The Best of Men

by Claire Letemendia

  He ignored this, saying, “Until soon, ladies. May God bless you.” And he galloped off without turning back. When he had gone a little way, he hurled Madam Musgrave’s package violently into the bushes.

  At Faringdon, he left his horse outside the Cross Keys Inn, the place of his appointment, and walked into the taproom. Looking the picture of ease, Beaumont was sitting with his feet propped up on a bench, his shirt and doublet hanging open, and his hair tied back loosely. He was engrossed in reading a newssheet.

  “Mr. Beaumont,” Radcliff said, at which he glanced up and smiled. “We should talk elsewhere.”

  “Of course,” he said, tossing aside the newssheet, and rose in a leisurely manner.

  As they went out together into the courtyard, Radcliff studied his profile; the flare to his nostrils and the upward slant of his eyes and fine brows were reminiscent of a drawing Radcliff had once seen of some Oriental prince.

  “Unbearably hot weather,” Radcliff commented, trying to imitate Beaumont’s relaxed air.

  “I find it quite agreeable.”

  “Your Spanish blood must account for that.”

  “Blood’s all the same, don’t you think?”

  They passed through the gates to the yard, and into the quiet country road beyond, where after a silence, Radcliff began, “I must admit, Dr. Seward has scarcely altered in these many years since I last met him.”

  “I doubt either of us will be as fortunate as he,” Beaumont said, with a laugh.

  “You don’t expect we’ll reach his age?”

  “The odds aren’t all that good. How I wish you’d never been robbed – in The Hague, I mean,” Beaumont added. “It would have made life much less difficult for me.”

  “But you can’t regret stealing my letters from the priest’s hole.” Radcliff halted, to face him. “Did my wife know that you had been in there?”

  “Does it really matter now?” Beaumont grinned at him with sudden brilliance. “I’ve a question for you, Radcliff. Who was your favourite girl in Blackman Street?”

  “What are you talking about?” Radcliff said sharply.

  “Or at Simeon’s house, then? I knew all the women – as in the Bible, you might say. Who did you prefer? Oh, I remember, it was Marie, wasn’t it.”

  Radcliff’s hands curled inadvertently into fists. “May we get to the point? Will you come with me to London?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I don’t believe in suicide.”

  “Is that what you think it would be?”

  “Don’t you want me dead?” Beaumont responded in a casual tone; he might have been asking Radcliff the time of day.

  “My feelings are irrelevant,” Radcliff said, his jaw clenched. “Part of my bargain with Lord Falkland is to ensure your safe return to him.”

  “Then I’ll be most obliged to you. Let’s talk about Pembroke,” Beaumont went on, more seriously. “How could he hope to seize power with so few accomplices?”

  “He had more than you were aware of, or I, probably. And then he did not require a large force if he could succeed in building his reputation as a peacemaker, even as he was –” Radcliff broke off.

  “Plotting to murder the King. How did that sit with you?” Radcliff said nothing. “Even if he succeeded, there’d be no peace. I hear he can’t even govern his own tongue. How could he govern a kingdom? You haven’t answered me, by the way. How did you feel about regicide?”

  “It was a necessary evil. And it was predicted.”

  “Ah yes, the horoscope. What did Pembroke promise you that would make it worth taking such a risk?”

  “You would not understand. Your family circumstances are more blessed than mine.”

  Beaumont shook his head sceptically. “You weren’t exactly starving.”

  “Look at me, Mr. Beaumont,” Radcliff said, mastering an urge to draw out his sword and plunge it into Beaumont’s guts. “I am a small landowner, not starving, but of modest means, and though gently born, unimportant. At forty, past the prime of my life, I find myself worse off for the increase in taxes than when I inherited at twenty-five. My only chance to rise has been through the condescension of my superiors. Men such as I cannot so much as piss in the wrong corner, lest we offend someone who might be useful to us at some future time. Now look at you. You scorn the pretensions of society and rank. When I said you were an honest man, in a way I meant it. You can afford to challenge convention, just as Pembroke can let loose any profanity he wishes. And you have friends in high places. Falkland, and Wilmot –”

  “You had Pembroke, though all along you were prepared to sell him out if you had to. You’ve been hoist by your own petard. You should have betrayed him earlier.”

  “Where would that have got me? Again, I am not you. See how effortlessly you gained the confidence of the Secretary of State. Falkland gave the letters credence because of your father’s name. He trusted you.”

