Cromwell had dismissed them all with contempt. The last thing he had wanted was for Charles Stuart – he never referred to him as King – to die. If he actually died of the plague, Cromwell said, Europe’s crowned heads would blame him. Let them. Cromwell, as always, was sure God was on his side. Charles Stuart was a fly, he said. Open the window and he would disappear. Unfortunately, Cromwell had disappeared, but not the fly. Thurloe, I recalled, had agreed with Cromwell, but might find it difficult to convince Charles Stuart of this, should he ever cross the Channel.
I coughed. ‘You’ve missed these, Mr Clarkson.’
Clarkson shot up, dropping blackened bits of paper and scooping them up again. His face was drained of colour. ‘Th-thank you.’
As he moved to take them, I withdrew them. ‘Is Mr Thurloe in the country? Or has he left it?’
He gaped at me, his linen, damp from the snow, clinging to his shaking frame. He eased his wet collar away from his throat, as if he feared the noose could tighten round his own neck. ‘I – I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas.’
‘I think you heard what I said.’
He swallowed. ‘In the country.’
‘Where?’
His eyes were fixed on the charred documents. He swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’ I moved to pocket the documents. ‘He made me swear not to tell anyone!’
‘I am not anyone, Mr Clarkson, and if I made these public, both you and he might be wise to leave the country.’
‘He has gone to a cousin’s. Mr Grayson. Radlett. Hertfordshire.’
‘Thank you.’ I crushed and tore up the pieces of paper, displaying some of his obsession to make certain nothing was legible. ‘If these were found, they might not bode well for me either. Be sure you make a better job of it.’
When I rode away Clarkson was cramming the remaining papers in a brazier in the courtyard. Turning into Holborn, I could see those fragments of history disappearing in a rising plume of smoke.
19
‘He was your closest friend,’ Anne said, when I returned. She had slept very little, and was searching Luke’s room, but had found no more indications where he might have gone from the house next to the Moor.
‘Friend? I never saw Thurloe as a friend. We worked closely together. If he was, he would be the first to say there is a limit to any friendship.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘It is why we have broken every rising of the Sealed Knot with scarcely a fight. Every European conspiracy. Every person believes he is different, but everyone lies, or at most withholds the truth. Everyone breaks. Everyone has a limit. Or a price.’
‘You have not solved this conspiracy.’
I shrugged. ‘They got rid of us.’
She stared out of the window from which Luke had made his escape. The tied sheets had been removed and the bed made. ‘Everyone lies, you say … You did not talk like that when I first met you.’
‘I was a young fool. In love.’
She turned to me directly. ‘And you’re not now?’
‘Not young, no.’ I smiled, but she did not return it.
‘Have you ever lied to me?’
‘I may not have told you the whole truth when something did not concern you. Or might hurt you.’
‘I mean lied about something that did concern me, something that might hurt me if I knew?’
I laughed. ‘What is all this? Truth or Die?’
She searched through the pockets of a suit of Luke’s she had been through several times before. ‘Last night … did you mean it?’
‘Yes. Did you?’
‘I want to.’ She put the suit away. ‘I told Luke to spy on you. It was when you changed your will. When you were selling Highpoint.’
‘A patch of land. On the fringes. Scarcely Highpoint.’
She stopped pretending to search and came up to me. She was very calm. Only a pulse, a thin blue vein at the side of her forehead, beat more quickly. ‘Luke thought it was Scogman but I knew that even he would not sell land. You sold it for a kiln. Trade.’ She spoke the word with distaste. Buying property was one thing, trade quite another. ‘Glass?’
‘Natural philosophy.’
‘Is that what this … red-haired boy was doing when Luke saw him at the kiln?’
She knew. It was there in her level gaze, in the slight dwelling on the colour of Sam’s hair, that fiery red that had given me away as a child in a rioting mob, or a forbidden alehouse. ‘Exactly,’ I said, echoing my son Sam’s words. ‘Experiment is at the heart of the new philosophy.’
‘Who is he? A boy, a prentis, Luke said, younger than he is?’
For a second – it felt an hour – I could not speak. Her question was as bald and direct as her confession about Luke’s spying had been. I had wanted her back, and by God I had her back as she was at first in our turbulent relationship, remote and distant one moment, the next raw and bleeding, all her feelings trembling on the surface.
I was on the brink of telling her, of having no secrets, of sharing everything, of complete trust. Then – what was it? That I had trusted Luke, and look what had happened? The suspicion that whatever her feelings for me or Luke it was Highpoint she wanted? Or was it, simply, that dishonesty had become my business?
‘His name is Sam,’ I said coldly. ‘You have been frank with me and I will be just as frank with you. When you refused to have another child –’
The pulse in her forehead looked about to break through her skin. ‘I cannot have more children! Dr Latchford –’
‘Latchford! If I doubled his fee he would tell me the opposite. When you would not go to a doctor of my choice I decided to adopt.’
