The Last Protector

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘Of course it matters. Where do the Cromwells lodge?’

  ‘Mistress Dalton’s, by Hatton Garden.’ She paused. ‘You were right, by the way. I should have betrayed them to the King. They cared nothing for me, after all. And it’s because of them that my husband is dead.’

  I walked from Henrietta Street to Charing Cross. I was lightheaded from lack of sleep. My skin felt grubby and my eyes were full of grit.

  I had been up half the night writing letters. I had dozed for an hour or so, until I woke with a start from a dream about Durrell’s severed hand crawling like a monstrous insect across my pillow and leaving a red smear behind it. After that, it had not been worth trying to sleep.

  It was a fine morning. The streets glistened after yesterday’s rain. The sky was a cloudless blue, apart from the streaks of smoke. Sam had been out early to gather news. The unrest had continued into the night, but the troubles were past their peak. The authorities had tightened their grip on the town and the ringleaders of the rioters had been arrested.

  At the golden gates of Wallingford House, the porter declined to admit me. I asked for Mr Veal. The man was reluctant even to allow the possibility that Mr Veal might exist, either at Wallingford House or anywhere else. I showed him my royal warrant and said that he himself might not exist much longer if he didn’t stop obstructing an officer of the Crown and send for Mr Veal at once.

  A boy hared off to the house. The porter retreated into his box. I stood outside the gates with the little crowd of beggars who were always there, waiting for the Duke to come out and throw them a handful of silver. I was coming to hate these palaces of the rich: Wallingford House, Arundel House in the Strand, Clarendon House in Piccadilly and even Whitehall itself. I had seen too much of what went on inside them.

  The tall, upright figure of Mr Veal came round the corner of the house’s west wing. He walked slowly across the forecourt towards me. He wore his old brown coat, as unfashionable as a ruff, and his heavy sword swung by his side. He didn’t look much like a clergyman. His life had led him to unexpected places, as mine had, and I felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy for him. He stopped a yard away from the gates and stared at me. By the look of him, he hadn’t had much sleep either.

  ‘Well?’

  I gestured at the beggars that flanked me, and the porter beside him.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to say to you either. I want to talk to the Duke.’

  He shrugged again and began to turn away.

  ‘Tell him it’s about a whore called Chloris, a bully called Merton, and a desk in Madam Cresswell’s house in Dog and Bitch Yard.’ I had the attention of my audience now, all of it, including the porter and the beggars. ‘Tell him—’

  Veal held up his hand. ‘Enough. I will pass on your message.’

  ‘And tell your master I shall be at Whitehall this afternoon. After that it will be too late.’

  I was about to walk away when he called me back. He waved the porter and the beggars to stand aside for us.

  ‘He’s alive still,’ he said in a low voice through the bars of the gate.

  ‘Durrell?’

  ‘Who took off his hand?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He frowned. He examined my face. ‘Truly?’

  ‘A man rushed in from the garden. He attacked Durrell in the hall, and then fled by the street door. I’ve never seen him before.’

  There was a silence as we both considered this.

  ‘He’ll probably live unless the wound gets infected,’ Veal said at last. ‘I suppose you saved his life.’

  On Thursday, the weather was so sunny and warm that Richard Cromwell spent longer than usual in the garden after breakfast. He and Elizabeth walked up and down the paths. He studied what was growing there with great attention.

  ‘Why, if this weather continues, we shall have a most glorious spring. Hampshire will be a veritable paradise. I wonder whether I might be able to slip down and join you there for a few days.’

  ‘Sir,’ Elizabeth said, ‘you grow reckless. A man died last night, and another wounded, perhaps mortally. You can’t run yourself even deeper into danger for the sake of a few flowers.’

  ‘Who knows? If the Duke’s plan works, I shall be able to spend the whole year round there.’

  ‘But it isn’t working.’ She kept her voice low but she would have liked to scream at him. ‘There’s a lot of talk at Wallingford House but that’s all. Just talk. The Duke will do nothing more for us unless it helps him in some way.’

