This is supposed to be a mere device. Levellers in communication with Royalists. Royalists in communication with Levellers. What wasps’ nest have I kicked?
‘Teach, I’m bored of the politicians. I’ve a fancy for a yarn.’ Teach, crammed into a wooden chair across the fireplace, waited. He was leaner since his time in Ireland. ‘What happened in Doncaster? With that man Rainsborough? I heard you had a hand.’
Shay’s second hearing of the death of Colonel Thomas Rainsborough was in a slumped excuse for a tavern, in an unnamed Scottish hamlet.
‘That?’ Miles Teach shifted uncomfortably, and then shrugged, dismissive. ‘Wholly reckless, and it hardly changed the war, did it? Something for the young bloods to feel better about themselves – siege eats at a man, d’you know? – and it rattled the enemy.’
‘I heard you helped to plan it.’
Again the uncomfortable shrug. Then a deliberate shake of the head. ‘One of the Pauldens thought of it. William. Clever man.’
‘You said two or three of you had the secret channel to the outside. Him?’
A nod. ‘Yes. The other Paulden – Thomas – he knew enough of things too. He got away, I think? Abroad?’ Shay nodded. ‘William Paulden’s idea and plan. Kidnap Rainsborough and—’
‘Kidnap him?’ Shay was forward, startled. ‘Not kill?’
‘No. It wasn’t intended, anyway.’
‘I’d not thought. I’d just assumed it was a sortie, a revenging.’
‘Lot of the men in Pontefract had been Marmaduke Langdale’s troops, and they’d heard he’d been taken after Preston. Someone – don’t know – had the wild idea of doing something to force Parliament to release him. This became kidnapping Rainsborough.’ Teach watched the effect of his words. ‘A nonsense, I guess. Doubt politics works like that. And men don’t kidnap easily.’
‘As you found.’ A grunt from Teach. ‘What happened?’
Teach shrugged. ‘Like the Swedes used to say. “Reality happened.”’ Shay smiled instinctively. ‘We rode in. Surprised the pickets and the gate. Got to his billet – an inn—’
‘Wait – who did what?’
‘We’d split up. We were four at the inn – William Paulden was scouting around – and Thomas Paulden went on immediately to spy the road. That left myself, and. . . Austwick – he was the regular military man in the thing, commanding type – and a lad.’
‘Blackburn. Cornet Blackburn.’
‘Mm. I’d a ruse about having a message for this Rainsborough, and that got us in. The lad held the horses, Austwick took me upstairs and we rooted out Rainsborough. His Adjutant too. Got them into the yard again and out into the street.’ Just two men. ‘Then it got out of hand.’
‘How?’
Teach scowled. ‘Shay, you know the skirmish better than most men living. Frightened men happened. Angry men, excited men. Everyone’s blood up. Hot words. Rainsborough resisted. Or perhaps it was his man. One or both of them lashed out. Then there was a pistol – not Rainsborough, the other, his Lieutenant – he had a pistol suddenly – a regular scuffle and . . .’ He shrugged. ‘No choice. Middle of an enemy camp. No time for a brawl or a parley.’
‘You killed them both?’
It wasn’t a question one asked, and they both knew it. Teach looked faintly bitter. ‘I don’t think I did for Rainsborough; I make no boast either way. That was Austwick, I think. The other? I don’t know. Perhaps.’
Shay knew he’d gone too far, and felt uneasy at his own strange obsession with the story. ‘As you say,’ he murmured. ‘A bit of recklessness. But we’ve few enough heroics. Folk’ll take them where they find them.’
Teach grunted and looked away. Shay was amused for an instant, and then lost again. I have learned nothing of this. These facts, the men and the deaths, are nothing.
Four men came to the inn, and were still alive: Thomas Paulden, Teach, Austwick and Blackburn. He’d found two so far.
The letter was still in his pocket. Astbury’s strange interest in Pontefract, and the Levellers and Rainsborough. Rainsborough is to be kidnapped. Rainsborough is killed. Where is the truth in this?
