‘High enough to give a good view in all directions,’ said Musk. ‘And it’s out of the town, so easy to escape north, west or east if they need to. A fair choice as a meeting place for suspicious men.’
‘It might not be them,’ I said. ‘There are disaffected creatures galore in these parts. All sorts of rebels and traitors who might want a Dutch banker to fund their conspiracies.’
‘It’s them,’ said Aphra. ‘Lesser men wouldn’t scruple to come to us at the inn. Men who were less wary of being recognised.’
‘But how can we confirm it?’ I demanded. ‘I can bring only Musk to the meeting – they’ll be mightily suspicious if Vandervoort the banker turns up with his wife. And my Dutch might be good enough to fool Sallows, but I doubt if it’ll bear more than a few seconds’ listening by a native Dutchman such as Schermer, assuming he’s there.’
Here, of course, was the difficulty: the great conundrum that no amount of thinking and talking on the parts of Charles Quinton, Aphra and myself had been able to resolve. If the Horsemen came to us at the inn, it might have been just possible to conceal Aphra, so that she could cast eyes on them and confirm their identities without them recognising her. But if we encountered them in any other way, in any other place, it was almost impossible to see how Lady Astraea could identify the Horsemen of the Apocalypse without giving away her own identity to them. If that happened, the elaborate trap that my brother had devised would come to naught.
‘I shall think of a way,’ said Aphra.
‘We have only a few hours, Mistress,’ I said.
‘Then I shall think of a way quickly,’ she said, smiling in that impudent, irresistible way of hers. ‘In the meantime, let’s go into the church. A little prayer might be efficacious.’
Musk glanced at me. I knew that look: it was his customary expression when he thought he was upon on a fool’s errand.
* * *
Leigh churchyard looked very different by night. There was little light; none from the dark mass of the adjacent house, only a few dim candles and lanterns showing in windows in the village below, or on boats in the roadstead. Table tombs and headstones that had looked innocuous in daytime now appeared infinitely sinister, as though the Last Trump had just sounded and the skeletons were stirring beneath, about to break through the prisons of earth and stone placed above them. There was a strong easterly breeze, and the rustling of the trees heightened the effect.
Sallows stepped out of the castellated porch of the church.
‘You’ve brought your wife,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t what I said, Meinheer.’
Musk and Aphra Behn stood just behind me, the latter caped and hooded.
‘If the men I am to talk to are English,’ I replied, ‘then it is likely English will be spoken by some, is it not?’ Sallows nodded. Even now, he could hardly reveal that those I was meant to be meeting might be Dutch. ‘So my wife can ensure that any translation from one tongue to the other conforms to what is actually said. A guarantee on both sides, Meinheer Sallows. A form of insurance, if you prefer.’
Even in the darkness, I could see Sallows frowning. On the one hand, I was stating all too clearly that I did not trust him to interpret correctly; but then, he could hardly have expected anything else.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I expect that is very much what a banker would demand. It is no matter. Your wife may stay, Meinheer.’
Sallows lifted something on his lips, and blew two short blasts. A sailor’s whistle.
Some moments passed; perhaps an entire minute. Then a dozen or so figures appeared from behind the west end of the church.
The ghosts of long dead monks.
The momentary thought chilled me, but passed at once. These were men, real, living men, though they were cowled as Aphra was. Men who did not want their faces seen. But why so many of them? We had been expecting one, two or three – no more.
‘Meinheer Vandervoort,’ said one of the cowled men, in Dutch; in the tones of a native speaker. ‘A banker, I’m told.’
This was the moment of truth. I prayed to God that Cornelia and her brother had taught me well enough.
‘That I am. Whom am I addressing?’
The fellow did not reply. Had even my first words betrayed me?
‘Not your concern,’ said the cowled man, at last. ‘A fellow countryman of yours. That is all.’
Aphra sniffed loudly, as though she was troubled by hay fever. Our agreed signal for identifying this particular one of the Horsemen. Anton Schermer – the Precious Man.
The other hooded men fanned out around the churchyard, surrounding us. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of them were the other two Horsemen. It was also impossible for us to retreat.
