He pointed towards a door some distance away on the river side of the gallery. It was guarded by two soldiers. One of them had opened it for a gentleman who was about to pass through to the apartments beyond.
The gentleman paused in the doorway and glanced along the gallery. He was a plump, middle-aged man, quietly dressed in dark clothes. I knew him at once by the wart on his chin.
‘Ah,’ Master Williamson said. ‘His master is stirring at last.’
Sir Denzil laughed softly. ‘Stirring, sir? The question is, which part of him is stirring?’
The door closed behind the gentleman. At the same moment, a servant in royal livery cut through the crowd towards us. Sir Denzil and Alderley turned towards him.
The servant came to a halt in front of them and bowed in the arrogant manner of his kind. ‘His Royal Highness is at liberty to receive you now.’
‘At last,’ Master Alderley said.
‘Let us walk together,’ Master Williamson said. ‘Lord Arlington will be at liberty too.’
The three of them left me to consider the riddle of the plump gentleman with the wart on his chin.
‘Pray, sir,’ I asked a servant in livery who was dawdling through the crowd. ‘Do you know where that door goes to?’
The servant laughed in the sneering Whitehall manner that suggested he found my ignorance both irritating and amusing. ‘Don’t you know? You won’t go far in this place if you have to ask something like that,’ he said. ‘It leads to the King’s private apartments.’
‘Master Marwood?’
I came to a halt under the northern gateway from Scotland Yard to the thoroughfare beyond. I was on my way to Master Newcomb, the printer, with the marked-up page proofs for the next Gazette.
A woman was standing under the outer arch, sheltering from the rain. Most of the light was behind her, and she was reduced to little more than a tall, slender shadow. Her face was partly covered by the collar of her cloak, which muffled her voice.
‘Yes?’
She pushed aside the collar of the cloak, revealing a narrow face and thin-lipped mouth.
‘Don’t I know you?’ I said. ‘Mistress Alderley’s maid?’
‘Yes, sir. She bids me give you a message. She is visiting a friend in the City tomorrow, and if you are at leisure after dinner, she begs you call on her there.’
‘Why? Do you know?’
‘You must ask her that yourself, sir. The house is next door to the sign of the Three Stars in Cradle Alley. Do you know it? Near Moorgate.’
‘I thought Cradle Alley had been burned.’
‘Only the western end. My mistress goes to dine there, and she will stay until master sends the coach for her.’
‘When?’
‘You are to attend her at three o’clock in the afternoon.’
‘Very well. Pray tell her—’
‘It’s a private interview,’ the maid said. ‘She desires you not mention it to anyone.’
Without another word, she walked away in the rain.
Master Newcomb, the printer, was in an affable mood, as he generally was at present.
He had been fortunate. Few of the City’s other printers had managed to save their press and to find themselves new premises since the Fire, let alone to continue to work profitably. Newcomb had lost the greater part of his stock and some of his household goods. But he was still doing steady business.
All in all, the court connection had served him well, and not just in the matter of finding new premises. Master Williamson employed him to print the Gazette, six hundred copies twice a week. It was steady, reliable work; it paid the rent, and it also went some way to providing Newcomb and his family with bread and meat.
The printer was in the shop at the front of his premises when I arrived, my hat dripping and my only remaining cloak sodden with rain. He was a bluff, fresh-faced man in early middle age. He looked up at the click of the latch.
‘Why, sir, a pleasure to see you.’ Newcomb waved his apprentice forward. ‘Take Master Marwood’s cloak and hang it by the kitchen fire. Ay, and his hat too.’
I came forward, feeling for the inner pocket of my coat. ‘I have the proof here.’
Newcomb took the two sheets and scanned through the additions and corrections that Williamson had marked up.
‘You’ll stay for a glass of wine, I hope? We’ll have it warmed to keep out the damp.’
He left his apprentice in charge of the shop, gave the proof to his journeyman and led me upstairs to the parlour.
