Blood's Game

by Angus Donald

  The playwright was standing at the small window and staring into the darkness below. There were lamps hung outside the bigger houses on Drury Lane and one hanging outside the Red Lion on the corner a hundred yards away but in St Thomas, the battered, rotting dwellings showed nary a glim.

  ‘Are you sure you were not followed here?’ she asked.

  ‘Followed? I don’t think so. I looked to see if there was anyone behind me several times but I saw no one. Do you think the duke is suspicious?’

  ‘I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. He is not a trusting man. I thought I saw something just then. But maybe it’s nothing.’

  ‘What are we going to do about the letter?’

  Aphra came and sat down at the table next to Holcroft and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot. ‘I had hoped we would be able to do this with the minimal amount of expense,’ she said. ‘Pass Buckingham some little bit of nonsense written by me, take the money and run. But I realized some time ago that this was not going to be possible. So I had an old friend make this up for us. He writes the playbills for the Duke’s Company. But he has other less genteel talents, too. I gave him your five pounds for this.’

  She reached into a bag and pulled out a piece of thick yellow paper. It was creased both vertically and horizontally as if it had been folded up and sealed, and there were even the remnants of crumbled red wax on the edges of the paper. Holcroft held it in his hand, dumfounded. He tilted the letter to the candle and read:

  Monday, April 17th, 1671

  Your Highness,

  I write this note in haste for my courier must leave for Harwich within the hour if he is to meet the Elizabeth before the tide turns. I have spoken this past week to a number of influential men in both Houses of Parliament, all good Protestants, and all men whom you encountered when you were visiting our shores last winter – although I prefer not to reveal their names at this time – and the general feeling towards Your Highness is warm. At least two members of the Upper House, men of considerable means as well as high rank, say that they are prepared to back you with force, putting the militias that they command at your disposal, and several officers in the King’s regiments are also prepared to bring their troops over to you in the event of an armed struggle. There are more men, however, who are uncertain about this enterprise, despite their abhorrence of the notion of a Papist monarch, but I believe they might be induced to come to our side with certain emoluments in the form of lands and honours. I am preparing a list for you to peruse at your leisure, which I will send under separate cover. The first step, of course, is to move forward with your marriage to York’s daughter, Lady Mary Stuart, and I have made strenuous efforts in this direction. However, the French faction, particularly my lords Buckingham and Arlington, will certainly oppose me on this matter and I often hear the name of Louis, the dauphin, mentioned as a potential spouse for the lady, although the French boy is only ten years of age. I’m taking steps to disparage this and to promote your name as a far more suitable match.

  I must finish this letter now as the courier is waiting impatiently but I wish you to know that you have many friends in the Three Kingdoms who would offer you a joyous welcome should you choose to embark upon this glorious venture and come again to our shores, including,

  Your most obedient servant,

  Ormonde

  Holcroft had read the text before, of course, and had memorized the words to recite to Buckingham, but it still shocked him with its treasonous nature. Then Aphra passed him the crumpled letter from the Duke of Ormonde to Thomas Betterman declining to support a production of The Amorous Prince and Holcroft held both and looked from one to the other.

  ‘It is miraculous. Every stroke of the pen is the same, even the way he signs his name and underlines it. Your friend is a wizard!’

  ‘Worth your five pounds?’

  ‘Every penny. By God, we have him, Aphra. We have the duke!’

  ‘We still have to get him to pay up – and if I know George Villiers that could be the hardest part yet. But would you be willing to agree to five hundred pounds? Or do you want to press him for the full thousand?’

  Saturday 13 May, 1671

  On the morning of the fourth day, there came the sudden thunder of iron-nailed boots on the stairs, the door was smashed open and men with muskets and swords tumbled into the little room on the first floor of the Blue Boar Inn. Tom was taken completely unawares and reacted lamentably slowly, getting to his feet from the stool by the window and standing gaping at the bawling red-coated intruders. Joshua Parrot, on the other hand, even wounded and sick, was up from his pallet like a cat, with a long dagger in each hand and a window-rattling roar erupting from his throat.

