But surely this is all very great nonsense, I said, the King can’t believe a word of it.
Jem, you’re an old friend and therefore I offer you my most solemn counsel. If anyone but me hears you talk in that fashion, they will tear you apart like a pack of dogs. Mrs P., you heard not a word of what my friend said, did you? Mr Oates has a dozen Jesuits in Newgate already, more are to be arrested today. The Duchess of York’s secretary is arrested too and his letters seized. There are riots everywhere. The fury of a righteous people is a terrible thing.
He tucked his paintbrush into a little walnut box and put up a mirror on the back of the box to admire his whiskers.
Mrs Paulett took advantage of this to ask whether she might have the five shillings that was outstanding by way of rent.
Jem, would you oblige me by letting Mrs P. have a sovereign? My purse is in my other coat upstairs?
As though in a trance, I handed Mrs Paulett the coin.
You’re a good fellow. You and I must put our heads together and prepare our evidence.
What evidence?
Mrs Paulett, might I with the greatest respect beg you to leave us, for we have private business to conclude?
Why don’t you go upstairs then? Mrs Paulett said. She seemed a tart shrew who was immune to the Colonel’s charms.
Dear lady, rem acu tetigisti, as always. The Colonel smiled at her and led me upstairs.
Now then, he said to me, as we were scarce in the little low chamber that was strewn with empty bottles and the Colonel’s fine clothes. This time we shall have him. No, no, I will not mention his name but you know of whom I speak. Mr Carcase has told me of the doughty work you did on the last occasion but alas in vain, for he was too quick for you. But this time, there will be such a hue and cry across the nation that he will be swept up in it as a piece of driftwood is shattered on a spring tide.
But what has he done?
Done, sir, what hasn’t he done? Corruption, sir, and piracy and popery and treachery. He has stolen from the Navy and stuffed her ships with Catholics, and he has been treating with the French.
Treating with the French?
You don’t believe me, sir? I have the evidence here, maps, the Navy’s own secret maps with the dispositions of our ships upon them which Mr Pepys’s associate Sir Anthony Deane gave Monsieur Pellissary, the late Treasurer of the French Navy. I have a man who will swear he saw it with his own eyes through a window.
I looked at the charts. They had been sewn with silk fringes and on them, in ink, some hand had written the positions of our men-o’-war, viz.: Quaker (60 tons), Firecat (2nd-rater), etc., etc. But I knew the maps at once.
Why these are my charts that I sold to sea-captains. Can the Navy be using them still? And these fringes . . .
The Colonel looked displeased.
Sir Anthony wanted forty thousand pounds for the plans, he said. If the French had ’em, they could sail in any day they chose and burn the English Fleet without losing a man. It was the basest piece of treachery I ever heard of.
Well, Colonel, I said, I must confess I find this hard to believe. Sir Anthony is the King’s favourite shipwright and a true man, he would not—
Didn’t he build two yachts for the French king?
Yes, it is true, Louis had seen how fine was the yacht our King travelled in—
If I was to tell you that I saw him with my own eyes trafficking with Monsieur Pellissary—
But you spoke of another witness, you didn’t say it was you yourself—
Sir, these are very secret matters, I may not say all that I know, even to a trusted confidant such as yourself. He stroked his whiskers again. I wondered whether the paint would run in the rain. I had myself inked over faded figures in the old Dutch maps where one could not see whether the depth might be three fathoms or nine and the plate-maker had copied my guesses: any French fleet which sailed by such charts might not sail very far.
But those charts— I began . . .
Sir, we shall speak no more of it. We must stay mum until the great bell tolls.
This phrase stuck in my mind. It seemed apt to the times. For after the first uproar and the arrest of the Jesuits, there was a week in which the world was expectant but no event of note occurred, so that it was like the pause that came after some great clock has tolled the three-quarters but before it begins to tell the hour.
