by Robin Blake
‘Were you a particular friend of Limmington, sir?’ I asked.
‘No. Used to be. Latterly, I couldn’t stand the fellow. He had fallen too low and it changed him. He did nothing but complain about illness, which deprived him of sleep, and poverty, which deprived him of new clothing. He wore the same frayed old coat every day, never changing it. His company was tedious, extremely.’
Fleetwood himself was formally dressed, even smart, in his black coat and stock. He did not look well, though. His hand trembled around the glass, spilling wine over his knuckles. He was there out of duty, I supposed.
‘By the way, sir, has anyone made themselves known as claimants for the treasure Limmington found by the Liverpool Road?’
‘The money, you mean? He came and consulted me on the matter. I told him to report to you, Cragg, as it may be treasure trove and must go to the King.’
‘That did not turn out to be the case,’ I said. ‘I judged that the gold had been carelessly lost, and that it belonged to its owner, should that person be found or, if not, to its finder – to Limmington.’
‘Not treasure trove, you say?’
I explained, as I often need to do, the true meaning of treasure trove, and then repeated my question.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I have had no application of that kind. I do remember the vicar making an appeal in the church one Sunday. No one came forward.’
Another mourner approached to speak to the old man, and I took the chance to detach myself and to speak with the widow. I introduced myself and expressed my condolence, to which she gave a haughty reply.
‘You need not express these sentiments to me, Mr Cragg. It is widely known that I had left Mr Limmington as he was no longer capable of supporting me. I’ve now been told he found a large sum of money just recently only to lose it again, along with his life. That is Limmington in a nutshell. A man who lost everything he ever had, including me. I live with my sister now and we have had an extremely trying journey coming here.’
‘Oh?’
‘The rebels were all over the road. They invaded Macclesfield – invaded, yes, it is the only possible term – on Sunday night until Tuesday morning when they headed away to the south. But their camp followers made such a crowd even on Tuesday that it was impossible to get on the road without extreme difficulty. I am exhausted, but I insisted we fight our way through because I see an attorney tomorrow who will sell the house for me.’
So the rebels had passed Macclesfield and had evidently still fought no battle with the Duke of Cumberland. Had they eluded him? Were they marching on to London? I put the question aside in favour of another, less momentous one.
‘May I ask about Mr Limmington’s servant, madam? I mean the housekeeper Griselda.’
Mrs Limmington’s back visibly stiffened.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Something of the woman’s history. How long has she served the family?’
‘Twenty years. I would have dismissed her after three, but Limmington would keep her.’
‘Was she a widow when she first came to you?’
‘Pretended to be, but I doubt she was ever married. She is a hussy and the boy is a bastard, I warrant it.’
‘The boy?’
‘Her son. He was an ugly disobedient child and is no doubt an ugly disobedient adult.’
‘When I questioned her, she said nothing of having a son. Do you know where he is?’
‘He went into service. I forget where. I am not much interested.’
I had intended to ask Mrs Limmington if there were any details of the inquest on which I could enlighten her. But I saw there would be none. Anyone less like a grieving widow was hard to imagine.
Shortly after this conversation I made my excuses and left to go home, or at least to go to the office. In those first days of December, as the weather continued cold with much frost, though no more snow, Furzey and I were picking up the threads of my legal practice. I was therefore deep in business every day, which distracted me from my sorrows at home, where Elizabeth continued to mope. More than once I found her in tears, or on the edge of tears. She would hear no questions from me about this and each time left the room without a word.
I had not mentioned it to anyone and found the burden hard to bear. I did not think my wife was punishing me, unless it was for not completely understanding what she was feeling. Then, at the end of the week that had begun with the Limmington inquest, she told me she would go to stay with her parents at Broughton, and that Hector would go with her. Matty would look after me. She did not place a term on her absence.
The next morning she was gone.
