The King's List

by Peter Ransley

  15

  I would have questioned Gilbert, Luke’s personal servant, but he was out, no one knew where. His absence alarmed me enough to think of putting a discreet guard at the reception in case Luke attempted to leave, but I dismissed it. It would be round the servants within minutes and I feared it would destroy what remained of the relationship between us. Already I was cursing myself for being too heavy-handed. I still could not believe he was a spy, but he had reacted with dismay when I told him the courier carrying the letter to Monck had been murdered. Because he had seen the letter and told someone? And where had he seen that list?

  Instead of a guard I went to speak to the ostler, whose discretion I could rely on. But he had slipped on the ice and was suffering a bad sprain or fracture and was waiting for the doctor. I was reluctant to give Scogman the role because of the animosity between them but had no choice. He was only too ready to do it and was oddly comforting.

  ‘He ain’t a spy, sir. I can smell ’em and my nose says he ain’t a spy.’

  I was astonished. ‘But you were convinced of it! You told me!’

  He sniffed. ‘You can be convinced of anything when a man treats you like shit. He thinks I’m rabble. Something that should be thrown out for the scavengers. That’s why he spied on me. But you’re a Stonehouse. He’d fight you, but he wouldn’t cheat you or grass you. Ever since you fought that duel he’s thought the world of you.’

  ‘But you told me he followed Mr Cole! Knocked him over!’

  ‘Well, it was confusing, sir. Dark in that corridor. Maybe I was over-anxious to be believed after her ladyship gave me the boot. Maybe Mr Cole had some kind of a fit and Mr Luke caught him.’

  ‘But he read that letter?’

  ‘Oh, he did that all right, sir. As soon as he had got Mr Cole comfortable and called the servants he grabbed the letter. He was shocked, sir. His face went as white as this snow.’

  I was more confused than ever. What did he see in a list of jewellery? He knew what I did, guessed it was coded. But what did he see that shocked him?

  When I returned to the house I found Anne had tried to speak to Luke but he had locked himself in his room. From it came the familiar, musky smell of the laudanum he took to ease his cough. It also made him feel drowsy and she had decided to let him sleep.

  She came into my study and I told her what had happened. In her brightening of the house it was the only part she had not touched. She rarely came in here. While I spoke she stared at the carpet where Luke had stood. His foot must have caught in it, for there was a tear through which you could see the boards.

  ‘I was wrong about him,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, no. You weren’t wrong. Not entirely.’

  ‘He lied to you. He’s been working with the Royalists.’ She now seemed more intent on condemning him than I did.

  ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I mean, Anne.’

  The coals shifted and several fell in the grate. I snatched them up and dropped them back in the fire. From the street came a faint crunching sound. I peered through the window but could see nothing.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I thought I heard someone.’

  ‘So did I.’

  She clutched at my arm. It was an animal reaction neither of us had felt for years, when you lived from day to day, hour to hour, not knowing what was happening, who was round the next corner, where you would lay your head that night, even if you would lay it anywhere at all.

  ‘Is it happening?’ Her voice was as sharp as ice cracking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The King.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What does Thurloe think?’

  ‘I don’t know about Thurloe.’

  ‘What do you mean – you don’t know about Thurloe?’

  ‘Anne – I don’t know why I don’t know about Thurloe!’

  There was the same crunching noise, sharper now, at the same time as a metallic click which sounded like the dog lock of a pistol. I pulled Anne away from the window.

  From the shadow of a tree a man emerged. I could not see much at first because of his wide-brimmed hat. There was a glint of metal in the moonlight. He put back the instrument he had dropped in the open bag he was carrying and crunched slowly over the snow towards the stables.

  ‘The apothecary. Come to treat the ostler’s leg.’

  She pressed her head against my chest, shaking like me from relief as much as laughter.

  After all the anticipation, the embellishments, the careful studying of women and their humours, the insidious dangers of their bloody flowers, the lover’s agonising of wanting her soul as well as her body, I took her like a whore in an alleyway. Or she took me.

