Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  It was this circumstance that he dared not confide to his particular master, though, Lord knows, his master had been in the same pickle more than once when he was younger.

  None the less they sent him for trial, hoping that Captain Vittles would break, but Vittles was stout as English oak, and Scroggs the Lord Chief Justice was no flincher from the glass and acknowledged the Captain as his fellow. And the jury found him Not Guilty, and Atkins knelt down and called out, not once but three times, ‘God bless the King and this honourable Bench.’ He was weeping as he cried out.

  I must confess that tears came to my eyes too, when I saw it, tears of joy that virtue could yet triumph in this naughty world and that the whining hypocrites had been beaten. And that joy diminished my hatred for Pepys, for the loyalty that young Atkins bore him could not but reflect upon his own character, as the sun’s light will brighten the darkest corner. I had rejoiced in the acquittal of one Samuel, could I rejoice in the conviction of another?

  ‘Well, this is a damnable nuisance, the Colonel said. Curse that lying drunken Captain. Never trust a Navy man, Jem. There is nothing for it, we have no recourse but to try the route direct.

  Yet the disaster that now fell upon Pepys was not of the Colonel’s own making. It was a grand calamity that went by the name of a general election. The people were inflamed with terror of popery. There was no room in their noddles for any other thought. Everywhere but in the Crown’s own boroughs the King’s men went down, and the republican fanatics were in. The King tried to keep his friends, but Parliament would not have it, and he had to dismiss them and let in the mutineers. Within a fortnight, Pepys was out of his place. Within another month, he was brought before a committee of the House of Commons charged with Piracy, Popery and Treachery.

  Now’s your moment, Jem, the Colonel said.

  How so?

  I have the information here. All you need say is how, looking through the window, you saw Sir Anthony Deane in conversation with Monsieur Pellissary and how you then saw him give the said Monsieur a packet of plans. Deane and thereby Pepys will be sunk for ever and we shall make our fortunes.

  But you said you had another witness who would swear to all that.

  Did I? You must have misheard me. You would swear much better to it. You are an old comrade of Pepys’s. It would come well from you.

  But it isn’t true.

  But it is, Jem. Haven’t I told you the story a dozen times?

  I was not by, I have seen nothing of the sort.

  Two witnesses are better than one Jem. Corroborate, corroborate. That is the art in legal matters.

  I know nothing of the business. And I will say nothing.

  Sleep on it, Jem, you would not wish to miss your part in Pepys’s downfall. The business will appear in a different light after a good night’s sleep.

  But all that night I lay awake and all I saw was the fresh young face of the other Samuel, and it seemed to me a vision of goodness that was sent to speak to me, just as the Lord spoke to Samuel in the Bible and he said Here am I.

  On the morrow, I went to the Dog and Dripping Pan and said to the Colonel straight out:

  I cannot do it. Even to destroy Pepys, I will not perjure.

  What is perjury? the Colonel said, a lawyer’s term, a thing of no account. But don’t fret, Jem, you can’t catch a fish without spreading the ground-bait. I shall speak to Elephant Smith.

  Elephant Smith?

  The first man in the kingdom for broadsides, squibs and libels and lampoons. He has a marvellous delicate touch. No man can recover his reputation, once the Elephant has trodden on him.

  But as it turned out, the matter came to the House before Elephant Smith had published his notorious libel upon Mr Pepys and Will Hewer his clerk (on whom Mrs Pepys had doted to my displeasure). And Mr Carcase? He had been so gladdened by his release that he had not drawn a sober breath since and, according to the Colonel, lay in a brothel across the river in a species of delirium, so that he could not be moved, still less come before the Bar to discourse of tickets and treachery.

  Thus when Pepys was arraigned before the mob of republicans and Green Ribbon men, there was but one witness principal, viz. Colonel John Scott. He looked fine in his silver lace but for his squint. He might have been one of the King’s ministers. When he met an acquaintance whom he had known in Paris, a seal-graver named Browne, he hallooed him with a ‘Welcome friend’ and begged him to do his King and country a service by testifying how, in the autumn of 1675, looking through a window, he had seen Sir Anthony Deane give Monsieur Pellissary, etc., etc.

