“He looks a bit of a cold fish himself.”
“I won’t argue with you, sir. But he has a title and land, and Richard is in awe of him and was anxious to find a match that Kate wouldn’t refuse. She had refused enough of them already. Where is she?” Madam Musgrave called out to a maidservant. “Tell her again that she has a visitor.” She turned to Laurence. “The girl spends hours in her chamber, sir, and she must be bored and miserable, yet when I try to entertain her with a game of cards, or ask her to sing for me, it is as bad as pulling teeth. Do you sing, by any chance?”
“Never,” Laurence said. “It’s against my religion. But I do like a game of cards.”
“Thank God for that. We shall have a hand after supper. I insist that you stay and eat with us, sir. Ah, at last,” she declared, as Kate entered.
Kate must have been no more than sixteen when Laurence last met her, and since then she had fulfilled the promise of her youth. She resembled some northern goddess, her carriage very erect, blonde and blue-eyed, and perfect in her features. She inspected him coolly, as though he were a worshipping devotee, so he appraised her in return with rather less hauteur and saw her lips twitch disapprovingly.
“Mr. Beaumont has ridden from Chipping Campden, at great peril to himself, just for your sake. There was a great battle yesterday that he has news of,” said Madam Musgrave, pouring more wine for them all. “Here, have a cup, my dear.”
“No, thank you, Aunt,” Kate replied, sitting down.
“I think you might need it, before you hear what he has to say.”
Kate accepted the cup, without drinking from it.
“I’m a friend of your brother’s, Lady Radcliff, though you won’t remember me,” Laurence said.
“Yes I do, sir. I hope he is well,” she went on, her reserve faltering slightly.
“Not altogether. His horse fell on him during the action. But he was lucky – he only broke his leg. I took him to my father’s house, and he had it set this morning by a good surgeon, so you mustn’t worry about him.”
“We are in your debt, sir,” she said.
“No, no. It was your husband who saved his life.” From his saddlebag Laurence withdrew the letter that Ingram had written to her after the operation. It was a surprisingly thick missive, he now noticed, although he could not remember his friend taking long to compose it. “Perhaps you should read this,” he said, passing it over.
She took it, and as she broke open the seal, another sealed letter fell out and tumbled to the floor. He bent to retrieve it for her and then hesitated.
“Is this your husband’s writing?” he asked, of the few lines on the cover.
“Yes. What of it, sir?”
He paused again, to control his excitement; the hand exactly resembled that on His Majesty’s horoscope. “Nothing,” he said.
Kate was perusing her brother’s note. “I am not to read Sir Bernard’s letter unless I know for certain he is dead. Sir Bernard wrote the same instructions,” she said, eyeing his. “‘To be opened by my wife, Katherine Radcliff, upon my certain decease and no sooner.’ What should I do, Aunt?” she inquired.
Laurence gritted his teeth, willing her to open the second letter.
“In your place, I would read it, Kate,” said Madam Musgrave. “Since it may concern what is now your property, you have every right.”
Kate looked from her to Laurence. “Mr. Beaumont, is it possible that he is still alive?”
He hesitated yet again; he could not lie to her about so grave an issue. “He might be,” he said, at length. “We must hope so.”
“Then I shall wait, until I find out for certain,” she said, lowering her eyes.
Damn her obedience, thought Laurence. And her reaction amazed him: either she was exerting magnificent self-control, or she did not care much for her husband.
After supper they sat at cards. Madam Musgrave suggested that he stay the night, and he agreed, for a private motive: he was burning to get his hands on Radcliff’s letter. While she dealt the first round, he considered the possibility of stealing into Kate’s chamber late in the night. But if she were to catch him, he would have a hard time explaining himself, and she might cause a highly unpleasant scene.
“You have an enviable proficiency at the game, sir,” Madam Musgrave told him, as he shuffled the deck for another round. “You could make a living off it, were you born to less happy circumstances.”
He merely smiled.
“I think, Aunt, that I may retire soon,” said Kate, her frown expressing undisguised contempt for such a trivial pastime.
