VI.
He and Juana had arrived at Paris without further incident. Either they had lost their pursuer or he had been satisfied by his search at Lille, for they saw no more of him, and as they rode along the banks of the Seine, Laurence felt a new optimism. Here at last was life untouched by war: there were boats unloading plentiful cargo of wines and cloth, and hawkers peddling hotcakes and birds in cages and ribbons and strange fruits to the milling crowds of people. Entering the heart of the city, he was surprised how well he could remember its geography from the last occasion that he had visited, on his foreign tour with William Seward.
Once they had stabled the horses, he took Juana to market to buy a change of clothing, and then, much against her will, to a bathhouse. Afterwards they repaired to a tavern, where he ordered a lavish meal.
“It’s the last we’ll have together, so it might as well be the best,” he said.
“Let me stay with you tonight, Monsieur,” she begged. “I swear I will be gone tomorrow.”
Feeling relaxed and indulgent, he agreed. It was dusk, and rainy, and he did not like to think of her sheltering in some damp alleyway, so he bought them two private chambers in a hostel.
When he came to say goodbye to her the next morning, she clung to him, pressing her face against his chest. “You are the only gadjo who has ever treated me with any respect,” she moaned. “Let me stay.”
“Come on, Juana,” he said, laughing. “This city is as rich as The Hague. You’ll do just as well here picking pockets.” Without another word, she pushed him away as though insulted, seized her belongings, and rushed out. “Goodbye to you, too,” he muttered after her.
He lazed about contentedly in bed until suppertime, then went to the same tavern as before, and ate and drank with some officers from the young King Louis’ court who later invited him to a social gathering. Here he fell into the company of two women, and he spent the night with them, in a tangle of limbs, only to return wonderfully sated to his own hostel in the early afternoon.
Juana was sitting on the floor, her baggage beside her, at the door to his chamber. In her lap was a purse of expensive calfskin, and she wore a new, gaudy yellow dress. Her hair was curled and pinned up to imitate the French fashion, though crudely, as if she had done it herself. Her lips bore traces of paint. All these additions to her toilette had the effect of making her look younger, more vulnerable, and cheap at the same time.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, puzzled by her transformed appearance.
She gave a sorrowful sniff. “I can tell where you’ve been. You reek of perfume.”
When he unlocked the door, she entered without being asked and planted herself on the bed, holding the purse to her chest.
“Juana, what more do you want,” he said. “I did as I promised, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Monsieur. And that is why I came back. I owe you a confession. The man who attacked me at Lille is the one we saw on the road.”
“Ah, so you finally admit it.”
“He tracked us all the way from Simeon’s house.” She unfastened the purse and emptied out a heap of gold coins. “I took this from the Englishman that Marie had in bed with her the evening we left. The one who chased us is the Englishman’s servant.” Laurence stared at the coins and then at her. “You can’t be upset with me, Monsieur,” she went on, in a defensive tone. “I needed money for the journey, and it was a clean theft, as clean as any of your card tricks. I took his sword, too, the one I told you that Simeon gave to us. He did not see me, because Marie had already drawn the bed curtains. Not even the servant saw me then. But we rode out in such a hurry, remember? That’s how they knew to come after us.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“You would have abandoned me!”
“No I wouldn’t have, though by God you’d have deserved it. This is English gold, newly minted,” he remarked, sitting down beside her to examine one of the coins, on which was stamped the profile of King Charles. “Hundreds of pounds.”
“It’s ours now,” Juana said.
“It’s yours. You’re a rich woman, you won’t have to steal again.” More gently he added, “You’ve made your confession. Now you can leave. Goodbye, Juana, and good luck spending your fortune.”
He lay back and closed his eyes, hoping she would make some move to depart with her wealth. Then to his amazement he felt her hands inexpertly caressing his thighs. “Well, well,” he said, sitting up again, and grabbed her by the wrists. “Have you reconsidered our terms on setting out? Is that why you got yourself all dressed up? It’s not in the best of taste, but you show your intentions clearly enough.”
