The Last Protector

by Andrew Taylor

  There was a heavy double-knock downstairs. Someone was at the hall door.

  ‘This one pleases me,’ I said, indicating Chloris.

  There was another, more prolonged burst of knocking.

  ‘Ah,’ said Madam Cresswell, ignoring the knocking. ‘You have an eye for quality, sir. Chloris was brought up in Paris. She lived in a very good family indeed, and was much at court. The French have a peculiar talent for the art of love. But is it only Chloris you would like? Wouldn’t you like her to entertain you with a friend?’

  ‘Just Chloris, if I may,’ I said.

  Merton appeared at my elbow, holding out the tray.

  ‘I have always remarked,’ Madam Cresswell said, ‘that a generous heart responds generously when beauty offers herself so sweetly. The usual present is a pound for the first half hour.’

  There were voices below – two men engaged in what sounded like an argument. I stood up suddenly. I scattered money on Merton’s tray and pushed aside his arm. Desperation inspired me.

  ‘Madam, I beg you,’ I said, giving Chloris what I hoped looked like a lascivious glance, ‘pray let there be no delay. I burn! I’m in torment! My passion threatens to unman me.’

  ‘That would never do.’ There was a hint of amusement in Madam Cresswell’s voice. ‘Quick, child, take your admirer away.’

  Chloris seized my wrist and drew me on to the landing. I heard Durrell talking below, and other male voices. The porter had clearly called for reinforcements.

  ‘This way, sir.’

  She drew me down the landing to a small but gloomy chamber furnished with a truckle bed, a table, a pot and a washstand. She closed the door and turned to face me. As she did so, she allowed her gown to fall open again.

  ‘How do you want me, sir?’ she said briskly in a voice that was closer to Bristol than Paris. ‘What’s your pleasure?’

  I crossed the room to the window. The casement was closed. It faced the blank wall of the neighbouring building.

  ‘On my back?’ she was saying. ‘Or on all fours? Some gentlemen prefer it that way, especially the quality. The Duke does, for one.’

  The voices below were growing louder. Among them was Madam Cresswell’s.

  I glanced back at her. ‘The Duke?’ I said. ‘Which Duke?’

  She grinned. ‘Bucks. Right name for him. He’s hung like a poxy stag, I can tell you, and it’s always rutting season for him.’

  ‘Is he often here?’

  ‘When he has the humour for it, he spends more time in Dog and Bitch Yard than at Wallingford House and Whitehall put together. But if you please, sir, I ain’t got all day and you’ve only got half an hour. I’ll do whatever I can to oblige. Within reason, that is.’ Chloris paused, her expression changing. ‘I thought you were so hot for it you couldn’t wait.’

  I opened the casement and craned out. The alley was directly below me. This chamber must be more or less directly above the side door by which I had entered this house. Above me, the upper storeys of the two houses on either side were so close I could almost touch them.

  ‘What are you about?’ she said in a sharper voice. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Your help,’ I said.

  ‘A little encouragement beforehand, sir? A lot of gentlemen like that. No shame in it.’

  ‘No. Help me get out of the window.’

  Chloris backed away, towards a bell rope at the head of the bed. ‘I knew you was a strange one. If it was me, I wouldn’t have let you in.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, spreading my hands wide. ‘I wish you no harm. I’m pursued. That’s why I came here. It was by accident.’

  Her eyes were bright with intelligence. ‘Debt, is it?’

  ‘Yes. The damned dice. It’s my creditors making that racket below.’

  As I was speaking, I was feeling for yet more money in my pocket. I scattered a handful of silver on top of the washstand. ‘That’s for you, just for you. Help me out of the window. You can say I pushed you aside and jumped out.’

  She smiled, looking genuinely amused. ‘You’re a surprise, ain’t you? Go on then.’

  She tore the sheet from the bed and followed me to the window. I wriggled out, legs first, holding on to the mullion. When only my head and shoulders were left inside, she wrapped one end of the sheet around the mullion and gave me the other end.

  ‘It’ll make it less of a drop,’ she said. ‘Go!’