Mistress Newcomb served our wine herself. When she came into the room, I saw that she was with child again. I had lost track of their children, living and dead, but I thought that this was probably her eighth pregnancy.
‘You’re looking thinner every day,’ she said to me as she set the tray on the table. ‘You can’t be eating properly.’
‘Don’t worry him, my dear,’ Master Newcomb said. ‘Let him drink his wine in peace.’
She ignored her husband, as she often did. ‘Come to dinner, sir, and I’ll feed you up. And your father too, if he is well enough. How is the poor man doing?’
‘A little older and a little vaguer, mistress. Otherwise well enough.’
‘I hear you’re living as far from town as Chelsea,’ Mistress Newcomb said. ‘It cannot be convenient.’
I shrugged. ‘The air is better. And it seemed wise when – when he came to live with me.’
The Newcombs exchanged glances. They had known my father before his imprisonment, for he had been a familiar figure among his brother printers and stationers and well known at Stationers’ Hall. He had been surprisingly popular among them, too, despite holding religious views that condemned most of the human race, apart from himself and a few other chosen ones, to an afterlife of eternal damnation. But, religion apart, he had had a reputation as an upright but kindly man, skilled in his trade and happy to help a friend in distress.
‘Does he like living in the country?’ Mistress Newcomb asked.
‘It matters little to him where he lives now, mistress. He rarely leaves the house and garden. He spends most of his time dozing by the kitchen fire.’
‘Will you stay in Chelsea?’
I hesitated. ‘We shall be obliged to move very soon – it is no longer convenient for the people of the house to have us.’
Again, the Newcombs exchanged glances, passing information between them in the swift and silent shorthand of the married.
‘You should find yourselves lodgings nearer Whitehall,’ Master Newcomb said.
Another glance.
‘As it happens,’ Mistress Newcomb said with an air of abstraction, ‘Master Newcomb and I have been discussing the possibility of taking lodgers ourselves. There are two chambers at the side, on the first floor. Not large, but adequate. The apprentice has one of them at present, but he could sleep in the kitchen. And the second one we use only as a store.’
A great wailing of high voices arose from somewhere in the rear of the house.
‘Those wretched children!’ Newcomb said. ‘My dear, can you not make them mute, at least while Master Marwood is here?’
‘Usually they are as quiet as lambs,’ Mistress Newcomb said, smiling sweetly at me as she glided towards the door. ‘But it happens that Mary and Henry both have the toothache, and once one of them starts crying, that sets the other one off.’ She shouted downstairs to an invisible servant. ‘Margaret! Stop those children making that din. At once, do you hear?’
‘The apothecary makes up drops for them,’ their father said. ‘It’s the only way, and the expense of it can go to the devil. A man cannot set a price on domestic peace.’
Mistress Newcomb was lingering in the doorway, her colour high. ‘Margaret lets them run wild, the foolish woman. She’s too kind to them. If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times.’ She moderated her voice and gave me another smile. ‘If you liked, sir, you could come to dinner tomorrow and see if the rooms would suit your purpose.’
> The wailing increased, and Mistress Newcomb slipped away.
‘She has it all arranged,’ Master Newcomb said in a low voice. ‘She always does.’ He sipped his wine. ‘Mind you, you could do a lot worse. And it would be a convenient arrangement for all of us. But don’t let our convenience affect how you decide.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ I found myself unexpectedly moved. In the last few years, I had received little kindness from others. The suggestion was kindly meant, even if it was tinged with self-interest.
Newcomb’s eyes considered me over the brim of his glass. ‘And she’s right about the other thing, too, you know. Come to dinner. You look nothing but skin and bone, if you’ll allow me to say so. As if you’re living on air and not much else.’
The rain stopped while I was at the Newcombs’. When I returned to Whitehall, I found a message from Williamson at Scotland Yard, commanding me to attend him at Lord Arlington’s.