  I can’t, for the life of me, sir, said the poor bewildered man, for I saw no such thing.

  Well, it is all true as light shines, said the Colonel and swaggered on to tell the House of Commons the self-same story with himself as the witness of it. Then in addition he told of the interview he had then had with Monsieur Pellissary who had showed him the papers Sir Anthony had brought, each signed by Mr Pepys, for which he was asking £40,000 and if the King of France had ’em, he could burn the English fleet entire as it lay at anchor. Was there ever treachery like it?

  The House gasped, the House gaped and gabbled. They had heard of Sir Anthony’s piracy, how he had diverted the sloop Hunter to his own use and furnished it out of government stores together with Pepys’s brother-in-law Mr St Michel and caused her to prey on English shipping. And now they heard of Pepys’s popery, how he had filled the Navy with the Duke of York’s Catholic nominees and how his butler James swore he kept a tame Jesuit named Morelli, with whom he would whine out masses in the Romish manner. But it was the Colonel’s evidence that was the clencher.

  Pepys rose and did his best. It was strange that no word of these charges had been spoken before him. As an Englishman and a member of the Commons he should have been acquainted with the charges beforehand. He had nothing to do with the business of the Hunter. Morelli was a harmless musician whose only fault was to catch the servant James in bed with his housekeeper, for which James was turned away. As for Colonel Scott, he had never met him, though he had had occasion to attempt his arrest at Gravesend under another name, and later to present the House with papers which showed him to be guilty of the same crimes with which he himself was charged.

  But it was all in vain. They mocked him without mercy. Some friend of Colonel Scott’s got up to say:

  You are unfortunate, are you not, Mr Pepys?

  Unfortunate to be here, I am indeed, sir.

  No I meant unfortunate in your servants: one accused to be in the Plot; your best maid found in bed with your butler; another accused to be a Jesuit. Very unfortunate.

  It is no crime to be unfortunate, sir.

  But then a flock of members – Harbord, Sacheverell and their ilk – got up, rehearsed to say that it was indeed a crime and one that had come to light only through the patriotism of Colonel John Scott, who was the finest man in all England for a West India voyage and a man of honour and sagacity.

  Moved, that Mr Pepys and Sir A. Deane be taken into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. Carried.

  Then, two days later, Moved that the said Mr Pepys and the said Sir Anthony Deane be committed to the Tower. Carried.

  There were bonfires lit beneath the windows of the Green Ribbon Club, and republicans throughout the length of England drank to the confusion of Pepys, Plot, Popery, Piracy.

  But as the gates of that dreadful place clanged shut behind Pepys and his faithful friend, there was no bonfire in my heart. I had not testified myself, yet I had not spoken against the Colonel’s false testimony. I had wanted Pepys disgraced, but it should have been by fair means, not by foul machinations.

  So it is, I dare say, that what we thought we most wanted in life reaches us by the back way if at all and we do not welcome its arrival, for it comes tainted by the times. I cannot say that the late proceedings had brought to me a fondness for Pepys himself. In defending himself, he was an irksome, arrogant little fellow who must always be in the righ
t of everything. Yet he had kept the love of young Samuel Atkins, though he had treated him severely. Pepys had abused his office, that was true, but he was zealous in his attendance to duty and I could not swear that he was greatly more corrupt than the rest of us.

  It was his zealousness that saved him now. From his chamber behind those frowning battlements he sent out agents all over the kingdom and to France and Holland to bring witnesses who might shake the Colonel’s testimony. Many of these witnesses were papists who would not be credited in an English court, some were too old to travel and their written depositions would be of small account. But little by little cracks began to appear in the smooth walls of Pepys’s prison.

  I was leaving the Duke’s house on a fine June morning when a beggar tugged at my arm.

  A word in your ear, sir, a private word.

  He was a filthy fellow, in soiled rags and a large black hat, doubtless filched from some gent he had robbed.