  As the first man charged through the shattered door, Parrot disembowelled him with a neat thrust to the belly and twist of his right-hand dagger. He killed the second man a moment later, with his left hand hacking through his neck so deeply that the white of his spine was glimpsed for a second before the man fell. Someone fired a musket and the ball flew past Tom and smashed the smeared glass of the window. Parrot was in the doorway now, snarling and slicing, and Tom could see hands grasped around his thick neck and a jumble of struggling red bodies beyond in the corridor. A sword hacked down at the big man’s head, partially severing Parrot’s ear. Another blade passed straight through his thick body, the bloody tip emerging between his shoulder blades.

  And Tom, at last, moved. He lifted the latch of the shattered window and pushed it open, the remaining glass falling out of the frame onto the vegetable patch below. Tom had one leg out of the sill. He saw Parrot take a musket butt to the chest and falter, drooping in the doorway, then recover and surge up and forward and out of the door, the two daggers carving the air in front of him and clearing the redcoats from his path. The last thing Tom saw before he dropped to the garden below was the side of Parrot’s head exploding in a shower of blood and skull fragments as a pistol was fired into his roaring face at point-blank rage.

  Tom landed in the soft soil of the vegetable patch, sinking up to his ankles and immediately rolling over and snapping off half a dozen asparagus stalks. He got up fast, recovered his hat and began blundering through the earth to the path, and there running as swiftly as he could to Seven Steps Alley. He whipped his head around to look at the window in the brick wall of the Blue Boar and saw a dark head looking out after him.

  He burst out into Gravel Lane, turned left, sprinting for Hounds Ditch, where the road was narrowed by the stalls of the cloth-sellers and jammed with carts and people. Forced to slow, he began pushing his way through the throng, buffeted by tradesmen carrying huge soft bundles. He pulled his hat low over his forehead and, as a result, he did not see his assailant’s face. He merely saw that a man on a horse was beside him, the animal’s muscular flank jostling him, and noted the thigh-length black leather military boots and silver spurs and the long scarlet wool coat with shiny brass buttons. Something crashed hard against his head and he felt his knees sag, all his strength washed away. He thought: ‘Father is going to be so angry with me.’ Then another hard blow fetched him into the darkness.

  Sunday 14 May, 1671

  Blood emerged from his own darkness and into the agony of consciousness. His face felt like a single swollen mass, the stumps of at least two shattered teeth sharp against the inside of his lip. His leg ached from the pulsing wound in his thigh to the shrieking of his shinbones, all the way down to his ankles where the skin had been stripped by the fetters. As he moved, rolling on to his side, he almost screamed from the cramping in his arms and back.

  His eyes were swollen shut but he could feel wetness on his face and a gentle movement on the hot, stretched skin. Someone was washing him – he could feel the wet cloth on his forehead now, soft strokes. And whoever it was seemed to be counting, very quietly, just under his breath. ‘Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .’

  Blood relaxed. He felt the cloth wipe away the clots of blood and dried matter from his swollen eye
s, but he did not try to open them. He knew who was with him. He listened to the counting – ‘Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one’ – and felt its sweet, soporific effect, like the singing of a lullaby. Only the thrum of his pain kept him from falling into slumber.

  After a while, he felt the person beside him get up and move away. He half opened an eye then, and saw Holcroft conferring with a gaoler, a short, hunched muscular creature with large, sad eyes and an enormous grey beard, and saw a coin pass between them. Then the gaoler came, knelt beside him and unlocked his manacles, both wrists and ankles, slipping them free and bearing them away. Blood knew that they must be snapped on again and soon, and he dreaded it, but the sudden absence of their weight was blissful. He found that he was weeping, hot tears running down his swollen cheek, and cursed himself for a weakling.

  ‘Father, are you awake?’

