‘What did you say that to Travers for, sir? Better to give than receive? She’s a forger! If I did that I would be hanged.’
I jumped out of bed, stumbling, grabbing at the bed-head to keep my balance. ‘Get out. If I ever catch you saying that again about Lady Stonehouse you will be hanged.’
I was almost asleep when I heard him at the door. ‘Permission to speak, sir.’ His voice sounded as if he was at the end of a tunnel. ‘I know you’re awake, sir.’ I buried my head deeper into the pillow. ‘You were as shocked as I was when you found the house was empty.’ His voice grew even more incredulous. ‘You mean you gave all that stuff away, sir?’
Again I leapt out of bed, this time pushing him out of the room. ‘Yes! I signed those letters. Shut up and let me get some sleep.’
We climbed the hills from the village. I remembered that, before Sam’s ill-fated visit, Anne had been preparing a number of bequests of chosen pieces to give to friends before we left for me to sign. There was a clause which retained them as our property, should we ever return or wish to sell them. Had she not merely carried out what we had already agreed?
We were approaching near where I was born and my mother died. I fancied I heard her laughter mingling with the wind, thinning the scudding clouds and bringing out the sun. Down there was the road where Matthew, after rescuing me from the plague cart, had fled from the Stonehouses to London, bringing me up until Lord Stonehouse had discovered me and decided I should wear boots and learn letters. Nothing more! Ever since then Highpoint had been like a millstone around my neck. I felt a great lift of the spirits.
‘Look down there, Scoggy.’
The sun lit up the lower slopes and the valley, spread out like a map below us. It showed what generation after generation of Stonehouses had done, encroaching on the forest here, common grazing land there, higher land where the river rose, giving control of water, gradually taking the liveable heart from an area where hill farmers had scratched a living for centuries. Now, after what my mother had started and I had continued, with Anne’s final gesture the enclosures had been demolished. Life was already pulsing back. Fences had been taken down from a common where cattle were grazing. A woman with a bundle of kindling on her back emerged from the forest. Even the river seemed to run more freely. A man and a group of children were fishing. They clapped and cheered as there was a flash of silver in the air and the man reeled the fish in. Scogman gazed at them sourly. I squeezed his shoulder.
‘Come, Scoggy. You used to fight for the rights of the common man.’
He sniffed. ‘That’s when I had nothing, sir.’
‘You can still fish there. It’s free. There’s enough for everyone. Enough land. Enough game. Enough water. Most of the food on the Stonehouses’ table was thrown away. It was display. To show they were better than anyone else. Now –’ I gestured again at the scene below – ‘is it not better to give than receive?’
He groaned. ‘But the house, sir. All those treasures. The furniture … the paintings … the, the …’ He seemed to take it as a personal loss. Perhaps it was. He must have had an eye on various pieces, like the walnut chair I had seen at his house. ‘Better to give than … I had no idea Lady Stonehouse was that way inclined, sir.’
‘No idea? Look at her charity work in the county. What she did for the servants. They loved her.’
‘Yes, but Lord Beacon ain’t in need of no charity …’
Lord Beacon was one of the recipients of the bequests I had discussed with Anne. I was almost certain the Mortlake tapestries, which his lordship had always admired, would have found a safe lodging there, but, unfortunately, Lord Beacon was not at home.
We pressed on to Catton Hall where Lady Geoffrey Wallace, a widow and one of Anne’s closest friends, had always coveted the Japanese lacquer cabinet. She also was not at home, although Scogman thought he saw her briefly at one of the upper windows. I told him he must be mistaken, for although she was a fervent Royalist, she had always had a soft spot for me.
We rode on in silence for a while. ‘I will say one thing for you, sir,’ Scogman said eventually. ‘You always think the best of people.’
By this time I was more than a little ruffled and beginning to lose faith in my theory. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said irritably. ‘Isn’t it better than thinking the worst?’
