The King's Evil

by Andrew Taylor

  As if in answer, she heard a low moan from the closet. Earlier in the evening, they had gone by coach to the Lamb. Hakesby had made a better supper than usual, and taken more wine. She suspected that he was paying the price for his self-indulgence. But he would not stay on his close-stool for ever. Soon he would emerge from the closet and demand what was his by the authority of both church and state.

  But it could not be as bad as when Cousin Edward had laid an ambush for her in her chamber and raped her. Cat clung to that knowledge. In his way, Hakesby had shown her nothing but kindness. But Edward—

  Her mind lurched sideways, slipping into the nightmare that haunted her, perhaps always would. Time and effort of will had allowed her to dull the memory of the rape. But this new memory, no more than three weeks old, was still raw and bleeding. It was waiting every time she closed her eyes.

  ‘One day,’ she had told Marwood when they met at the New Exchange, ‘I shall kill my cousin.’

  A mere form of words, she told herself, an expression of hatred, not a statement of intent. Truly, she had planned nothing on that Saturday evening. When she had left Marwood in the Strand, her mind had been heavy with his news that her cousin had tracked her down. But that had been no reason to ignore her responsibility to Mr Hakesby and his clients. In the morning, Mr Milcote had asked her privately to meet him at the Clarendon House pavilion to discuss the sensitive subject of Mr Hakesby’s ability to complete the commission he had accepted; he was concerned, he said, about Hakesby’s declining health, and also about the state of progress so far. For Hakesby’s sake, and hers, she had not wanted them to lose the commission.

  Milcote had asked her to come to the pavilion by the wicket into the garden. He would leave it unlocked for her. ‘I’m afraid tongues would wag if we were seen together without your master,’ he had murmured. ‘Our meeting in private might reach his ears, and he would naturally want to know why. Also, it – ah – might compromise your reputation. You know what people are. So pray be discreet, and I shall be the same.’

  She had been touched by his consideration and flattered that he valued her opinion. She dismissed the idea that he might try to seduce her – he was too much the gentleman, and too conscious of his reputation. He had seemed almost embarrassed that he had been obliged to ask her to meet him in private. Now she understood why. Edward had known Milcote’s secret and used it to blackmail him into luring Cat into a trap.

  So she had left Marwood; she had almost run up the Strand to Charing Cross and along Piccadilly to Clarendon House for fear she would be late. The daylight was fading. No one had seen her enter the garden, for the gardeners had stopped work by then.

  The door to the pavilion was unlocked. She let herself in, closed the door and called Mr Milcote’s name. She heard an answering shout from the basement kitchen. She went downstairs. The door was open. A lantern burned on the shelf above the fireplace. The basement was full of shadows.

  ‘Sir?’

  Cat advanced into the room. The door slammed shut behind her.

  ‘Bitch,’ a man’s voice said. ‘Unnatural punk. Devil’s whore.’

  She swung round. Edward was standing with his back to the door. In his hand was a drawn sword. The eyepatch he wore gave him an air of unreality, half-nightmare, half-clown.

  ‘Scream if you want,’ he said. ‘No one will hear. The garden’s empty at this hour.’

  Cat backed away from him, fumbling for her knife in her pocket. But the knife had snagged slantwise, wedging itself in the material. She tugged desperately at the handle but she could not free it.

  Edward was advancing slowly towards her, the tip of the sword dancing in the air, and its slender sheath swaying from his belt. He was larger than she remembered, heavier and more bloated. She remembered the suffocating weight of him pressing down on her. The stink of him. The pain.

  Still facing him, she retreated, step by step, further into the room. On the far side of the well was a pile of planks, part of the dismantled scaffolding they had used when repointing the masonry of the well shaft. In the corner was the hoist. No tools, unfortunately – the workmen had taken them away.

  Her shoulder touched the wall. She could retreat no further.

  Edward laughed. ‘There’s nowhere for you to go.’

  ‘Haven’t you done enough?’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘I could bring a charge of attempted murder against you for your attack on me,’ he went on as if she had not spoken. ‘I could see you hanged. But where’s the pleasure in that, in seeing the law take its course? I’m the one who deserves revenge, not the court.’ He touched his eye patch. ‘An eye for an eye, says the Bible.’

  Cat ran her hand along the wall behind her, hoping for a loose brick that might make a weapon, hoping for a miracle.

  ‘Besides, I have a mind to throw up your skirts first and teach you the sort of lesson I taught you once before. Indeed, Cousin, you look riper now, fitter to be plucked than you did then.’

  She was cold and sick. Her left hand felt a current of air. She was near the opening of the fireplace, with the stone shelf running above it.

  The tip of the sword was no more than a yard away. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘when I have finished with you, the well can have what’s left. How fortunate for you, Cousin. They say its water is the purest in London. But it won’t be pure much longer once your foulness mingles with it.’

  There was no time for calculation, no time for anything except a flurry of movement. Cat flung her arm up to the shelf. Her hand jarred against the lantern. She hooked her fingers between it and the wall. She flung it in his direction with all her might.

