‘I’m sorry. The ship is full.’
‘Well. Bon voyage, Tom.’
I raised my hand as he returned to his boat, which would take him another merry dance. If he was part of a trap, by the time he reached London I would be miles away. I watched him clutch the waterman for support before lowering his ungainly, slightly stooped figure into the boat. I had known him as long as I had known Anne. He had taught me everything I knew about Parliament. We had drifted apart only since Cromwell’s death. I glanced up and down. The anglers were still as statues. The children snatching at the bottle had lost it in the water and were blaming one another. There were no signs anyone had followed him. I did, in fact, have a place. A cabin I had kept for Anne. Just in case.
I told him not to expect creature comforts. Nor would I tell him where we were heading. We continued downstream, past the marshlands where I had grown up as a child, past the docks where I had been a pitch boy, past the gaunt skeletons of half-built ships, becalmed for the past year but already coming back to life at the prospect of a new government, with hammering and sawing and pitch fires burning, the smoke from them hazing the air as the boat cut through coal scum and bits of wood and rope, weaving past buoys and rusting hawsers. I touched the scar on my arm left by one of those pitch fires. I could almost hear myself screaming, see Lord Stonehouse picking me up, at the point when the whole story began. Then the river was clearing and widening and there were meadows and villages, and birds found their voices.
All this time we were silent, hunched up with our own thoughts, except once when I began to open the packet and he stopped me, like a father protecting his child, saying the oiled paper protected it against the water, and I reassured him I would contain my impatience until we were on board.
We crossed the river at Deptford, where he was somewhat disgruntled to find that, because a carriage would have been too conspicuous, it was an open cart waiting for us, with rough wooden seats, the sort that carried servants. I chaffed him for this, for his origins were as poor as mine, and suddenly things were more cordial between us and we talked of old times as the cart rattled through the Kentish Downs. At an inn we had pease and pork and strong beer, brewed with the innkeeper’s own hops.
‘On your way to see the King?’ the innkeeper asked.
‘Why? Is he arriving today?’ I said innocently.
There was much laughter at this and I was told I must be the only person in Kent who did not know it. People spoke with awe about the gentry who had gone to Dover to meet him, a place which seemed the end of the world to them. Some had never seen the sea. Unlike London, where you might find radicals wherever you scratched the surface, Kent had always been lukewarm about Cromwell, at best. The fervour at the King’s return was genuine. There was a maypole on the green and strong beer was being sold for the price of small. We were almost as merry as they were when we heaved ourselves back into the cart, and it took very little jolting for me to fall asleep.
When I awoke I thought for a moment we were back in London. There was a carriage in front of us, a farm cart behind, and a whole army of riders cutting across fields to force their way on to the road. All were waving oak branches. In London hawkers had been out early, selling oak leaves for a penny, claiming they came from the tree in which Charles Stuart had hidden after the battle of Worcester, before he escaped into his long exile. An empty bottle was thrown from the carriage in front where they were toasting the King. I asked the carter where we were.
‘North of Dover,’ the carter said.
‘Dover! I told you to keep to the side roads.’
‘Gentleman said it would be quicker.’
‘You don’t know where we’re going,’ I said to Clarke.
‘Presumably the coast,’ he said tartly. ‘This is normally much quicker, whichever way you’re going.’
‘You know the road, do you?’
‘I was on it a month ago. Returning from Holland.’
His mood had changed. He sat on the edge of his seat, gripping the side of the cart as the carriage in front of us braked and the carter yanked back his horses. Hemmed in by crowds and other traffic, the heat was oppressive, the air heavy with the smell of horse dung. Clarke took off his cravat and mopped his forehead with it.
‘Why were you in Holland?’
‘Seeking a position. Like everyone else.’
A young man in petticoat breeches and ruffled shirt jumped out of the carriage in front, declaring it was quicker to walk. He gave three cheers for his monarch, flinging his wig in the air. The carriage lurched forward to cries of alarm from the other occupants. His shaven head bobbed as he retrieved his wig from the hedgerow, and was dragged back into the carriage with shouts of laughter.
