Shrewsbury could hardly have avoided hearing that Buckingham had injured him: the whole town had known for months. The Duke flaunted the fact that Lady Shrewsbury was his latest mistress; so for that matter did she. But I was now quite sure that there was more to this affair than a straying wife and a cuckolded husband.

  ‘I want you to be there,’ Williamson said, leaning back in his chair. ‘At the duel. To be my eyes.’

  My skin crawled. Duels were illegal. Besides, I wanted nothing to do with the quarrels of noblemen. Especially these two: Buckingham and Shrewsbury. ‘Sir, they would kill me if—’

  ‘I agree – it would not be convenient to either of us if you were seen,’ he interrupted. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a small wooden box, which he handed to me. ‘Open it.’

  I obeyed. The box contained a perspective glass made of brass, small enough to slip in a pocket.

  ‘Keep your distance. Once the duel’s over, come back as soon as you can and report to me. I want to know who’s been killed, who’s been wounded. I want to know exactly what happens, and who is there. Not just the combatants. Everyone.’

  I made one last effort to avoid the commission. ‘Sir, is it wise? The Duke would recognize my face if he chanced to see me. And several members of his household know of my employment at Whitehall.’

  Williamson nodded. ‘Who do you know among the Duke’s people?’

  ‘One is a clergyman named Veal, not that you would know he was in orders if you saw him. He served in the New Model Army, first as a soldier and then as a chaplain. He was given a living during the Commonwealth, but he was later ejected from his benefice. They sometimes call him the Bishop, because of his calling, though he’s not fond of bishops. He has a servant, a brute of a man named Roger, who served with him in the army.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Neither of them has any cause to like me, any more than their master has.’

  ‘My intelligence is that the Duke uses these two rogues a good deal for his secret dealings. The servant’s surname is Durrell. The more I can learn about them both the better. If they are there today, it will be a proof positive of how much the Duke trusts them. But the important thing is the duel itself and what happens to the principals. And I can’t emphasize enough that I don’t want our interest in the matter to be known.’ He coughed, turning his head towards the window and looking down at a team of oxen dragging an overladen coal waggon across the second courtyard at Scotland Yard. ‘My interest, that is.’

  ‘Where is the duel to be held, sir?’ I asked, noting this hint that Williamson was not acting solely on his own initiative.

  ‘Barn Elms.’ He turned back. ‘After dinner – two o’clock, according to my information. I’m told that they left the decision about the time and the place until the last moment, to avoid the risk of detection. I don’t even know precisely where in Barn Elms. You had better hire a boat and get there before them. I imagine they must come by river.’

  He dismissed me. At the door, however, he called me back. He scowled at me. ‘Take great care, Marwood. I don’t want to lose you.’

  Williamson waved me away and lowered his head over his papers. I supposed I should take his last remark as a twisted compliment.

  I had time to return to my lodgings in the Savoy. The weather was milder than it had been last winter, but it was cold enough in all conscience. I had Margaret, my maidservant, send out for a fricassee of veal. While I waited for the dish to arrive, I went up to my bedchamber and put on a second shirt and a thicker waistcoat.

  After I had eaten, I put on my heaviest winter cloak and a broad-brimmed hat that I hoped would conceal most of my face. It was now about half-past eleven. I walked down to the Savoy stairs. The tide was up, and several boats were clustered about the landing place, waiting for new fares. Here I had a stroke of good fortune. Among the boats was the pair of oars that belonged to a waterman named Wanswell. I had used him often enough in the past year, usually to take me up the river to Whitehall or Westminster.

  ‘I want to go up to Barn Elms,’ I told him. ‘And I’ll need you to wait for me. Perhaps for a few hours.’

  ‘Picnic, is it, master?’ He had a flat, sardonic way of speaking that made it hard to know if he was smiling or sneering inside. His face gave no clue. Exposure to weather had made it a ruddy mask, stiff as old leather. ‘Perhaps a bit of singing after you’ve eaten and drunk your fill?’

  ‘Don’t be more of a fool than God made you,’ I said.

  ‘I leave that to others, sir.’

  I chose not to take offence. The watermen were notorious for their surliness. For my present commission, however, I would rather trust Wanswell than a complete stranger. He had been pressed into the navy in his youth and he had served for a time with Sam Witherdine, Margaret’s husband. The two men often spent their leisure drinking together. I asked him how much he would charge.

  He spat in the water. ‘Seven shillings each way. A shilling an hour waiting time.’

  It was an extortionate price. ‘But the tide’s with y
ou now,’ I pointed out. ‘And it’ll be on the turn by the time we come back.’