  ‘But he gave me his word. He’s a man of honour.’

  Her father stooped to examine the new shoots appearing on a rose. Poor Tumbledown Dick. Elizabeth was eighteen years old, and her father more than twice that. Yet she felt as though their ages had reversed themselves in the last few weeks. He still had the foolish optimism of youth, whereas she felt half as old as time.

  Last night she had not slept. What had happened in Henrietta Street was as vivid in her mind as if it were still in front of her. There had been all that blood. In those few terrible minutes at the foot of the stairs, she and her father had lost everything: the strange creature from the sewers had snatched the pearls and run into the night with them. This morning, to make matters worse, Mistress Dalton had told them that it was no longer convenient for them to remain with her. But still her father would not face up to the truth.

  He glanced at her. ‘You’re very like your grandfather, my dear.’

  ‘What?’

  Her father seemed to have forgotten their troubles for the moment. ‘Your face seen in profile. You have quite a look of him.’ He smiled, belatedly remembering to be tactful. ‘But in a way that’s becoming to a woman, I mean.’

  The side door of the house opened. She looked up, expecting to see Mistress Dalton or her steward. But it was a stranger.

  ‘Who’s that?’ her father said.

  ‘I’ve seen him somewhere …’ The memory hit her like a blow. ‘I think he was at the Hakesbys’ last night. I didn’t see him properly and the light was poor, but—’

  She broke off. The man was almost upon them.

  ‘Mr Cromwell, I believe.’ The stranger bowed. ‘Mistress Cromwell, your servant.’

  Her father drew himself up. ‘Who are you, sir?’

  ‘My name’s Marwood, sir. Pray have a sight of my warrant.’

  He handed her father a creased piece of paper. He knows who we are, Elizabeth thought, which means he must also have known about us last night. He was not an imposing man – his clothes were on the shabby side of respectable, his wig was a disgrace. She glimpsed scarring on the left side of his face and neck.

  ‘The King sent you?’

  ‘As you see, sir. The King knows of your connection with the Duke of Buckingham and others, and he knows of the intrigues you have lately been engaged in. The breaches of the peace we have seen this week, the destruction of property in various quarters of the City – why, that’s only a small part of it. A conspiracy by the late Protector, a judge would call it, a conspiracy against the Crown.’

  ‘No – no, my dear sir, that is a complete misunderstanding, a misinterpretation. Allow me to—’

  ‘Or to use another name for it, sir,’ Marwood interrupted, ‘treason.’

  He held out his hand for the warrant. Wordlessly, Cromwell returned it.

  ‘There’s also the matter of the pearls.’ Marwood glanced at Elizabeth. ‘Theft from the Crown. Another charge, if one were needed, along with trespass: bribing persons to enter a royal residence by stealth in order to commit a felony on your behalf. Oh, and you have also laid yourself open to a charge of accessory to murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ Cromwell’s face had lost its colour. ‘Murder? That’s nonsense. It’s …’

  Elizabeth took her father’s arm and led him to a bench against the wall. He was trembling. She looked up at Marwood. ‘Whose murder?’

  He stared back at her. ‘The Duk
e’s servants have committed at least two murders in the last few days in order to further this conspiracy. As an active member of that conspiracy, madam, your father has aided and abetted those murders. You yourself were a witness to one of them last night. When the Duke’s hired bully threw an old man down the stairs. He was a distinguished architect and surveyor named Mr Hakesby. He was murdered in his own house.’

  Cromwell put his head in his hands. ‘I’m innocent, sir. I wish no one harm, least of all the King. True, I’m in pressing need of money, but there’s no crime in that. The Duke was kind enough to offer me a pension. I—’

  ‘The King’s not a vengeful man.’ Marwood stood over Cromwell, blocking the sun from him. ‘But those around him are not so forgiving.’

  There was silence. Cromwell looked at his daughter, who stared stonily at him, barely able to contain her anger. He turned back to Marwood.

  ‘What does the King want me to do?’