  Blood tried to sit up, and Holcroft helped him, lifting his father’s fifteen stones more easily than he could have imagined, and setting him in the chair. Holcroft brought him water, and Blood swallowed it down. Then Holcroft said: ‘I have a small cask of brandy, if you are strong enough to take some.’

  Blood nodded and smiled and when he had engulfed a beaker of the fiery brown liquid, coughing like a dying beggar and feeling the burn all the way down into his belly, he opened his eyes fully, lifted his head and said: ‘You are surely destined for Heaven, my son! The Lord will reward you.’

  ‘Not just yet, I hope.’ Father and son smiled at each other.

  Blood gestured with his chin at the gaoler, who was watching them from the far side of the chamber, a tiny suspicious figure, pretending to clean the huge manacles with a blood-streaked cloth. ‘Can you make him leave us alone for half an hour, son? I need to speak privily.’

  Holcroft got up from his place on the floor beside his father’s chair and strode over to the gaoler. Another bright coin passed.

  He’s grown, thought Blood. His back is easily as broad as mine now – but, more than that, he is a man. He talks to other fellows like a man, as an equal. He knows his own worth. Why did I ever doubt it?

  When the gaoler had left, and Blood had accepted another welcome glass of the brandy, he said: ‘Listen to me, son, we do not have much time. You have guessed that I did this business on Buckingham’s orders – yes?’

  Holcroft said, ‘He sent me with a message to you: he says you are to stay silent. Keep your mouth shut and he will help you.’

  ‘He lies. He always lies. He means to allow me to hang. But I shall not oblige him. I’ll stay silent, yes, if I can find the strength to resist them. But I must have a royal pardon. Only a pardon from the King will save me. And I must see the King in person to obtain it. Now listen to me, son, remember my words: Buckingham gave me the order to make an attempt on the jewels, but he takes his orders from higher still. If he sanctioned this then his master – and by that I mean His Majesty himself – must have known about the attempt, at the very least, if he did not in fact order it. I was to turn over all the jewels to Buckingham, that was the arrangement we made, and we would receive a vast sum of money for all our pains – ten thousand pounds!’

  Holcroft looked at his father with mingled incredulity and respect at the size of the sum. ‘If the King ordered you to do this, even indirectly, then surely he must grant you a pardon.’

  ‘I am sure the King would deny it to his dying day, if he could, and so would my Lord Buckingham. So I wrote a letter to the King and smuggled it out the day before they started beating me, praise God, for I do not think I could hold a steady quill now. In that letter I begged the King for an audience – and I made it blindingly clear that if I am to suffer death I shall tell the world everything that I know about both His Majesty’s and Buckingham’s role in this little affair. I also mentioned that I have been receiving funds – government funds from the Pay Office via his henchmen Sir Thomas Littleton and his brother James and that bastard Sir Thomas Osborne. I hope that will suffice to secure me an audience. But I tell you, too, so that you know the truth, in case everything should go bad. Also, I have an ace up my sleeve . . .’

  At that moment, the chamber door opened a little and the dwarfish gaoler poked his head through the gap.

  ‘We agreed half a crown for a full half an hour, sir,’ said Holcroft, leaping to his feet. ‘And not five minutes have passed!’

  ‘Your honour, we did indeed. But here’s another visitor for the colonel. I did not like to keep her waiting.’

  He pushed open the door and Jenny Blaine walked in, looking pale and frightened, but still quite remarkably beautiful.

  She took one look at Blood – even cleaned up by Holcroft he was appallingly bruised and battered – and rushed over to him and began exclaiming about the cruelty of his treatment, weeping in sympathy and kissing whichever unmarked parts of his face she could find.

  Blood stopped her by grasping her arms. ‘My dear, calm yourself. Have a drop of the brandy – get me another one, too – and allow me to finish this conversation with my son. A moment and I will be all yours, my love. One brief moment.’

  Jenny looked uncertainly between Blood and Holcroft. But she had enough wit to realize that she was intruding. She stepped over to the table by the window and began noisily clinking bottle and glasses.