  ‘It’s six or seven miles up to Barn Elms. The wind’s freshening, too.’

  ‘Six shillings.’

  ‘Seven.’ Wanswell was no fool. He sensed my urgency. ‘All right, sir. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll take you there. But once the tide turns, I’m off. And whatever happens I’m leaving long before dusk. Which means I want my money when we reach Barn Elms. Take it or leave it, just as you please. It’s all one to me.’

  I haggled a little more for honour’s sake, but he would not give ground. In the end I agreed to his terms. I believed him to be honest enough in his way, and he would think twice about cheating me because of Sam.

  We set off, making good time because the wind was with us, as well as the tide. It was most damnably cold on the water, though, with nothing to shield us from the weather, and I wished I had a rug to cover me. The sky was a dark, dull grey, sullen as uncleaned pewter. There were patches of snow on either bank of the river.

  The last time I had been to Barn Elms it had been full summer. The estate lay on a northerly loop of the Thames on the Surrey bank. There was an old mansion there, with gardens and parkland. The place had become a favoured resort of Londoners in the warm weather. I had never been there in winter but I guessed that, away from the house and the home farm, it would be a desolate spot. The duellists had chosen well.

  Wanswell brought me to the landing stage used by the villagers rather than the parties of pleasure from London. An alehouse stood nearby, and it was there he proposed to wait for me.

  Time was galloping away – it was already past one o’clock. If the duellists had arrived before me, it would prove difficult to find them in the expanse of gardens, orchards and pastures that formed the estate. My best plan was to keep within sight of the river.

  I followed a lane that ran north along the bank, a field or two away from the river itself. Having no alternative, I pressed on for perhaps half a mile, plodding through mud and slushy snow. At this point, the lane veered closer to the water. I paused at a stile to find my bearings and to make sure I was not overlooked. It was then that I saw two or three boats hugging the shore and making for a landing stage about a quarter of a mile upstream. They had four oarsmen apiece, and each of them carried two or three passengers under the awning at the stern. The passengers were all men, and all wearing dark clothes.

  I hung back in the shelter of an ash tree and took out the perspective glass. The party disembarked at the landing stage. The boatmen stayed with their boats. I twisted the brass cylinder to bring the passengers into focus. They were marching in single file towards a spinney that crowned a gentle rise in the ground too slight to be called a hill. I recognized both Sir John Talbot, a tall, red-faced man, and Lord Shrewsbury himself, a thin, stooping figure who struggled to keep up with his kinsman. The third man must be Howard, who was talking earnestly to his lordship as they walked, gesturing with his arm to emphasize what he was saying. The others had the look of servants.

  I was about to follow them as discreetly as I could, when another boat appeared on the water. This one came at speed from the opposite bank of the river. It was much larger, a richly painted barge with a dozen or more oarsmen and a cabin made private with leather curtains. Such an ostentatious craft made an instructive contrast with Shrewsbury’s three unobtrusive boats. There was a brazier of coals in the stern, and three gentlemen stood beside it warming their hands. One of them was taller than the others. I knew who he was before I fixed the glass on him and made out the florid features of the Duke of Buckingham.

  Among the other passengers were two men standing on the other side of the cabin, near the oarsmen. Their faces were shaded by their hats. Both were big men, one thin and tall; the other more than making up for his relative lack of height by his breadth. They were almost certainly the men I had encountered last autumn, when I had had certain difficulties with Buckingham: his confidential servants, the Reverend Mr Veal and Roger Durrell.

  While the Duke’s party were disembarking, I moved away from the ash tree, following a line of hedgerow towards the spinney. I concealed myself among the trees. Buckingham and his followers marched away from the river, making no attempt to conceal themselves; I heard one of them laughing, as if he were on a jaunt.

  By this time the Shrewsbury party had vanished into the spinney. When the trees had swallowed Buckingham’s party as well, I followed cautiously. The one advantage of spying on members of the aristocracy was that they were so absorbed in their own affairs, so shrouded in a sense of their overwhelming importance in God’s creation, that they tended to be careless of what was going on around them. They (or more probably their advisors) had taken the precaution of choosing this secluded spot for the duel; but, once here, it did not occur to them to take particular precautions against being observed.

  By the time I reached the spinney, the duellists and their supporters were out of sight, but I heard the sound of voices in the distance. There was a path through the trees, the soft ground churned up by the passage of a dozen or so people. I advanced slowly among the leafless trees, a mix of birch, ash saplings and the occasional oak. Though the path was clear, it was obvious from the tangled undergrowth that the spinney had not been coppiced for some years.