  The lantern was made of iron and heavier than she had expected. She had hoped it would reach him, but instead it fell with a clatter to the flagged floor at his feet. But for the instant it was in the air, it distracted him. His blade dropped. He took a step back.

  The candle went out.

  Even before the flame died, Cat was moving along the wall, away from the fireplace, towards the corner beyond the well. The basement was very nearly dark but memory guided her. The scaffolding and the hoist were there. Perhaps she could find a weapon of some sort. Perhaps—

  It was too late. Edward had recovered himself. He plunged towards her, herding her against the wall. His face was no more than a shadow. He drew back, the fencer’s move, preparing for the thrust. Then, with a grunt, he lunged, the blade darting towards her shoulder.

  ‘God’s—’

  Edward’s oath was cut off before it was out of his mouth. As she tried to scramble away from that murderous sword, he fell forward. The sword clanged on to the flagstones. There was a crack as his head hit the well’s coping. Then a miracle: her cousin no longer existed.

  She took a perverse pride in the fact that, when Marwood had told her of Edward’s death, she had not lied to him. ‘I never touched him,’ she had said to Marwood. ‘That’s God’s literal truth.’ More than pride: relief as well; she found that she did not want to lie to him.

  After Edward vanished, there had been a cry, followed by the sound of frantic splashing, amplified and distorted by the cylinder of the well shaft. Trembling, Cat had knelt by the side of the well and peered over the edge into the utter darkness below.

  ‘Help me.’ Edward’s voice had been as high as a woman’s. ‘For the—’

  The splashing continued, gradually losing its force until at last the only sound was Cat’s own breathing.

  She wriggled away from the well and stood up. Her limbs were shaking as Hakesby’s did when the ague was upon him.

  She knew that she must go before anyone found her here. It was vital to leave the place as it had been when Hakesby locked up for the day. She glanced at the nearest window. It was almost dark. There was no time to think, to act. At dusk they would release the mastiffs into the garden.

  Cat’s foot jarred against an object on the floor. She looked down. She could just make out the shape of the lantern on the floor. Sh
e picked it up. It was still warm. She had lobbed it into the well and listened to the sound of it hitting the water. She crouched by the wooden cover and tried to drag it over the well. It had been too heavy for her. A muscle in her back had shrieked with pain.

  Panic had conquered her, swiftly and suddenly. She would have to leave the cover where it was. There was nothing left to do but run away.

  A door creaked open, dragging her into the present, to Henrietta Street, to her wedding night.

  Hakesby shuffled out of the closet and crossed the floor towards the bed. ‘Ah,’ he said as he drew nearer, ‘still awake, I’m glad to see.’

  He pulled back the covers. She was lying on her back, her legs together, her arms close to her side, like a stone figure on a tomb chest.

  Hakesby climbed laboriously on to the bed. He knelt over her, his nightshirt ballooning about him, and stared down at her. His nightcap was askew, which gave him an incongruously rakish look. He laid a hand on her belly, where it lay like a large, pale spider. She closed her eyes. A bargain was a bargain. She willed herself not to shrink away from him. Perhaps she could pretend her husband was someone else, someone younger, someone more like – for the sake of example – James Marwood, on those rare occasions when he was amiable to her and not puffed up with pride.

  ‘Ah,’ Hakesby said again, and this time there was a sadness in his voice.

  The hand was no longer resting on her belly. She opened her eyes. Hakesby moved clumsily away from her. He laid himself down and turned his back on her. He pulled up the covers and drew up his legs towards his chest.

  ‘Draw the curtains, Wife,’ he said in a muffled voice, ‘and blow out the candles.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  MR CHIFFINCH HAD leased a house conveniently close to Windsor. We travelled there by coach, one of the unmarked ones kept at Scotland Yard for the private use of the royal household. The weather was bad and the tide was against us, so we could not go by river as originally planned.

  It was the Feast of All Souls, the last day of November. It had not been convenient for the King to command us to attend him at an earlier date. I sat facing forwards with Lady Quincy. Stephen and Frances were opposite. Two horsemen escorted us. Like the coachman and the postillion, they were armed because of the risk of highwaymen.

  The coach swayed and rattled and jolted, throwing the four of us against each other. Sometimes the rain found its way inside. There was little conversation until London had fallen behind.

  Lady Quincy had not been pleased when I had told her that the King had agreed to touch Stephen as well at the same ceremony. But she was doing her best to suppress her irritation.

  ‘Have you heard?’ she murmured in my ear. ‘My Lord Clarendon fled abroad last night. To think of it.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  That drama had at last reached its ending. If Clarendon had stayed, he would have been impeached. One charge was corruption, with Clarendon House itself a great argument in stone against him. There were charges of high treason, too, with some of his enemies claiming that he had cost us the victory in the war against the Dutch, and betrayed us to the French into the bargain. Had the case gone against him, he would have lost his head on the scaffold.

  ‘So great a fall,’ she said. ‘And from so high a place.’

  There was a hint of a question mark in her tone, inviting me to play my part in the conversation. I ignored it. After half a mile or so, she tried again.

