The King's Evil

by Andrew Taylor

  I stared at her. ‘You mean Mr Turner?’ I said. ‘Of Barnard’s Inn? Your attorney.’

  I had called on him in his chambers over a week ago and shown his clerk, Frankley, my warrant. Frankley told me that Alderley, newly rich, had called there to discharge Lady Quincy’s mortgage on his Farrow Lane house – and that, while he was there, he had taken the opportunity to mention something to the attorney about a marriage contract. At the time, I had assumed Alderley was contemplating offering his hand to a lady. But I now realized that the marriage in question had not been his own. In that case, whose?

  The coach drew up outside the Holborn entrance of Barnard’s Inn.

  ‘Will you ask Mr Turner to step out to me?’

  The coach waited, an impediment to traffic, while I passed into the inn and crossed the front court to the staircase by the hall. The clerk recognized me at once. His confusion was written on his face.

  ‘My master is engaged, sir, so—’

  ‘Tell Mr Turner that my Lady Quincy is waiting for him in her coach.’

  Frankley shot me a startled glance. He went into the inner room without knocking. I heard the murmur of voices, and then the stout and untidy figure of Mr Turner emerged, straightening his periwig. He was the red-faced, bright-eyed man I had glimpsed on my previous visit. ‘Mr – ah – Marwood?’

  ‘Your servant, sir. Allow me to take you to her ladyship.’

  We clattered down the stairs together. Turner said nothing as we crossed the court, though he couldn’t help glancing surreptitiously at the scars on my face and neck. He was uncertain how to treat me. I opened the coach door for him and he bowed clumsily to Lady Quincy. She told him to sit with her. He clambered inside and squeezed himself into the corner opposite her, trying to make himself as small as possible.

  ‘And will you join us, sir?’ she said to me, to my surprise. ‘You had better sit beside me.’ She gave the lawyer a swift, sly smile, which made him smile nervously and twitch on the seat. ‘Mr Turner needs a little more room than either of us.’

  The lawyer’s colour darkened still further, and he spluttered an apology. I climbed into the coach. When I sat down, my hip rested snugly against Lady Quincy’s thigh.

  ‘I have a question for you, sir,’ she said to Turner. ‘A hypothetical question. Let me put a case to you. On foreign soil, an English gentleman offers marriage to a lady, also English. She accepts. They exchange a verbal contract of marriage in presence of witnesses, and also give each other a gold coin as a token of betrothal. The next day, a clergyman of the Church of England marries them in the presence of the same witnesses, but without a licence or banns being called. The groom gives his bride a ring, a plain gold band. Being young, and hot for each other, they consummate the marriage at once. The following day, the gentleman writes a letter to the lady, referring to her as his beloved wife and referring both to the contract of marriage they have made and to the fact that they have lain together. My question is this: would such a marriage be valid now, in England?’

  Turner stirred uneasily. He glanced at me and then back at Lady Quincy. ‘Yes – and no.’

  ‘Come, sir,’ she snapped. ‘It must be one or the other.’

  ‘Then probably it would be considered valid. Can the witnesses sign affidavits in support of the—?’

  ‘Unfortunately they are both dead. As is the clergyman. In the same outbreak of plague, as it happens.’

  ‘And the gentleman …?’

  ‘Is not inclined to admit his part in the affair. There was a certificate signed by the clergyman, but the gentleman kept that and he has probably destroyed it. Apart from the lady’s testimony, the evidence consists of the letter he wrote in his own hand on the day after the contract of marriage. And the ring, together with the coin he gave to the lady. The coin bears his teeth marks, for he bit and bent it as a token of the betrothal.’

  ‘My lady, the ring – if it is plain and lacks any inscription, is neither here nor there. It proves nothing. The teeth marks might be more interesting, if unusual. Perhaps it could be offered as evidence – assuming the gentleman retains the teeth in question, and they could be shown to correspond with the marks. But the letter could be far more important than all the rest. That he would find difficult to dispute, so long as the writing can be proved to be his. Does it mention the lady by name?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lady Quincy permitted herself a small smile. ‘The letter was enclosed in a cover addressed to the lady by her maiden name, because the marriage had been in secret. But the letter itself was addressed to the lady in her married name.’

