‘I must go on, or I won’t finish.’
The unexpected visitor and Luke’s hurried exit had happened, he said, two or three days before he came across us talking about the death of my father. As soon as he heard his grandfather’s name it came to him that he was the unexpected visitor. He dismissed it as nonsense. He was upset. He had scarcely met his grandfather and that was when he was a child. He had caught only a brief glimpse of the visitor. But he could not get it out of his head. He went down to the basement and brought out the one picture his mother would never hang: the Van Dyck of Charles I with Richard Stonehouse. His grandfather was the visitor. He had no doubt of it. That was why he’d had to intercept Mr Cole and look at the letter from Amsterdam. Not to read it … not to spy …
‘But to check the date,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I saw him in Watling Street. Three days after the letter was sent saying he was dead.’
He stared into the shadows beyond the fire into which more and more people were disappearing. The pig had been carved until the ribs shone in the firelight. The butchers and their boys were squatting to have their own meal. A coach passed, but it was not Lucy’s.
The letter from Amsterdam was make-believe, like Lucy’s figures. I could see my father enjoying that. Cutting off the finger of the man sent to kill him and – the final touch – putting his ring on it.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Luke said. He uttered a curious sound, half laugh, half mockery. ‘Betray my father. Or my grandfather.’
Anne put out her hand to him. He pulled away. ‘Can’t you stop it?’ he burst out. ‘Hating one another? Can’t you stop? Can’t you …’
He stood up, knocking over his empty tankard, staring again towards Moorgate.
‘What did you do?’ she said. ‘Where did you go?’
‘To Watling Street.’
‘To Sarah,’ I said.
‘To Richard,’ he said, with a kind of triumph.
I dropped my face in my hands. He had demanded to see Richard. Demanded! I could not speak. Neither could Anne. Was that not exactly the sort of stupid, unpredictable thing I did at his age? No wonder the house was empty when Scogman and I arrived.
But he did not, it seemed, go to warn him. Faced with the choice of betraying his father or his grandfather, Luke did neither.
Ever since he could remember, he said, he had lived not in one family but two. Or perhaps three. There was his mother. His father, who came in from one battle and, before the mud had been brushed from his boots, left for another. His grandfather, whom he never saw. Even when there was peace, there was no peace. Not in this family. If you could call it a family.
He reduced us to an uncomfortable silence. No doubt if he had talked to Richard in that way he had also rendered my father speechless. ‘Luke … I’m afraid my father is nothing like the man you describe.’
‘He – he admires you!’
‘So much he wants him hanged,’ Anne said.
‘Why won’t you listen? He listened. He said he had committed the first wrong, for which he was profoundly sorry. He said you may have come from the streets but you are more of a gentleman than most of the King’s officers. And you are his son. He does not want the Stonehouse name drawn through the mud by some foul cart –’
‘Luke.’ Anne shivered and got up. ‘Let us go home and talk about it there.’
I had not realised how deserted the common had become. The butchers were damping down the fire and putting on their shirts. There was still no sign of the coach, but we might be lucky enough to get a Hackney in Moorgate. I wrapped Anne’s cloak around her. ‘Come, Luke.’
He stared round the common for a moment before reluctantly following us. It was when we were just beyond the light of the fire that I saw him. My father. At first I recognised the way he rode, rather than the rider. He sat a horse better than any man I knew, effortlessly, as though they were part of one another. The horse felt his complete control and seemed to glide soundlessly across the grass. Unexpectedly, my first reaction was relief. I had not realised until that moment how much I had buried the guilt I felt at, as I had believed, killing my father. He wore a weathered Dutch jump jacket, brightened by the froth of a linen cravat. Red. Trust him. It was like going back to the war, when the Royalists sported red favours. Only his slackening jowls betrayed his age. The thinning hair I remembered was covered by a wig of fine curls descending to his shoulders.
‘Tom,’ he called, ‘I am so glad you could come to the party. And your good lady.’ He inclined his head courteously towards Anne.
