The Honey and the Sting

by E C Fremantle

  ‘When she’s recovered I’ll join you and, in the meantime, I can work out how best to approach the situation.’

  ‘Yes, when she’s recovered.’ The likelihood of Bette not recovering hangs in the air unspoken. ‘So, where is this place you know of?’ I recall George’s words, my heart sinking: I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Hessie.

  Ambrose has begun to write and, without looking up, begins to describe an old hunting lodge buried deep in a Shropshire forest that was bequeathed to him by a cousin. Signing off the hastily scrawled letter, he marks it as urgent and calls in one of his grooms to deliver it to the carrier. ‘We’ll get you to the Lamb and Flag in Oxford where you can hire horses. From there …’ He reels off a list of towns and the names of their coaching inns, writing each one down, ending with Ludlow. I have little idea of where Shropshire is but clearly it is distant.

  ‘It will take at least three or four days,’ he hands me the list, ‘with time for detours to foil any attempts to follow you.’

  I find myself folding the piece of paper over and over again as I fight feelings of defeat.

  ‘I’ll send instructions to Gifford the caretaker to meet you at the Feathers in Ludlow and guide you to the lodge. It’s dilapidated and, without knowing the way, almost impossible to find. That’s what makes it so safe. You must travel under aliases. I think it might be wise, too, for Rafe to be dressed in girls’ clothes and one of you got up as a man.’ He looks me over, deep in thought. ‘Neither you nor Melis could make a convincing man, you’re both too small, but Hope would. They’ll be looking for three women and a boy.’ He’s right: two women with a young man and a girl might throw them off the scent. ‘We can find suitable clothes for them. Now, have you enough funds?’

  I feel weighed down. The idea of several perilous days on the road when I am already exhausted is almost too much to bear, but I must brace myself. ‘We have our savings.’

  He reaches into a coffer on his desk and brings out a purse, handing it to me. ‘You’ll likely need more than you think.’

  The purse is heavy, and I begin to protest, but he says, ‘Listen. I promised your father I would act as protector to you girls. That doesn’t end simply because you are grown up.’ He takes a wooden box from a shelf, opens it and produces an object wrapped in a cloth. It is a pistol.

  ‘There’s little point in giving me that. None of us has ever handled a firearm.’ The very idea seems absurd.

  ‘Gifford will teach you how to use it when you get to the lodge. I’d show you myself but we don’t want to attract unwanted attention, with the neighbours so close here. You could explode a hundredweight of gunpowder at the lodge and no one would hear.’

  I feel daunted. Seeing the firearm brings home to me the extent of the danger we are in.

  ‘I’ll find someone to guard you. Gifford’s rather long in the tooth, you see. I’d send my groom with you but I’m not entirely sure of him. He hasn’t been with me long.’ He is absently tapping his fingers on the desk.

  The thrumming enters my head, like the sound of horses arriving. It makes me jittery and I am grateful when he stops.

  ‘I have someone in mind, a man I trust, an officer called Bloor, but it may take me a day or so to contact him.’ He pauses, resting his chin on the heel of his hand, deep in thought. ‘See this ring?’ He holds out a finger. ‘Take a good look.’ It is a black-enamelled band, like a mourning ring. ‘I’ll give it to the man I send to you, so you’ll know he comes from me.’ Peering closer I see that it is inscribed with a motto: Veritas nunquam perit – the truth never dies.

  DEATH FORETOLD

  * * *

  Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light.

  John Webster, The White Devil

  Felton

  The pungent reek of saltpetre stings his nostrils and his head rings with noise, shouting, chaos, terror. Someone calls his name through the thick fog. A flare lights the sky and the blanket of smoke is a sudden hellish pink. He staggers, losing his footing, crashing to meet the ground, dirt flying up into his eyes, his mouth. As he scrambles to his feet, a jolt shudders through him, the snap of shattering bone, the searing pain, his breath knocked right out of him.

  He wakes with a lurch.

  ‘Lieutenant Felton!’ The landlady is thumping repeatedly on the parchment-thin door of his room. ‘Lieutenant Felton, there’s a delivery for you. Says it’s urgent.’