  “And Pembroke trusted you because of your astrological skills. Is he really that superstitious?” Beaumont queried, as if it were an afterthought.

  “I do not consider astrology a superstition. But yes, he is in other respects.”

  They were quiet for a while; then Beaumont said, “So you’ve been hunting about London for intelligence on Parliament’s spies.”

  “I was lucky to have some useful connections in that regard. It’s not to save myself, as I told Dr. Seward. I just want my wife to be able to raise our child without shrinking with shame at my memory.”

  “She won’t shrink, Radcliff. She’s not the sort.”

  Radcliff glared at him, livid. “What do you know about my wife?”

  “No more than I ought to,” Beaumont said, laughing again. “Now, Falkland is waiting for us. Shall we go to him?”

  VI.

  Stephens woke Falkland around midnight.

  “I had that dream again, Stephens,” Falkland said.

  “Of Great Tew?”

  “Yes. It is always so refreshing.”

  “My lord, Dr. Seward and Mr. Beaumont are here with Sir Bernard Radcliff.”

  Falkland sat up quickly, a sweat breaking over him; at long last, he and Radcliff would meet. “What does Radcliff look like, Stephens?”

  “He has a grey aspect, my lord. He strikes me as a very sober man.”

  “And how is Mr. Beaumont with him?”

  “Watching him as a fox might its quarry.”

  “Thank you, Stephens. Tell them that I shall join them directly.”

  Falkland had been sleeping dressed. He put on his boots, and tidied his hair before the looking glass, all the while thinking of that first day when Beaumont had come to him with the letters. “I pray I am not sending him to his death,” he murmured to his own image, and walked out.

  In the other chamber he found them all seated around the table. Radcliff and Seward made as if to rise, but Falkland motioned for them to stay where they were. Radcliff’s expression was both dignified and respectful; how one could be deceived by it, Falkland thought.

  He turned to Seward. “Doctor, is Sir Bernard Radcliff apprised of His Majesty’s offer to him?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “And you too, Mr. Beaumont?”

  “Yes,” answered Beaumont, his eyes on Radcliff. “A ten-year sentence and a small fine. Not bad, for a would-be regicide.”

  Radcliff bit his lip but did not speak.

  “Sir Bernard, the list, if you please,” said Falkland. Radcliff produced a rolled document and placed it on the table. “Thank you. You may leave us.” After Radcliff had gone, Falkland asked, “Are any of the names familiar to you, Mr. Beaumont?”

  Without permission, Beaumont had picked up the list and was examining it. “No, though that means nothing.”

  “I must agree with you about Sir Bernard. It infuriates me that he should be so leniently treated.”

  “He may yet hang if he does not stick to the terms of the bargain,” Seward put in. “Although His Majesty has given him every incentive to compl
y.”

  “Indeed he has,” agreed Beaumont. “But I still don’t trust Radcliff any further than I could throw him.”

  “While this mission has royal approval, Mr. Beaumont,” Falkland said, “His Majesty has told me that any mistakes will be my responsibility.”

  “Isn’t that always the way things are,” Beaumont remarked, his voice full of contempt. “My lord, pray tell His Majesty that if there are any mistakes, they will be mine alone and you are not to blame. And if I don’t return, you mustn’t blame yourself, either, because I’ve chosen of my own accord what I’m about to do.”

  “Thank you, sir,” murmured Falkland gravely; this was the man he had hesitated to trust.

  “I should warn you, though – and His Majesty – that if Radcliff makes one false move, I’m going to kill him. Oh, and before I leave, I’d like to read over those coded letters again,” said Beaumont, with a slight smile.

  VII.

  Having pondered all the dangers ahead, Laurence decided not to visit Isabella before setting out for London, although he swore to himself that if he did come back alive, he would never leave her again for as long as she wanted him.

  He rode off with Radcliff the next day under a light rain, and they made fair progress. On the following morning, however, the heavens seemed to conspire against them. An unremitting downpour churned the roads into quagmires, they were soaked to the skin, and Radcliff’s horse cast a shoe in the thick mud. When they stopped to find a blacksmith at an inn on the edge of Hounslow Heath, they were alarmed to encounter a party of Parliamentary soldiers jostling to be served beer, singing psalms as they quaffed their draughts. The men stared so at Laurence that he chose to wait in the stables for the blacksmith to finish.