“Oh, come now! Mr. Beaumont, you must know some tricks that might entertain her.”
He looked at Kate, thinking that no sleight of hand could possibly achieve that end. Ingram was right: she was not easy to like.
“Here, allow me, sir.” Madam Musgrave took the deck from him. “Kate, you have only to pick a card.”
With the air of an adult humouring a difficult child, Kate selected the knave of spades. More appropriate than you know, Laurence could not help remarking to himself.
“‘How absolute the knave is!’” Madam Musgrave quoted. “‘We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.’”
“I beg pardon?” said Kate, blinking at her.
“From a play – a tragedy, about a Danish prince, who could not make up his mind.”
“Whether he should kill the man who had murdered his father and married his mother,” Laurence added. “Don’t you know it, Lady Radcliff?”
“I have never been to a playhouse, sir.”
“I used to go quite often with your brother,” he said, remembering how disconsolate Ingram had been after the death of his wife a year or so into their marriage. Laurence had taken him about Southwark and shown him some of its many attractions, some more licit than others.
“Walter did not tell me,” she said, as though in reproach not of Ingram, but of Laurence for leading her brother astray.
Madam Musgrave winked at Laurence. “He must have had his reasons! So, Kate, are you ready? Put the card back.” As he watched her thick, capable, none too clean hands deal out the cards, Laurence tried to imagine what Ingram would say, were he to learn that Sir Bernard Radcliff, the excellent soldier, the dear relative trusted with a precious sister, was plotting against the King’s life. Then Madam Musgrave nudged his elbow. “Mr. Beaumont, you are far away.”
“I’m sorry, madam. I’m just a little tired, and I must leave early tomorrow.”
“I am also tired,” said Kate, getting up with alacrity. “Thank you for bringing my letter, sir. Good night, and I wish you a safe journey. Good night, Aunt.”
When she had gone, Madam Musgrave set aside the cards. “I shall not keep you long from your bed, sir, but help me see that all is locked up. The servants are sometimes neglectful.”
“Of course,” he said, and he accompanied her about the house as she went from window to window, and to the doors, checking that each was shut fast.
They were at the stair, and she had given him a candle to light his way, when she held him back and whispered, “What disturbed you so about Sir Bernard’s letter?”
“It wasn’t the letter,” he replied hastily. “It was Lady Radcliff who disturbed me – it’s as if she doesn’t love him at all.”
“Walter assures me that she does. And Sir Bernard is deeply in love with her. If he is still in this world, that is.”
“I wish my inquiries on that count had been more successful,” Laurence said, with genuine regret.
“What might he have written to her, for him to place such a condition on her opening it? It must concern his property, which he has gone to great pains to secure from Parliament. He was so worried about his house being ransacked that he stored a coffer of his here – he said he feared to leave behind certain family valuables at Longstanton.” Madam Musgrave heaved a sigh. “If we were to receive confirmation of his death, Kate must see what is inside it.”
She might
not like what she found, thought Laurence, his own curiosity instantly aroused. He should have been more pessimistic as to Radcliff’s chances of survival. Kate had come so close to breaking that seal.
Madam Musgrave surprised him by leaning forward to plant her lips on his cheek. “I do declare, sir, I haven’t seen such skill at gaming since my days at King James’ Court. And if I were as young as I was then, I would not permit a handsome fellow like you to escape with only a chaste kiss. Now off to bed, and I shall wake you at dawn, though if you have need of anything before you go to sleep, my chamber is to the right hand of the stairs, and I shall be up soon. You may take the one on the left.”
“Thank you,” he said, wishing he could ask which was Kate’s. “Good night, Madam Musgrave.”
Once in his room he removed his boots and blew out the candle. Keeping his door an inch or so ajar, he peered out. A few minutes later he saw his hostess stomping upstairs, followed by her maidservant. They entered her chamber, and for a while he heard voices in conversation. Eventually there came a loud thump, as of someone settling heavily into bed, and silence. He waited, until reassured by the snores emanating from her chamber. Slipping past it in the narrow corridor, scarcely daring to breathe, he very cautiously tried each of the other doors on that floor. Only one was fastened shut, and he discerned from his investigations that it must be Kate’s. Frustrated, he returned to his room, and paced about. Then he stopped short. How on earth could he have forgotten the message that Seward had left him at Clarke’s house? Seward knew the author of the horoscope, and therefore Seward knew Radcliff.