  He waits a moment to gather his thoughts, his fear dissipating as he takes in his surroundings: the filthy room with its mean furniture, the overflowing piss-pot in the corner, the relentless metallic hammering of the blacksmith next door, the squeal of the winch on a nearby building site. He is not back on the battlefield but in the Budge Row boarding-house in London, where he has been staying since he returned from the war in France. He was lucky to survive the siege at Saint-Martin; thousands didn’t. But the horror remains, waiting for him to drop his guard. He must have fallen asleep as he wrote his journal: he is slumped forward with a crick in his neck and his inkpot is on its side, a black runnel dripping to the floor.

  Pain shoots through his injured arm as he rises to open the door. It has been several months and the shattered bone has knitted, albeit misaligned, but the wound still refuses to heal. The moon-faced landlady is on the threshold.

  ‘You don’t look the sort to receive fancy correspondence from Whitehall.’ She is holding out a letter of spotless stiff vellum bearing an important-looking red seal.

  He takes it from her, recognizing the arms instantly. ‘George,’ he says, under his breath. He rips the letter open, scanning it. It is a summons. A spark ignites in him.

  ‘Who’s it from, then?’

  ‘That is my business. You got anything to eat?’ He is lightheaded with hunger.

  ‘It’ll cost you extra.’

  ‘Add it to my account.’

  She makes a tutting noise. He owes her a month’s rent. He had been fretful about joining the ranks of beggars lining the streets of the capital, mostly soldiers who, like him, haven’t been paid in months. But this summons will surely change everything.

  ‘And bring me a basin so I can wash, if you would.’

  ‘About time. You don’t half stink.’

  He returns to the table to read the letter. It is to the point. His Grace, the Duke of Buckingham requests your presence at Whitehall early on the morrow …

  This must be it: his promotion, the captaincy he had long given up on. The times he has tried and failed to reach George, and just as he is at his lowest ebb, this arrives. He knows he’s useless for soldiering now, what with his injured arm, had been wondering how he would find a way to earn his living, his options diminishing rapidly. But a captaincy, a leader of men – at last his skills as a martial strategist will be recognized – a place in the world.

  ‘George needs me,’ he says to the empty room, heart light as a cloud. George and he were equals once, and close, very close – it was first love for them both – but time and circumstance had separated them. Felton has spent a decade and a half fighting on every battlefield of Europe, for anyone who would pay him, working his way up to the middling role of lieutenant. War has been raging for a decade now: the old faith, the emperor with Spain against the Protestant alliance, a multitude of states spread over northern Europe. It was all good business for a mercenary. While Felton was ankle deep in European mud and gore, George had elevated himself with indecent swiftness. He’d barely arrived at the English court, in his borrowed suit, when he was warming King James’s bed.

  Felton first met George in France, where they were being trained in the martial arts: horsemanship, the use of firearms, fencing. Everyone knew, even then, that George was destined for great things, not for his intellect, for he hadn’t that, but for his extraordinary magnetism. Felton finds himself becoming a little wistful as he thinks of those days and how close they had been. Most would have been envious but Felton had always accepted George’s unquestionable destiny.

 
He turns the vellum to see if George has written a personal note but it is blank. Taking a small phial of opium tincture from his pocket, he removes the stopper with his teeth to swig a measure and then a little more, careful not to finish it. He hasn’t the means to buy another bottle and it is the only remedy he has found that stills the pain of his injured arm. But the summons has given him hope that his fortunes are shifting.

  There is another knock at the door.

  ‘Come,’ he calls, and the landlady’s son, Joseph, backs in, balancing a tray of food on a basin of water. He grins broadly as Felton takes the basin to the table, peeling off his shirt and sluicing his face and torso, rubbing his armpits.

