by Angus Donald
It was no wonder that the militia had picked him up on the Portsmouth road after his ham-fisted attempt to stop a carriage and six at the point of a horse pistol. The grizzled carriage-driver had simply refused to stop, swept past at the gallop and had immediately alerted a passing militia troop to Tom’s presence on the road. The soldiers caught up with him an hour later, and by dawn they had him chained and bloody in the notorious Southwark gaol. Why, Blood wondered, was he cursed with such useless sons?
‘I am serious, Father. I don’t want to do this thing – tonight or any other night. I can’t go back into the pit. And they will put me back in there – put all of us in there if we are caught. You have no idea how terrible it was. They chained a man to a rotting corpse all night because he would not pay his gaolers a small bribe. There were thirty prisoners in a cell no bigger than this snug, no room to lie down, barely room to breathe. The rats there gnaw on men’s feet at night and some of them are bigger than—’
‘Oh, I do know all about it, son, believe me I do. But we are bound to do this dark deed – I have given my sacred word of honour.’
William Hunt stifled a snigger. But Blood fixed him with a hard blue eye and the small man looked away. If his grown sons were weak and stupid, thought Blood, his men were little better: Parrot could obey orders but only if they were spelled out to him in the simplest terms; his chief assets were his strength and ferocity. Hunt was sly and reasonably smart – but since the war he had lost his nerve and developed a wide yellow streak down the centre of his backbone that meant he could no longer be trusted to stand his ground if things went awry. But Blood was stuck with them, these old comrades, the last of his irregular cavalry troop to survive the bloodshed of the brutal civil wars and stay with him in the intervening years.
They had had some high old times together back in the day. They had raided homes of known and suspected Cavaliers, hanged all the men of fighting age, made free with the women, pocketed the valuables, dug up the buried coin and driven off the livestock to feed the army. It had been a time of war and, as always, much was forgiven fighting men in the heat of battle, and after it. But even the iron-hard troopers of Parliament’s New Model Army considered the company commanded by Captain Blood – he had awarded himself the promotion to colonel long after the end of hostilities – to be a little hard to stomach. Many swore that they were not much better than bandits. Some said they were a lot worse. Nevertheless, powerful bonds between the men of Blood’s troop had been formed in that time of death and chaos. And these two had stuck with him, when the others had faded away, died or grown fat and peaceable. He needed them. He needed his eldest son too, for the difficult task at hand, weak and stupid though he might be.
‘The only reason you are out of the Marshalsea – free and clear of that hell on Earth – is because of the man to whom I gave my sacred word,’ said Blood. ‘And because of a stack of his bright gold that I paid over to the warden. You were the one who wanted to play at being Claude Du Vall, the dashing rank-rider, and look how it served you. Arrested by the troopers, and slung in the pit to await trial. You’d still be there were it not for me – and no doubt hanging by the neck at Tyburn in a week or two. So you will cease your whining, son, and listen to what I have to say. We will take Ormonde tonight and send him to Hell where he belongs. It will go smooth as silk, no one is going to be caught – I guarantee it – and no one is going to be gaoled. Our vengeance will be served and a great power in the land, a duke no less with the ear of the King, will be in our debt.’
‘I don’t want to do it, Father, please. I don’t want to kill anyone.’
‘Hush your mewling mouth now, youngling,’ said Parrot, a looming shape seated on the bench beside Tom. ‘We need four men for the job – at least – why else did we hand over the colonel’s good money to free you from the pit? Earn your freedom, boy. And show a little gratitude.’
Blood looked intently at his eldest son. He doubted that he would feel much gratitude to his father for extricating him from the Marshalsea. It was a quality much harped upon by the old but seldom practised by the young. And yet true gratitude did exist in the world and could create an iron fetter between men. Blood owed a debt of gratitude to Hunt – who had taken a sword cut meant for him in a melee outside Kingston upon Thames, when his captain had been helpless. The little man, brave as a rooster in those days, had deliberately ridden his horse between Blood – who had been dismounted – and a huge, roaring Cavalier who seemed determined to cut him into pieces. Hunt had taken the blow meant for Blood and then Parrot, riding up belatedly, had split the enemy’s skull with his sabre. Blood remembered Hunt’s actions and honoured him for them. And Parrot’s too. And he remembered their conduct in a dozen similar escapades besides. Gratitude. It meant that, despite their obvious shortcomings, he could never disown either Hunt or Parrot as long as they lived.