The King had gone to Newmarket. Although he seemed an idle man, yet he knew when to let things lie and could judge the tempo of affairs, just as his jockey Fletcher was famous for letting his horse run easy until the last furlong of the race and then would steal through to win by a short head.
Kit must go too and I with Kit. To be near the King was to show one’s loyalty and to be safe from accusation. For that reason, I was not astonished to see Mr Pepys come down to join the Court at Newmarket, but it turned out the King had sent for him, fearing that he might have need of his counsel if Parliament should renew its broadside against his conduct of the Navy.
Pepys looked mournful and he was tetchy. What are you doing here? was his only greeting. I answered that I had as good a right to be there as he.
The King sent for me, Pepys said, to which there was no answer, and he passed on his way into the King’s study, affecting to take no notice of the ladies playing ombre in the small saloon, although they offered a cornucopia of delights.
But we all had the fidgets and would roam restless from room to room, as though someone in the next room might explain what we were there for. Men would go out into the rain for no purpose except to hear if there were any news from London.
And then the news came. At first, we did not grasp its meaning.
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, magistrate, found dead in a ditch at the foot of Primrose Hill, with his own sword run through him, but no blood on the sword or the body, yet there were bruises on his breast and his neck.
Who had murdered him? There could be but one answer: the Jesuits. Terrified, the Catholics sought to show that Sir Edmund must have committed suicide.
But how could he get to a ditch in Primrose Hill without a spot of dirt on his polished shoes? And how could he have run a sword through himself after he was dead, for it had passed through his body as dry as a butcher’s knife through a well-hung carcase which showed the injury to be posthumous. Those cruel bruises proved that the Jesuits had strangled him first and then run him through with his own sword to counterfeit suicide. O the villainy of it!
On my return to London, I found a note from the Colonel:
The great bell has tolled.
The upstairs room at the Dog and Dripping Pan was swept clean. Where once there had been high disorder, now not so much as a stocking of the Colonel’s was to be seen. He sat on a stool in the middle of the room that was as bare as though the bailiff had but lately called.
When I spoke of this transformation, he seemed distracted.
I’ve been on my travels. I daren’t leave traces of my whereabouts. There are enemies everywhere. If we don’t strike first, they’ll have us. Tonight, I must remove again to collect more evidence.
Evidence of . . .
He thought he was too clever for us. I will admit it was a master stroke, to place himself in the one spot in the kingdom where nobody can deny he was, at the King’s side. But we’ll have him yet.
If you mean Pepys, I saw him at Newmarket.
A master butcher does not do all his own slaughtering. We know the butcher’s boy.
The Colonel stroked his whiskers which had gone grey since our last meeting. Indeed, he was altogether dishevelled and moth-eaten.
But why would Pepys want to kill Sir Edmund?
Why would – the Colonel squinted at me with astonishment as though at a man with three heads. Are you an imbecile, sir? Have I the honour to be addressing a three-year-old child? Pepys and Godfrey had been acquainted, well acquainted and in the course of their acquaintance Godfrey had learnt Pepys’s secrets – his popery, his dealings with the French
, his conspiracy with the Jesuits – and as an honest Englishman, and a magistrate, don’t forget he was a magistrate, he was about to carry this information to Mr Oates who would make it public in the proper quarters, but being a good Christian, O fatal innocence, he thought it right to advise Pepys of his intentions. In so doing, he signed his own death warrant.
The Colonel slapped the table as though slapping such a warrant down upon it. Then he paused, struck by another thought.
Do you think we might go downstairs for a glass or two? I have been riding all night on State service and my throat is dry.
In the Dog and Dripping Pan, he told me of his adventures.