‘That fool has a position, or don’t need one,’ Clarke said. ‘Whereas with my experience …’ He folded the cravat meticulously and put it into his pocket, staring out across the fields. The horse riders had found another route and we were moving more freely again.
‘What happened in Holland?’
‘Cant, sir, that’s what happened. Fine words took me there but they turned out to be cant, gabble, gammon – in short, I was deceived, sir, by that smooth-talking hypocrite Samuel Pepys.’
‘Sam! He is a good man.’
‘Aye. Good at saying one thing and meaning another. Your trouble, Tom, if you don’t mind me saying so, is that you are always determined to see people in a good light.’ He mopped his brow again.
The carter climbed a hill, from which we caught glimpses of the sea. Clarke told me that Pepys had promised an introduction to his patron, Lord Montague, now formally announced as head of the navy. Pepys himself, since he was organising the refurbishing of the ship in Holland for the King, was close to the court.
It was a tenuous thread to draw Clarke to Holland, but careers had been built on less. I only half-followed the all too familiar story of meetings arranged, then cancelled at the last minute, for we were getting near Dover and the road was choked with traffic again. While the carter tried to find the road to Deal that would take us away from Dover, Clarke obsessively went on with his story. Apparently I was involved, because I had promised to write to Montague. I had no recollection of it, then remembered. It was the night of the burning of the rump, when we had found Luke. It had flown from my mind.
Clarke took my apology in silence. The carter found a country lane, a narrow green tunnel running between hedgerows white with hawthorn, which would take us to the main road to Deal. Clarke seemed to have exhausted the subject and I had no wish to return to it. He slumped low in his seat, wiping his forehead, although it was cooler in the shade of the hedgerows.
As we emerged into open fields, with a distant view of the sea, there was the boom of a cannon, followed by others, echoing and re-echoing.
‘The King,’ the carter said, pointing his whip towards the sails of a ship on the horizon.
‘In Holland …’ Clarke was like a dog who drops a bone, only to return to worry it again, ‘the worst moment was when I saw Pepys talking to Montague and was determined to interrupt. I had nothing to lose. I was at the very point of approaching them when the King’s son, the Duke of York, came by. Well, of course, they were all bows and scrapes and I bowed and half-retreated as I should, but hovered and looked at Pepys and Montague directly. I wanted but a smile, half a smile, a mere nod, any acknowledgement before I withdrew. They cut me. They turned their backs on me and cut me. Later they did the same. Pepys never intended to help me. He deceived me, sir. Well … You know how it feels. Your wife was there.’
By this time I was beginning to doze again and came to with a jolt, not sure I had heard him correctly. ‘What did you say?’
‘Your wife was there.’
‘In Holland?’
‘She was accepted. She was accepted all right.’
‘Stop!’ I yelled at the carter. ‘Stop!’
The lane had taken us in a long detour, avoiding Dover, bringing us to the outskirts of it and the road to De
al. In a bay beyond Deal was the brig that would take us to the ship. For a moment I was sure Clarke was part of a trap. I had fallen asleep and he had told the carter to take the road bringing us much nearer to Dover than I intended. But no one had followed us. We were in this remote spot and he was staring at me with puzzled incomprehension. And the suspicion was displaced by anger at his remarks about Anne, which brought to a head the looks and innuendos I had been forced to bear in silence.
‘You said my wife has deceived me.’
The carter stared round, then looked away, clicking at his horses as they dipped to crop grass. Clarke gave me a blank, bewildered look.
‘Implied it. You said she was there. I knew how it felt.’
He looked bemused. ‘I … I simply meant anyone knows that feeling …’
I felt foolish. I had identified too much with his own sense of betrayal. But, now it was released, I could not keep the bitterness out of my own voice.
‘My wife and I are separated by circumstances. For the moment. That is all. I have every trust in her and she in me. Do you understand?’