‘Adopt?’ For the first time she looked uncertain, confused, her clenched hands slackening, plucking at her dress. One day, by chance, I told her, I saw this youth. Sam had violently red hair, just as mine used to be. It was when, I told Anne, we were tearing each other apart, Luke and I scarcely spoke and I had to face that I would have no more children. Sam was bright, full of hope, of a new form of thinking, as clear as the crystal glass he hoped to make. I had not told Anne a story like this since we were children, full of fervour, but laced with a kind of sourness, which she liked, and I was good at telling.
When she rejected me, I said, I took solace in Sam. But our partnership was over. We had parted, and not on good terms. I would never see Sam again. That, at least, was absolutely true. It must have struck her as such, for she flung herself at me with an abandonment she had not shown since the early days of our marriage. It was the kind of release that followed agonised partings and quarrels – I had forgotten the sheer, leaping joy of it. Half a dozen times she tried to speak but tears or laughter stopped her.
At last she got the words out. ‘Oh, Tom! I have been such a fool. I have been driven half crazy by it! I thought … I thought he was your son.’
The next day she rose early and went out. No one knew where. All her maid Agnes could tell me was that she wore a cloak and a velvet mask. She did not take the carriage. I thought everything; she had gone to the City to search for Luke, a dangerous place for a woman alone in the increasing unrest, or to Clerkenwell to see Sam for herself. I became so convinced that was true I was on my horse to ride there when a Hackney came into Queen Street.
She would say nothing until we were alone in her rooms. At first she would not even take off her mask. It was not the ugly full mask, but a very pretty deep-green half-mask which emphasised the curve of her lips, trembling bewitchingly, as she told me to my astonishment that she had been to an even more dangerous place than the City, Spitalfields Without.
She had been to see my old army friend Ben who, to the fury of City doctors like Latchford, practised medicine outside the walls, where the City had no jurisdiction. Doctors called him a quack because he was an apothecary. Anne did not tell him who she was. She asked him if he thought she could have another child. She expected, as was the case with doctors, charm and a high fee. She got neither. She was horrified when he said he w
ould examine her and almost walked out. Latchford would not dream of touching her there – his midwife did that.
Ben shrugged and told her it was always the shepherd that delivered the lambs. The shepherd never interfered unless he had to, and when he did, lore handed from father to son told him how to right the position of the lamb in the womb. There were more human babies lost than lambs. Lambs were money. Food. Children were just another mouth to feed. Would she rather have a shepherd, or a midwife?
She let Ben examine her. It was a risk, he said, a higher than normal risk, but it was possible. Taking the risk depended on how much she wanted another child.
20
There was no word from Luke. However much I searched and enquired, I drew a blank everywhere. I expected renewed grief from Anne. Instead she seemed to dismiss him from her mind whereas I, in the middle of the night, awoke to wonder if I had misjudged him. He could have got away when Scogman had challenged him. But he had stayed to warn me, putting himself in jeopardy.
Anne had his rooms cleared, and the boots and doublets he loved sold to the carter who collected from houses where someone had died. Gradually it became apparent that she wanted the room to be a new nursery.
Perversely it was Anne who now craved another child while I drew back. It was the worst of times to bring a child into the world. Lambert’s army, the only one between Monck and London, had collapsed. Still no one knew which side Monck was on. I found out from Ben that the risks for her having a child were even greater than she had told me.
‘She is driven by the estate, by Highpoint,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if she wants a child, or an heir.’
I tried to reason with her but it was swept away by her energy, her sense of purpose, of direction where everyone else seemed adrift. She even breathed life into the Good Old Cause. It was the only way in which she could keep Highpoint. For the first time for years we were together, in hearts and minds. By the time Monck had reached Barnet, half a day’s ride from London, we had put together a list of seats which would expand the Rump to a full Parliament, with places open for both republicans and Royalists. The only proviso – our safeguard – was that candidates would swear an oath renouncing the King and the House of Lords. To our delight, Parliament’s leader Haselrig said he would put it to the vote.
The riots grew worse. Apprentices, who hated the Rump, thrust their arses at constables and shouted, ‘Kiss my Parliament!’ Others cried for a free Parliament, which, if brought back under the old franchise, would vote for the return of the King.
General Monck marched into London in February. He reduced the riots to sullen pockets after the alehouses had closed. He had talks with both the Rump Parliament and the City. Still no one knew what his intentions were. On the one hand, he obeyed Haselrig and the Rump by destroying City gates in retaliation to the City Council’s tax strike. On the other, he refused to swear an oath renouncing the King.
London went quiet again. Anne’s energy seemed to leave her. She was sometimes sick in the mornings and I had hopes she was with child, but she dismissed it. There were no letters from Lucy in Brussels. At the Rota Club it was decided that the Roman Senate had never had a steady form of government. I had my usual chop with Mr Pepys. His only news was that he had had a violent argument with his wife, threatening to throw her dog out if it pissed on the floor again.
Returning to Queen Street that night, I could not believe what I saw was real. I had not seen Lucy’s carriage, with the familiar coat of arms of the Countess of Carlisle, since she had been exiled by Cromwell. She was stretched out on a chaise longue in Anne’s rooms, sipping hot chocolate. She was one of those women who go silver, rather than white. It gave her an imposing grandeur and she had kept the lines of her famous beauty, albeit only – as she said herself when I complimented her – by painting over the cracks. I told her she took a risk in coming to London.