He was not there, but I found him taking the air nearby in the Privy Garden. He was pacing along one of the straight paths that ran parallel to the range of buildings containing the Matted Gallery. If he came to a puddle, he walked through it rather than alter his course by a single degree.
He looked up as he heard my footsteps on the gravel. ‘You were a long time with Newcomb.’
I bowed. ‘Your pardon, sir. As it happens, he has two rooms to let above his press.’
Williamson raised his eyebrows. ‘How fortunate. Will you take them?’
‘I haven’t seen them yet. But I am hopeful.’
He walked on. I walked a pace behind, following him to the far side of the garden, to the wall that divided it from the bowling green, and then along another of the paths. He did not speak until he stopped by the King’s great sundial. He looked about him to make sure there was no one in earshot.
‘This business at Barnabas Place,’ he said abruptly. ‘There’s something you’d better know. It may not matter, but I cannot be sure.’
He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. It contained a list of names, arranged in a column.
John Bradshaw – obit
ord Grey of Groby – obit
Oliver Cromwell – obit
Edward Whalley – fugit
Sir Michael Livesey – fugit
John Okey
The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. I looked up after reading the first six. ‘But these are—’
‘Yes. These are the Regicides. The men who presided over the murder of his late Majesty, and those who assisted them.’
I knew then why Master Williamson preferred to talk to me in the privacy of the garden. At the King’s Restoration, six years ago, Parliament had passed the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, a necessary measure to heal the wounds of the long Civil War. It granted a general pardon to those who had taken up arms against the King and his father. The only exceptions to this pardon were the Regicides and their helpers, together with a handful of others whose treason had been considered too foul to excuse.
My eyes ran down to the foot of the list. The annotations after the names told me the men’s fates. ‘Obit’; these were the lucky ones, who had died. Those who had escaped and were still alive were labelled ‘fugit’; they lived in fear of death at the hand of the King’s agents. Others had been imprisoned or even pardoned. And the rest—
‘The ones crossed out have been executed or otherwise killed,’ Williamson said. ‘Read on.’
I turned the paper over. The list continued on the other side. My eyes snagged on a name near the bottom.
Thomas Lovett – fugit.
‘There’s nothing against Catherine Lovett personally, or Sir Denzil would not have betrothed himself to her.’ Williamson coughed. ‘Her father’s goods and lands were confiscated when he fled abroad, including his house and business in Bow Lane. But I am informed that the young lady is an heiress in her own right, by her mother’s family, so she still has her own fortune.’
‘Pray, sir,’ I asked, ‘why are you telling me this?’
‘Because this business is about more than a murdered servant. More than an insignificant Fifth Monarchy man ending up in the Fleet Ditch. Henry Alderley’s niece is the daughter of a Regicide, who has so far escaped capture. You must tread very carefully, Marwood. We must all tread carefully. Do you understand me?’
I understood many things now. One of them was that Master Williamson was scared. Another was that he was perhaps a kinder man than I had thought him to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ON SUNDAY MORNING, I took a boat down to the stairs by Charing Cross and dined with the Newcombs at the Savoy. My hostess fed me well, and I took more wine than was altogether wise. No doubt she wanted to ingratiate herself and her husband with me. I liked Master Newcomb well enough, but I was less sure of his wife, a dark, sharp woman with darting eyes. She was charm itself to me but she was curt with her servants and quick to chastise her children.
After dinner, they showed me the two rooms on the first floor of their premises. The apartments were small and overlooked a common way leading to a yard with a pump. But they were clean and they were available now. It would be possible for my father and me to have our own rooms, something I devoutly desired. The sounds of the press in the workshop downstairs might deter many prospective tenants, but they would have a blessed familiarity for the old man. Moreover, I had learned during dinner that Mistress Newcomb had nursed her own father in his last years; she was used to dealing with the vagaries of the aged. As a final advantage, the lodging was retired in situation, yet convenient for both Whitehall and the City.