It was gratitude, too, that bound Blood and Buckingham together. Not long after the melee in which Hunt had taken his wound, Blood and five of his men had cornered a richly dressed Royalist stripling against an oak tree in a meadow by the Thames. The boy had defied them with a drawn sword, and had told the six enemies he faced that he meant to sell his life dearly and take at least one of them with him. Blood had teasingly asked the handsome young Cavalier if he had any money on him with which to buy his life. The boy had said no but had added that, if Blood would give his word to let him go unharmed, he would write out a note of hand for five hundred pounds, to be redeemed in person after the war. In an uncharacteristic fit of mercy, or possibly just good old-fashioned greed, Blood had agreed, accepted the note, and let the boy go. He was startled to find, when he looked at it later, that the note was signed George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham.
It was not until the Restoration of King Charles – when Blood’s fortunes were in a sad state of disarray – that he was able to redeem the note from the now-prominent duke. As well as the five hundred pounds – paid immediately and without the slightest quibble – Buckingham had asked Blood to undertake a delicate task on his behalf. A former servant was attempting to blackmail the duke, falsely accusing him of the vile crime of buggery. Blood and his men had paid the servant a visit in the dead of night and, after administering a savage beating, and threats of a more permanent punishment, had persuaded the man to desist. Buckingham was grateful. More commissions had followed. And Blood, now landless, soon penniless again and on the run from the law, was grateful for the paid employment.
Tom took a deep draft of his wine, finishing the pot. ‘Gratitude, you say. All right. You got me out of that stew and I’m grateful. But I’ll put a pistol ball in my own head if things go wrong. Better death than gaol again. Far better. I’ll help you kill Ormonde. But at least give me a decent drink to fire my belly. A pint of hot spiced Barbados, or good French bingo, if they have it. If I must do this foul deed, I need a proper drink inside me.’
‘You take after your mother, boy. No – no hard stuff till it’s done. You can have one more pot of wine and that is it. We do it tonight, we do it sober, and when it’s over you can drink your fill for a week at my expense.’
*
Holcroft was led away from his first encounter with his master by the duty page, a fellow named Albert St John. The page was a year or two younger than him but wore a similarly blinding coat to Holcroft’s adversary of that morning. He was, however, a good deal more cordial and while he showed Holcroft around the duke’s sprawling apartments he kept up a stream of cheerful but inconsequential chatter.
The duke’s rooms were at the very western edge of the Palace of White Hall, on the far side of the huge, square Privy Garden, and even beyond The Street, the wide thoroughfare that led due south from the castle-like gatehouse. Buckingham’s establishment might have been a little removed from the centre of power – it was, for example, a good three hundred yards west of the King’s bedchamber, Albert informed him – but it happily allowed His Grace to avoid any tedious nocturnal encounters with the King’s
several mistresses. It was more than comfortable, indeed quite lavish, and looked out over the soothing greenery of St James’s Park. There were a dozen large staterooms for the duke’s use clustered around a small courtyard with a rectangular patch of neatly trimmed lawn and a joyously crowded tulip bed at its southern end. A warren of passages, galleries and cubbyholes that linked the staterooms were for the use of the servants and the ducal staff, including the four or five pages who permanently resided with the duke. The Cockpit-in-the-Court, an old-fashioned octagonal wooden theatre, now used only rarely for masques and other entertainments, formed the northernmost limit of the duke’s domain and gave it its name. Beyond the Cockpit, and slightly to the east, was the realm of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde in the Irish peerage, and Buckingham’s bitterest foe.
The Irish duke’s apartments, much to Buckingham’s pleasure, were less extensive than his own and considerably less well appointed. They were also cheek by jowl with the Tilt Yard, the barracks of the First Regiment of the King’s Foot Guards and the quarters of that bold company’s officers beyond, which were on the other side of the gatehouse that marked the entrance to the palace. It was noisy late at night when the soldiers caroused and, during the day, there was a constant stream of traffic in and out of the gate.