  For so long I had satisfied my animal needs in such low company that I had forgot how well defended the respectable woman was. Even widows morally beyond reproach who wished to re-enter society with a man had to make their underskirts reasonably accessible. The front panel of Anne’s skirt was an easy entrance, but I got lost and more and more frantic in the maze of petticoats, then, when I did get through, was completely blocked by the keep of her busk, as rock-stiff as I was, a solid wall from her belly to her honour.

  To my amazement she thrust me to one side. I had forgot that before she was Lady Stonehouse she was Anne Black, with a calculation in these matters you would normally find only in a woman south of London Bridge. With short, crisp movements, she unlaced the busk. The sharp snaps of the lace sent me even further aloft. Her belly, save for the weal-like marks the busk left, was as smooth as a young girl in spite of the two children – or three if she was to be believed – who had passed through it. Her smell intoxicated me, the sweet clinging musk released by her clothes, cut by the unexpectedly rank odour of her sweat. Her look, as slippery as her bush, drove me into a frenzy of ineptness and impatience. It went from mockery, to hunger, to desperation, to love, to hate, to tenderness, to violence that one moment threw me into a daze, the next maddened me. Clumsy as a boy, I fumbled to enter her. Her hands moved to guide me, but at their touch I came. The seed that for months I had been determined to plant inside her pumped on my hand, the carpet, her petticoats – anywhere but in its intended target.

  She began to laugh. I went to push her away. Still she laughed helplessly, pointing at my side. Embedded in the bare flesh was a cinder that had fallen from the fire when I kicked it. It must have been hot, for the skin round it was reddened, but I had not felt it. It clung like a limpet. In a sudden movement she unpicked it, flung it into the fire and kissed the burn, burying her lips deep into my skin. We held each other tightly, in a way I had thought would never happen again. Even the insidious thought that, under the guise of helping me, she had played the old whore’s trick of making me come too soon did not disturb me. Trickery was part of her and if there was deception in her heart pulsing against mine, there was none in the feeling of utter peace that stole over us.

  How long we lay there I do not know. The warmth of the fire was like a blanket over us. Her breathing became more and more shallow and mine began to rise and fall in tune with it. From time to time, as clouds drifted away from the moon, an opalescent light flickered slowly over the room, turning the furniture into strange, dancing shadows.

  A short, sharp cry rang out. She jumped, an eye jerking open, her breathing checked. There was another cry, followed by a dying series of groans. We twisted our heads in unison. The sound came from the stables.

  ‘The ostler having his leg re-set,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. The poor ostler.’ She buried her face back into me. There was a silence, followed by sounds from the stables, comforting rather than disturbing: the clank of a pail, the scrape of a door. There was a protesting, penetrating neigh from one of the horses, which set another one off. A cavalryman in the field listens to his horses in his sleep, for if you lost your horse you lost your legs, and often
enough your life. I tensed and felt her body tighten against me, but the horses settled and we began to slip back into our dream-like state.

  There was a thud of doors bursting open, a snapping clatter of hooves. I scrambled up, falling against the desk as my britches fettered my ankles, yelling at the top of my voice, an almost scream I had not uttered for ten years.

  ‘The horses! See to the horses.’

  In the stable yard servants milled around in confusion. In the whirl of mashed-up snow it was impossible to see what horses had been taken. The rest had panicked and were rearing and neighing in their stalls. From the darkness inside came spasmodic groans of pain.

  ‘Two of you! The rest check the street. Calm the horses. Bring a light.’

  James brought a lantern, gaping at my half-buttoned shirt, clumsily hitched back on to my britches on the wrong hooks. The light glinted on specks of blood outside the stalls. Two were empty. Luke’s horse had gone, along with Scogman’s. Whoever had stolen them knew his horses. Unless it was Scogman himself. As things were slipping into chaos and anarchy, I could believe anything. Scogman was aggrieved enough and he might have taken Luke’s horse to spite him.