  I let go of the bar and clambered hand over hand down the length of the sheet. The alley seemed to be empty. I looked up at Chloris. The gown had fallen open again. I jumped. Pain shot through my right leg, from ankle to thigh. I sprawled on the path.

  She pulled up the sheet. There was a clatter as she dropped my stick after me. I seized it and scrambled to my feet, ignoring the pain. I glanced up the alley. The cart of hay was no longer blocking the far end. People were moving in the street beyond.

  I looked up at Chloris’s face. She was laughing silently at me.

  ‘Quick,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder, and then back to me. ‘Run, you fool.’

  I ran.

  It was a relief to be in the safety of Whitehall. By the time I passed through the King Street Gate towards Westminster, the pain in my leg had subsided and I was scarcely limping at all. A moment later I turned into Axe Yard, where there was a tavern, the Axe. The landlord knew me well, for I had spent many shillings there since I had first come to Whitehall.

  I found a seat on the end of a bench in a gloomy corner near the door to the privy. My hands were trembling so much that I had to use both of them to lift the first mug of ale to my mouth.

  After half a pot of ale, my breathing had returned to normal, and the haze of fear had thinned. I tried to bring some sort of order to what I knew. I had resolved the matter of the dog and the bitch that had so niggled at my mind since the duel. As he lay on his sickbed, Lord Shrewsbury might well have had more than one meaning for the dog and the bitch in his feverish mind: one was that Buckingham was the dog and my Lady Shrewsbury the bitch; the other, at the same time, was Dog and Bitch Yard, the location of a brothel that the Duke frequented, and perhaps the place where he had taken refuge after the duel, when there had been a warrant out for his arrest. If I was right, the house in Dog and Bitch Yard was more than a brothel as far as Buckingham was concerned: it was a bolthole.

  ‘Marwood?’

  I looked up with a start. I would have jumped at the sight of my own shadow. To my relief it was only Richard Abbott coming through the crowd towards me. He was a clerk at Scotland Yard – junior to me; a pudding-faced man with worried eyes and lips that permanently pouted.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Marwood?’ he said. ‘Williamson’s asked for you twice since dinner.’

  ‘Faith,’ I said. ‘That’s good to know.’

  ‘You were expected before midday.’

  ‘I’m engaged in other business,’ I snapped. ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘Mr Williamson sent me to enquire at the Cockpit if the Duke of Albemarle’s expected.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘No. He’s in the country until May. Pray, have you noticed your coat’s muddy?’

  ‘I’m not blind,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you aren’t, either.’

  Abbott coloured. He was eyeing my grazed knuckles, probably wondering whether to comment on them, and deciding it might be wiser not to.

  I sent him away. It would be foolish to linger much longer, but for pride’s sake I waited for ten minutes. It would damage my position among the other clerks if I allowed Abbott to think he had frightened me into rushing back to Mr Williamson.

  His mention of the Cockpit reminded me of what Cat had told me yesterday: Tumbledown Dick’s claim that there were valuables of his concealed somewhere in the Cockpit. While I dawdled over the last of the ale, I turned it over in my mind. Perhaps there was some truth in the story. Something must have brought Richard Cromwell back to England, within reach of his debtors.

  I knew old Ol
iver had lodged in the Cockpit before they proclaimed him Lord Protector of England. After the Restoration, Oliver’s wife – another Elizabeth, like Richard’s daughter – had been accused of stealing royal possessions and smuggling them from Whitehall. No one had produced evidence of this, and the government had wisely let the matter drop; they had thought it better to push the surviving Cromwells away from the public view rather than run the risk of turning them into martyrs.

  Oliver might have been as incorruptible as everyone claimed. But perhaps his wife had been another matter.

  Despite Abbott’s dark hints, Williamson was quite amiable, for him, when we met. I had returned to the office and was looking over the proofs for the Gazette when he sent for me. In his private room, he told me to close the door and gave me a sealed packet.

  ‘This is for my Lord Arlington,’ he said. ‘He should be in his office now. I want you to wait while he reads it over. He may send a message back by you.’