V.
Dressed in the robes of Lord Chamberlain, Pembroke was sitting beside His Majesty in the Banqueting House, with young Prince Charles nearby. The King fastened on Pembroke his expressive Stuart eyes with their drooping lids, so like his father’s, and asked, “Are you my f-f-riend, Herbert, or my enemy?” Pembroke declared his undying allegiance in the warmest terms, yet even as he was speaking, the boy Charles rose and cried, “Take him from here, and when he is hanged, drawn, and quartered, put his head on a stave at Traitor’s Gate for all to see his disgrace.” Pembroke turned in horror to the King; and a yet more terrible thing happened. His Majesty’s head seemed to flop from one side to another loosely, and next toppled altogether from his shoulders and into Pembroke’s lap. Pembroke tried to rid himself of the object, but it stayed as if glued to his robe, and he began to scream.
In a sweat he awoke, clutching his throat. The recurrent dream became more vivid each time, although it always stopped short at the same point, flinging him back to consciousness, heart pounding in his breast.
He must not let it agitate him so, he told himself sternly, as he had on countless past nights. His conscience should be clear: he was working to save his country from the stranglehold of popery and cut short the bloodshed that had already broken out in the land. He had recognised what must be accomplished and had chosen to act alone. And Charles Stuart’s destiny was written in the stars, sanctioned by a Divine Hand. Pembroke himself was merely God’s instrument, executing His will. The death of one would preserve the lives of many, bringing peace and prosperity to the realm, so that England would stand out again as a beacon of true faith to the whole of Christendom. With God’s grace and the secret powers that Pembroke hoped soon to acquire, he would start a cleansing tide that would in time purge out the whore of Rome, her priests and her armies too.
He deserved some revenge, he thought next. He had served the former King James dutifully, allowing the old sodomite to caress him and lean upon him and slobber over him when he was a pretty young man. All the while he had courted Prince Henry, heir to the throne and noble defender of the Protestant cause at home and abroad. But Henry had died in the flower of his youth, of fever or perhaps of poison, and his brother, that unworthy, stuttering dwarf Charles, had become king in his stead.
Lying back, Pembroke could recall as if it were yesterday the fateful incident in the summer of 1641 that had cost him the office of Lord Chamberlain. Lord Maltravers, the Earl of Arundel’s impudent son, had set out to provoke him during a meeting at the House of Lords, and he had lost his temper, a mistake to which he was prone. He had slapped the boy’s face. When they were both sent to the Tower, he thought that would be the end of it. Yet King Charles had been waiting for just such an excuse to remove him from office and appoint the Earl of Essex in his place, in a belated attempt to appease Parliament and to please the little buck-toothed Queen, who Pembroke knew harboured an intense hatred for him.
“You and your papist wife,” Pembroke said quietly, into the darkness. “You should not have humiliated me.”
He was about to shut his eyes when rapid steps approached his door, and his servant’s voice called, “My lord, please forgive the disturbance, but Mr. Rose is come to see you.”
“Have him wait in my antechamber,” he called back, tossing aside the bedclothes. He got up, removed his nightcap, put on his dressing gown and padded slippers, combed his thinning hair, and went out to receive his guest.
Radcliff’s face was shockingly grey, his eyes circled with shadow. His buff coat was stained with dried blood, and his right arm was in a sling.
“Bring him refreshment,” Pembroke ordered the servant, “and then leave us in privacy until I ask for you again.” He and Radcliff waited to talk, exchanging agonized glances; like lovers too long separated, Pembroke thought wryly. At length his servant brought wine and a platter of fruit, bread, and cheese, then withdrew.
“So our plan succeeded,” Pembroke observed.
Radcliff nodded. “Upon capture at Edgehill I feared for my life, but your document of safe conduct was respected, and here I am.”