I had command of a regiment in Holland, you know. De Witt swore I was the finest commander there. If I had been present at Texel, the outcome would have been very different, though it would have been obnoxious to me to defeat my own countrymen, however badly they may have treated me. But it was not to be. My wife, that is, my Dutch wife, for my American wife was at my estate on Long Island, took it ill that so many women should run after me. I do not account myself a Beau Garçon, but there is a certain good humour about me. I never come into the coffee-house if there are a hundred other men in the room but the women will come and flock about me to hear me discourse. I think I shall marry Lady Vane in the end, for she will settle three thousand pounds a year on me and I may marry myself into Parliament. The people of England like a man who has seen something of the world. Did I tell you I killed a man in St Kitts? They took me to the gallows and I had the rope round my neck while I was persuading them that the man, a sugar-planter by whom I was employed, was a rogue and should have been on the gallows in my stead. So instead of hanging me they gave me command of a company against the French.
Together we disposed of glass after glass, and the Colonel’s exploits grew more remarkable yet. Because I did not wish to seem a dismal simpleton I told him something of my own past, how I had made my fortune in Cromwell’s service, how I had won the love of the Duchess of Albemarle and become the trusted counsellor of Honest George Monck and fought side by side with him at the Battle of the Medway – of which action my body still bore the marks, and of the place I now held among the young rakes and bloods of the town, how I saved the young dukes from the gallows after they had run the beadle through and so earned their gratitude. And I could see that I had made some impression upon him.
We’re navigators, sir, on the sea of life. We shall help one another into safe harbour yet. The butcher’s boy will save our bacon. Hush, not another word.
He put his finger to his whiskers as I tried to ask him who this mysterious butcher’s boy might be.
But I was to know soon enough. For no more than a week later one Samuel Atkins, clerk to Pepys, was arrested and taken before the Committee for Examining the Plot, which was in truth a committee for destroying Pepys and, through Pepys, the Duke of York that was now his sole patron, for Sandwich (olim Mountagu) had perished in the last Dutch war.
It is a first-rater of a committee, the Colonel said, the Duke of Buckingham is a member and Lord Shaftesbury and many another great gentleman that have the welfare of this realm at heart (anglice. a crew of libertines, republicans, sodomites and other riff-raff).
I will ask you a favour, Jem, he said. I dare not attend upon this Committee myself, my person is reserved for great business and I must come fresh to it so that they will know my testimony comes from a sincere heart and has not been prompted or confected by artful plotters. Will you keep watch for me and let me know what passes?
I will, I said, not quite knowing why I said so.
Thus it was that I saw Samuel Atkins, a fresh-faced youth, brought in from Newgate and taken before the Committee.
Did you ever say that there was no kindness, or a want of friendship I think it was, between Mr Pepys your master and Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey? (This was Lord Shaftesbury, a little man with a canting whining voice like a dog that will be let out.)
No, my lord.
I think you did. We have your namesake Captain Atkins who will swear that you told him Sir E. Godfrey had very much injured your master, Mr Secretary Pepys, and would ruin him if he lived.
I said no such thing, my lord.
Well then, let us hear it from the horse’s mouth. Bring in Captain Atkins.
And they brought in a big fellow with a face that was well weathered, by liquor as well as by storms at sea, I fancied. This Captain Atkins then testified as he was meant to, though his manner was somewhat rehearsed.
Did you not say those words, Mr Atkins?
No, my lord, not in my life, not one word like it.
You know, said the Captain to his namesake, the discourse was between us in your large room by the windows.
Captain Atkins, sir, the boy answered, God, your conscience and I know it is notoriously untrue. We have not met since last summer, when you came to borrow half-a-crown of me.
Come, Mr Samuel Atkins, said Lord Shaftesbury in his most wheedling manner, you are an ingenious hopeful young man. Captain Atkins has sworn this positively against you, he bears you no malice, besides, to tell you truth, I don’t think him to have wit enough to invent such a lie.
No, my lord, I said no such thing.
What, we admit Captain Atkins to be a man that has loved wine and women, but would you have us think him a liar?
Well, sir, I would not have spoken a word of the matter, were things otherwise, but you will recall that it was two years ago that Captain Atkins was captured by Algerine Corsairs and let himself be towed into Algiers by them that he might save the gold he had on board, which he ought not to have had aboard a man-of-war, and he lost his command.