  May God and all his Angels save us, I prayed. At last I saw where this was tending, and I could not see how it could lead to a happy ending for anyone, save perhaps the Duke of Buckingham.

  Turner pursed his lips and considered. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. ‘As I said, the ring is neither here nor there, nor probably the coin … But the lady would certainly have a case. It is a great pity that the witnesses and the clergyman are dead, but the gentleman’s letter, if it can be produced in court, might well prove a compelling piece of evidence.’

  ‘Would the marriage be upheld?’

  ‘I can’t say whether it would be considered good in law. Partly because the law itself is not entirely clear on the subject of marriages and their validity. Indeed, all three branches of the law – ecclesiastical, common and equity – are sometimes involved in cases involving a disputed marriage. What makes matters worse, is that they do not always agree on what constitutes a legally binding marriage. That means that their verdicts may be contradictory. The case such as the one you postulate would definitely need to be heard in a church court, where the rules of marriage are governed by medieval canon law, in their revised form as laid down by the Canons of 1604. If there are considerations of property involved, however, then that would also be the province of civil law so—’

  Lady Quincy held up her hand. ‘Enough, sir. One last question. What if the parties in such a case had contracted subsequent marriages?’

  There was no mistaking the look of shock on Turner’s face. ‘Then, madam,’ he said slowly, ‘there would be yet another complication, particularly if one party chose to sue the other: bigamy is a statutory penal offence, so it must be a matter for the criminal courts.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  ‘YOU CAN’T BE too careful,’ Brennan said. ‘Best not show your face in Henrietta Street. I think they’ve bribed the porter.’

  ‘Who has?’ Cat asked.

  ‘How do I know? Probably those rogues at Whitehall. But other people have been sniffing around too. Asking questions of the neighbours …’

  After a frustrating afternoon, she had found the draughtsman in the garden of an alehouse in Long Acre where he sometimes stopped to refresh himself on his way back to his lodgings. Since she had given Milcote the slip, she had spent hours criss-crossing London in the hope of tracking down Marwood. Now she was footsore, hungry, thirsty and close to despair.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Brennan said, reading her mind. ‘You look half-starved. Bread? Cheese?’

  She nodded, wordlessly, and sat down on the bench in the sun while he went to the hatch to order. No one gave her a second glance. Brennan came back, and she fell on the food and the ale with a ferocity that made him stare.

  After a couple of minutes, she said with her mouth full, ‘How is Mr Hakesby?’

  ‘Not too bad. He’s moved in to the new lodgings. Landlord said he could come a week early. That makes it easier for him.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him, and then remembered. Hakesby had taken a lease on the apartments below the Drawing Office. He had been due to take possession of them at Michaelmas, the Quarter Day on 29 September. This was where she and Hakesby would live when they were married. The thought caught her off guard. It made her feel nauseous. He was old enough to be her grandfather. The arrangement seemed distasteful and faintly ridiculous. Such alliances belonged to other people living other lives, no
t to her and Hakesby.

  ‘The old man keeps talking about you,’ Brennan went on. ‘He misses you. So do I.’ He flushed suddenly and rushed on, ‘I mean, the work’s mounting up. They want the final drawings for Dragon Yard by the end of the month, and we should really make a site visit and check the foundations before we sign them off.’

  The words were not meaningless but they had lost most of their significance. The Dragon Yard commission was their biggest yet, giving Mr Hakesby the responsibility for the design and construction of a small street of houses north of Cheapside. One way or another, it had dominated her life for the last few months. But now it seemed unimportant.

  Cat finished the rest of her ale and stuffed the remains of the bread and cheese in her pocket. She stood up. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said, scrambling to his feet. ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘Better you don’t know.’

  Brennan held out a hand, trying to detain her. She swerved away from it and slipped through the back gate into the street.