I took the lodgings on the spot. The Newcombs already knew my father’s history, and so there would be nothing to conceal from them. Perhaps, I thought, as I walked a little unsteadily up to the Strand, the tide is beginning to run in my favour.
I turned east and walked towards the black stump of St Paul’s and the city of ashes.
Cradle Alley was a narrow but straight street that ran east from Coleman Street in the direction of Austin Friars and Broad Street. The western part of it was lined with heaps of ash and rubble, some of which still lay on the roadway, stretching down to the choked kennel in the middle.
I picked my way along the alley, holding my cloak to my nose. I was late. It had taken me longer to get here than I had expected, for the streets were still clogged with debris. I wished now that I had not lingered at the Newcombs’.
Tendrils of smoke from trapped fires mingled with the misty vapour of the rain and the gritty coal smog that had covered so much of London even before the Fire. The ruins gave way to a variety of houses and workshops huddling on either side of Cradle Alley.
The house next to the sign of the three stars was on the left, near the end. The building was narrow and spread itself over four storeys, the upper ones jettied out above the street. There was no trace of a business or trade being carried on there, and no clue to its occupants. But the windows were clean and the plaster on the gable had been whitewashed since the Fire. It looked well cared for, which could not at present be said of most houses that remained in the City.
An old woman, her eyes closed and her face the colour of grubby chalk, was squatting in a doorway on the other side of the road, her hand held out for alms. I dropped a penny into her palm. The eyes opened at once. The fingers closed over the coin and thrust it out of sight beneath her filthy cloak.
‘God bless you, sir,’ she mumbled.
‘Who lives over there? In that tall old house?’
She looked up. One of her eyes was covered with a grey film. ‘That’s Quincy’s, master.’ She held out her hand again, palm upwards. The penny was no longer there.
I gave her another penny. ‘Master Quincy?’
‘Old man’s dead and in his grave. But it’s still Quincy’s.’
‘Who lives there now?’
‘They come and they go.’
The eyelids closed, and I gave up the struggle to extract information from her. I j
umped over the kennel to the other side of the lane and knocked on the door of the tall house. It opened almost at once. The porter ushered me into the hall even as I was stating my name and business.
The interior took me by surprise because it did not match the exterior of the house. The hall was spacious and well proportioned. Clocks ticked away the seconds. The flagstones were marble, chequered black and white.
Another manservant appeared, bowed and asked me to follow him. He was a tall man, with a pox-scarred face and the carriage of a soldier; there was nothing servile about him. We went up a wide, shallow staircase to a galleried landing on the first floor. He tapped on a door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it and stood aside for me to enter.
Mistress Alderley was seated by the fire in a tall armchair with a caned back. As I came in, she laid aside a book on the table by her chair. She was more plainly dressed than usual, though her clothes were of the finest quality. To my surprise, there was no sign of her maid or her hostess.
I bowed low. As I raised my head, I made a rapid survey. The room was large, high-ceilinged and surprisingly modern. Opposite the door, two large windows gave a view north over the rooftops to the City wall, punctuated by the stumpy tower of Moorgate.
The apartment was furnished in the French style as a withdrawing room or private parlour. It was as luxurious as the parlour at Barnabas Place but very different in its manner of expressing it. Barnabas Place looked to the past in its furniture and fittings: this room could hardly have been more modern. There were many pictures on the walls, most of them on classical themes and many with goddesses or perhaps nymphs displaying their charms.
Only a heavy leather screen struck an old-fashioned note. It was placed across one corner of the room; the lintel of a second doorway was visible above it. The leather had been painted with a hunting scene, but the reds and greens had darkened with time and smoke into a mottled brown.
Mistress Alderley indicated that I should sit on a settle facing the fire and at right angles to her chair. ‘It is kind of you to come, Master Marwood. You must forgive me for asking you here. And you must be curious about the reason.’
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