There was a silence, very heavy, and Lord Shaftesbury was greatly out of countenance.
Then they began to inquire of the religion of young Mr Atkins, and he swore that he was a stout Protestant and was due to receive the Sacrament on Sunday.
Foiled again, his accusers returned to the principal accusation.
Well, Samuel Atkins, said the Duke of Buckingham flatteringly, I never saw you before, but I’d swear you are an ingenious man. I see the working of your brain. Pray tell us what you know of this matter. You may be sure that you will come to no harm so long as you keep nothing back, and otherwise a great deal of harm must attend you.
My lord, said Atkins – and my heart leapt to hear him – telling a lie will do me a great deal of harm.
They could not shake him, however hard they talked of honour and truth and religion – of which their hearts knew nothing. And as Bucks pressed him on matters of conscience, I recalled that bawdy sermon he had preached to the King and wondered how so great a canting rogue should be esteemed the first gentleman of Europe.
They came at him again a week later. Same questions put, same answer given:
My lord, I avow to you Mr Pepys never in his life committed any secret to me of any kind, nor ever mentioned to me upon any occasion one word about Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. And this you’d believe if you knew how totteringly I stand in his opinion, having been turned away from him, and am this minute in his very ill apprehension.
Why, said the Bishop of London (who was an ill-natured fanatic), are you given to drink and debauchery?
And though the Bishop thought it a great thing to throw discredit upon the character of Samuel Atkins, yet, curious to relate, in that direction lay Atkins’s salvation. For he did have a secret, but it had nothing to do with popery or treachery or the poor murdered magistrate.
Bucks and Shaftesbury and the rest had him committed back to Newgate to await trial, that is, to give them time to assemble more false witnesses against him to bolster the ungallant captain. There was a swindler named Bedlow who told the House of Lords that the murder had been committed in Somerset House by a gang of desperadoes hired by Jesuits and that Atkins had been seen there later at nine o’clock on the Monday standing over the corpse by the light of a lantern – or so he was meant to swear, but all he would say was that he had be
en told the man he had seen was called Atkins and he did look very like the prisoner.
And still Atkins refused to bend, and still the great lords pressed him, promising, wheedling, threatening. But all the while, his master Mr Pepys was bustling to and fro to find evidence that might save his clerk and himself. This delay while the great lords were bribing their witnesses gave Atkins’s friends a breathing-space.
And into that space stepped another Navy man, one Captain Vittles who had command of the yacht Katherine then lying off Greenwich. The Bishop swore him, and then he told his tale:
It was four o’clock on the Monday, I mean the Monday after that poor gentleman was murdered. I had come up to London to take my orders from Mr Pepys, but finding him to be away at Newmarket (a sigh from some great lord here), I fell into discourse with Mr Atkins who told me that he had pledged himself for the afternoon to two young gentlewomen. Might he bring them to see the yacht, he said. Yes, I said, by all means. So I went back to Greenwich, cleaned the ship that it might be fit for inspection and waited till half past four when Mr Atkins came with his friends. Well, we drank some wine, and the wine being good and just come from beyond seas, we drank some more. It was past seven o’clock when I put them into the ship’s wherry with a dutch cheese and half a dozen bottles of wine. I fear they were very much fuddled. But the tide was flowing too strong for my seamen to make London Bridge, and so they set them down by the iron gates at Billingsgate at half past eleven.
Half past eleven?
Yes, sir.
They could not be mistaken as to the time?
No, sir, nor as to their condition, for they were much in drink and Mr Atkins was unable to stand, being asleep.
Thus two hours after Bedlow claimed to have seen Samuel Atkins by the light of a lantern standing over the corpse, the said Atkins was dead drunk in a wherry rowed by four seamen, and thereafter one of the young gentlewomen, Sarah Williams, would swear that she could prove that Mr Atkins had spent the rest of the night in his own bed, for she had been lying next to him.
Jem (and Sam) Page 28