  ‘To sign this letter I’ve brought with me. Both you and your daughter will need to sign. In it, you confess that Buckingham lured you back to England and forced you to lend your name and presence to his efforts to build an independent party in opposition to the King and Parliament. You received money from him, and you attended meetings with disaffected men at Wallingford House. We shall be merciful and forget this matter of the Cockpit entirely.’

  ‘Who will see this letter?’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘No one but the King, if all goes well. He himself has no malice towards your father, unless he threatens the peace of the realm. The letter will keep Buckingham on a tight leash if the King has need of it.’ Marwood turned back to Richard Cromwell. ‘Sign it now. Then you must leave London. At once. Today, not tomorrow. Take a coach to Harwich or Dover as quickly and discreetly as you can, go abroad and stay there. Otherwise I can’t guarantee your safety, and your life will be forfeit.’

  Richard Cromwell rubbed his finger on the seat of the bench. He glanced at Elizabeth, who thought her father looked like a confused sheep. ‘But if I sign, I could be putting my head in a noose,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve done that anyway, sir,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You have no choice. You must sign.’

  Tumbledown Dick, she thought. My father.

  By the time I reached Whitehall it was midday, and I was exhausted. It occurred to me that lack of food might have something to do with it. I dined at the Angel in King Street. I had not been to Whitehall for two days; nor had I sent word to explain my absence. There would be a reckoning with Williamson but it would have to wait.

  Even now, it was within my power to change all this: to do myself much good with both Williamson and Lord Arlington. I was tempted. But there would be a price to pay for advancement on those terms. I wouldn’t be the only one who had to pay it.

  I had almost finished my meal when I heard someone clearing their throat behind me, very close to my ear. I turned my head. A man I had never seen before was at my shoulder. I ran my eyes over him. He was soberly dressed in black, but the cloth was good and the stockings below his breeches were of silk.

  ‘Have I the honour of addressing Mr Marwood?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a message for you, sir.’ He bent forward as if bowing, which brought his mouth closer to my ear. ‘Mr Veal says two o’clock at the Chelsea Gate end of the canal. Near the deer houses. Thank you, sir.’

  He straightened himself, cleared his throat again and disappeared into the crowd by the door.

  Part of me wanted to hurry, for old habits die hard, to avoid the risk of making so important a man as the Duke wait for me. Then I remembered that even great noblemen are made of the same clay as the rest of us, and they are just as capable of acts of folly. I owed him nothing, certainly not respect.

  I passed under the King Street Gate and turned into the Cockpit passage that led to St James’s Park. I emerged blinking into the sunshine. Laying out the canal had been one of the King’s first projects after the Restoration. It stretched from the Cockpit and the Tiltyard in the east towards the Chelsea Gate and Goring House in the west. The deer houses were at the western end because, being further from Whitehall, it was the quietest area of the park.

  A statue of a gladiator stood at this end of the canal. Suddenly superstitious, I touched its base for luck as I passed. I sauntered down the path, with the water on my right.

  As I walked, I glanced from side to side. There was no sign of Buckingham yet. Half a dozen guardsmen were acting the fool with a maidservant near the Chelsea Gate. Two little boys tumbled like puppies on the grass under the eye of their nursemaid. A gardener wheeled a barrowload of cuttings along the avenue of young trees on the other side of the canal. A group of courtiers was playing bowls in the sunshine. Further away, three young men exercised their horses and showed off to each other. A servant was walking a pair of mastiffs, tight-leashed and muzzled. The roofs of Goring House, Lord Arlington’s London residence, were visible beyond its garden wall and a belt of trees. I hoped that my lord and Williamson weren’t staring down at me from an upper window.

  I stopped at the end of the canal and looked about me. It was an innocent spring afternoon, fresh and green. If a man didn’t know better, he might almost believe that all was right with the world.

  ‘If it please Your Honour.’

  The gardener was standing between two of the young trees on the other side of the canal. He was leaning on his barrow and looking at me over the water. He was a tall man with a red face. He wore a stiff leather apron to protect his clothes and a broad-brimmed hat.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. Then, in a sharper voice: ‘Oh, devil take it.’