The garden at Chelsea had exploded into colour. When Thurloe stepped up from the river, the silvered black of shrivelled winter had become yellows and reds and mysterious gradations of purple, with an undergrowth of all the greens. Sir Theodore de Mayerne’s garden was an encyclopedia of herbs and shrubs, and now that it was fully awake Thurloe saw more clearly the meticulous ordering. It seemed too that the rich smells, crammed together in the corridor in his previous visit, had now been taken out and spread over the garden, fresher now and in their proper places.
The old man was sitting in a chair on the path, well-wrapped despite the July heat, head slumped, silent and staring into his horticultural world. For a moment Thurloe wondered if he might be dead. Then the two eyebrows rose slowly up the dome, and the eyes fixed Thurloe and waited.
Thurloe said, ‘A man named Duncan Campbell will visit you. He is troubled by irregularities and excitements in his heart rhythm. Duncan Campbell is factor in London for Archibald Campbell.’
Silence. Then Mayerne’s mouth flickered. ‘The Marquess of Argyll?’
‘He.’
‘The Campbell land is. . . in the west of Scotland, I think.’
‘Yes. I don’t know about mining there, but I understand that also you have an interest in oysters; Argyll has substantial estates on the Clyde.’
The heavy face bulged up in a smile, and Mayerne’s eyes disappeared for a moment. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is most thoughtful of you, young man.’ The eyes reappeared, sharp and shrewd. ‘How may I oblige you today?’
Thurloe was caught in a deep breath. ‘This garden is a miraculous place.’
‘No, Master Thurloe; quite the opposite.’ A shudder, and the head shifted forward. ‘It is a supremely rational place. While men like you burn Europe with your hysterias of religion and politics, men like me are creating places like this together. Did you come here to debate which of us will leave more to future centuries?’
‘In your secret diplomacy in the Stuart Court, did you meet a man named Shay?’
The eyebrows rode up again. ‘Shay.’ And dropped. ‘No. I do not. . .’ The eyes closed. ‘The name, though. . .’
Thurloe waited.
‘Somehow in connection with. . . Wallenstein. His murder in 163. . . 3 was it? 1634? Bohemia. Somehow I remember the name Shay in that connection.’
‘This Shay was – one of the killers? He would have been on the side of—’
‘The side?’ The great body heaved. ‘Young man, you have the silliest idea of European politics.’ Mayerne’s head slumped. Thurloe waited, uncomfortable. ‘But no. . . No. . . Shay though.’ The faint eyebrow bristles, slowly up again. ‘I remember a Shay. A woman.’
‘A woman?’
‘In the 1630s I was guest on three occasions with a young man in Oxfordshire. A troubled soul; a very worthy chevalier of the intellect. He attracted to that place many very civilized, open minds. Scholars. Poets. Churchmen. Travellers. Natural philosophers. Devotees of Erasmus and sympathizers of Grotius.’ Thurloe was struggling. Always there is a world behind the world. ‘I met once – twice – a woman named Shay there. A careful, piercing intellect, and quite the better of any of the men. You should speak to. . . but my so ancient brain will not. . .’
Thurloe waited. Beyond the walls of this garden is a world of battles and tortures and conspiracies.
‘Another. She was less interested in the debates, but she knew everyone. But everyone. Most charming, and apparently in the company of every faction of the Court. If you could ever meet her. . .’ The eyes had disappeared again. ‘But I have it! Constance Blythe. Constance Blythe.’ The repetition was slow; the first name emerged as if French, the surname as a squawked attempt at the vowel.
‘Constance Blythe. Thank you, Sir Theodore.’
‘I’m obliged to you for your Scotchman, young man. Let us continue in correspondence.
’ And Thurloe left him, slumped in his carefully ordered paradise.
Sir Mortimer Shay and Lady Constance Blythe stood on the edge of an Edinburgh hall, silent, and watching the cautious courtesies of the men and women around them as they felt their way into conversations.
It was a tentative time: new loyalties being tested and doubted; old enmities being swallowed, bitter and uneasy. The English Royalists who had come back from exile wore their fineries to impress, light laces and bright colours, and felt cold and uncomfortable among the more staid formal clothes of the Scots. Laughs came hesitant, and every glance was reviewed for meaning. Shay watched it all bleakly.