I smiled. I could not help it. I always forgot how charming he was. ‘You are looking well, Father.’
‘Still in one piece, Tom.’ He held up his left, ringless hand. ‘Still in one piece. I’ve come to collect my ring.’
Luke stared up at him as if he was some kind of spirit who had materialised from the drifting smoke of the fire. ‘You came.’
‘Of course I came, Luke,’ he said genially. ‘Wouldn’t have missed this. You have brought up a fine son here, Tom. With all your qualities I would not have believed you could have raised such a gentleman. More than that – a Stonehouse.’
Luke moved up to us, his eyes shining, gazing up at Richard and then towards me. Was he really that naive? Was I, to have come here? Or was it really an olive branch? After all, now he had Highpoint – for if the King landed that was certain – he must see the fruitlessness of the feud that had torn generations apart. The most that we could hope for was our lives. I had some cards: the parts of the estate I had divided up and concealed. If he was prepared to settle now, he might avoid the endless complications and arguments from competing claims by returning Royalists.
‘You are prepared to intercede on my behalf,’ I said.
His horse strained to reach at a patch of grass. He allowed it to do so, never taking his eyes from me. ‘At a price, Tom, at a price.’
‘Highpoint.’
Richard inclined his head.
‘You do not want it.’ Luke broke in. ‘You are never there.’
‘A mediator, a diplomat,’ murmured Richard. He looked nonplussed, as if events had taken an unexpected turn. Perhaps they had. I only saw my father after long absences, during which time he wrote those long, insane letters. Now he looked level-headed and all too sane.
‘There’s the coach,’ Anne said.
It was going slowly down Moorgate. She pulled off her muff, dropping it as she waved frantically. Ralph reined in the horses, signalling back.
‘I appreciate your concern, sir,’ Anne said to Richard. ‘But it is late. We can pursue this some other time.’
She bent to pick up her muff. In a blur of movement Richard was riding towards her, rapier in his hand. Even though it was useless I drew my knife. I had forgotten, also, how fast he was, how his expression could change from sleepy benevolence to the naked intensity of battle. She stared rigidly as the horse was expertly reined to a stop in front of her. He scooped up the muff with the sword and held it out to her.
‘It is a cold night, my lady.’
She took the muff without a tremor. ‘I am most grateful, sir.’
Richard saw my dagger and raised an eyebrow. I sheathed the weapon. Luke was so entranced for a moment I thought he was going to applaud. Anne set out towards the coach but caught my warning glance. A little distance away were two men on horseback. Both had swords. One was sucking meat from a pork rib. They might have just been celebrating, but I did not think so. They looked like the sort of mercenaries Richard employed.
‘No time like the present, my lady,’ Richard said. ‘Luke tells me how well you have looked after Highpoint.’
He spoke as if she was a caretaker, a temporary tenant. Her voice shook. ‘How well? How well, sir?’
The butchers scattered scraps of fat on the embers, which flared up, etching the fine lines of her face against the night. The last time Richard had seen her she was a printer’s daughter. But transforming Highpoint had transformed he
r. Even in that situation it was as if she was receiving Richard in court, not the other way round. ‘Looked after? Looked after, sir? I have made Highpoint the finest seat in England.’
There was a movement near the coach, a sketchy outline of a horse and rider. Scogman. At least I hoped it was Scogman. Richard followed my glance but he would see nothing. Scogman was wearing his black steward’s uniform.
‘Will the King listen to you?’ I said.
‘I can promise nothing –’
‘If you did it would be worth nothing,’ Anne said bitterly. I told her to be quiet. Whatever slim chance there was of a settlement, she seemed determined to ruin it. Somewhat to my surprise she was not only immediately silent, but flustered, and contrite, dropping her muff again, then hurriedly scrambling it up as if she feared another display of the rapier. All of this Richard watched with some amusement.
‘Your reputation reached the King’s court, madam. I was told you wore the britches.’