Up to that moment I had kept a shred of belief. Or hope. Why else had I reserved a place for her on the ship until that day? But putting it into words, having to say it, reduced it, hollowed it.
He bowed his head. ‘Of course I understand, Tom, and apologise if I have given any offence. I certainly did not mean it.’
We went off in silence for a short space but, just as he could not leave his obsession alone, neither could I. It was like a sore to which my fingers kept returning. ‘What do you mean – accepted?’ I thought he knew exactly what I meant, but he gave me another puzzled look. ‘You said my wife was accepted. What do you mean?’
He prevaricated, saying he should have realised how sensitive the subject was. When I persisted he told me she had gone to Holland with Lucy. For days, he said, Lady Stonehouse looked as lost as he was, milling about amongst the people looking for favours and positions. Then Richard Stonehouse presented her to the King. She made – he chose his words carefully – an immediate impression. So much so that Barbara Villiers, the King’s mistress, was quite put out.
‘What nonsense! It’s difficult enough to believe my wife and father could be reconciled. Impossible that Richard would ever present the wife of a regicide to the King.’
He brought out his cravat again. ‘She is among the party greeting the King today. Part of a special presentation to him.’
‘Special presentation? Who on earth told you that?’
‘It is all round the Exchange.’
I stared at him with renewed suspicion. Anne part of a special presentation! But I drew back from another clumsy accusation.
‘What nonsense. Six months ago it was all round the Exchange the King would never return.’
‘True, very true,’ he said, in heartfelt tones. He slumped down in a corner of the cart, cutting such a pathetic figure I felt a tinge of guilt at suspecting him.
The carter stopped at the junction with the main road. There were so many people on the cliffs cheering and shouting and struggling for places, and craning and peering, they threatened to tumble into the sea. Maypoles had been erected. From every building fluttered yellow flags emblazoned with CR. I put my glass to my eye. Standing out at sea, a short distance away, furled sails fluttering, was a vessel I knew as Cromwell’s flagship, The Naseby, in recognition of the decisive conflict that had won the war. It had been painted over and renamed Royal Charles.
‘Go right,’ I said.
‘Deal is left, sir,’ the carter said.
‘A little way. Do not get tangled up with the crowds.’
In a narrow space between the buildings, through the glass, I could see a tent on the beach, flying a royal standard. From it scurried Mr Pepys, puffing with exertion, ordering a naval guard to one side, talking urgently to the Mayor, who had a white staff in one hand and a large Bible in the other. They vanished from my view. A fusillade of cannon rolled like thunder round the harbour. I spotted a clear space further down the hill, but the crowd was too thick for the cart to approach.
‘Wait there.’
I jumped from the cart, pushing my way through the crowd. Taller than the people round him, the young King – he was not yet thirty – stood silently on Dover beach. He could have been a statue, apart from the wind stirring his own dark hair. No appearance in a cathedral could have matched that moment. Nothing he might have said could match what he did. For a moment his lips curled below his pencil-line moustache and, as he viewed the tier upon tier of cheering faces dwindling into silence, a hint of what might have been amusement flickered across his face. Then he dropped to his knees on the beach and pressed his lips into the sand. Impossible even for me not to feel a lump in the throat before the crowd erupted. I swung the glass round. There were the noblemen. There was Richard. My father had fallen to the ground too, tears on his face. He believed the tall figure rising from the beach was divine. I moved the glass. There she was. Anne stood out because, amongst all the colour and pageantry, she was wearing black. Among the ecstatic faces, only hers remained still. Did I imagine it, or was there an amused look on her face, a faint echo of the King’s?
There was a cry and the sounds of a struggle from further up the street. The carter was falling to the ground. Clarke was standing up in the cart. I thought he was going to help the carter but he climbed into the driver’s seat, seized the whip from its socket and cracked it at the horse, which jerked forward, almost throwing him. The cart careered crazily down the hill. I leapt forward, aiming to catch at the reins. The whip caught me a stinging cut on the cheek. I rolled away from the hooves as people pressed against walls, yelling in alarm.