SEVENTEEN
The house seemed desolate and I continually sought business – if not in the office, then elsewhere. The work on old Entwhistle’s will had long been concluded, but now I received an invitation to dinner from the Parkinsons to look over their enhanced collection of Jacobite objects, and to approve how Entwhistle’s items complemented the rest. It was not something I wanted very much to do, but I went for no better reason than to escape the cheerlessness at home.
Catherine Parkinson greeted me happily. She enquired after Elizabeth, in a voice hinting that people around town were beginning to wonder at our estrangement. I merely said her mother was unwell (which actually was true) and that Elizabeth needed to be by her side. I was then taken into the parlour where the sacred objects were displayed in a glass-topped case. I recognized the things Entwhistle had bequeathed – the medals, an engraved glass cup, a lock of hair said to have been snipped from the Old Pretender’s head as a boy, and so on. To my eyes, the hair, in particular, was difficult to be excited about, although Catherine was ecstatic.
‘Do you see?’ she exclaimed. ‘It lies next to our own lock of the King’s hair, taken much more recently. It is moving indeed to mark his progression from the soft, curly darling locks of a boy to the wise and grizzled hair that he now possesses. Oh! It is like a biography in itself!’
Her husband came in from his chandlery and we sat down to dinner. Jonathan talked gloomily of tallow prices, the near impossibility of obtaining high-quality wax, and the badness of oil lamps which (he said) smoked, smelled and burned down houses.
‘The oil lamp is a murderer, Mr Cragg. An arsonist, you might say, and a poisoner of the air, and if I were in charge of the laws of England, I would collect up every one of ’em and send them to the Frenchies!’
‘A good idea, Jonathan, very fitting,’ I said, though I could not see why his odiferous candles gave any advantage in terms of cleanliness or safety. However, Jonathan Parkinson was renowned in Preston for being regularly tedious on this subject and I avoided any demurral for fear of elongating his rant.
If her husband was a long-faced merchant of complaint, Catherine Parkinson was full of life. She refused to acknowledge the dark side of anything.
‘The Chevalier is in Derby,’ she said. ‘By now he is probably on his way to reduce London. It is so exciting. They say Lord George outfoxed the Duke of Cumberland by pretending to march into Cheshire, then veering back to join the Prince in Derbyshire. It is all going so well. In Manchester hundreds of men joined the colours and are formed into the Manchester Regiment under Colonel Towneley, who is a brave soldier that served in the army of King Louis. We were lucky enough to have had some soldiers in our house for two nights. Officers, of course, though not very senior. I expect you had a general in your fine house, Mr Cragg.’
‘A captain and, um, a colonel, I think he was.’
I said nothing more about this colonel or his comportment as our guest.
‘And did you see His Highness at all?’
‘A distant view of him, merely. He looked pleasant. Very young.’
‘He is so handsome when you see him close to. I fought my way to the front of the crowd when he issued the proclamation, and I touched his hand. Oh! Gooseflesh, Mr Cragg! I was covered in it. He has so many admirers amongst us ladies. I wonder if he has a particular love amongst all
of them. Miss Cameron, of course, is very assiduous to him, so they say. Do you know the story of how she was sent by her uncle with a quantity of cattle and barrels of whisky as tribute to him? When she arrived at his tent, she leaped from her horse and told him she was come like the Queen of Sheba to drink at King Soloman’s fount of wisdom. He received her with great gallantry, but I do not know if they have become lovers.’
‘Of course they have not, woman,’ growled Jonathan. ‘The Chevalier has no time for such dalliances. He is inured to the hard soldiering life. He must be pure like Sir Galahad.’
Catherine was indignant at this.
‘Well, it is a fact, husband, that he is a fine dancer and musician who plays with special skill upon the bass viol. “If music be the food of love”, you know? Even a soldier must have his tender moments. Mr Cragg, have you seen the new picture of him that has been circulating?’
She rose and went out, coming back with the picture.
‘I have it already framed, see?’