  I bowed in acknowledgement, and said nothing. As Secretary and Undersecretary of State, Arlington and Williamson were bound to work closely together, but there was something almost clandestine about Williamson’s manner on this occasion. Judging by the thickness of the packet, it held at least a dozen sheets. I noticed that lying on his desk was a file of reports from his informers. It was the London file, not the one that covered the rest of the country.

  ‘The contents of this packet are confidential. I prefer to trust it to you, not to one of the others. Put it into my lord’s hands yourself. Don’t talk of it to anyone – apart from my lord, if he should condescend to address you on the subject.’

  I bowed again.

  ‘That’s enough bowing and scraping for now,’ Williamson said tartly, reverting to type. ‘What have you been doing to yourself? You’re filthy.’

  ‘I fell in the street, sir.’

  ‘I can’t have you looking like that in public. Get the boy to brush you down before you go out.’

  When I was fit to be seen, I left Scotland Yard and walked over to the Privy Gallery, where Arlington had his office as Secretary of State. It was, I thought, a compliment that Williamson had singled me out. If it had been my other master, the wily Chiffinch, I would have suspected some ulterior motive, some devious manoeuvre that might not be to my advantage.

  Arlington received me in his private room with as much lofty condescension as if I had been a lowly curate and he an archbishop. His face was unsmiling and pale. The black plaster across the bridge of his nose gave him an incongruously clownish appearance. I gave him the packet. He frowned at it and then at me.

  ‘Wait next door while I read this,’ he ordered.

  I bowed and went to idle away my time in the outer office. I knew a clerk there, a man named Dudley Gorvin, with whom I occasionally dined. He was older than I. He had the reputation of being quiet and industrious, to match his master’s unbending seriousness, but in private he could be as witty as any man I knew, and he was as sharp as a needle as well. When I came in, he was standing at his desk, pen in hand, and looking out of the window. He glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Mr Williamson sent me with some papers for my lord to look over. I’m to wait.’

  I crossed the room to him and we looked down at three of the Queen’s ladies in waiting who were walking slowly along one of the paths with their heads close together. One of Arlington’s letter files lay open on the desk.

  ‘Are they gossiping, do you think?’ Gorvin said, closing the file for he was a discreet man. ‘Plotting? Both? It’s something like that, Marwood, as God’s in his heaven. It’s all we ever do in this poxy place: intrigue about this or intrigue about that.’

  ‘You’re turning philosopher,’ I said.

  Gorvin jerked his head towards my lord’s private room. He lowered his voice still further. ‘He’s at it, too, you mark my words. With your Mr Williamson.’

  ‘Do you know what this one’s about?’

  ‘The Duke, I think. Bucks, I mean, not Albemarle or York.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Something in the air?’

  ‘My lord’s convinced that Bucks has some great scheme afoot, but he doesn’t know what it is. Or when he’ll set it in motion.’

  ‘Williamson’s been studying our London informers’ file.’ I hesitated, aware of the need to reciprocate, for information is like any other valuable commodity: it is transferred through trade, not gift. ‘Sunday is Easter Day. Easter Monday’s a holiday, of course.’

  ‘You think there may be trouble then?’

  I shrugged. ‘Perhaps. There’s a danger of trouble on any public holiday. Give the apprentices a little licence and they make the most of it.’

  ‘I wonder. You may be right.’ Gorvin leafed back through the letter file on his desk. ‘Here it is, a note in the Duke’s own hand. My lord had proposed a meeting with him on Easter Monday, but the Duke wrote to say he would be out of town.’

  He passed the letter to me. It was only a few lines long, and I read it in an instant. But suddenly it wasn’t the meaning of the words that mattered to me, but the handwriting that conveyed it. Buckingham wrote a firm, flowing hand, with few scratchings-out. It sloped markedly to the right and was easy to read.

  I had seen a handwriting very similar to that only a few hours ago, on Madam Cresswell’s desk in Dog and Bitch Yard. That hadn’t been a letter, but a strange sort of petition concerning a list of brothels.

  ‘What is it?’ Gorvin said sharply. ‘Have you seen something?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I – I wonder where the Duke is going on Monday.’

  I knew by Gorvin’s face that he had sensed my evasion. Luckily the office’s page boy chose that moment to rush over to me. His face was pink with urgency and self-importance.