She pulled her hands away, and whispered, “The servant is here in Paris, Monsieur. Yesterday, I saw him following me. I … I thought I had lost him, but he may be waiting to catch me outside.” Neither of them spoke for some time; Laurence was too angry. “Monsieur,” she continued, “he knows your name. That night in the cellar, he kept talking at me and shaking me, and I couldn’t understand any of what he said, except for your name: Beaumont. He must have asked about us at Simeon’s. No one inside the house would have betrayed you, but the grooms hated you because you had your freedom with the women. They hated us both.”
“I should hate you, too,” Laurence said quietly. “You put my life in as much danger as yours, and only when you think you need me again do I find out about it.”
“But, Monsieur, you must help me! The servant will kill me whether or not I give back the money.”
“I wouldn’t blame him in the least.”
She burst into tears, which seemed genuine, and he felt a kind of pity for her, that she should have guarded her virtue so zealously for years, only to offer it to him as a last resort and find herself humiliated.
He started to gather up the coins and replace them in the purse but stopped on noticing an odd lump beneath its silk lining. Ripping apart the fabric, he drew out some folded sheets of paper, durable but so thin as to be almost transparent, covered in lines of writing. “This is a code, or a cipher,” he said, inspecting them. “Why didn’t his servant find the purse when he attacked you?”
“Because of the dark,” she said miserably. “And I had buried it deep in the straw, along with his sword.”
“Then he wasn’t looking for the money when he told you to strip off your clothes. He was after these papers. That’s why he searched you as he did. Christ!” Laurence exclaimed, studying them with new interest. “They must be worth as much to his master as the gold. Perhaps more.”
“How could paper be worth more than gold?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t understand why he didn’t ambush us long ago, to get what he wanted.”
“You would have fought him off,” she declared, with childlike confidence. “You would have killed him.”
“If I didn’t then, I may have to now.”
“Bless you, Monsieur –”
“I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for myself. And if I hear another lie from your mouth, or if you give me any more nonsense, I’m finished with you.” She nodded resignedly, which amused him, even though he was still angry. “And one last thing.” He detached the pins holding up her coiffure and tossed them aside. “Don’t wear your hair like that again. It doesn’t suit you at all.”
VII.
At Stratford-upon-Avon, only about twenty miles from Chipping Campden, Tom suffered a relapse. Laurence fed him the remains of the opium, and they pressed on, stopping just a couple of times for Tom to ease the gripe in his belly. Late in the night, they reached the gatehouse to Lord Beaumont’s estate. Laurence ordered the gatekeeper’s son to run ahead with news of their arrival, and then arranged for a litter to carry Tom the rest of the way, while he followed, leading their tired horses.
Lord and Lady Beaumont were waiting with Mary at the entrance to the hall, and as he walked in, they bombarded him with anxious inquiries about the invalid. When they were assured that Tom’s life was in no da
nger, and once he had been put safely to bed, accompanied by his wife, Lord Beaumont observed to Laurence, “You look worn out, sir. It seems we shall have to nurse you both back to health!”
Laurence could not even smile; he had spent too much time on the road with Tom, and he now feared that the Colonel’s men might arrive at the house to arrest him before he could get to the meeting place near Aylesbury. “I can’t stay,” he said. “I have to set out again at first light tomorrow.”
“On what business?” his mother asked.
“It’s a private matter.”
Lord Beaumont frowned at him. “Did you perchance pay a call on Lord Falkland in Nottingham?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Has it any connection with your need to ride out so early?” When Laurence hesitated, his father said to Lady Beaumont, “I should have informed you, my dear. I suggested that Laurence inquire whether he could be of assistance to Falkland. He is so clever with figures and languages and ciphers, I thought there might be a place for him in Falkland’s service. And I must confess,” he added to Laurence, “I wrote to him on that subject.”