It was late afternoon by the time we reached Watlington, on the edge of the Chilterns. I had no doubt Anne would have chosen the library at Seaton Manor for my Highpoint library. Andrew Seaton had fought with me at Naseby. It was he who had exposed the Sealed Knot rebellion the previous summer, and warned me about Luke’s involvement. He was a great bibliophile and I could think of no one better to care for my books.
Andrew was not only in; he was in the library cataloguing my books.
‘There you are, Scogman,’ I said triumphantly.
Andrew welcomed us, wrapping his left arm round me, the other having been lost at Naseby.
‘Tom, you old regicide! Scogman, you rogue!’
He had beer and ham brought to us in the library. I could not eat a morsel until I asked him if he had seen Anne. He shook his head. I told him things had been difficult between us and he nodded. He had heard about Luke’s death and said how sorry he was. I took a sup of beer and tried to eat, looking towards one of my books he had laid out on his desk. The protective wrapping had been removed. From the exquisitely printed map of the mythical country, I could see it was More’s Utopia.
‘Anne must have contacted you about taking care of my books,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘My books now, Tom.’ Not only was there no thanks for the bequest, but there was an edge, more than a hint of the triumph of one collector over another in his voice.
‘You must at least have had a letter from my lawyer about the bequest.’
‘Bequest? What are you talking about? That shark of an agent of yours sold them to me.’
The ham caught in my throat and I could not stop coughing. Half-masticated bread was suspended in Scogman’s open mouth. I remembered Travers saying the carter had a gentleman with him he did not know.
‘Agent?’
‘Richard Symonds.’
He was the antiquarian Anne had used when she was first furnishing Highpoint and buying the pictures from the Royal Collection. ‘I know him,’ I said faintly.
‘Know him? I should think you bloody well do know him with the money he screwed out of me.’
When I told him he had no right to sell them, that Anne and I had talked only of making bequests, he snatched a letter from his desk drawer. ‘Are you saying this is not your signature, sir?’
There it was. On Stonehouse paper with the falcon seal, written by the same impeccable scrivener, with the same telltale hesitation in my signature. Scogman stared from the letter, to the books to me with awe. I suppose it dwarfed all his petty rogueries as Highpoint had towered over the other seats in the country. It all came out then. I told Andrew everything. He had the beer taken away and Dutch brandy brought in.
After the Sealed Knot rebellion, Andrew had known all the arguments Anne and I had about Luke. He had been present at some of them. He poured more brandy, the evening light catching it as he set the glass down. He moved as quickly, as dexterously, with one arm as most people did with two.
‘I understand you killed him?’
‘Who?’
‘Luke.’
Somewhere a fly buzzed, stopped, then started up again. Or was I imagining it? It brought back that hot afternoon, the moment when they seized me, when Luke realised I was being taken away and ran towards me. What was I trying to do that afternoon? Be a hero? Win Anne back? Was it guilt at keeping the letter back from her? Love for him? Her? A muddle of all these things? I did not know. All I could remember was what happened. That was all that mattered. All that ever mattered was what happened. I could see his blood, his face, hear his voice.
‘You came, Father, you came.’
If I had not, he mi
ght be alive. That was all that mattered. That was what had happened. Intentions were buried with him.
Andrew was still waiting for an answer to his half statement, half question, his hand hesitating, as if to squeeze my shoulder.
‘Killed him? Yes. I suppose I did.’
Andrew withdrew his hand, recoiling, even while he was struggling to bring out the usual excuse for it.
‘That bloody war! Will it never stop? Father against son … Brother against …’ He swallowed his brandy.
Scogman came to life. He had been shifting, staring from one to another. Now he stood up, heels coming together as if he was on parade. ‘Permission to speak, sir. That’s bollocks, sir. Double bollocks. Kill him? Sir Thomas went to give himself up for him. I ain’t one for being noble, or honour or any of that shit, and when I realised I thought it the most stupid thing in the world until …’ He turned away. I had never seen Scogman cry and he did not cry then, but he came close. ‘He died game, sir. As he wanted to. Like a soldier.’
Andrew got up and looked at me with a puzzled frown. ‘Like a soldier? What are you talking about? I thought Sir Thomas killed Luke in a duel –’
Scogman sprang at him. ‘If you had two arms, sir, I’d fight you myself.’
