“Oh for God’s sake,” Laurence exclaimed, “he might die. He may be dead before we even get there.”
Tom was searching in his doublet. “Here, give this to Elizabeth.” He held out a ring, which he dropped into Laurence’s hand as though to avoid all contact with him. “Ormiston wished her to have it. You can make whatever excuse you choose for my absence.”
“Please, as your brother, I’m begging you –”
“Ormiston was more of a brother to me than you’ve ever been, or ever will be,” Tom cut in hoarsely.
“For the sake of our family, then. Please come.”
Tom shook his head, and turned back to his pistol.
On the way north out of the city, Laurence called at Isabella’s house. Her maidservant Lucy invited him in, smiling until she saw his expression, then motioned him quickly upstairs. At the bedchamber, he paused by the open door; Isabella was at her sponge bath. He watched, quite still, as if in disturbing her he might shatter everything between them.
She must have felt a presence, for with that endearing instinct of a woman caught unawares she crossed her arms over her breasts, to peer over her shoulder. “You!” she said; then like Lucy, she became instantly grave. “What is it, Beaumont?”
He picked her up, dripping wet as she was, set her on the bed and knelt down before her. “My father is sick. He may be dying. I have to go to him.”
“Oh my love,” she whispered. He rested his head on her lap and inhaled the fragrant perfume of her soap, wanting to stay, comforted by the simple warmth of her skin against his. But she drew him up, and looked very directly at him. “It was too good to last, wasn’t it. We should accept what we knew all along. It must end.”
“No,” he insisted, trembling. “Whatever happens won’t change my feelings for you.”
“Beaumont, I told you once before,” she said, “think of who you are and will be, and who I am. I cannot marry you, and I cannot give you children. All that I could ever be to you is a mistress, of whom you would eventually tire.”
“Have some faith,” he encouraged her, but she said nothing to this, and merely kissed him goodbye.
II.
“I trust I can rely on you not to dissolve into tears,” Lady Beaumont told Laurence with unaccustomed gentleness, as he looked down at his father.
Lord Beaumont lay sleeping in bed, in his neat cap and gown, his mouth contorted on the right side. His skin was unnaturally pale. His hands, palms up on the coverlet, resembled inanimate objects that did not belong to him. If not for the rise and fall of his chest and the soft sound of his breathing, he might have been a corpse laid out for burial.
“We have hope – he is much better than he was,” she went on, more briskly.
Laurence sniffed, before asking, “How so?”
“He can speak more clearly and has regained some movement in his frozen side. According to the physician, we may anticipate even greater improvement. Martha prescribed lily of the valley, in a tincture with wine, to regulate the heart. And walnuts ground to a powder – I do not understand the point of this last item, but it may be having some effect.”
“She’s following the doctrine of signatures. The walnut resembles the brain.”
“Thank you for that interesting information,” said Lady Beaumont, with a faint smile. “Have you seen Elizabeth?”
“Yes.” He thought of his sister in her rose-pink gown, standing at the altar beside her husband. “I just gave her Ormiston’s wedding ring – from Tom.”
“Why is Thomas not here?” she demanded, her smile vanishing.
“He said he would follow me as soon as he could. Poor man, he’s broken up – he loved Ormiston.”
“More than his father?”
“Oh no, I’m sure not.”
She sighed and lowered her eyes. “I was angry with his lordship, just before the fit came over him, and I cannot help thinking that I am partly to blame.”
Surprised that she should confide in him, Laurence slipped an arm around her waist to comfort her, then realised that he had never done such a thing in his life. He could detect her equal amazement in the straightening of her spine.
“I must thank Lord Falkland, for permitting you to come,” she remarked, moving away from him. “How is he, these days?”
Not a happy man. Since the events in London, any hope of peace is finished. The war party is on the ascendant, on both sides.”
“How long will he let you stay?”
“As long as I wish, unless some emergency arises,” Laurence answered, knowing that Falkland’s generosity was born of embarrassment, over His Majesty’s stubborn indifference on the issue of the conspiracy.