‘You seek passage to our country,’ said Schermer. ‘And you shall have it, on one condition. A surcharge, if you like, upon the terms you have agreed with Master Sallows, here.’
‘This is robbery!’
‘Not so. This is revenge – and as a Dutchman, it is revenge in which you should rejoice. Revenge for what the arms of the malignant reptile Charles Stuart lately inflicted at the Vlie and Terschelling. A simple charitable act on your part, Meinheer, to facilitate a suitable form of retribution, and a new dawn of freedom here in England.’
Careful, Matt –
‘Of course,’ I said, trying to say as little as possible. ‘But what revenge?’
Schermer did not answer immediately.
‘Your speech is very strange,’ he said. ‘Even for Assen. I have been to Assen, and the people I talked to did not speak like you.’
A deep breath – but before I could reply, one of the other hooded men, standing by a headstone to my left, stepped forward. I thought he was trying to get a closer look at me, or to see Aphra Behn’s face beneath her own hood.
‘Phineas Musk,’ he said. ‘You cheated me out of five guineas in Alsatia, you fucker, that time in Ram Alley. And you’re a fucking King’s man!’
‘You’re certain?’ said another cowled figure.
Aphra coughed twice. So here was Shadrach Goodman, Mene Tekel himself.
‘Works for Lord Ravensden, that’s a friend of the Stuart whoremaster!’
Here was the flaw in our grand plan. Something none of us had ever considered. We had prepared for the eventuality that someone in Leigh might know me by sight, or that one or more of the Horsemen might recognise Aphra Behn. But none of us – not even Charles, Earl of Ravensden, whose planning was normally so meticulous – had envisaged the possibility that someone might identify Phineas Musk.
What happened next was a blur. The hooded men drew weapons – daggers, swords, at least three pistols. Schermer drew a fine rapier.
‘I thought you were no Dutchman,’ he said, advancing towards me, Sallows at his side.
I drew the knife I had secreted at my belt, but otherwise, I had only one weapon; and that weapon was a single word. A single, shouted word.
‘Sceptres!’
A musket shot shattered the silence of the Essex night. The ball struck a tomb a few inches ahead of Schermer, who suddenly crouched. I made for him, but Sallows interposed himself, brandishing his blade in my face. Another two musket shots, followed by the sound of men running on hard ground. I caught a glimpse of Musk wrestling with the creature who had recognised him, and of the other hooded men retreating, trying to get out of the churchyard, but having to fight their way through the men who were now pouring into it. My men.
I wanted Schermer, but could not reach him for Sallows. The Precious Man turned and ran.
‘Bastard!’ cried Sallows. ‘Cavalier bastard!’
He lunged for me, but missed. Instead, he found himself staring down the barrel of the pistol brandished by the young man who now stood at my right flank. Ensign Lovell, the young man whose nod I had acknowledged alongside the beached flyboat that morning. The beached flyboat that had secretly held a score of the Royal Sceptre’s Marines within its hold.
‘Good work, Ensign,’ I said, as one of th
e Marines bound Sallows’ arms behind his back.
‘Too dark for good aiming, Sir Matthew,’ said Lovell.
I could hear shouts, and the sounds of men running. Marines were in pursuit of rebels, but they knew the ground and Lovell’s men did not. If the Horsemen alone had appeared, as we hoped they would, it would have been an easy matter for our men to surround the churchyard, or wherever else we might be able to lure them into the open, and secure all of them. But the Horsemen were no fools; the three who still lived had not survived years of ferocious war without learning how to take sensible precautions in such a situation as this.
Aphra Behn was pulling back the hoods of the prisoners, examining their faces intently.
‘None of them,’ she said. ‘We have none of them.’
‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘Ensign Lovell, search the town. Every house, every garret, every cellar.’
But I held out little hope.