  The groaning came from the other end of the stables. Sprawled outside the door to the tack room was the ostler, face down in the snow. I summoned James. The ostler screamed and writhed as we lifted him. One leg was hanging uselessly. I could feel the movement of the broken bone as I gripped him. I shifted position. He screamed again and we almost dropped him before we managed to get him on a trestle bed in the tack room. Mercifully he passed out. Below a workbench where the ostler had been repairing a saddle, I saw a boot and the familiar black steward’s britches Scogman wore. As I pulled him out from under the bench he aimed a blow at me. I caught his arm. He stared up at me, one eye blinking away blood trickling from a gash at the side of his head. He made a feeble attempt to get to his feet, his voice slurred.

  ‘That … country hick … Gilbert …’

  Luke’s servant. I left him to James and ran back into the house, almost colliding with Anne. She said something but I did not catch it. I could smell the laudanum halfway down the corridor. It grew worse as I approached his room. I had the dreadful fear he had killed himself. It was exactly the sort of thing the idiot would do. Another martyr for the cause of his beloved King, which another fool would write a poem about. I yelled his name, pushed servants to one side and flung myself at the door, swearing to God that he could have his wretched King if only he was still alive. Whether from the strength of fear or rage, or a combination of both, the lock snapped and I spun into the room.

  At first I could see little. The sickly smell of laudanum almost overpowered me. A draught of cold air disturbed the heavy drawn curtains. A brief flash of moonlight lit up a still figure in the bed. On the table next to it was an empty bottle of the drug. That glimpse, before the curtains dropped back into darkness, held a lifetime of regret; regret that we had not come together sooner than we had over that duel; regret that I had pushed him too far; regret that, in the end, far from trusting him too much, I had perhaps not trusted him enough.

  I went to the bed and touched not cold flesh but pillows stuffed under the counterpane. I pulled back the curtains. By this time servants had brought candles. They illuminated sheets knotted to the bed-head, passing through the open window. The makeshift rope had not been long enough, leaving a considerable drop to the roof of the stables, which depended on a steady nerve and sure feet. He was unlikely to have taken the laudanum. I found it poured into a saucer near the door, the thick odour seeping beneath it suggesting to anyone outside he was in a deep sleep. Perhaps, in the confrontation in my study, he had even faked his cough. Near the laudanum was a picture. It was one from the King’s Collection which Anne had never put up; a Van Dyck of the King with Richard. Luke must have got it from the cellar. In a brief, uncontrollable flash of rage I kicked the saucer across the room. If Anne had not stopped me I would have put my boot through the picture.

  16

  The sword belt was old but the sword I buckled into it was new: Flemish steel with a simple shell guard; almost a rapier, but still with a cutting edge. Anne did not know the sword, but she knew the belt. It was an old baldrick, one part going over the shoulder, the other round the waist. Faint traces of a pattern in silver cord long gone were dotted in the dark, sweat-soaked leather. I had taken it from a dead Royalist at Marston Moor. Anne took one look at the belt and said nothing. She knew it was useless.

  Although it froze the whole house, she insisted on having the windows of Luke’s apartment wide open, as if she wanted not only to remove the thick cloying stench of laudanum, but Luke’s whole presence. The draught blew out candles, and kept others dipping this way and that. When I mounted my horse the house looked like a ship rolling crazily in a storm at sea. Scogman, who was more mortified than hurt, insisted on coming with me.

  ‘Women. Children,’ he said. ‘And you wonder why I never take a wife?’

  I told Scogman to take me to Moor’s Coffee House, in which Luke had shown an inordinate amount of interest. Part of me still believed, or wanted to believe him when he said he would have nothing more to do with the Royalists. Then I remembered his reaction when I told him about the murder of the courier I had sent to General Monck. Guilt had been written all over his face. A fresh surge of bitterness ran through me and I kicked my horse forward. The trampled snow down Fleet Street was turning to ice and she slipped and almost threw me. Scogman, who spent much more time in the saddle than I did, came to help me.