III.
“Will you stop that?” Seward inquired of his cat. Tail high and back arched, it was winding in and out of his legs as he tried to solve a complex algebraic formula. “My dear Pusskins,” he said, “it is four of the clock, the sole time of night when I can have peace and quiet, amidst all the chaos of Her Majesty’s arrival on these premises. Pray let me concentrate! Clarke was wise, to seek refuge in the countryside,” he muttered to himself.
Just then, the cat nipped sharply at his ankle, making him jump up. He was about to berate it again when a memory stirred within him. He looked through the window to the dark quadrangle beyond and saw no one. But a second later there came a knock at the door. He opened it a crack, to Sir Bernard Radcliff, and stepped back in fright.
“Dr. Seward,” Radcliff said, “may I come in?” Seward admitted him, after which Radcliff inspected the room as though in a dream; he was hollow-cheeked, his eyes darting from one object to another. “Everything here is as I remembered it!” he exclaimed, as if he and Seward were still on the best of terms.
“No thanks to the depredations of your servant,” said Seward, keeping close to the door in case he needed to make a quick escape; Radcliff was wearing his sword.
“Doctor, I am in need of your assistance,” Radcliff confessed, in a humble tone.
“To cast a royal horoscope?” Seward said, with wary sarcasm.
“No, to finish the mischief just such a horoscope started. To stop a regicide.”
“Go to His Majesty and make your confession.”
“You know that if I do, I’ll pay with my life and my family will be paupers.”
“The price of treachery is ever steep.”
“I predicted the King’s death! I did not plan it.”
“Liar! You would not be here at all, and nor would I, had you not been frustrated in your evil scheme! Why should I help you?”
Radcliff fell into Seward’s chair and buried his face in his hands. “I want to save my wife and child from dishonour. No more than that.” He looked up, beseeching. “You must have foreseen I would come to you.”
“I thought you might address Beaumont first.”
“I tried, when he was at Faringdon. Then he stole my letters and disappeared. Doctor, the Earl of Pembroke has shown me the painting of the god of silence. I assume you scried for Pembroke’s name, for it was in none of the letters.”
“My skills, in this instance, were unnecessary,” Seward said, taking great delight in telling him. “Beaumont identified Pembroke long ago as the master of the conspiracy. And the painting was entirely his idea.”
“By God!” whispered Radcliff. “Pembroke discovered that he sent it, however, and has asked me to bring him to his lordship’s house in London.”
“When was that?”
“Back in May, before the Royalist uprising was thwarted.”
“Why did you not do it?”
“Of course I would not hand Beaumont over to him! My association with Pembroke is finished, and he must know it. He may already have sent someone out to kill me. Although he, too, is somewhat compromised in his activities these days,” Radcliff added. “As one of the moderates in Parliament, he is under suspicion of involvement with the Commission of Array, and is being watched closely by Parliament’s spies.”
“Alas for him,” said Seward,
and pointed at Radcliff’s sword. “Was it you who told him about the Knights of the Rosy Cross?”
“Yes, and at once he saw that their aim of establishing a wholly Protestant Europe fitted marvellously with his own ambitions.”
Seward gave a dry laugh. “I hope he is not aspiring to enter the Brotherhood.”
“He said he desired the privilege but had first to earn it.”
“In that, he may be disappointed.”
“In that, perhaps, but not in other respects,” Radcliff said, his voice shaking. “I have cast his horoscope, on his bidding, and he is destined to live on for some years into a time of peace – well after the King’s death. So there is reason for us to fear that he may still achieve his goal.”
“Oh my God,” murmured Seward. Radcliff had truly excelled at astrology and was unlikely to have made any mistake in Pembroke’s chart, or indeed in the King’s.
“Dr. Seward,” Radcliff began again, more firmly, “I have been gathering information, to compile a list of Parliamentary spies operating in London and beyond. It could be of value to the royal cause.”
“You would buy your neck with it?”