Lady Constance said, ‘Tell me you’re busy, Shay. Tell me you gallop through the night on quests of passion and revenge. Tell me this cause is worth something.’
‘As it happens, I have some instructions to send tonight. Whatever success the King has with the Scots, he will need his supporters in England to rise. Will that do?’
She was watching him, and smiling. ‘Actually, it might.’ She turned to face the hall again. ‘You remember Jasper Fylde? I was thinking of him just now.’
Shay shook his head, indifferent. ‘No.’
‘Of course you don’t. Dead these twenty years. And Tom Blayne, about the same time. And John Egerton, who died at – which battle was it? And Hoxton, who was killed with you in Germany. Can you imagine what it’s like to know that all the men you’ve bedded are dead? I longed to be sweetness, and I find I am disease.’
‘There are men enough left, Con; and you’re as handsome as ever.’
She glanced at him with something like pity. ‘Bless you for that, Shay. Shall we grow ancient together? A great boar and a fat sow in the corner of the farmyard, sustaining ourselves on turnips and some unconscious memory of pleasure? Idle shrivelled brains, and idle shrivelled privates. But no. You’ll be away to some meadow, where Meg is always spring.’
She looked out into the drifting figures. ‘And what of me now? Am I supposed to be their memorial? Here lieth. . . none any more, because they’re all dead.’
A snicker of laughter near them. She glanced at it, and gave a little frown of distaste. ‘Think of it. Life was fruit, and jewels, and music, and a generation of beautiful men. I danced and sang whole years away. We were golden and glorious, all of us.’
‘We were rancid, petty and foolish.’ He smiled roughly. ‘We lived our every hour, though.’
‘Like gilded cattle before the slaughter.’
‘You were too wise for that, Con.’
‘Not wise. Never wise. But I had brain enough to be useful to you and your predecessors.’
Shay nodded into the room. ‘This is the field where I must fight my battle. Tell me of it.’
She sniffed. ‘A marsh. Little firm ground to be had. There are some who are sincere in their religion, but they know that the King’s adherence to that cause is political only, and so they will use him politically. The old soldiers are true enough. Leslie. Leven. They’re obliged to play at politics but they are not political. Don’t let your sympathy over-account their influence. You cannot trust Argyll too little. A heart so shrunken by thirst, and by betrayal, that he is become ambition only. A beast of survival. His mother was a Douglas, royal blood on both sides though not always the right side of the blanket. For Argyll, and for Hamilton, even though he’s a solider man than his dead brother, the little difficulties of the Stuarts are just a distraction from older squabbles.’
‘And the English here?’
‘Fisher. Booth.’ A little shrug. ‘Wilmot’s true. Apt to try to be cleverer than his brain would stand, and to drink more than his manhood would stand. He tried to make a peace with the Parliamentarians in ’43. No, ’44, of course. Taylor. Percy. . . Percy thought he was going to marry Lady Margaret Soane, but Fisher beat him to it. 163. . . 8.’
Shay watched the hard lost eyes. ‘Good. Something else. Last year, Parliament sold all of the royal pictures. Vast amount of money. There were a handful of men doing most of the buying. Huygens. Javach. Le Blon – I think he was fronting for Swed—’
‘For Golden Christina, yes, he would have been.’
‘And Kenyon. Martin Kenyon.’
‘Kenyon.’ The eyes flickered, and were still. Shay waited. ‘Helped to arrange the King’s visit to Madrid in 1623.’
‘So buying for Spain.’
‘Perhaps. Not the one to worry about. Javach – Jabach, actually – he’ll have had the private suppers with the Parliament men, if they’ve sense. Lives in France, works for Mazarin. If there was politics among the pictures, it was him.’ Again she focused on the people in front of them. ‘Look at us!’ She shivered for effect. ‘Such desperate, wheedling men now. Ralph Fortescue once hid a pearl in his cuff and let it drop into my hand, and the next day sent the most elaborately dirty poem on the theme. Last night a man took my hand to kiss it and he actually left crumbs in my palm. Desperate.’
Shay grunted. ‘I grant, I look at some of these political men and wonder why I bother.’