I looked carefully at the print, which was no more than a foot in height, yet there was a liveliness about it. The Prince wore civilian clothing and a star and sash, but the emblems surrounding him were martial – a helmet, sword and so on. The motto inscribed below the portrait was Everso missus succurrere seclo.
‘Do you remember, Catherine?’ I said, pointing to the inscription. ‘The words are from the poem of Virgil that we spoke of before: “sent to set right the upturned age”. The medals that came from Entwhistle, which you have in your glass case, carry allusions to the same passage.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember. Wasn’t there something about a young man – the Chevalier himself, of course – coming to do that business?’
‘That’s right. Virgil asks the gods not to prevent the young man – in reality, he means the young Emperor Augustus – from saving the nation.’
‘Well, that is what is going on now – is it not, Mr Parkinson?’
She asked the latter question very sharply, for Jonathan had fallen asleep in his chair.
‘Now, Mr Cragg, sir, you must take a glass of hot brandy and sugar to see you home on this cold night.’
While she was out of the room, I had another drab conversation with the candlemaker about the dearth of best Italian wicking thread, the importation of which (he explained at some length) had been impeded by warfare on the Continent. At last his wife returned with my drink, and took a chapbook from her apron pocket, which she put into my hand.
‘It’s just that I thought, as you’re so kindly translating the Latin for us, you would like another book of poetry touching on the Prince.’
The pamphlet was crudely enough printed, and with a very different portrait from the one I had just been looking at. It was a simple woodblock of a lad with long, wavy hair under a Quaker hat, his eyes much too large for the face, and the beard writhing on his chin like a family of snakes. The title printed beneath told me who it was supposed to be: The Prophecies of Robert Nixon concerning the New Order that will be Made with the Coming of the True King into his Own.
I turned the pages, looking without much enthusiasm over the many lines of doggerel verse.
‘Listen to this!’ cried Catherine. ‘Could this be more exact concerning the Scotch army?’
She took the pamphlet back and read aloud.
The pipes will pipe and the drums rattle
Till they shall win the final battle.
‘Ah, Mr Cragg,’ said Catherine, as her face assumed an angelic look of pleasure. ‘That is true poetry, true inspiration.’
She pressed the book back into my hand.
‘Take it home with you, do.’
Fifteen minutes later I was letting myself into my house. In lieu of taking Suez for his nightly walk, I let him into the garden, to run up and down its narrow length a few times. Then I took him into my library and stoked the fire. The dog lay down before the flames as, taking Catherine’s pamphlet from my pocket, I found the place she had quoted from, to see how it continued. I read:
With snow on their hats the Scotch shall come
With eery pipe and dreadful drum.
The pipes will pipe and the drums will rattle
Till they shall win the final battle
But only rule in England here
One day more than half a year.
Then shall the King from Avalon
Ride home and all our sorrows be done.
The metre was lumpy, and the sentiment at the end – well, ‘the chance of that carries no fat’, as Gilliflower my barber was fond of saying. I looked to see if the chapbook provided its date of publication. It didn’t. But I would have been very surprised if a man called Robert Nixon, who may (or may not) have lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth, ever wrote those exact words. He may (or may not) have written some approximations to them, or some of them, but as I turned the pages, I found that these ‘prophecies’ looked on the whole like the concoctions of London’s Grub Street, where they know how to give John and Jenny Bull just what they want to read at any given moment. Some of those distinguished authors were university men, which might account for the odd passable bit of poetry in the chapbook – phrases such as ‘eery pipe and dreadful drum’, which I rather liked. But most of what I saw was poetical dross.
Until I came to four lines that suddenly almost stopped my heart.
A crow atop a headless cross
Is rape and murder and fell loss.
The day shall wane, the crow shall fly,
And never tell us why.
I read these four lines once, and again, and a third time. I sat for a while staring into the air. Then, after stoking the fire and shutting up the dog, I went upstairs with a pensive tread, the four lines still ringing in my mind. I felt real ill-omen in them, something dark which made me afraid. Something that would, I knew, prevent my sleeping for some time that night.