  The pain has mercifully receded to a dull throb and his head is beginning to swim pleasantly. Joseph puts the tray down but doesn’t leave. ‘Is there something else?’ Felton turns, rubbing himself dry, looking at the young man, noticing how lithe he appears, his shirt tight against the lean muscles of his chest as if he has grown out of it. His own body, with its useless arm, seems cumbersome in comparison. On another day he might have been distracted by the sight of Joseph in his room, with his ill-fitting shirt, but his head is filled with George.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ Joseph has picked up his summons and is inspecting it. He has become rather familiar lately – they have shared the occasional game of dice and cup of beer. Felton doesn’t really mind: London can be a lonely place. ‘The Duke of Buckingham? What does he want with you?’

  ‘None of your business.’ Felton snatches back the letter, noticing, to his annoyance, a greasy thumbprint.

  Joseph meets Felton’s irritation with a smile. ‘Buckingham’s doctor, the one they called his wizard, he was murdered near here.’

  ‘You mean Dr Lambe, his adviser.’

  ‘I heard he had his finger in all sorts of devilish schemes.’

  Felton has heard the rumours, too, of Lambe’s occult practices. He doubts any of it is true. George isn’t foolish enough to get involved in such things. ‘You don’t want to believe everything you hear.’

  ‘Know what happened to that Lambe fellow? A mob set on him, tore him apart.’ Felton is well aware of what became of Lambe but Joseph is warming to his topic. ‘I saw him with my own eyes that night, couple of months back. Not long before you arrived here. I’m having a drink at the Windmill, minding my own business, and in comes this elderly cove, eyes wheeling like a horse at the knacker’s – got to be eighty if he’s a day. He’s twitchy as anything, looking behind as if he’s being followed. And he seems to know the landlord cos they go upstairs together.

  ‘Next thing I know a gang of a dozen ugly fellows piles in the door, all rowdy like, and looking about. I keep my head down, don’t I? Can tell their blood’s up. They order a flagon of ale and I can hear them talking about the duke, laughing, saying, “Someone needs to stick him with a knife for the sake of England,” and, “Needs teaching a bloody lesson.” Anyway, they leave and it’s the morning after, I hear that the old doctor was killed. Pulled apart, wasn’t he, down on Old Jewry? Eye hanging on a sinew, arms pulled out of their sockets, kicked black and blue –’

  Felton raises a palm. ‘That’s enough, Joseph.’

  ‘I only say it cos you wouldn’t want to be getting involved with the duke’s business if that’s the kind of –’

  ‘No need to worry about me. I know how to stay out of trouble. Now get lost,’ he says amiably. ‘I’ve business to attend to.’ He hustles the young man out of his room.

  Truth is, Felton hasn’t any business, unless it’s pondering on his lack of it. But being reminded of Lambe’s fate has rattled him, made him wonder about the safety of his old friend George, up in his gilded palace. He may still be feted at court but the public have turned on him lately. Felton recalls an image in a recent news-sheet of a tiny King Charles as a puppet, operated by George, ignorant of the coins falling from his pockets and the dead soldiers scattering the ground.

  It was the disastrous siege, under George’s command, with so many casualties, a litany of mistakes and costs escalating beyond control, troops unpaid, the country bankrupted, that had made public opinion turn.

  He takes a few bites of a pork pie but the tincture has quashed his appetite. He moves the tray, exposing the packet of papers that has sat unopened on the table since he collected it from the notary three weeks ago. It is his mother’s will.

  He had had word of his mother’s death soon after his return from France. He can’t face opening it. She had nothing to leave him and he has no desire to confront the pathetic list of mended furniture and threadbare dresses she has most likely left to the parish poor. He and his mother had been estranged for many years. They had never been close, even when he was a child, but he couldn’t forgive her for neglecting to tell him of his beloved twin sister’s death. He had been a thousand miles away on a distant battlefield when word got to him. Bridget had been dead three months and was long buried by then.

  When he managed to travel home, every scrap of her had been erased, just a mound of red earth in the corner of the churchyard. He had commissioned a stone to mark the grave but had never been back to see it. His mother had made it clear he wouldn’t be welcome. The year is branded on his heart: 1614. Fourteen years have passed but he still feels the vacuum of Bridget’s loss.

  Time is collapsing, memories churning him up. The languid summer when he and George had returned home to Playford Hall from the school near Rouen where they had been transformed from cocky boys into martial men.