“No. All I can hope to buy is my family’s good name, with that list and my testimony as to Pembroke’s guilt. But now we have very little time.”
“We?”
“Pembroke will not leave this business unfinished. He will want vengeance on both you and Beaumont. So you must realise, we have an interest in working together to bring charges against the Earl,” Radcliff concluded, his steel-grey eyes fixed on Seward. “And if I were you, I would not hesitate to warn your friend.”
IV.
Lord Beaumont was ensconced in a high-backed armchair in the library, his feet resting on a stool, while Laurence sat cross-legged on the Turkey carpet nearby, reading to him. He had requested a favourite work in Spanish, Don Quixote, and they had just reached the passage describing Dorothea’s seduction, at which Lord Beaumont became visibly moved, occasionally dashing the water from his eyes with his handkerchief.
“‘What is more,’” Laurence continued, “‘Don Fernando’s oaths, the witnesses he invoked, the tears he shed and, finally, his charm and good looks began to incline me forcibly to a course which proved my undoing –’”
“Oh, that a poor, innocent young maid should be so terribly wronged by that scoundrel!” interrupted his father, just as his mother burst through the open doors, a strange, panicked look on her face. Perhaps still absorbed in Dorothea’s fate, Lord Beaumont did not catch her agitation. “My dear wife,” he said, “is it not remarkable how well our son has kept his Spanish? He sounds as if he had never spoken anything else all his life.”
“Put that book away,” she snapped at Laurence, regarding it as she might some deadly weapon. “A letter has arrived for you. The messenger said it needed no reply.”
Laurence rose and took the letter from her. “It’s from Wilmot,” he said, scanning it, hugely relieved that it was not a summons from Falkland. “Her Majesty has arrived in Oxford and has been installed at Merton College. And there’s been a victory, at a place called Roundway Down, near Devizes. Wilmot and Byron crushed Sir William Waller’s army – they killed or took prisoner about fourteen hundred men, and seized all of Waller’s ammunition and his baggage. Her Majesty insisted that the King create Wilmot a baron, out of gratitude for his success. He’s now Lord Wilmot of Adderbury.”
“That has a fine ring to it!” said Lord Beaumont cheerfully.
Laurence started to laugh, as he folded up the letter. “It’s going to make Wilmot unbearably smug.”
Lady Beaumont’s face relaxed into a small smile. “Now, Laurence, it is time for your father’s nap. Pray go and call Geoffrey to assist him to bed.”
When his father had been settled comfortably, Laurence excused himself, and as he often did when the weather obliged, he went down to the river to bathe.
Undressing at the bank, he waded through the shallows and plunged in, breaking the smooth surface. What could have inspired his mother’s odd behaviour today, he mused, as he floated lazily on his back; she had been so much friendlier towards him since he had come home. Then he thought of Isabella. Over the three weeks or more since they said goodbye he had missed her like a part of his own flesh, yet he had written to her only once, to inform her of Lord Beaumont’s recovery. Although he felt no less certain of his love for her, he knew that it had not been a particularly eloquent letter. In fact, he now worried that she might have found it inadequate. He should reiterate his feelings for her, but the words did not come easily to him.
Diving deep into a colder current of water, he surfaced gasping. Instantly his stomach contracted with fear: on the near bank, a man in black stood watching him.
He exhaled with relief on hearing Seward’s voice. “Come out, Beaumont!”
Unlike Joshua Poole, Seward did not avert his gaze as Laurence emerged from the water, but examined him instead with more than academic interest. Eventually he said, “Please cover yourself. I may be old, but my fires have not given out.”
“And I thought I was too old for you,” Laurence joked, pulling on his breeches. “So what on earth brought you all the way here?”
“Beaumont, something most untoward happened yesterday. Sir Bernard Radcliff visited me at Merton.”
“Good Christ.” Laurence sat down beside him on the grass. “What did he want?”