Chapter Twelve
Dawn brought the certainty that we had failed. The search revealed nothing; wherever the Horsemen had hidden themselves for days and weeks, it was not in the village itself. The citizens of Leigh, outraged at the disturbance of their sleep and the invasion of their homes, stood in groups in the street and on the foreshore, complaining loudly of the illegality of what we had done. They were momentarily shocked and cowed by the reappearance from their hiding place in the flyboat of Lovell’s Marines, now properly uniformed and fully armed, but it did not take long for their outrage to reassert itself. I then had to endure an uncomfortable meeting with a Justice of the Peace from nearby Benfleet, a portly fellow who evidently did not take kindly to having been woken in the small hours and forced to ride through the darkness.
‘Arbitrary beyond measure, Sir Matthew!’ cried Musk, doing a passable impression of the Justice as we rode back west, through the scrublands of coastal Essex. ‘This is not France, Sir Matthew! We shall proceed to law, Sir Matthew! I’d give him arbitrary – I’d hang him arbitrarily for being an arse.’
The Marines marched in yellow-uniformed file behind us, escorting their prisoners. For all Musk’s bluster – much of it, I suspected, born of embarrassment at having been the unwitting cause of our near-demise – the scene must have had more than a hint of France about it.
‘He was right, though,’ I said. ‘Soldiers bursting into the homes of innocent, God-fearing people – we saw enough of that in England, in Cromwell’s time.’
‘The means to an end, Matthew,’ said Aphra. ‘A pity we did not achieve the end, but I doubt if the King will condemn us for trying. And, as I recall, the Lord Lieutenant of Essex, who no doubt can mollify the magistrate, is a friend of your brother.’
He was, though the thought of him did little to ease my troubled mind. Aubrey, twentieth Earl of Oxford, the last of the De Veres, spent his every waking hour gloomily contemplating the extinction of one of the most ancient bloodlines in England: a state of affairs uncomfortably similar to my own.
‘What did he want, do you think?’ I asked. ‘Schermer. The Precious Man. Retribution for Holmes’ bonfire, and a new dawn of freedom of England. What would Vandervoort’s money have paid for?’
‘Whatever it is,’ said Aphra, ‘they have been planning it for a long time. Schermer and Goodman must have had their plan in place to get De Wildt out of Chelsea College before news of the bonfire reached England. Whatever they have in mind, revenge is only one part of it, and a newly added part. Their scheme is deeply laid – talk of Mene Tekel and the Precious Man began back in the spring, at the time of the Rathbone Plot.’
‘For men like them, and for Rathbone, a new dawn of freedom would mean only one thing,’ I said. ‘The overthrow of the monarchy, the re-establishment of the Commonwealth. Their notion of freedom being every right-thinking Englishman’s notion of slavery, as Cromwell’s time proved.’
‘One fewer target for them, though,’ said Musk.
‘Crave pardon, Musk?’ I said.
‘Rathbone and his crew planned to kill Monck, the Duke of Albemarle. No need to do that now, as the fat, gouty old – very well, Sir Matthew, His Grace – he’s at sea, so well out of the way.’
So he was. George Monck, who as Lord General of the army had secured London ahead of the Restoration of the King, and then kept it secure for him. Any conspirator worth his salt would surely attempt to carry out his plot before Albemarle returned from sea and resumed his iron if lumpen grip on the capital.
‘What else did Rathbone seek to do, Musk?’ said Aphra Behn. ‘Neither Sir Matthew nor I were in London when it happened.’
‘Not a bad plot, as these things go,’ he said, ‘and your brother and I have fair experience of such things, Sir Matthew. Kill the King – naturally – and Monck, then fire London to create panic and confusion. If it was me, I’d have put knives in the Duke of York, Clarendon and Arlington too, and any other lords or gentlemen I could get my hands on. A new Sicilian Vespers, or a second Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre if you prefer, only this time in Whitehall.’
‘God help England if you ever turn rebel, Musk,’ said Aphra.
‘Not in a dozen lifetimes, Mistress,’ he said. ‘Anyhow, they planned to surround and disarm the Life Guards, get across the Tower moat in boats, scale the walls, then break open the arsenal and arm every old New Model trooper and canting conventicler within a dozen miles of London. Chances are, they’d have had an army of fifty thousand by dawn and your neck would soon have been on a block waiting for the axe to fall, Sir Matthew.’