She was trembling, her face flushed. She looked towards the mercenaries, one of whom flung the pork rib in the dying fire. The butchers had gone. She apologised to me before going over to Richard. ‘I – I have a temper, sir. Sometimes I – I scarcely know myself. I apologise.’
One thing I had not forgotten was Richard’s eye for a woman. He stared down at her as if he had never seen her before, as indeed he had not. When he had seen her last she had been, in his imagination at least, a woman of the streets, a fighting harridan. Now, as well as looking regal and flushed and very beautiful, she appeared the epitome of what he believed a woman should be: subservient, with a dash of spirit to arouse the interest.
Richard doffed his hat. ‘Your reputation included your beauty, but it does not do it anywhere near justice.’
She dipped her head modestly, and stared down at her muff.
The romantic tableau they presented – the gallant knight submissive to women (providing they were submissive first) – was claptrap. But the myth lived on, certainly in Luke’s head, where his mother’s modesty and Richard’s gallant reaction must have resonated with all the tales of chivalry he loved. His eyes shone.
‘Grandfather has begun drafting a letter to the King. I – I have been helping him.’
Grandfather! The word had a curious effect on Richard. His voice lost some of its certainty. ‘Well, weIl, I was never one for words …’ He looked down at me. ‘As you know. And you have quite a scholar there, Tom … quite a scholar.’
Luke beamed.
Richard had been a liar, a cheat and a dissembler all his life. He had tried to murder me. But was that because he felt cheated? He had lost his King, his inheritance by which, according to the strict letter of the law, Highpoint belonged to the eldest son. Now both were in his grasp. He could afford to be magnanimous. Had Luke, with his naivety and trust, worked a miracle in bringing us together? I would never know.
One moment Anne was standing quietly, submissively, near Richard. The next she slipped her hands out of her muff. In them was a stone. She must have concealed it when she dropped the muff and picked it up with apparent clumsiness. Richard stared at the stone, at such odds with her submissive behaviour perhaps he did not believe it. She flung it.
How did she know? Perhaps she had seen it in the war, or I had told her or it was pure instinct. She flung it not at Richard, but at his horse. Richard clung on as the horse reared, boots thrashing for the stirrups, then found them but lost the reins. Anne stood transfixed as he fell.
‘Run!’ I grabbed her. I threw my knife at one of the mercenaries riding down on us. It missed but the horse veered. The other mercenary was closing in on me when Scogman came out of nowhere, slashing at his horse with a whip. I heard Luke running after us. The coachman had the door open. Anne stumbled in, falling against Lucy. I pushed Luke towards the coach. He wrenched away.
‘You’ve killed him!’
‘Get in.’
‘He meant what he said.’
‘It would be the first time,’ I said.
‘Don’t argue!’ Anne cried. ‘Pull him in.’
‘Get into the coach.’
He stumbled in. Silhouetted against the fire was the tall figure of Richard, testing one foot, then the other. He gave a short cry and fell. Someone was bringing over his horse. I rapped on the roof. Ralph cracked his whip. Luke stared through the window at Richard being helped up. He pushed open the door and jumped out of the moving coach, staggered, found his feet and disappeared into the darkness.
‘Luke,’ Anne screamed. ‘He will kill you!’
‘Go on,’ I shouted to Ralph, hammering at the coach. ‘Go on.’
As the coach turned into London Wall, Luke reappeared in the light of the fire, running towards Richard. He never looked back.
23
For no reason that I knew, General Monck sent two soldiers to secure – as he put it in a brief letter – our house in Queen Street, saying it was to prevent disturbances. I thought at first this was a euphemism for house arrest but I found I could come and go as I wished. The soldiers treated us with utmost courtesy. I wrote to Monck to thank him, and try and divine a reason, but received no reply. This was of a piece with the way he governed London in the next two months. He opened up Parliament to members whom Cromwell had prevented from attending. Most were Royalists, which suggested he was leaning towards the King; but at the same time he declared he was for the Commonwealth.