“So he told me,” Laurence said.
“I hope he also told you that I did impress upon him your concerns, and that I wished him to treat you well.”
Laurence groaned inwardly.
“Well treated?” cried Lady Beaumont. “My lord, have you taken leave of your senses?” She turned on Laurence. “What have you agreed to do for him? Has he employed you in some kind of … underhanded occupation? For if you made any such commitment, I will not allow it!”
“Oh my dear,” murmured Lord Beaumont. “Falkland would never bring dishonour upon our son.”
“Tell me, Laurence,” she insisted.
How astute she was, he thought, and how unworldly was his father. “I’ve made no commitment to Falkland,” he answered, with absolute truth. “In fact, when I was in Nottingham, I enlisted in Wilmot’s Horse.”
They appeared astonished. “I must congratulate you,” his father said, at last. “We were aware how hard it would be for you to take up arms again.”
“But why not serve with Thomas’ troop?” objected Lady Beaumont.
Was nothing ever good enough for her, mused Laurence. “Wilmot’s an old friend of mine, and I owe him a favour,” he replied. “You’ll have to be satisfied with that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I.
On the way to London with Lord Spencer, Falkland pondered yet again why Mr. Beaumont had failed to keep their appointment. He still refused to accept the explanation Colonel Hoare had offered that morning, as they waited a whole hour for the man to appear.
“Beaumont’s a complete and utter scoundrel,” he had told Falkland, after describing what he had learnt from his investigations amongst the veterans of the foreign war. “I reckon he was lying to you about how he acquired those letters. He may know more about the regicides than he was willing to admit, and after he saw you, he probably lacked the nerve to defend his concocted story. As I said, my lord, you must let me question him.”
“That I forbid,” Falkland had insisted, appalled by Hoare’s imputations, as by his eagerness to interrogate Mr. Beaumont, given what the process would entail. “And I don’t believe you. He was begging me to act on the intelligence.”
“Then will you alert the King as to a plot that threatens his life?” Hoare had inquired, coldly.
“I must know more about it first, from Mr. Beaumont. I shall speak with him myself upon my return. And afterwards of course I shall address His Majesty.”
Colonel Hoare tended to place too much faith in the veracity of rumour, Falkland thought, and whatever were Beaumont’s sins abroad, his father had written him a high recommendation. He deserved another hearing.
On arrival in the city, Falkland found it as noisy, crowded, and smelly as always; he could not understand how anyone would choose it over the peace and cleanliness of the countryside. But many things had changed: playhouses were closed, the taverns were half-empty, and the apprentices had left work to train with their own bands to defend the capital. Even women were employed digging earthworks, skirts kilted up, singing psalms as they wielded their shovels. Apparently all the churches had been stripped of the art that they had housed for centuries, and while Falkland did not share his mother’s Catholicism nor her love of Episcopal trappings, he was sad to imagine statues defaced, and frescoes and panels whitewashed over.
It saddened him further to realise, as he began negotiations with Parliament at Whitehall, that he had embarked upon a bootless mission. From the outset, he had predicted that the King had not gone far enough in agreeing only to put a formal end to hostilities if both sides withdrew the accusations of treason each had brought against the other. And so, in a private conversation with the leaders of Parliament, Falkland extended His Majesty’s terms, saying that the King was ready to consent to a thorough reformation of religion, and to anything else that they could reasonably desire. He knew that he might be compromising himself, for His Majesty had just once, and very vaguely, intimated such broad concessions, but in the end Parliament voted to reject even these. Falkland sent a messenger post-haste to Nottingham with the news, then sat in his coach alone and wept.