Pembroke now noticed the green leather scabbard at Radcliff’s side. “How the devil did you recover your sword?” he cried. “You told me it was stolen on the same night as my money!”
Radcliff laid a hand on it, as if to comfort himself that it was still there. “It came back to me by a coincidence that can only have been fated, my lord. A friend of my brother-in-law Ingram gifted it to me as a wedding present. Since it was originally your gift to me, its return can only augur well for us.”
“What? You mean it travelled across the sea to you, as though drawn by magnetic force? I would more easily believe that it was never stolen than swallow a tale like that!”
“It is the truth, my lord, which is often more unlikely than a lie. The man who gave it to me also fought abroad. He happened to purchase the sword in the very same place that I was robbed – The Hague.”
“A pity he could not have found my gold, as well!” Pembroke sneered. Had Radcliff pocketed the money himself? Though if so, why arrive with the sword in evidence, and such an unlikely explanation? “I am disappointed,” he went on in the same caustic tone, “that with all your astrological skills you could not foretell this extraordinary event.”
“My lord,” said Radcliff, speaking in a tense whisper, “I am not some mountebank that cozens old women for a penny to find their missing thimbles. What I practise is both art and science, and it has not failed you in the past, as far as I can remember.”
“I spoke in jest, man,” Pembroke said, uneasily; he still needed Radcliff’s skills, even if the business of the sword left a nagging doubt in his mind. “What happened to your arm?”
“Grazed by a ball. The wound has festered a little with the strain of riding.”
“Why did I not hear from you after Robinson delivered my message to you at Shrewsbury?”
Radcliff stared at him in obvious consternation. “I received no message!”
“By Jesu’s blood! I sent him over a month ago, to inform you of what passed between Falkland and myself when we met. He did not return to report to me, which I found perturbing; he is usually so reliable. The message was in our code, and contained nothing that could damage us, but if he were seized and put to torture, he might reveal our names.”
“He knows only that we are striving towards a pea
ce.”
“Yes, thank God, no more than that,” Pembroke agreed. “And we are amongst many these days. Here in Parliament, the radicals are falling from favour. You may depend upon it, peace talks will begin again soon.” He eyed Radcliff warily. “I now see fit to tell you: since late summer I have been corresponding in secret with His Majesty. I have offered my services unreservedly to his cause and pledged never to take up arms against him.”
“Did you have to go quite that far, my lord?”
“Why not? The more he trusts me, the better.” Pembroke gulped back his glass of wine, a thrill passing through his veins. “As I said in that message to you, Falkland has effectively promised to re-establish communication between myself and Dr. Earle. When Falkland was in London I gave him a letter for Earle, begging Earle’s forgiveness if I had ever offended him. Neither man will resist my advances, I know,” he concluded, smiling to himself. There was a silence, during which Radcliff gazed blearily at the floor. “What’s the matter?” Pembroke said.
“Excuse me, my lord, it is my wound that ails me.”
“Oh, I meant to ask – did your bride like the jewels I gave you for her?”
Radcliff seemed to wince. “Yes, thank you, my lord. When I last saw her, she was wearing one of the necklaces.”
“The diamond?”
“No. She was most taken with the ruby and pearl collar.”
“She has modest tastes! That was a mere trinket, compared to the others. And were her favours worth the wait?” Pembroke added. “Anticipation can be more exciting than the act itself, especially with an untrained girl.”
“My wife delights me in every respect,” Radcliff answered stiffly.
“Then you must have been sad to leave her bed! God willing, in another month or so we shall all spend Christmas with our families. How I miss Wilton! I had no chance to hunt this autumn and my estate must be overrun with fine buck.” Pembroke broke off; Radcliff looked as if he were about to faint. “We must attend to your wound,” Pembroke said, and rang a bell to summon his servant. “Mr. Rose shall stay for what remains of the night,” he told the man. “See to his comfort, and fetch the surgeon. He has a bad arm that requires care. Mr. Rose, we shall talk again tomorrow.”
The Best of Men Page 33