Last year Ormonde had protested to the King that, in view of his long and loyal service to the Crown, it befitted him to have a larger, more opulent set of lodgings, perhaps in the eastern part of the palace nearer the King on the banks of the Thames, but Buckingham had blocked him by claiming that the renovation of a set of new apartments beside the King’s, to a standard that befitted the dignity of a nobleman of Ormonde’s standing, would be prohibitively expensive. He also whispered to the King that Ormonde disapproved of his constant philandering and sought to restrict access to his mistresses by setting his servants to stand guard at night in the corridors. It was an outright lie, of course, but the King had been moved by this second argument far more than the first; indeed, he was incensed. Buckingham had triumphed. Ormonde was forced to rent a more suitable and spacious palace, at considerable expense, from the exiled Lord Clarendon in Piccadilly.
‘You should have heard our dear old duke laugh,’ said Albert, as the two of them walked up a narrow set of stairs. ‘He called it the merriest jest.’
‘He lied to the King and considered that a joke?’ said Holcroft.
Albert looked at him. ‘Yes, it was very funny.’
Nevertheless, Ormonde remained a close confidant and trusted advisor of the King, Albert continued, despite being housed so far away. He was still Lord Steward of the Household and his word on affairs of state was heeded more than any other man’s, save perhaps Sir John Grenville’s.
All this Holcroft learned as he was conducted through the long corridors that snaked between the great rooms of state in the Cockpit. Albert chattered away as he trotted along and Holcroft’s head swam as he tried to take in all the new information: ‘There are two pages attending the duke at all times during the day, to run messages or errands, and one page on duty at night. That’s the worst! You have to try to stay awake when the whole world is asleep, and if the duke rings the bedroom bell you have to be at his side, alert and awake, in an instant if he wants to send someone a message or whatever. The senior page Robert Westbury does the rota. He does it most efficiently, I must say, as he shares out the night duties fairly, so we only have to do it once a week at most – unless he’s punishing us for some terrible sin. He’s always happy to accommodate you if you need time away to see your family or if you’re feeling unwell or something.’
Holcroft’s heart sank at the mention of his enemy’s name. Clearly there could be no escaping the fellow in the Cockpit and he wondered if he had made the biggest blunder of his life when he had started the fight with him.
‘The one you have to watch is the steward – Matlock. He has overall charge of the whole household, including the pages. He doesn’t like us much and he has the authority to beat you, if he sees fit. But we don’t see all that much of him as Westbury does all the day-to-day organization. If you have any problems, you can always go to him and he’ll surely find a solution.’
Holcroft did not think that very likely. But he said nothing.
‘This is where we all roost.’ Albert opened a door and showed Holcroft into a long, narrow room, painted white with a sloping wall on one side to match the pitch of the roof. It was almost triangular in section and divided roughly in two, with a wooden table and four chairs by a small window cut into the sloping wall near the door, and half a dozen narrow beds in a line down the vertical wall. One of the chairs had fallen onto its back and, without thinking, Holcroft stepped forward and picked it up, setting it with its three mates straight at the table, the seats tucked neatly under the wooden surface. A small boy was sound asleep in the nearest bed, wrapped up tight in his blankets with only his sharp pink nose and a few wisps of red hair poking out from the bedclothes.
‘That’s Fox Cub,’ said Albert. ‘His real name is Henri, Comte d’Erloncourt, and he’s French and a Papist.’ Holcroft stared at the sleeping boy with horror. A Papist! He had heard his father and his Presbyterian cronies talk about these foul creatures who bowed down before the Whore of Rome, and he was slightly disappointed to discover that the boy did not possess a pair of horns and a tail, at least none that Holcroft could see. But Albert was still chattering away: ‘ . . . we call him Foxy or Fox Cub because he looks like one. He’s been on night duty, which is why he’s asleep in the daytime – Westbury gave him three nights in a row because he dozed in his chair outside the duke’s chamber on the first night and had to be shaken awake by His Grace himself when he wanted a bite from the kitchens. He was lucky not to be sent to Matlock for a whipping.’