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘Horse can’t, sir. Beg your pardon, sir. Knows you’re angry. Thinks it’s with her.’

  I let him talk softly to the horse. It was a kind of ballad, which some people thought came from the Devil, but which I knew came from his time as a horse thief. He not only quietened the horse, he calmed me. It was as if we were in the field again together.

  ‘The Good Old Cause,’ I said.

  He flashed me a toothy grin, in which the moonlight caught a glint of silver wire. As a sign of his increased status, rather than for their chewing capacity, he had replaced his lost teeth with false ones. One of the strange trades that had grown was that in human teeth. After the war there was a plentiful supply.

  ‘The Good Old Cause,’ he said.

  Without another word we rode together down Ludgate Hill, past St Paul’s towering above us like a giant iced cake, catching the smell of the river as we turned into Watling Street.

  The man running the Moor Coffee House smelt as if he had been boiled in his own coffee. His apron was stained with it and grains of it had found their way into his greying beard. While I gave a description of Luke he was constantly in movement, wiping the counter, putting chairs on top of a table, giving hopeful glances towards the last of his customers. There was a man on his own, going over a shipping table, and two merchants arguing heatedly. One, a young man, was for the King coming back. The other, an old man who looked like his father, spat on the floor.

  ‘Never happen! Last one taxed everything in sight – soap, ships. Someone told me this one would tax having a piss. It’s true!’ he said in an aggrieved tone when the other laughed. ‘A privy tax.’

  The man behind the counter gave it another unnecessary wipe and said he had never seen anyone fitting Luke’s description. Customers were mainly merchants and he knew most of them, he said, with another tired glance towards the old man, who looked a permanent fixture in his comfortable chair in a corner by the fire.

  ‘He was a regular customer several months ago,’ Scogman said with an encouraging smile. There was something of a threat in his display of unusually perfect teeth. The man stopped wiping the counter. The old man and his son ceased talking.

  ‘French clothes? About eighteen? Ah, yes. I think I know the fellow you mean. But he hasn’t been in for a long time.’

  On our way out the old man drained his coffee, spitting the grounds on the floor. Scogman went to unhitch
the horses. Next to the coffee house was a timber-framed house, one of a street of similar houses where craftsmen had lived and which merchants had extended upwards by building jetty after jetty dotted with windows which leaned perilously over into the street, as if they were about to fall into it. Out of one of these windows I thought I saw the red jowls of a familiar face – that of Sir Lewis Challoner, the man whose coach had almost run over the Quaker girl. The next moment the face had gone.

  A servant passed one of the lower windows, dousing candles. I told Scogman what I had seen and tried the front door, just as the house steward, with his bunch of keys, was about to lock it. The force of the opening door almost made him drop the keys. He recovered quickly, clenching his fist round the keys, bringing them up as a weapon. Only my hand near my sword stopped him.

  ‘I do beg your pardon, but I believe Sir Lewis Challoner is staying here.’

  ‘You are mistaken, sir. There is no one here of that name. My master is at sea.’ He tried to close the door but Scogman jammed his boot in it.

  ‘Sir Lewis is wanted for questioning by Parliament,’ I said.

  The servant who had been dousing the candles hovered in the background, gripping a candlestick. ‘Have you a warrant, sir?’

  ‘This is my warrant.’ I held out my hand. In the dimness of the hall the jewels on my ring seemed to produce their own light. Its power would not last much longer, but it was sufficient. The steward motioned the servant away and without another word, keys jingling at his belt, led me through that musty, creaking maze of a house, answering my questions civilly but tersely. His master was a navy captain. Mistress and daughter in the country. On the walls were what looked like every ship in the navy. We went from room to room, stumbling over uneven floors and ducking under beams. They were all empty except for one at the top of the house where there was a grumbling maid and her skivvy.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ I heard the maid say as we approached, ‘but we’ll have to do it all over again, mark my –’