  He and Radcliff spoke infrequently, and when they did, his sole pleasure lay in continuing to goad the man into a silent rage. Sometimes he wished Radcliff would attack, so that he would be justified in killing him.

  They took Laurence’s old route as they neared the city by nightfall, stabling their horses with the Chelsea ostler. He wanted to steal a ride on one of the barges again, but Radcliff insisted that they should enter openly. “We’ll take a boat at the nearest dock,” he said, at which Laurence felt immediately nervous, and yet more suspicious of him.

  When they reached the river, a crowd of wherrymen were waiting for custom. “Your destination, sirs?” asked a burly fellow, pushing himself forward.

  “Whitehall,” Radcliff told him. “How much?”

  He named a sum that sounded cheap, until he explained that he had three more passengers going the same way. Radcliff argued to Laurence that they would be delayed, but Laurence quickly paid up the fare. The presence of others offered him a little security; one was a woman nursing her child.

  The river stank, as always in high summer: a mixture of sewage, offal, rotting fish and animal carcasses, and the effluent of the tanneries. The night was cloudy, and after a while, as they sailed further from the shore, everything grew dark. Once they were in open water Laurence relaxed marginally, though he kept a grip on his pistols, and he was still watching Radcliff, who sat perched at the edge of the small vessel.

  “So, you must be looking forward to seeing your noble patron,” Laurence remarked. “I wonder what he’ll say when he finds out you’ve betrayed him.”

  “My life won’t be worth a damn,” Radcliff whispered back harshly. “Unlike you, I have no Secretary of State to protect me.”

  You have more than you deserve, as it is, Laurence nearly told him.

  Radcliff lifted his hand as if to brush off a fly, and a second later Laurence felt an enormous blow to the back of his own head. As he tumbled into the bottom of the boat, he cursed not having trusted his instinct. For that, he was about to die. There came another blow, to the side of his jaw. Through the pain, he heard Radcliff shout, “Tie him up, and attach the rope to that weight.”

  His pistols were wrenched out of his hands and his wrists bound hastily in front. He was too stunned to resist. He heard a loud splash and then sensed himself being rolled over the edge. At once he was engulfed. The chill water shook him out of his stupor; he was sinking fast. He must not panic, he urged himself, tugging at the rope around his wrists. At last he managed to free one hand and then the other, keeping well below the surface, knowing that Radcliff would wait to make sure he had drowned. But after a while he was forced to raise his head, gasping for air. He saw black all around except for the glimmer of lights on either shore, a horribly long distance away. His waterlogged clothes and boots were dragging him down again, and as he struggled unsuccessfully to kick off the boots, he could not help swallowing gulps of the foul river. His limbs were becoming leaden, his teeth chattered, and he had started to give up hope when suddenly an even greater darkness burst out of the night like some primeval monster: a barge, bearing straight for him. Either it would hit him, or it would rescue him. He cried out, his voice so faint against the noise of swirling water that he despaired of anyone hearing him.

  Yet gradually the barge altered course. “Fetch the line!” someone shouted.

  The wet rope smacked Laurence hard in the face, but he caught it and clung on with both hands, and slowly he was brought in and fished out by a very amazed bargeman.

  “Bless me if you aren’t a strange catch!” the man exclaimed.

  Laurence nodded, coughing up mouthfuls of the Thames. “What a drink,” he said afterwards, spitting.

  The man handed him a leather bottle. “Here’s a better one.”

  Though he gagged at the coarse liquor, it stayed in its rightful place and revived him considerably. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said, and reached out to clasp the man’s hand. “Are you going upriver?”

  “We are, sir. What the devil happened to you?”

  “Someone tried to drown me,” Laurence replied, accepting another swig from the bottle. “Can you set me down at Whitehall?”

  “Aye, sir. Are you a Member of Parliament, perhaps?”

  “No. That’s not yet a drowning offence.”

  “Should be for some of ’em, sir,” the man said ruefully.

  The barge pulled in at the dock nearest to Whitehall. Laurence searched to see if he still had any money in his sodden pockets, which he did. The man protested that it was only his Christian duty to rescue souls in need, but he was not above taking some coin for it; and they said goodbye.

  “Fuck you, Radcliff,” Laurence muttered, as he staggered along the dock. Reeking and covered in slime, head aching from the blow, and with another bruise swelling his jaw, he was going to Pembroke’s house.