The cart disappeared round the corner in the direction of the harbour. I went to help up the carter.
‘Madman! Just hit me … no reason, no reason!’
I picked up the oiled packet and ripped it open with my knife. The top sheet was one of the Putney papers but the rest was a mixture of old pamphlets and blank sheets. No wonder he had been so anxious I should not open them until we were on board. I had ten, perhaps fifteen minutes to get out of the place. Before I had even reached the road to Deal I knew it was hopeless. There was no farm in sight where I might get a horse. Even if I did, I would risk leading my pursuers to the ship and endangering the whole enterprise. My only hope lay in the crowds.
At the bottom of the hill the cart was skewed over the road, with one man calming the horse and others all shouting at once to a constable. I was tempted to reclaim it but in the darkness of a doorway saw one of Richard’s mercenaries.
It was now mid-afternoon. There was no chance of catching the ship and I determined to do the last thing they expected: go towards the beach and then make my way in the opposite direction to Folkestone.
I was carried by the crowd past market stalls that had sold out of food and small beer, but some enterprising hawkers were preparing to sell sand. One tore old pamphlets into strips while the other poured sand into them and twisted them into makeshift paper bags, which he dropped into a tray behind him.
‘As kissed by his Royal Highness,’ said one. ‘Sell a few bags of that, Jake, and you can live comfortable for a year.’
I squeezed between the stalls and, while they were preparing another tray, snatched up the one they had filled, hearing their arguments as I slipped down an alley.
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I never touched it!’
Coming out of the alley the sun was blinding. There were so many people I could not see the beach. Above the roar of the crowd were the raucous cries of gulls, dipping, wheeling, snatching up discarded bits of food. A bird dived at the tray, rising with a paper bag in its beak. One of Richard’s mercenaries was staring at me. I pushed the tray at him, finding the voice of the youth I had been, that London street whine.
‘As kissed by the King. Cure anything. One penny.’
He pushed me away in contempt. A sailor with his prot
esting girl picked up a bag. ‘Any good for love?’
‘Never fails. Look how successful the King is.’
He dropped a penny in the tray and carried away the shrieking, laughing girl. I sold more. I could have emptied the tray. Then I saw her. She was just one of a group of noblemen and women, on the periphery of it, while I was hemmed in at the rear of the crowd held back by soldiers, all waiting for the King to appear and step on the coach which would take him to Canterbury.
He came out of the tent to tumultuous applause, smiling and lifting his hand. With him was Richard. He was pointing to a carriage I recognised as Lucy’s. The King paused. Richard was gazing round searchingly, beckoning, and the nobles made way for Anne. She did not hurry. Among the women in their tight-boned bodices, skirts, frills, laces and jewellery, agitating their fans at flushed faces, in her simple black dress, with the barest flicker of embroidered underskirt showing as she walked, she looked as cool as if she was in her own drawing room.
Her curtsey was just a little too long in deference, but not long enough to be mocking. They held their gaze a fraction too much. What Clarke had told me was true. They knew one another, although few would have realised it but me. I supposed the King had had much practice at it. A moment later the thought came: in her long years at Highpoint, so had she.
She signalled to Lucy, who was near her coach, and Lucy gave an order to a footman. He opened the boot. Two servants took from it something wrapped in cloth and brought it to the King. Richard unfurled the cloth, revealing a Van Dyck of the King’s father, as he loved to be seen, in black armour. I remembered it from Highpoint. I had never allowed her to hang it. The King, visibly moved, bowed his head. Several noblemen, who saw the executed King as a martyr, fell to their knees, hands clasped in devotion. Another picture was being shown. Fighting to see over the heaving crowd, I glimpsed a Holbein that had been a centrepiece of the long gallery at Highpoint. I squeezed and pushed and elbowed as I struggled to see. The leaden sky, with a copper-coloured sun, seemed to press down on me. The sea sounded like the mutter of thunder.
The King's List Page 26