  ‘I hear that the King uses Mr Chiffinch’s house for private meetings.’ She turned her head and I felt her breath on my cheek. ‘Of one sort or another.’

  There was no mistaking Lady Quincy’s meaning: the King could meet people there in more discreet circumstances than Whitehall or Windsor Castle allowed.

  I bowed my head towards her in the gloom, acknowledging her words but not replying.

  She tried once more. ‘Mr Chiffinch tells me that my niece is married,’ she said. ‘What a surprise. Given her circumstances, Catherine is indeed fortunate. Even if her husband has one foot in the grave.’

  ‘I believe Mr Hakesby is kind to her,’ I said.

  ‘That’s something, I suppose.’ She drew away from me. ‘Frances, my love,’ she said. ‘You look cold. Come and sit by me. Mr Marwood will take your place.’

  At Chiffinch’s house, the ceremony took place after the King had dined. It was the middle of the afternoon. Dusk was already creeping into the rooms and filling their corners with shadows.

  We were shown up to the long gallery on the second floor. The rain pattered on the tall windows, and the air smelled of the river. The four of us waited at one end. At the other end, the candles were lit, and two servants carried in a heavy, old-fashioned elbow chair of carved oak. One of the King’s surgeons – not Mr Knight – inspected the children’s certificates of scrofula and pronounced them valid. One of the royal chaplains took us through the order of the ceremony.

  We waited for over an hour before the King and his attendants arrived by a separate staircase from the great chamber below. They paced solemnly along like a procession of clergy in Westminster Abbey, their shoes clattering on the bare boards.

  The King paid no attention to us. He commanded the ceremony to begin. The chaplain intoned the familiar readings from the Book of Common Prayer. At a signal from Chiffinch, Lady Quincy led Frances up to His Majesty.

  Everything was done according to the pattern I had seen nearly three months earlier in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. There were fewer players and surroundings were humbler, but the service was the same in its essentials. A ritual is a ritual, I thought, and it must be followed in every particular or it will not work. The form was as important as the substance, perhaps more so. The truth or otherwise of the ritual was a different question.

  When they returned, Frances was staring at the floor and Lady Quincy’s face was wet with tears. Chiffinch nodded to me. I led Stephen up to the silent figure on the great chair.

  The King laid his hands on either side of Stephen’s swollen neck. The boy’s body stiffened, and he began to tremble.

  The chaplain read on, stumbling over the words in his haste. The King raised his eyes and stared directly into mine. His face was still, as if carved from dark-stained wood. In this light, the brown eyes looked black. There was no expression in them, only the candle flames reflected like flickering pinheads. The eyes were empty of understanding, empty of feeling.

  Did the King believe in this himself, I wondered as the words filled the silence around us and rose to the smoke-stained plaster ceiling, did he believe he truly was a channel for God’s grace, divinely appointed to cure the King’s Evil by a miracle he had repeated thousands of times? Or did he know himself as a mortal man acting a part purely for his own advantage on this royal stage?

  Or did the truth lie somewhere between?

  THE END

  Keep Reading …

  Make sure you’ve read the two previous books in Andrew Taylor’s acclaimed series following James Marwood and Cat Lovett:

  A city in flames

  London, 1666. As the Great Fire consumes everything in its path, the body of a man is found in the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral – stabbed in the neck, thumbs tied behind his back.

  A woman on the run

  The son of a traitor, James Marwood is forced to hunt the killer through the city’s devastated streets. There he encounters a determined young woman, who will stop at nothing to secure her freedom.

  A killer seeking revenge

  When a second murder victim is discovered in the Fleet Ditch, Marwood is drawn into the political and religious intrigue of Westminster – and across the path of a killer with nothing to lose …

  Click here to order a copy of The Ashes of London

  A time of terrible danger …

  The Great Fire has ravaged London. Now, guided by the Fire Court, the city is rebuilding, but times are volatile and danger is only ever a heartbeat away.

  Two mysterious deaths
…

  James Marwood, a traitor’s son, is thrust into this treacherous environment when his father discovers a dead woman in the very place where the Fire Court sits. The next day his father is run down. Accident? Or another murder …?

  A race to stop a murderer …

  Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust – Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Then comes a third death … and Marwood and Cat are forced to confront a vicious killer who threatens the future of the city itself.

  Click here to order a copy of The Fire Court

  About the Author

  Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of crime novels, including the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed TV drama Fallen Angel, and the historical crime novels The Ashes of London, The Fire Court, The Silent Boy, The Scent of Death and The American Boy, a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller and a Richard & Judy Book Club Choice.

  He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing. He also writes for the Spectator and The Times.

  He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.

  @AndrewJRTaylor

  www.andrew-taylor.co.uk

  By the same author

  The Fire Court

  The Ashes of London

  Fireside Gothic

  The Silent Boy

  The Scent of Death

  The Anatomy of Ghosts

  Bleeding Heart Square

  The American Boy

  A Stain on the Silence

  The Barred Window