  When he arrived at the high walls that surrounded it, he was overcome by dizziness and had to lean against them for support as he felt his way to the main entrance. A liveried servant came quickly to demand his business, and a couple of guards bristled their weapons at him. “I am here on behalf of the Secretary of State,” he said, his legs trembling with fatigue. “My name is Laurence Beaumont. I must see his lordship at once.”

  The servant admitted him with a revolted sniff, and ordered him to wait behind with the guards. Finally he was summoned, and accompanied by the guards he squelched along a corridor, past canvases and statues as refined in taste as those of his father, and into an elegant carpeted room, where two men stood before him.

  “Mr. Beaumont, your lordship,” he said to Pembroke, and bowed, deriving immense satisfaction from the horror on Radcliff’s face.

  Pembroke dismissed his guards, closed the door, and turned with infuriated surprise to Radcliff, then to Laurence. “Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “did you come by some accident?”

  “Oh no, my lord. It was such a warm night that Sir Bernard encouraged me to go for a dip in the Thames on our way here.”

  Pembroke smiled thinly. “I had been looking for you to thank you for the painting you had delivered to me.”

  “It was the only means I could think of to show you how badly you had misplaced your trust in Mr. Rose. He’s been a thorn in y
our flesh for a while, if you’ll forgive the tired metaphor.”

  Radcliff opened his mouth but Pembroke silenced him with a curt gesture. “Go on,” he said to Laurence.

  “He kept the correspondence that you’d ordered him to destroy.”

  “Which correspondence?”

  “The most damaging to you, my lord, so he could sell you out if he decided he’d had enough.”

  “He is lying, my lord!” Radcliff shouted. “He is William Seward’s accomplice.”

  “Which correspondence?” Pembroke repeated, in a frigid tone.

  Laurence began to quote, word for word, Pembroke’s letter about the King, and the hunting party at Wilton or wherever else was chosen for the assassination, and what would follow.

  “What sort of magic is this?” Pembroke burst in.

  “It’s not magic, my lord,” said Laurence. “In fact, the explanation is rather ordinary. As Sir Bernard can attest, he was robbed at a Dutch bawdy house by a friend of mine – robbed of your gold, his sword, and some letters. That’s how I came to have them, and I found more, later, hidden away in a chest of his. All of the correspondence is now in His Majesty’s possession. The sword I gave back to Sir Bernard, as you can see. And as for the money –” He dug from his pockets his few remaining coins and threw them at Pembroke’s feet. “The rest is spent. My apologies.” He sighed, suddenly exhausted. “Oh, and one last thing, my lord. His Majesty wishes you to know that in view of your past relations, he is inclined to treat you mercifully. He expects to hear from you soon. Good night to you both, gentlemen.”

  “Wait,” cried Pembroke, and called out for his guards. “Detain him in one of the antechambers,” he barked at them.

  “My lord, I assure you, I’ve nothing more to say,” Laurence objected, but the guards hustled him off, into a smaller adjoining room, and locked him in.

  He slid down the door and knelt by it, listening. There came the sound of Radcliff’s voice and Pembroke’s arguing; then the voices subsided into whispers. He hauled himself to his feet and over to the window. It was a steep drop, but onto grass. Defenestration was becoming a regular habit, he thought, as he unfastened the casement and squeezed through. He hung for a second by the broad ledge before letting go and landing with a bump, rolling some way. Ahead was what appeared to be dense shrubbery. Crawling into the thick of it, he crouched and tried to catch his breath. Shouts issued from the open window. On all fours, he plunged further into the bushes, hoping to find the wall that surrounded Pembroke’s house, yet he might as well have been blindfolded, for what he could discern in the dark. Recalling the thief Barlow’s advice, he stood up and closed his eyes and stretched his hands out as he pressed forward. They met not stone, but wood, and he bashed his forehead against the branch of a tree. The shouting came nearer. He reached up and hoisted himself over the branch, edging along on his stomach until his feet encountered the girth of the trunk. By turning about and clinging to it, he could balance precariously and feel upwards for another branch thick enough to carry his weight. He got to a fork in which he could sit, propped against the trunk, and rest his shaking arms and wipe the blood from his brow. Lights were now approaching in the blackness, as though carried by invisible beings, to within a yard of his tree. “If you catch him, hold him fast: he’s mine!” someone yelled out.