On his last night in the capital, he and Spencer were invited to attend a feast in the Banqueting House, to signal a close to their visit. He wondered if the location had been selected to heap upon them a final insult. For the House, constructed and decorated richly in honour of His Majesty’s father, King James, whose resplendent form had recently been depicted on its ceiling by Rubens, had formerly been the scene of many royal ceremonies and pageants. How ironic, Falkland reflected, that he must now sup with men who might blow out his guts if he met them on the battlefield. Nonetheless, social decorum had to be observed, and so he and Spencer, in full regalia as members of the House of Lords, would go to break bread with the enemy.
He returned to dress at the house where he was staying, that of his friend Edmund Waller, who had been one of a minority in Parliament that voted to accept His Majesty’s peace terms. As he walked in, he was surprised to hear music: Waller must have come home early from the Commons and was now in his parlour playing an air on the bass viol, with another man at the virginals. Falkland listened, unwilling to disturb them, the minor key suiting his mood. But they had heard his footsteps and broke off.
“Falkland,” cried Waller, coming out to him, “you tried your best.”
“Parliament has given me what amounts to an unequivocal declaration of war,” said Falkland. “How could the King possibly commit to withdrawing his protection from his advisors and, yet more outrageous, have them pay the costs of this war as traitors to the realm?”
“Pym and his allies would love to see Lord Digby’s head stuck over Traitor’s Gate,” Waller remarked, with a smile.
“Mine too, perhaps.”
“No, my dear friend. You have their respect, and always will. And be comforted. London is far from lost to the King. He has only to march as far as Reading, and he’ll see that his capital has not deserted him. I’ll write to you, and keep you apprised of the climate here.”
“I pray you, be careful,” Falkland warned. “Letters can be intercepted. For you, especially, as a Member of Parliament, it would be unwise to risk anything of the sort. And now,” he added, with a sigh, “I must prepare myself for the banquet.”
Yet it was not as much of an ordeal as he expected. He had been seated beside the Earl of Pembroke, who behaved very graciously towards him, and expressed deep regret that an impasse had been reached.
“My lord,” Falkland said, as the last platters of a meat and fish course were cleared away, “I am pleased to discover that you have not hardened yourself against His Majesty, after your last encounter at Newmarket when he rejected your own peace petition.” The King must have incurred Pembroke’s wrath long before, Falkland thought, when he dismissed him from the position of Lord Chamberlain. It was amazing that Pembro
ke should seem to bear no grudge. Falkland had always known him to be a choleric sort, sensitive to the slightest breach of his dignity.
“He is our anointed King, may God preserve him,” said Pembroke. “At any rate, if a campaign this autumn can’t be avoided, which I fear it can’t, Englishmen will at least be taught what it is to spill each other’s blood on home soil. When the armies break for the winter months we will have more of a chance to negotiate a peace.”
“Unless one side emerges triumphant,” Falkland pointed out.
“But that would leave the other desirous of revenge and restitution. My lord,” Pembroke went on more urgently, “I think we have much to discuss. Would you permit me to take you in my coach wherever you are staying tonight? We could then talk a while undisturbed.”
“Very well. I am at Edmund Waller’s house.”
“The poet?”
“Yes, and my good friend, although I had lost touch with him lately because of our country’s woes.”
“We have all lost touch with friends – another reason we must speak.”
After the company rose for a final health, Falkland said his goodbyes, gave instructions to his servant Stephens to follow him, and accompanied Pembroke outside.
“The Banqueting House always brings me back to the old days of King James’ reign,” Pembroke observed, as they settled themselves in his coach. “I was quite a favourite with him, until George Villiers displaced me in his affections, and got created Duke of Buckingham for it.”
“At least you did not meet your death at the hand of an assassin, as did the late Duke,” Falkland reminded him.
“Too true that being a favourite of kings has its dangers,” Pembroke said, with a hint of bitterness. As the horses picked up speed, he began again, “I should like to lay before you a proposal. I ask you to mention it to nobody as yet, not even your closest allies. Have I your word?”
“My lord,” said Falkland, “I cannot be party to anything that might harm His Majesty’s interests, nor will I betray the confidence of anyone who has chosen to serve him.”
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