The next morning, not greatly to my surprise, James Barrowclough returned to the attack. His messenger, Richard Rudgewick, entered the office with a look of grim determination.
‘My client has asked me to draw up a writ of slander against you, sir.’
‘He cannot still be sore about the Ribchester inquest, Rudgewick,’ I said mildly. ‘You know quite well my questions were not by any means slanderous. Indeed, I doubt whether a question can constitute a slander, since it comes out of uncertainty, of not knowing, whereas a slander is a false statement that masquerades as the truth.’
‘If that is your best defence, I am sorry for you, Cragg. Your “I put it to you” and your “Is it not the case?” were suggestions of what you wished people to believe about my client, but in fact were not true. Therefore, these insinuations falsely brought into question my client’s integrity. That is a slander by any measure.’
He drew a small bundle of documents, sealed and folded together, and insolently dropped it on my writing table.
‘You are therefore summoned to answer before the Duchy of Lancaster civil court at nine o’clock on Tuesday next.’
Barrowclough and Rudgewick’s use of the Duchy court, rather than before the Mayor of Preston, was because my supposed slander had happened out of town. I picked up the writ.
‘Very well, Rudgewick,’ I said. ‘Let battle commence.’
When the lawyer had slid out of the room, Furzey and I opened the writ of slander. It contained among other things a partial transcript of my questions to Barrowclough at the Ribchester inquest, and copies of affidavits from two witnesses who had heard me speak the offending words. The originals of these would have been submitted to the court and were being held by the presiding judge.
‘You have an excellent case,’ Furzey told me, then started to jerk his head back spasmodically until he sneezed in a great splutter.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘A cold is coming. A bad one, I expect.’
‘My sympathies. Go on. How do you think I should argue the case?’
‘You simply make it a point of court pr
ivilege – that a coroner’s questions and remarks in the course of an inquest, just like those of a judge in a trial, cannot by custom be held against him personally. That will shut the case down entirely. The judge will stop it.’
‘Will he? You know perfectly well that the law is vague and even the status of the inquest is unclear. It’s governed by tradition and precedent. Do I, in fact, have the same legal protection as a judge in quarter sessions? I am not at all sure. What if Rudgewick has unearthed some case pursued under Henry the Eighth where a coroner was indeed successfully had up in this way?’
‘I know of no such case.’
That was some consolation as Furzey knew ten Almanacks’ worth of information about coroners and the law.
‘Very well, we’ll begin with that as a first line of defence. I see one of these affidavits is by Abel Grant. There seems to be nothing he won’t do to serve his master. We had better apply to the judge to see the originals of both these, and make sure our copies agree with them. Will you go in and do that on Monday?’
I wished I could talk it over with Elizabeth, whose good sense normally kept me from any gross errors of judgement. But whatever you might call this time in our marriage, it would not be ‘normal’. I went instead to meet Luke Fidelis that evening at the Turk’s Head.
‘I am being sued for slander by Barrowclough,’ I said as soon as I walked in. ‘He has taken exception to my suggestion that he killed the two Highlanders and cut off their heads. The hearing is the day after tomorrow, at the Duchy court.’
Luke pushed a pipe towards me across the table and poured me a glass of wine.
‘You look haggard, Titus. Are you afraid you may lose? It would not be any way just if you did.’
‘I am grateful for your loyalty, Luke.’
‘How will you mount your defence?’
‘I will fight on the grounds that a coroner’s public interrogations are privileged.’
Fidelis considered this for a moment while drawing on his pipe.
‘Titus, I believe you should plead justification,’ he said at last. ‘Think of it in this way: by suing you, Barrowclough is taking a great risk. We both consider he was implicated in the Highlanders’ deaths, but because no one will talk, we cannot prove it. Here is a chance to put him on trial in front of a judge. It is a golden opportunity to find out what happened. Don’t forget you almost suffered military execution on account of that inquest. You must want to know the true state of affairs.’