I was grateful for the respite. What I had suspected a month earlier was true: Anne had conceived. She had not wanted to tell me until she was more certain. The day after the burning of the Rump, Anne had a miscarriage. The scarcely formed baby was not more than three months old. I blamed myself bitterly for pressing her to have another child.
I stayed with her day and night, except when I went to my study to go over my correspondence with Mr Cole.
‘There is one from Mr Luke, sir.’ His voice was neutral, comfortable, as if nothing had happened. He recognised it from Luke’s fine Italian hand.
The letter was as vitriolic as his writing was beautiful. He blamed me for poisoning his mother’s mind. Somehow – he never specified how – I had slipped the stone into his mother’s hand. His grandfather was very ill with a high fever. His arm was broken. The writing lost some of its clarity and some splashes of ink marred the page as he scribbled that he had struggled all his life not to believe it but he was sure now I was the Devil’s child. How else had I escaped death when I had been thrown in the plague cart –
There was more. I could not read it. I handed it to Mr Cole. ‘Burn it. Say nothing about it to Lady Stonehouse.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The letter Mr Cole brought me had a Parliamentary seal and was from John Thurloe, who begged me to attend him at a chambers in Gray’s Inn at noon sharp. He signed himself Secretary of State. Thurloe back in power? Did that mean that Monck was for the republic after all? Was that why the soldiers were guarding my house? Did that mean I had my job back? Why else had John Thurloe sent for me? I chose a skimpy doublet that would show off my ruffled shirtsleeves. Only when I picked up my sugar loaf hat did I feel a pang of regret. My marriage may be fraught, not the stilted perfect marriage it once had been. But it was a real marriage. Did I really want to return to a world of paper, which would drain the life from it again? Well, I chided myself as I set my hat at a rakish angle: better, surely, to be offered it and turn it down, than not be offered it at all.
24
I suppose I should have known from the fact that the address Thurloe had given me was Gray’s Inn, not his own chambers at Lincoln’s Inn. It was a cold April day with a bitter easterly wind, which added to the feeling of desolation. Few people were about. The one or two I saw kept their heads down and veered away from people, as they did during a plague, although it was far too early in the year for that. The first surprise was that the chambers were labelled as those of John Cooke, who had prosecuted King Charles and signed the death warrant. The second was that there was a Parli
amentary notice on the door forbidding entry.
Through a chink in the door an eye was staring at me. My hand went to my empty belt. I cursed the blind stupidity of hope that led me to spend time choosing the sugar loaf hat, yet forgetting my dagger. A bolt went and the door opened. It was Clarkson, John Thurloe’s clerk.
‘Did anyone follow you, sir?’
‘Not that I could see.’
He directed me to the first floor. The air had the stale, sour smell of rooms that had been unoccupied for some time. I stepped over a pile of legal files in a corridor. The door was open on an office which I could see, from the citation on the wall giving him the right to practise, was John Cooke’s. A damp cold gripped the room. By the dead fire, a scuttle of coals was grey with dust. Sitting at the desk, still in his overcoat, checking some papers and writing a note, was Thurloe. He motioned me to sit, then rubbed his white fingers and resumed writing. For once he had forgotten his train of thought and the quill remained poised over the paper. I could stand the silence no longer and congratulated him on his appointment. He looked up, startled, saw the sugar loaf hat and the fine ruffled linen of my shirt, and gave me a dry, rather bleak look. The hat and the shirt told him everything: I was hoping for office. His manner gave me the answer: I would not get it.
A blob of ink had fallen on the paper. He snatched it up, crumpled it into a ball and threw it on the clinkers in the grate.
‘Cooke has been taken.’
‘Taken?’
‘Imprisoned.’
Thurloe told me that Justice Cooke, architect of the King’s trial and execution, was working in Ireland where he was invited to a meeting with Sir Charles Coote, whom he knew as a virulent opponent of the Royalists. Cooke found the meeting was with a troop of Coote’s cavalry. They seized him and threw him into Dublin gaol.
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