  Cat recognized the coach by the widow’s lozenge on the door. She had seen the arms before, often, on a set of silver gilt plates that her Aunt Quincy had brought to Barnabas Place when she married Henry Alderley, Edward’s father and Cat’s uncle. The plates had been a wedding present from the King on the occasion of her first marriage to Sir William Quincy.

  The lozenge displayed the arms of her aunt’s family quartered with those of Quincy. Her aunt had enlisted even heraldry to support the fiction that her second marriage, to Henry Alderley, a man who died a bankrupt Regicide, had never taken place. Here, Cat thought, was a woman who believed that truth should not be allowed to stand in the way of a more convenient alternative.

  The coach drew up on the south side of the Strand, by Arundel House. The footman jumped down to open its door, forcing Cat to step into the gutter, which fortunately was dry. She had been waiting among the crowd in the Strand for nearly an hour, hoping to catch a glimpse of Marwood.

  Marwood climbed out. Cat turned her head, concealing her face. His face was hot and flushed as if running a fever. He looked back into the interior of the coach. A hand in a grey glove appeared. He took it in his own hand and bowed over it.

  The rogue, she thought, the damned rogue. Yet another fool who kept his brain between his legs.

  He set off towards the Savoy. The footman closed the door and scrambled up. The coach inched its way into the traffic.

  This changed nothing, though. She still needed to talk to Marwood, and for her sake as much as his. She followed him down the Strand to the great gateway of the Savoy. She waited until they had both passed under the archway and into the broad cobbled way beyond.

  Once inside the palace precinct, the noise of the Strand receded to a bearable level. The lane sloped down to the river, with the walls and chimneys of the Savoy on the left-hand side. She put on a spurt of speed, drew level with Marwood and touched his arm.

  He spun round as if she had stabbed him. ‘Why, what the devil—’

  ‘I must talk to you.’

  ‘Here? In broad daylight? Where anyone might see you.’ He glared at her. ‘And see me with you, as well. Have you thought what that could mean? For me as much as you?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to find you all day. While you’ve been dallying with my aunt like a moonstruck fool.’

  A flush stained Marwood’s face. ‘It’s not what you think. I’ve—’

  ‘Have you heard that Gorse is dead?’ she interrupted. ‘They fished him out of the Thames this morning.’

  His eyes narrowed. For a moment he said nothing. Then: ‘How did he die?’

  ‘I heard that he’d been stabbed. When I saw him, he was laid out on the quay at Botolph’s Wharf with a great wound in his chest.’

  Marwood frowned. ‘But he was here yesterday evening, if the hat is anything to go by.’

  She nodded towards the river, towards the Savoy stairs. ‘Then perhaps that’s where he went into the water. And the tide carried him down under the bridge.’

  She watched his eyes widening as he worked out the implication: that he and Cat had heard the killer’s footsteps yesterday evening outside his house in Infirmary Close; that only the width of a wall had separated them from a murder.

  ‘The news will be all over town by now,’ he said.

  ‘Only the news of a murder. When I saw the body, no one had identified it.’

  ‘Do you mean that we may still be the only ones who know that Gorse is dead?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Cat hesitated. ‘I went to look for you at the Goat today, to tell you the news. But Mr Milcote saw me.’

  ‘For God’s sake—’

  ‘I couldn’t avoid it. He tried to seize me.’ She looked away from him. ‘I stabbed him in the leg and ran.’

  Marwood glared at her. ‘God save us all,’ he said. ‘You fool. Will he live?’

  ‘It was only a pinprick.’

  The tension burst like a bubble. They both smiled, and then both looked away, as if guilty of a foolishness.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Cat said.

  ‘There’s not a lot Milcote can do. You should go back to Dorcas, and pray no one has seen us together.’ Marwood glanced up and down the lane. ‘But first I had better tell you this while I can. Buckingham and your aunt are intriguing against Clarendon and possibly against the King himself.’

  ‘My aunt? Then you were not—?’