  Buckingham laughed. He abandoned his barrow and walked round the end of the canal towards me. The Duke made a sport out of everything, even a crisis.

  ‘Did I fool you?’ he said.

  ‘I had forgotten Your Grace’s taste for the theatrical.’

  ‘Come now, Marworm, you must admit it was well done. The stance – the clothes – the complexion: why, I had the part to a nicety. Let’s walk towards the deer houses. You can pretend to be giving me my orders.’

  The Duke smiled to underline the drollery of this. We walked in silence for a moment. I glanced about me. I suspected that some of the people I could see were his servants, ready to intervene if he desired.

  ‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble lately,’ he said. ‘I can’t say I care for that. One of my favourite bawds is dead. My papers are stolen. A servant of mine is so maimed he’s like to die. Even if he survives, I must count him useless. Another has his skull smashed like an eggshell while defending my property from a housebreaker. Every stone I turn, I find you underneath.’

  ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be impudent, Marworm. Did I give you leave to speak?’

  ‘Your riots are over.’ I waved a hand in the direction of Wallingford House. ‘Your attempt to build a party among the Independents and that crew. Men who long for the good old days. Your efforts to raise the City.’

  For a moment I thought the Duke would hit me. Patches of pallor appeared on his skin.

  He said, ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t have you flogged? It could be done here – now, in broad daylight – if I but click my fingers. It would make it clear to Arlington and his creature Williamson that I don’t brook interference. It would also make it clear that I don’t permit impertinence from my inferiors.’

  ‘If I’m harmed or killed, sir, I have arranged for certain papers to be delivered to the King and the Privy Council.’

  ‘Be damned to that. And your friends.’

  ‘Mistress Catherine Hakesby—’

  ‘That bitch.’

  ‘She is innocent of any crime, Your Grace, but she knows something of your intrigue. If any harm comes to her, it will have the same consequence as if the harm was done to me. The King and the Privy Council will see the papers.’

  ‘What papers are these? Do you take me for a fool, Marworm? I’m n
ot a child to be frightened by things that don’t exist.’

  I rubbed my itching eyes. ‘They include an early draft of the Whores’ Petition written and amended in your own hand. It was taken from your desk in Cresswell’s bawdy house in Dog and Bitch Yard. It will leave the King, his councillors and my Lady Castlemaine in no doubt that you were the original author. There’s also a letter signed by the late Protector Richard Cromwell. He writes that you bribed him with money and promises of a pension to support your intrigues against the King and Parliament. His daughter Elizabeth has put her name to the letter as well, confirming the truth of what her father says. They throw themselves on the mercy of the King.’

  ‘Prove it. Show me this draft petition you claim to have. And show me this letter.’

  ‘They are safely lodged with a friend, Your Grace.’ He wasn’t to know that I meant my servant Sam, as I hadn’t had time to find a safer home for them yet.

  ‘I’ve only your word for this. I don’t believe these papers exist. The more I think of it, the less likely it seems.’

  ‘The draft of the petition has a line through it, Your Grace, and on the other side of the sheet is the document you wished to keep. It is a scene from a play called “The Rehearsal”. I had not known you aspired to be a playwright as well. Let me quote you a line from it.’ I paused shamelessly for effect. ‘“By my troth, I have long’d as much to laugh with you, at all the impertinent, dull, fantastical things.” Is that enough proof for you?’

  ‘No. All it proves is that you’ve stolen a page from my play.’

  I hesitated, groping in my memory for other words. ‘Then let me remind you of a phrase you used in the petition, but later deleted. You informed my Lady Castlemaine that when the rioters seized her, she should expect “to be thrown on your back and roughly ravished by the grimy multitude”. No doubt the King will want to share that with my lady.’

  In the silence that followed, I listened to the cries of the little boys and the shouts of the horsemen. I watched the Duke. He was staring down the canal at Whitehall.

  Suddenly he tore off his hat and stamped on it. The grey stubble on his scalp was greasy with sweat. He walked away, leaving the barrow standing among the trees.