  ‘Your pardon, sir,’ he gabbled. ‘It’s Mr Marwood from Scotland Yard, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘This, sir.’ He held out a letter. ‘Handed in downstairs.’

  I took the letter. My name was written on the outside, but without any direction: this was from someone who had known that I was at my Lord Arlington’s office. Murmuring an apology to Gorvin, I turned away, broke the seal and unfolded the paper.

  Nothing was written inside. There was only a sketch in ink, crudely executed by someone with little talent for drawing. But the artist’s intentions were clear enough for all that.

  The picture showed a gallows on which was hanging a man with his feet dancing in the air and the letter M on his chest.

  ‘Bad news, sir?’ Gorvin asked. ‘Why, you look quite pale.’

  Mr Veal called unannounced at Mistress Dalton’s on the Tuesday before Easter. Richard Cromwell received him in the hall because his hostess and Elizabeth were in the parlour. Cromwell loved his daughter and he wanted to spare her what he could.

  Veal suggested they take a turn up and down the courtyard. His tall, austere figure towered over Cromwell. Without any preamble, he came directly to the point.

  ‘You remember that His Grace requests your presence on Easter Monday? To meet certain friends of his.’

  Cromwell cleared his throat. ‘On that subject—’

  ‘He will send a coach for you early in the morning, or even the previous evening.’

  ‘Is my presence absolutely necessary, do you know?’

  ‘Indeed it is, sir.’ Veal was looking grim, but then he almost always did. ‘All the arrangements have been made.’

  ‘I see.’ Cromwell felt a spurt of anger, and for once did not trouble to suppress it. ‘So I have no choice?’

  ‘We always have a choice.’

  ‘Don’t chop logic with me, if you please. My daughter and I are your prisoners to all intents and purposes. Isn’t that the truth?’

  Veal shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t choose to put it like that. For your own safety, we—’

  ‘What it comes down to is this. Either I do what
your master wishes, in every particular, or he will ensure the government knows where to find me.’

  ‘The Duke has no desire to do that.’

  ‘What if I say that I have other plans for Easter Monday, and that I regret I cannot meet his friends?’

  Veal laid long fingers on Cromwell’s arm, tightening his grip. They stopped and looked at each other.

  ‘That cannot be, sir,’ Veal said. ‘His Grace has set his heart on your being there.’

  ‘I may be otherwise engaged.’

  ‘As it happens, he knows you had previously had other plans in mind for that day.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘On Sunday, I called at Henrietta Street and had a conversation with Mr Hakesby, the surveyor.’ Veal paused.

  Cromwell swallowed. He looked away.

  ‘And his young wife,’ Veal went on. ‘We are all friends here, all supporters of the good old cause. There need be no secrets between us.’

  ‘You’ve been following us,’ Cromwell said.

  ‘For your own safety, sir. His Grace is most solicitous on your behalf. In fact, we have already been aware of the Hakesbys at the sign of the Rose, about quite a different matter. But, leaving that aside, I understand from him that you wish to retrieve some family possessions from Whitehall. From the Cockpit lodging, to be precise. Is that correct?’

  Cromwell nodded. ‘But it’s a private matter, of no interest to anyone other than myself and the Hakesbys.’

  Veal went on as if Cromwell had not spoken. ‘Mr Hakesby says that he’s making the arrangements on your behalf, and by chance he had chosen Easter Monday for your commission. As it’s a holiday, it’s the best time – fewer servants will be about. Is that the truth of it?’

  ‘I see I have no secrets from you,’ Cromwell said as calmly as he could.

  ‘Hakesby tells me that these valuables are concealed in a sewer beneath the Cockpit lodgings. He has enlisted the help of a malcontented mazer scourer who will act as a guide.’

  Cromwell pulled himself from Veal’s grip. A wave of bitterness threatened to overwhelm him. Hakesby had blabbed the whole affair to Veal. All this expense, all this danger, had come to nothing. Indeed, worse than nothing, because it had entangled him in the schemes of the Duke of Buckingham. He was caught, like a fly in a spider’s web: and the more he struggled, the more he was entangled.