I sprang up. ‘You forget your station, Scogman.’
‘Sorry, sir. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe I’m getting a touch of the gentleman myself. Sorry, sir.’ This to Andrew, whose brandy he had spilled over his cuff.
‘At ease, Scogman.’ Andrew shook his sleeve and finished the remaining brandy. ‘We’re not in the army now.’
‘Feel as if I’ve never left it, sir,’ Scogman said.
‘Not Cromwell’s army, no,’ Andrew said. ‘You never leave that.’
‘Who told you I killed my son in a duel?’ I said quietly.
‘Who told the world, you mean.’ Andrew saw the expression on my face. ‘You mean it’s not true?’ It was as though a weight was lifted from him. ‘God damn it! I knew it wasn’t true, but all the same …’ He went to his desk, opening one drawer, then another, before pulling out a pamphlet. ‘You mean you haven’t seen this?’
‘I haven’t seen anything. I was ill, then we went to Highpoint along the drove road.’
It was a Royalist pamphlet, The Weekly Discoverer. The headline was A perfect relation of how the son of Lord Stonehouse was barborously kill’d by his own father. And several terrible circumstances of the fact. I read it in a curiously detached way, with even some admiration at the way in which the lies had been skilfully sewn together to look a seamless truth. I was the evil demon, of course. Richard was the hero. I had tried to kill him because he was claiming his rightful inheritance. My son Luke, a committed Royalist who loved his King, had come to the aid of his ailing grandfather.
Ailing grandfather was a bit rich, but never mind. I turned over the fold to read the rest of the story and went very still. I took the paper to the window, not so much for the light, for the candles were now lit, but to be away from the others.
Tom Neave, as he shoulde properly be called, for he usurped the title from his father, with his accomplice Scogmanne, hid the body in the depths of a forest. Sir Richard Stonehouse recovered it, ensuring that the Royalist hero was buried with all due ceremony in the family grave at St Paul’s. In a remarkable display of Christian charity & forgiveness that brought tears to many eyes, Sir Richard allowed Luke’s mother Anne to attend the ceremony. In her griefe and gratitude to Sir Richard, she is believed to be expressing penitence for the foule acts of the regicide Neave, and it is said she won the hearts of many of the mourners at the funeral. Neave has not been seen since the murder, but is believed to be in hiding in London.
Andrew came up to me. ‘You hid the body?’
‘Buried,’ I said. ‘Buried. We buried him. Of course we did. What else could we do? As we did in the war. Like a soldier. As he would have wanted. We buried him.’
I turned away, feeling the earth on my fingers, smelling the leaf mould. I told Andrew I had intended to take Anne there, for she would have wanted a Christian burial, but I am not sure I would. Luke loved the forest at Highpoint where he hunted and I felt he would have wanted to stay there. At the very last, at least, he was my son. You came, Father, you came. For the first time since it had happened grief overwhelmed me. I sat on a window seat, looking out at the darkening beech trees which leaned over the house. Andrew offered me things and said things, but I took none of it in until I heard him say: ‘Anne’.
I sprang up, blinking, from my dark corner, dazzled by the bright lights of the candles swaying in the draught from the open door. Anne was standing there, dressed in black. I could tell her everything. She would understand. She would believe me. She might never forgive me but that seemed no longer as important as telling her exactly what happened, what Luke had said. We would at least be together in that. In my hurry to get across the room I knocked over a chair.
‘Anne –’
As she moved from the dark shadows of the door Anne shrank away, like the will o’ the wisps I used to see as a child, flickering tantalisingly over the marsh. She turned into the maid, in the act of picking up a tray, staring at me in bewilderment.
‘All right, Anne,’ Andrew said to the maid, steering me to a chair. He pressed into my hand the brandy I had scarcely tasted. I took a swallow and spat it out.
‘There’s a fly.’
‘Where?’
‘Can’t you hear it?’