‘But such a plot would need money,’ I said, ignoring the prospect of my beheading, and thinking aloud. ‘Ready money, for bribes to the necessary parties, and then to establish the government of the new republic. Ah, of course! When it began, the old Commonwealth already had control of Parliament, which voted it money every step of the way it took. Any sudden revolution, like the one Rathbone plotted, would need credit until it could convene some sort of new Rump or Barebones Parliament, a puppet assembly of fanatics to give it a semblance of legality – and above all, to vote it taxes. That’s why the Precious Man was so keen to meet Meinheer Vandervoort.’
‘Bravo,’ said Aphra. ‘Now that truly is Lord Percival thinking and speaking.’
‘Bit obvious, though,’ said Musk, ‘for these Horsemen to attempt exactly the same thing as Rathbone.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘they’ll have a different plan, that’s for certain. But it’ll still come back to the same thing, Musk. Money. They’ll need money to erect their utopia, the new paradise of the godly saints upon earth. Perhaps they can get it from another source, but the fact that they were so keen to get it from Meinheer Vandervoort suggest they don’t have it yet. That being so, all they can do is destroy, to wreak havoc – to avenge what Holmes and I did at the Vlie and Terschelling.’
A strange, unwelcome thought then came to me: that my very own, recently ruined father-in-law might have been a likely candidate to supply the Horsemen with funds.
‘Or else,’ said Musk, ‘maybe we’ve given them such an almighty fright that they’ve turned tail and gone off to find a different war. One with plenty of walls they can blow up and towns they can fire.’
‘Remember, Musk, I know these men,’ said Aphra. ‘They’ll seek to complete what they have started. Nothing is more certain.’
‘Then we must find some other way to stop them,’ I said.
* * *
The Horsemen had eluded us, but at least we had Sallows. The other men we had captured in Leigh churchyard were clearly ignorant fellows, brought along only to provide strength in numbers. I was content to release them to the local magistrate as a sop. But Sallows was too valuable; he was the one chance we had of finding the trail of the Horsemen once again. Knowing the treacherous reputation of such vile dens of rebellion as Rainham and Barking, we went by way of the road closest to the river whenever possible, and put up overnight at Tilbury blockhouse, where the garrison, augmented by Lovell’s Marines, ensured there would be no attempt to rescue
the villain before he could tell us anything of value.
Not that Sallows was talking. I had threatened him with the gallows. Aphra Behn had attempted to bribe him. But the man seemed an inveterate fanatic, one of those whose eyes were fixed firmly on the life to come, the eternal and markedly dour rule of the Saints, as they called themselves. The certainty of predestination made men insufferable, but it also made them difficult to break.
‘One hour,’ said Musk.
‘Beg your pardon, Musk?’
‘One hour, Sir Matthew. That’s all I’d need with him. Lord Percival – the real Lord Percival – would know that, and grant me that.’
I forced myself to glance at Aphra – something I had tried to avoid doing – and she nodded grimly.
‘And what will you do to him in that hour, Musk?’
His round face was unreadable.
‘Best not to ask questions like that, Sir Matthew. Best to be well out of earshot, too.’
I averted my eyes, and thought hard upon the issue. But in truth, it was not so difficult a decision. God alone knew what monstrous crime the Horsemen might inflict – how many innocents might die, for instance. I also knew full well what Sallows and his kind would do to the likes of me and mine, if they ever held power in the land once again. Above all, I knew exactly what my brother would say, and I was there, in that room, in that fortress, merely as his substitute. His mouthpiece.
‘Very well, Musk,’ I said, my throat dry. ‘Go to it.’
In the event, it did not take an hour. It did not quite take fifty minutes, during which interval Aphra and I at first discussed the remarkably dry and hot weather, albeit in a somewhat intermittent fashion, until she somehow wheedled out of me tales of my days in the likes of Naples, Sicily and Venice, when I commanded in the Middle Sea, even of my visit to Madrid in my youth. She had a way of getting men to talk, whether they wanted to or not; of getting men to do many things, whether they wanted to or not. And above all, she had a way of getting men to forget, if only for a few precious minutes, those otherwise nearly unbearable burdens called sin and guilt. Of getting men to forget that they had wives.
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