‘Cromwell is dead. They cannot make up their minds who is in charge, let alone arrest me. And I grew so tired of Brussels.’
‘What is happening there?’
I had not heard from her since she sent me details of a Sealed Knot rebellion planned for Ireland and the West Country, before my father’s death. ‘The most important news in Brussels –’ she finished her chocolate before continuing – ‘is that Mrs Palmer’s wasp-like waist really is achieved without lacing.’
Anne laughed at my expression. I had forgotten how Lucy loved to prepare her audience. She never came without some revelation, some bombshell; but she liked to drop it in her own good time. And we had time. Anne wanted to hear about the waist of the King’s mistress, what people were wearing and saying in Brussels and Paris. We both needed and sank into idle comforting chatter in which we could pretend everything was normal. The claret I had drunk with Mr Pepys made me feel sleepy and to keep awake I drifted over to the window.
The moon was up, glinting on the church spires of the City, quiet as a graveyard. The streets were empty, not a church bell rang. Once I would have known what was going on there. Now I was as ignorant as the poorest beggar.
There were the flickering lights of a fire from the City. At first it seemed to be a house fire, but as it grew higher it looked to be in an open space, perhaps Artillery Ground. It might be Monck’s soldiers, burning wood from one of the broken gates to keep warm. Or it might be a beacon. Anne and Lucy joined me at the window.
There was the crack of a musket followed by several others, the sounds echoing in the still night air. I could see two more fires burning, one in the direction of St Paul’s Churchyard, the other, a much larger one, in the area of Smithfield. From Holborn came the clatter of horses. It sounded like a troop of soldiers.
‘Well, well. This is exciting,’ Lucy said. Where Anne, ever since Luke had been burned, became nervous at the sight of fires, Lucy’s eyes gleamed and she craned to see more. It was as if she had organised it; this was her bombshell.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
‘How do I know? Look. There’s another fire. Just by London Bridge.’
Anne was now agitated, as much by Lucy’s manner as by the fires. ‘Tell us what is happening. Please.’ When she did not answer, Anne gripped her arm. ‘Tom saved your neck.’
Lucy turned on her. ‘I don’t know what is happening. I don’t know anything any more.’
She spoke so bluntly, nakedly, it rang true. All the same she was lying. There was something feverish about her reactions. She knew more than she was saying; she always did. It was no coincidence she had returned to London after all this time. She clapped her hands at the sight of the next fire, like a child at a surprise party.
‘Why did you leave Brussels?’
‘Because the King left.’
‘To come here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. He wants to be asked. Begged. He has gone to Breda.’
‘Where on earth is that?’
‘Some God-forsaken place in the Netherlands. His sister Mary’s court. He left in a great hurry. I have never seen him more excited, except for a new woman, of course. Hyde, his chief adviser, was calming him down. Charles listens, you see, unlike his father, who only listened to God. Charles Stuart has been a beggar half his life and has had to listen to other people. Much more dangerous. Something’s going on. But that little bitch, Mrs Palmer, would tell me nothing. Nothing! After all I’ve done for her.’
There was another hail of gunfire. More fires had begun to appear along the curve of the river. At the nearest, Milford or Temple Stairs, a large crowd was assembling.
‘This must be the rising you wrote about.’ I turned from the window back to Lucy. Her outburst and our questioning had exhausted her, quite apart from travelling in the coach from Dover the previous day. She leaned against the wall, her eyes closing. I shook her. ‘How many troops have the Royalists? Five? Six thousand?’
‘Plus the Irish … don’t forget the Irish … ten thousand on their way from Cork.’ Her voice was slurred with tiredness. ‘Oh, Tom … I’m sorry. I a
m afraid I have not been entirely accurate.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like you, I have been somewhat out of favour … when not … forgotten.’ She had a stunned look, as if she was admitting it to herself for the first time. Her lips quivered and she walked across the room in a burst of anger. ‘I was never in the court at Brussels. If I saw the King it was through my window in the hovel I rented opposite. Twenty guilders it cost me. For a glimpse of the King.’ Bitterness laced her voice. ‘I was thrown crumbs, titbits from that nineteen-year-old whore. I taught her everything. Like I taught you, my dear.’
She swivelled round on Anne. She not only looked old now but ugly, her low décolletage exposing fretted skin mottled like rust. ‘Everything. How to defer to a man’s superiority while establishing your own. How to look, how to stand, be modest, be a virgin – men like to believe they are the first. How to be immodest – a man likes to believe he is the only one who can unlock hidden passions – how to talk, how to seduce while the man believes he is doing the enticing, how to promise the apple, while never quite giving it to him to bite.’
It was so much a description of the torture Anne had put me through it was her turn to move into the shadows. Lucy lifted the folds of her skirt from the Louis heel of her pointed shoes with a coquettish froth of the underskirt, lowering her head in a perfect, if slightly unsteady bow, as if being received for the first time at the Caroline court of the executed King. There she had drawn all eyes and, if a fraction of the stories were to be believed, had seduced – or been seduced by – both Royalists and Parliamentarians, according to who was in power.
The King's List Page 13