Seward recounted the conversation. “I am certain that he is a lying rogue, but he is trapped like a fish in a barrel,” he went on. “And we know there is some truth to his assertion that Pembroke is sniffing at your heels. I spoke with Falkland, and he has impressed upon His Majesty the need for action. Yet it is a delicate matter. His Majesty would still prefer to retain every possible ally he has in the House of Lords.”
“He’s fooling himself, in Pembroke’s case.”
“Wipe that sneer off your face, and listen. We are to meet – Falkland, you, Radcliff, and myself. His Majesty has agreed to preserve Radcliff from a traitor’s death in exchange for his switch in loyalties, and also a list he has apparently made of Parliamentary agents. Then, under the Secretary of State’s authority and safe conduct, you and he will travel to London and engage in negotiations with Pembroke.”
“Negotiations? Pembroke should be brought to trial, and so should Radcliff! Is the King going to let Pembroke get away with plotting his death?”
“You and Radcliff must persuade him that the conspiracy is stillborn, and that if he so much as dreams of any violence against His Majesty, or any of His Majesty’s servants such as yourself, he is finished.”
“Or I may be, if things go wrong. Radcliff could easily change his tune again, once we arrive in London.”
“We have his letters, don’t forget.”
“True. But, as you said,” Laurence reminded Seward, “he’s a lying rogue.”
V.
It was a still, sultry evening turning to dusk, the sky streaked with gold and rose in the west; and to the east, a few pinpoint stars glittered against the deepening blue. Radcliff could hear wood pigeons cooing in the trees and invisible animals stirring the hedgerows, and he could smell the sweet odour of leaves and damp sod beneath his horse’s hooves. All this would be the same whether he lived or died, he thought. What self-important creatures men were.
He dismounted in Madam Musgrave’s courtyard and gave the stable boy his reins. “Don’t unsaddle him, Sam,” he said. “I shan’t be staying.”
He walked along the stone path, through well-tended flowerbeds fragrant with the scent of roses and lavender and rosemary; and with distinct dread, he entered the house.
Madam Musgrave and Kate both leapt to their feet on seeing him. “Sir Bernard,” Madam Musgrave exclaimed, “where have you been? Walter wrote to us that you had vanished from your troop to go to London. He is frantic with concern for you!”
“I know, I know,” Radcliff said, assuming a carefree tone. “I shall catch up with him later – ther
e’s an appointment that I must first keep tonight, and then I ride for Oxford.” The women exchanged consternated looks, suggesting to him that his bluster failed to convince them. Then he realised how he must appear: he had not had occasion to trim his beard or change his linen, and his clothes were hanging loose on him. He embraced Kate, thrilled to feel the swell of her stomach against him. “As you see, my dear, I am whole and hearty,” he assured her.
“You do not seem hearty, sir,” Kate said, rather fearfully.
“Aunt Musgrave,” he hurried on, “I must beg your pardon – I should like a short time with my wife before I depart.”
“Can you not even sup with us, sir?”
“I regret not. My dear, let’s take a stroll outside.”
He guided Kate off before Madam Musgrave could object, and they went along the same stone path that he had followed earlier, into the apple orchard beyond, where the trees were heavy with green fruit.
“Did you get back the letters that awful man stole from you?” she demanded at once.
“Oh yes – Mr. Beaumont and I have resolved that problem.”
“Don’t treat me like a child! Is your life in danger because of what he did?”
“I am no more at risk than I ever was – we are a country at war, my sweetheart! Although I do have some distressing news – my lawyer, Joshua Poole, passed away recently. But my documents, my will and so forth, are still at his chambers. I gave you the address –”
“You came to say goodbye. I won’t see you again.”
“My dearest, stop!” He seized her and kissed her. “Kate, please trust me. You have nothing to worry about.”
But she did not look persuaded as they walked back to the house.
Madam Musgrave was waiting with a parcel wrapped in cloth. “A taste of our supper,” she said, offering it to him. “And never again leave your wife so long without news of you, if you can possibly help it,” she scolded, as they accompanied him to his horse. “It’s not the only time you’ve been neglectful, sir.”
The Best of Men Page 60