Constance Blythe’s surprise was genuine, though the voice stayed low. ‘But you don’t do it for any of us, surely. Truly, Mortimer, I would die of ecstasy if I thought that I was in your mind as you fought your wars across Europe, or as you carved your way through this island doing. . . whatever you do. But you’re no Lancelot. It’s not for one sad old whore, or for any of these painted relics. Not even for Meg. You do it because it is you.’
Shay was staring bleak across the room. ‘And what do you offer me at the end, Con? What is my rest or reward? Is that all I am ever to be – an eternal destruction?’
‘We must live what we are, Shay. There is nothing else.’
TO MR I. S., AT THE ANGEL, IN DONCASTER
Sir,
I was heartily glad to hear from you, and relieved that you yet endure these turbulent times in fair health. I know not what to make of the goings between Leveller and Royalist: it is plain that the men trapped in Pontefract had contact with the world outside by divers privy means, but with whom I cannot say.
I am now established in Edinburgh, which is a very pit of politics, with every man jostling for his interest and his private advantage, so that I do think myself glad when most solitary, or in the company of the meanest servant rather than one of the Court men. No doubt, though, the Royal party is in the ascendant, and the more belligerent of the King’s interest are become very cocksure accordingly. There is still some hedging and cavilling by the leaders of the Scottish Church, but all know it for mere posture and performance, intended to get the best bargain they may. All know that they will come round to public support of the young King Charles, and with the levies, who already perform prodigiously under the guidance of veteran sergeants of our own late conflicts and those in the Continent, looking most warlike, there is such a general enthusiasm for battle that it does quite chill me. The defences of this place are vast, with many unchristian tricks and traps laid for those who would attack.
You will understand that communication with me in Edinburgh may be difficult. But there is a lad who goes to and fro Galashiels, and if you were to write to me at Macrae’s at that place your words may chance to reach me, and would bring pleasure if they did.
[SS C/T/50/63]
‘It looks too hard a nut, gentlemen.’ Cromwell, hot and hard-breathing like the horse from which he’d just descended, thick hair plastered to his head from the steady drizzle, was already talking as he approached. Lambert, his second-in-command, and Scot and Thurloe turned and gathered as he joined them under the tent awning. ‘We went as close to the city as respect for providence would allow, and the lines are well-made. I won’t risk good men against them.’ He ran a hand through his sodden hair, and looked at the three of them.
Scot, obviously disappointed at the possibility of withdrawal, said, ‘I regret that I have not better information to offer from inside the city.’
Thurloe said, quietly, ‘I hear that the lines are strong, and the men enth
usiastic to fight.’
Cromwell’s face twisted in a silent growl at him, and then he nodded. ‘One last demonstration to try to tempt them out. If that fails, we must withdraw for a spell. The men are drowning in this rain to no purpose, and the Scots left us a desert to feed on. Lambert?’
‘I agree, General.’
‘Well then. Colonels to me in one half-hour.’ Lambert grunted acknowledgement and stamped off into the rain. ‘Thurloe: you have a friend inside the walls?’
Thurloe nodded slightly. ‘A correspondent.’
‘I cannot find cracks in their barricades, but their alliance is loose enough. Can’t we play on that a little? Can’t the more reasonable men be helped to understand that we are not their enemy?’
TO MR J. H., AT MACRAE’S IN GALASHIELS
Sir,
I was obliged on an errand to ride to be with the Army, so we may temporarily have been closer than you imagined when you wrote. I shall be spending time at Newcastle, and you might write to me at the George, in that place.
You will have seen and, perhaps, as I did, been contented at the more pacific posture of General Cromwell these last days. It seems he does not wish to spend the lives of men in fighting other men so close in nature and sympathy. He is wont to talk of the Godliness of many of the leaders of the Scottish Church party, and I think he truly regrets that they came close to battle. We must hope that events give breath and nourishment to this side of his nature, and thereby give us all hope for some kind of reconciliation. It is well known here how suspicious the Church leaders are of the young Charles Stuart – many of the preachers in the camps are Edinburgh men, and their language is most unchristian on the subject of the prince and his friends.
I do not wonder at your discomforts, caught up among these divided and fratricidal factions, and wish only that you may come through with your spirit unaffected.
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