  Why should I speak to you?

  Pepys, the beggar whistled through his broken teeth, it is of Pepys I must speak.

  I let the man lead me round the corner to a private spot behind the porter’s lodge.

  What is it then?

  See here, Jem, said the Colonel unbending to his full height and shaking his hair free of the black hat. This fellow Pepys is beginning to vex me.

  How so?

  He has put spies on my track in half the countries of Europe. My every movement is followed and recorded. He even has a man in New York compiling my history.

  You must expect that he will defend himself.

  I have been discoursing with the Attorney-General who is a first-rater and an intimate of mine. He is of the opinion that we cannot hang Pepys on my evidence alone.

  Hang?

  I spoke metaphorically, the Colonel said. You remember, I told you – corroborate, corroborate.

  And?

  You’re the key, Jem. You’re the one man who can sink him. You speak as the trusted counsellor to the present Duke of Albemarle and to his father who saved the nation. You speak also as an ancient colleague of Pepys’s, one who has witnessed his career of crime and misdemeanour at close hand. The Attorney-General told me that he had Lord Shaftesbury’s authority to say that certain high places in the Navy Office must be filled as a result of these proceedings and that he would know where to look to fill them.

  No.

  You don’t believe me. Perhaps you’d prefer to converse with Mr Attorney directly?

  No.

  You mean –

  I shall not, cannot and will not do as you ask. Here’s sixpence for your pains.

  This last gesture was not solely to humiliate the Colonel, but was brought on by my seeing Kit stump across the court with his greyhound Patch which he was to course at Barnes that afternoon. Quick as lightning, the Colonel was crouched back into the shape of a hoop and thanking me for my sixpence as he hobbled off into the street.

  That was the last I was ever to see of the Colonel, for though he came and went, he could no longer stay openly in London, for Pepys’s witnesses began to arrive in clouds like flies hatching in May. Within a month, Pepys was out of the Tower, and removed to the Marshalsea. Within another month, he was out on bail and free to pursue the Colonel which he did without mercy until the whole case melted into thin air and when he and Deane came before the Lord Chief Justice, that cheerful old tosspot Scroggs, and Scroggs asked the Attorney-General what he had to say against the prisoners’ motion for a discharge, the Attorney answered ‘Nothing’ – and they were free.

  For all that, Pepys had lost his place and lived quietly in retirement, but his downfall gave me small pleasure. Indeed, I was weary of life. All my fond hopes had shrivelled into husks. Kit grew fat and greedy for office. Because he was a stout Protestant he became a great man in the kingdom, the people being so distracted and fearful that all they wished to know of a minister or a magnifico was that he was of the true religion, caring little whether he be imbecile, of which the prime example was Kit being made Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, when never in my life had I seen him read a book through. But Monmouth who had the place before him was put out of it because the King (though fond of him) thought he had grown too big for his boots.

  Which he had, for when he came back to England he struck the baton sinister from his arms, putting it about that the King had secretly married his mother (a poor whore from Haverfordwest) and went down to Somerset where I believe he touched for the King’s Evil, claiming to be the Prince of Wales.

  So the King dismissed him from all his posts and made Kit Captain of the Life Guards in his stead, and so the two old friends fell out and nearly came to a duel, when Monmouth said the guards did not march as well as when he had had command of them.

  Yet though Kit was cock of the dunghill, he was not a happy man, for it was then that the first dread whisper began to attach itself to his name, viz. DEBT. Even a year before, I would not have believed it. He had rich estates in half the counties of England, he had a place at Court and vessels upon the high seas. When he lost a thousand or two playing at basset at Madame Mazarin’s, it was as though you or I were to drop twopence in the street. He entertained all the great potentates from overseas: the Prince of Orange, the Muscovite Ambassador who was dirty and the Ambassador from Morocco, a great gentleman though barelegged who gave the King two lions and thirty ostriches, and who much enjoyed the Bear Garden and the horse-racing at Newmarket where he raced his Barbary steeds and borrowed money from Kit which he did not pay back. But all the time the money was leaking away.