  The crossing to Ipswich had been delayed and they had arrived in the dead of night, had had to wake Bridget by throwing pebbles at her window. She had let them in wearing her nightgown, dishevelled from sleep, and had thrown herself immediately into her brother’s embrace.

  ‘Who is your friend?’ Her eyes took in George then. Felton saw what he always saw when people first met George and were staggered by his beauty.

  ‘George Villiers.’ He stepped forward to kiss the back of her hand. He was just plain George Villiers then, minor gentry, as were the Feltons. But still Felton always felt the need to impress him. ‘Your brother has told me so much about you that I feel I know you already.’ He turned to Felton. ‘You two are like peas in a pod.’

  Felton felt an astringent pang of jealousy. He had so wanted George to love Bridget but, seeing them together in that moment, he was struck with a sudden desperate worry that George’s desire would turn away from him to his twin.

  His concern was unfounded. The three spent an idyllic summer together at Playford before they went their separate ways: Felton to fight in the Adriatic, George to court and his meteoric rise, and Bridget, it galls him to dig up his long-buried grief – Bridget to the grave.

  He stuffs the unopened package into the bottom of his travelling chest, angry with himself for allowing his thoughts to run away with him, the pain of loss as sharp as ever. Taking another measure of the tincture, he kicks back on the narrow bed and turns his mind to George and their meeting tomorrow.

  Hope

  Hope practises her swagger.

  The suit had once belonged to Ambrose Cotton’s nephew and the minute she’d put it on she’d felt different, taller, stronger. It fits surprisingly well, but the wool smells slightly of mildew and it is thick, much too warm now the morning heat has burned off the cloud after the early rain.

  She sits on the box seat, sweltering, beside the driver, hat pulled over her eyes, while Hester, Melis and Rafe travel inside the carriage. Rafe, with his slight frame, makes a convincing girl. It had been a struggle to get him into the brocade gown, and the effects of Worley’s sedative have not yet quite worn off, making him fractious, his mood not helped by the yard-dog’s absence: it had become lame and was left behind at Littlemore. The green smudge on her finger mocks Hope, a reminder of her own stupidity. She balks to think what might have happened to Rafe and is relieved to see, through the small window behind, that he has dropped off to sleep, lolling against his mother.

&nb
sp; Before long they are wheeling into the yard of the Lamb and Flag. The place is bustling with life. The post-coach must have recently arrived. Its passengers mill aimlessly about the stable-yard. Hope is surprised that the stable-boy doesn’t offer his hand to help her down, then remembers she is meant to be a young man.

  She scans the yard for anyone seeming shifty and is thrown into panic when she spots a familiar red jacket slung over one of the stable doors.

  ‘Could that be Worley’s, do you think?’ she whispers to Hester, who agrees they need to check and pulls her hat low to shadow her face, suggesting the others do likewise. Fear prickles over her, like nettle rash, but a man they don’t recognize appears, taking the jacket and shrugging it on. Hester leads the way inside to find the landlord.

  He is surrounded by a clamour of people all wanting rooms, or food and drink, or fresh horses. Hester pushes through to hand him the letter of introduction from Ambrose. At the mention of the doctor’s name, he ushers them to an anteroom, ignoring the complaints of his disgruntled customers.

  ‘Any friend of Dr Cotton gets privileged service from me.’ He couldn’t have been friendlier. ‘He saved the life of my daughter, so I’m ever in his debt.’

  The man offers them a drink, which Hester politely refuses, saying they are short of time. ‘We must get to Aylesbury today and from there to Bedford, to make Cambridge in time for our mother’s birthday celebrations.’ She smiles at him. ‘I wonder if you might recommend an inn at Aylesbury. Somewhere clean.’

  Hope is impressed at the ease with which Hester tells the lie. She adds small details to elaborate the story, making it seem more authentic. She would almost believe it herself, were she not aware that they intend to head in the opposite direction, towards a place called Burford. The innkeeper appears entirely convinced and, anyway, there is no reason for him to doubt their plans. Even so, Hope cannot shake off the feeling that they have ‘fugitive’ shot through their bearing.