Albert led Holcroft down the row of narrow cots until he came to the end one. A pair of linen sheets and two thick woollen blankets were folded and piled on top of the bare mattress, with a plump goose-feather-stuffed pillow beside it. As the boy helped Holcroft to make up the bed, he marvelled at the luxury of having a bed all to himself and clean linen sheets, to boot. Holcroft had just smoothed the top blanket to his satisfaction, when the door of the pages’ dormitory opened and a tall figure in a gold coat stepped into the room. The boy sleeping in the bed nearest the door jerked awake, sat up in bed and immediately began babbling manically, ‘I wasn’t asleep, Robert, I wasn’t, honestly. I was just resting my eyes for a moment.’
Robert Westbury’s nose was dark red and conspicuously swollen, he had a cut on his cheek and two black lines under his eyes. He had a big sheet of paper in his hand. He stared at Holcroft who was frozen in place, bent over by the bed with his hands flat on the blanket.
Westbury kept his eyes locked on Holcroft but he addressed the redhead. ‘It’s all right, Fox Cub. Go back to sleep.’
Holcroft said nothing; he kept his eyes fixed on the golden buttons of Westbury’s coat. It occurred to him that the boy had changed his coat for another exactly the same, for it was no longer torn or stained with blood and dirt. That the boy owned two such items quite stole his breath away.
‘Good day to you, Bertie, I see you’ve met the new chick.’
‘What on earth has happened to your face, Robert?’ said Albert, clearly appalled by the obvious marks of the fight.
‘I fell down some stairs. Clumsy of me. Won’t happen again. I’m appointing you the chick’s daddy until he finds his feet in the Cockpit. Make sure he knows everything he needs to by nightfall.’
Westbury turned away and Holcroft watched him pin the big sheet of paper to a board on the wall at the far end of the room.
Without turning his head, Westbury said: ‘You can start by telling him that he’s on night duty for the rest of the week. You’re off the hook, Foxy.’
With that, the golden boy walked over to the door, yanked it open and left the room.
‘Thank you, Robert, thank you so much. I won’t forget this!’ burbled the red-headed boy happi
ly to the swiftly closing door.
‘Well, I don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it,’ said Albert, ‘but you must have done something. I have never heard of Westbury giving someone night duty on their first day, and for the rest of the week, too. He seems to have taken against you. Have you done something to upset him?’
Holcroft shrugged but held his tongue. So he had to stay up all night, so what? He done that many times before. How bad could night duty be?
*
With a little grunt of effort James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, swung his right leg up and dumped it into the silk-covered lap of the young lady who sat opposite him in the carriage. Miss Jenny Blaine, a bracken-haired beauty who had yet to see her twenty-fifth birthday, slipped off the tight silver-buckled shoe and began to gently massage the swollen foot of her elderly protector as the carriage rattled along the Strand, heading west to the duke’s rented home at Clarendon House on Piccadilly.
She might be more than half his age and about a third of his weight, but to the duke’s expert eye she showed no signs of revulsion as she gently worked the knotted flesh through the sheer white silk stocking. Over the drumming of the rain on the roof of the carriage, he could hear the footsteps of his six footmen, running alongside the slow-moving vehicle and crying out for all to make way for its passage. Ormonde gave a tiny grunt of pleasure and closed his eyes as the pain from his aching feet gradually began to recede. He put his right hand on the loaded pistol on the padded seat beside him, the cold metal of the barrel and the warm walnut wood of the grip comforting him. He let out a lungful of air, lowered his shoulders and let the girl’s ministrations soothe away his discomfort.
It was no surprise that his feet were playing up now; it had been a hellish month all told. A state visit from William, Prince of Orange, the King’s nephew and youthful head of the first family of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, had occupied all of his time and kept him busy day and night, and the lavish banquet he had just attended in the young prince’s honour at Guildhall had been the high point in a long and tedious diplomatic process. But it had been a success, the duke considered, a great success. The visit had passed so far without any major embarrassments, which was surprising considering the Dutch had been at war with England until three years ago. The war had ended when the bold Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter had sailed up the Medway and burned much of the English fleet at its moorings at Chatham. He towed away the flagship HMS Royal Charles along with a very large slice of English national pride. After that humiliating catastrophe, a peace treaty had been cobbled together by the Earl of Clarendon’s disaster-prone ministry and hastily signed by King Charles, while the rest of Europe looked on with amused contempt.