  He overrode her, speaking rapidly. ‘Lady Quincy has a daughter, Frances. The girl has never been acknowledged – she’s been living in seclusion with a connection of Lady Clarendon’s. That’s why she wanted me to escort her to Cambridgeshire, to fetch the girl.’

  ‘My aunt has a child? But why wouldn’t she acknowledge her?’

  ‘Because her first husband wasn’t the father. She had the girl before her marriage, when she was living in Clarendon’s household in Bruges. She was one of her ladyship’s waiting women.’

  ‘Why now?’ Cat said. ‘Why has she brought the girl to London?’

  ‘She went to see a lawyer this afternoon to ask him about the validity of marriage contracts. So perhaps …’

  ‘She believes that she was married to the father after all?’

  Marwood nodded. ‘If the man is still alive, that would mean her marriages to Sir William Quincy and your uncle were bigamous. And it—’

  She was there already: ‘And it would also mean that if Frances’s father had married someone else, that would be bigamous too and—’

  ‘And therefore any children of the second marriage would be illegitimate,’ he finished. He looked ill, she thought: he was hunched forward, shoulders slumped, his skin clammy and his breathing rapid, like his speech. ‘They were all in Bruges then, when the Court was in exile. The King, York, Buckingham and Clarendon. And your aunt.’

  She forgot everything else, as the implications of what Marwood had said sank in. ‘What do they want, my aunt and Buckingham?’

  ‘The Duke wants power and glory.’ Marwood glanced down at her. ‘And your aunt? I think she’s suddenly discovered that she wants her daughter. I’m not sure that the girl returns the compliment and wants my lady as her mother. But of course the real question is—’

  ‘Who is the girl’s father?’ Cat said.

  George Milcote was so much in Cat’s thoughts that it seemed almost natural that she should see him again. He came walking down Botolph Lane and turned into Thames Street. It was early evening, and Thames Street was busy. Cat and Dorcas were on their way to the cookshop for food. Cat had money in her pocket – Marwood had been generous with the boat fare – and she was determined to buy their supper.

  Milcote was near the Green Dragon Tavern, where she had seen him two days ago. He was dressed as he had been then, in dark, shabby clothes. His shoulders were bowed, and he walked rapidly, without looking from side to side. She turned aside, pretending to read a handbill on the tavern door. He passed them without a glance. He
threaded his way through a group of sailors and turned up Love Lane.

  If she were wise, Cat thought, she would thank God for a lucky escape and run back to the safety of Dorcas’s stable. But what the devil was a man like Milcote doing in this area, and dressed so meanly? She touched the older woman’s arm. ‘Humour me. I want to see where that man goes.’

  Dorcas looked aghast. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve seen him sometimes.’

  ‘Why do you want to follow him?’

  ‘I’m curious.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  Cat didn’t answer. She took the older woman’s arm and urged her along.

  Dorcas smiled at her. ‘You’re a sly one. Who’d have thought it?’ They turned into Love Lane. Milcote’s tall figure was twenty yards ahead of them. ‘But … you do know why men usually come here, don’t you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘It was always called Love Lane. But since the Fire, it lives up to its name. It’s where the whores are now. Convenient for the river trade.’

  ‘But he’s not like—’

  Cat broke off. Milcote had stopped outside a house which had lost its upper storeys to the fire. The blackened stone walls of the ground floor remained, and a makeshift roof had been constructed over it. Without a word, the two women stopped.

  Dorcas caught her breath. ‘If you’re sweet on him, I think you’re making a mistake.’

  Milcote glanced up and down the narrow street and knocked on the door. It opened almost at once. Cat couldn’t see who was inside. Milcote slipped into the house. The door closed.

  As they stood there, two men passed them and walked quickly up the lane away from the river. The sword of the taller one brushed Cat’s skirts, and his colleague nudged Dorcas out of his way. Cat watched them with dislike. They stopped for a moment and looked up at the house that had swallowed Milcote. The taller man spoke to his companion, who nodded, looking up at the frontage. They continued up the lane at the same rapid pace as before in the direction of Fenchurch Street. The smaller of the two was as fat as a barrel. They were soon out of sight among the crowd.