  Then came the bitter reckoning. Albemarle House was to be sold and we returned to his old childhood lodging at the Cockpit. It was a mournful homecoming.

  In his despair, he listened to the counsels of his secretary Arthur Farwell, a giddy gent, who had married his cousin Mary Monck (a miserable sallow creature whom my lady could not abide). Farwell had always half a dozen schemes bubbling in his mind’s cauldron, most of them harebrained. His latest was to present to Kit one Captain William Phipps from the New England plantations who told him of a Spanish galleon laden with gold and silver for the King of Spain which had been wrecked off the shores of Hispaniola, a year before the King came back (I mean King Charles). Many a ship had been sent to search for the gold and silver, from France and England and Spain, but none had found it. But now Kit must be taken in by this crazy mariner from the Americas, persuade the King to lend him the frigate Algier Rose, eighteen guns and ninety-five seamen, and pay half the costs himself at a time when he needed every penny to maintain his estate. The expedition failed, to the amazement of none and the delight of Kit’s enemies, and he was left worse off than before.

  But Kit had contracted the gold fever and whenever a rumour of a wrecked galleon reached the Lords of Trade and Plantations, his ears pricked fastest, though we all told him it was but foolishness.

  Worst of all was the plight of his wife. How thin and distracted she had grown, how wearisome her complaints against her husband and his cousin Mary Farwell.

  Where is he?

  Gone to Wapping, madam, there was a great fire, and he’s gone with the Lord Mayor to direct the water engines.

  A pretty story, did he think of that himself? No, he is too stupid. You invented it, Jem, you’re his artificer.

  No, madam, I did not. You will read of it tomorrow in the Gazette.

  He will pay the Gazette to say he was a hero, and saved a dozen burning babies.

  No madam, I swear he –

  Why can nobody see how unwell I am? I have such an ague, Jem, but Dr Barwick says there is nothing wrong with me.

  Dr Barwick is a learned doctor.

  Dr Barwick is a quack. I’m not a fool Jem, I know he has been sent here to guard me because my husband thinks I am mad. Besides, he knows nothing of women.

  Who does, madam? I mean, what man?

  You do, Jem. I think you do. You look much like the King, has anyone ever said so? The King knows women
though he is foolish with them, but he will die soon.

  I hope not, madam.

  But he will, you know, I am sure of it. Please place your hand there – and she undid the buttons at the front of her dress and took my hand and thrust it in upon her slender belly.

  Madam, I –

  Do not madam me, there now, can you feel my barrenness? Perhaps you can cure me, Jem, perhaps you are a wizard.

  And she laughed her high laugh like a magpie’s chuckle.

  Would you like to call me Eliza? You called his mother Nan, didn’t you?

  I –

  You did, I heard you call to her so when she was dying, and then I knew why you were so sad.

  Madam – She still held my hand against her naked skin which was warm and trembled to my touch.

  I will not let you go until you call me Eliza.

  Very well – Eliza.

  Now I shall not let you go because we are friends, and she laughed again and held my hand more tightly against her.

  Please, I said, I don’t think this is right.

  Many things are not right, Jem. It’s not right that I should be cooped up here with Dr Barwick and that horrid Farwell. It’s not right that my husband should cut my income so that I have barely a thousand pounds a year to feed on and dress myself and my women. It’s not right that my mother should reproach me with being undutiful. Nothing is right, so one more wrong will do no hurt, don’t you agree?

  Eliza – I managed to get out the word, though it came hard to me – I am . . .

  A servant? Then you should be willing to serve me.

  No, I was about to say that I’m so much older than you.

  Well, you were so much younger than his mother. It is a pleasant fancy, is it not, to make an echo in the next generation.

  It’s only a fancy, madam.

  Eliza.

  Eliza, I can’t do what you ask.

  What I ask? You don’t know what I ask. Did you think I meant – well, upon my honour, I was never so insulted. And she gave me a basilisk glare, tearing my hand out of the opening in her dress.