  I was aware of a leaden sensation in my belly, together with an inconvenient urge to empty my bowels. I walked even more slowly than before. Unlike the gentlemen ahead, I was not the stuff of which heroes are made. I could imagine, all too easily, what the duellists and their entourage would do to me if they found me here.

  The voices ahead were louder. Then came a deep and throaty shout, a word of command. It was followed by the clash of steel, fast, furious and shockingly harsh. All this time I was continuing to advance. The path rounded a corner and suddenly they were all in front of me.

  The spinney was bounded by a low line of bushes that once had been a hedge. The path passed through a wide gap and into a small field, a close perhaps used for confining stock. Beyond it were more trees and more hedges, which cut off the view of what lay beyond.

  The six swordsmen were going at each other in a blur of movement, grunting, shouting and stamping. The others had gathered in two camps, one on each side of the close. It was fortunate that everyone’s attention was drawn exclusively to the duel, otherwise I must have been seen at once. But they had eyes for nothing else.

  I took in this picture in a fragment of a moment. At the same time I leapt backwards, skidding on the mud, in my effort to avoid being seen. As it was, I stumbled, almost falling into a vast yew tree beside the path. The tree swallowed me up: it was hollow inside, for its centre had been eaten away by time, leaving a sturdy palisade of offshoots and bark, thickly covered with evergreen foliage. I slowly parted two of the branches on the side of the yew nearest the field. At this point, the tree had invaded the hedgerow, and my spyhole gave me a view of the duel.

  The swordsmen had put off their cloaks and hats, removed their coats and tucked up the cuffs of their shirt sleeves. Buckingham had removed his hat and golden peruke. His shaven scalp was pinker than a lobster in the pot. He towered over Shrewsbury, who was breathing hard and retreating before the onslaught of the Duke’s thrusts. The other four were hacking and slashing with the abandon of madmen. There was no science to this – no elegant dance of thrust, parry and riposte: this was as bloody and brutal as a pitched battle between rival packs of apprentices in Moorfields. In such a brawl, weight, muscle and length of arm were more important than skill or agility.

  Screaming in triumph, Buckingham ran Shrewsbury through in the chest, driving the blade up into the right shoulder. The Earl dropped his sword and fell to the ground. The Duke tugged his sword free.

  Holmes and Talbot were evenly matched, giving each other blow for blow, so Buckingham swung to his right to aid Jenkins, who was hard pressed by Howard. Howard saw the danger. Snarling, he flicked away the Duke’s blade, putting him off balance and causing
him to lurch towards Jenkins. The latter, his sword arm impeded by Buckingham, tried to recover. But he was too late. In a fluid, unexpectedly graceful movement, Howard switched his attack from the Duke and drove his blade into Jenkin’s left side. The young soldier cried out and fell.

  The duel was over as abruptly as it had begun. The bystanders rushed forward, shouting. The four remaining swordsmen stood suddenly still, their blades hanging towards the ground; they were open-mouthed, red-faced, panting like bellows; their expressions were confused and embarrassed, as if they had been unexpectedly caught out in an act of folly.

  One man, a physician perhaps, knelt beside Shrewsbury and felt for his pulse. Blood was pumping on to the grass. The Earl made a feeble attempt to stand, his left arm flailing for purchase on the ground; one of his servants pressed him back down and tore off his own cloak to cover his master.

  Jenkins lay silent and unmoving. Mr Veal was bending over him and shaking his head at a question from Buckingham. ‘Dead, Your Grace,’ I heard him say. ‘The poor brave fellow.’

  ‘Oh God’s blood,’ Buckingham said, mopping the sweat from his scalp with his sleeve.

  ‘And now?’ Veal said, in a lower voice I could hardly catch.

  ‘Dog and bitch …’ said the Duke.

  That was what it sounded like, but as the words were fainter and more muffled than before, I wasn’t at all sure I had heard him accurately. He might have been saying ‘something which …’ or ‘the wound needs a stitch’ or a dozen other phrases. He was still speaking, but I could no longer hear any of the words, only see his lips moving, and his arm gesturing to the two men lying on the ground with the blood soaking into their shirts.

  In a moment or two, both parties would be returning to the boats. It was time for me to leave. I retreated through the spinney and made the best speed I could, running and walking, down to the lane. The tide was high, and it was still light, so with luck Wanswell would be waiting at the alehouse. I glanced towards the river, where the boats were moored alongside the Barn Elms stairs.