They exchanged glances and Scogman said something to Andrew I did not catch. I could not stand the taste of brandy on my tongue and Andrew brought me some beer. I found I had a raging thirst and drank one tankard then another, reading the Weekly Discoverer until I could have repeated the story word by word. I knew now why Lord Beacon and Lady Wallace had not been at home. That was trivial compared with the desecration of Luke’s grave. My grief was gradually displaced by mounting anger. I could not bear the thought of Richard’s men digging up Luke’s grave, laying their hands on him.
‘I can understand now why she …’ Andrew was waving the letter on which Anne had written my signature. At first I scarcely listened. The treasures, too, were trivial compared with what had happened to Luke. But by this time Andrew had taken several brandies and kept returning to the letter and the books.
‘Had to sell land for ’em. God damn it! Nearly broke up my own marriage. Women. It’s the war. At least my wife came to heel. You were always too free with Anne, Tom, got to say that. Too free. Much too free. Even so, I can’t believe she’d go the length of …’ He picked up the letter with the signature and went over to the books, lovingly turning the pages of More’s Utopia, listening to the crisp crackle of paper, shaking his head in admiration at the workmanship of the map. He closed the book, his voice heavy with regret.
‘Of course, I can’t keep ’em.’
It was a moment before his words registered. ‘Of course you must keep them, you idiot. You paid for them.’
He turned away from the books. He was almost in tears. ‘No, no, no, old friend. Even if I wasn’t a gentleman I couldn’t do it. They were not hers to sell.’
Scogman, who had been drifting into a doze, sat up. His eyes gleamed: hope, no doubt, being rekindled for the fishing rights. ‘Stolen goods, sir.’
‘Exactly, Scoggers.’ He turned to me. ‘You must take action against her, Tom.’
I dismissed the idea. Court cases were at a standstill between governments. Andrew declared he would do it when the new government was in place. All he needed was my testimony that I had not signed the document. I stared at the books. At Highpoint I would turn to passages I knew almost by heart. Thomas More, Ovid and Caesar were like old friends with whom I had a chat from time to time. Again I felt the loss and anger when I had walked through the pillaged library. Again I looked at the signature on the document, uncannily like mine, but not mine. Andrew put pen and paper in front of me. He had trained as a lawyer and dictated what I was to write.
&n
bsp; ‘I, Sir Thomas Stonehouse, do affirm and attest …’
I moved to sign it. My hand, which had been flowing fast and easily over the paper, was suddenly cramped and awkward. I rubbed it, moved to dash off the signature, but again came to a stop, acutely aware of the different parts, the ascenders and descenders, loops and curves that made up what I had done without thinking many thousands of times before. I even looked at the forged signature for guidance. I dipped the quill in the horn to make a fresh start, then scribbled over what I had written and flung down the pen. I pointed to the document giving Richard Symonds permission to sell.
‘I signed that. I forgot.’
‘Forgot?’ Andrew and Scogman exchanged glances. Scogman looked about to speak but changed his mind when he saw my expression.
‘That’s right.’
I would not do this to her. I could not. I picked up the Discoverer and read the passage again. Of course she would go to Luke’s funeral. But would she believe Richard’s story? I had been drawn in, captivated by my father’s lies, but she never had. She had wanted him turned over to Cromwell and hanged.
‘… in her griefe and gratitude she is believed to be expressing penitence for the foule acts of the regicide Neave …’
What garbage! She would never acknowledge me as Tom Neave. I was a Stonehouse. A gentleman. That was why she had married me. It was through me that she had her name and title. Sometimes, when the will o’ the wisp’s light flickered, I believed she loved me. But when the light went out, I accepted that I loved her and she loved Highpoint. That was the deal. The wholesale clearance of Highpoint was not a vindictive act against me as Andrew believed, but against Richard. Highpoint was hers, not mine, not Richard’s. It was her creation and would remain in people’s memories as such. She was determined neither Richard, nor I, for that matter, would sully it.
I said as much to Andrew and Scogman. Andrew was silent for a while. It was now quite dark outside, the only sound the rustle of the trees. Andrew picked up his glass, then put it down again without drinking.
The King's List Page 22