  ‘As I said, I have an ace up my sleeve,’ continued Blood then, looking into his son’s puzzled face he said, ‘By that I mean I have something to bargain with for my life. The jewels. They found some of them on me but the others – including our Tom – got clean away with the rest of them.’

  Blood looked around the room. Jenny was out of earshot at the table on the far side of the chamber, looking hurt and sipping a glass of brandy.

  Blood pulled Holcroft closer to him and whispered in his ear. ‘Go to the Blue Boar Inn off White Chapel Street, ask for Matthew Warburton. He’s a friend. Tell him who you are. He should have news of the others and the jewels. I mean to trade them with Buckingham and the King for my life. Go to the Boar and bring whatever message the boys have left for me there.’

  *

  ‘So it is blackmail,’ said the King. ‘This Blood fellow means to buy his freedom with threats against me. Do I have it correctly?’

  ‘Yes, sire,’ said the Duke of Buckingham. He was surprised by how calm the King was. It was near midnight, His Majesty had been readying himself for bed when he read the letter, thinking it was some private piece of correspondence, a love letter or something of that nature. He had immediately summoned Buckingham – the hour be damned! And now, wearing nothing but a nightshirt and walking up and down the royal bedchamber holding the letter from Blood in his hand, the King berated his chief minister in a stern icy tone. Sir John Grenville stood by the large brocade-swathed bed holding up a blue quilted silk robe, waiting patiently for the monarch to put it on. His face was quite expressionless.

  The King looked again at the letter in his hand. ‘It says here:

  May it please Your Majesty, this may tell and inform you, that it was Sir Thomas Osborne and Sir Thomas Littleton, both your treasurers of your Navy, that set me to steal your crown, but he that feeds me with money was James Littleton, Esq. ’Tis he that pays under the treasurers at the Pay Office. He is a very bold villain, a very rogue, for I and my companions have had many a hundred pounds of him of Your Majesty’s money to encourage us upon this attempt . . .’

  The King broke off and stared at Buckingham. ‘Is this true? Did you have the wretched man funded out of the Pay Office? That is a public office – there are records, files, clerks who make a note of everything, a trail of papers that connects this murderous villain Blood all the way to myself. You have a reputation for being subtle as a serpent, my lord, but this is gross incompetence. There is no other word for it. You told me when I agreed to this outrageous scheme, against my better nature, I might add, that it would never be discovered and yet – here in my hand – I have a letter from this brass-necked old outlaw threatening to make all this busines
s public. He is threatening to make me the laughing stock of Europe: the beggar King whose poverty forced him to steal his own Crown Jewels – and who made an appalling hash of it. It won’t do, Buckingham, it really will not do!’

  The duke was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Your Majesty,’ he began, ‘all is not lost. We have recovered most of the jewels from that inn in White Chapel Street. Blood is in chains and the world knows he is guilty – after his past escapades in Ireland, the attempt on Dublin Castle, particularly, marks him indelibly as an enemy of the state and of your person . . .’

  ‘Why on earth did you engage this dangerous rebel in the first place? He seems to be known more for his failures than anything else. You said it would be a reliable man who undertook the task. You said the jewels would be gone in the blink of an eye, they would be handed over to you and could be broken up and sold by your Jewish friends in Antwerp; you said I would receive no less than fifty thousand pounds and we would then persuade Parliament to vote us the money to buy more jewels. A King without Crown Jewels, you said, if I recall correctly, would be so lacking in dignity that both Houses must vote us money to replace them to avoid the shame.’

  Buckingham’s patience was near its end. ‘I have said many, many things to Your Majesty in the past. But I think that now it might be wiser to concentrate not on the past but on the future.’

  He whirled and glared at Sir John Grenville. ‘And you can wipe that schoolboy smirk off your face!’

  Grenville’s face had, in fact, been entirely immobile. But the King remembered his groom of the close stool then and went over and allowed him to thread his arms in the sleeves, drape the robe around his shoulders and tie the belt around his waist.