Thus it was that at an unheard-of hour for such summonses, Lord Townshend found himself being ushered into the royal closet at St James’s Palace by the Turkish Groom of the Chamber, the notoriously inscrutable Mehemet. The scarcely less inscrutable Earl of Sunderland was already present. He had a narrow, skewed face that seemed forever suspended between a smile and a frown. His eyes were close-set and evasive. He greeted Townshend with his customary coolness, clearly unabashed by being accused in the Commons earlier that evening of accepting £50,000 worth of South Sea stock as virtual hush-money.
But if Sunderland was calm in the face of the storm, the King was not. He had always been a difficult man to read, what with his stilted English, his immobile features and his unsociable temperament, but it was apparent to Townshend that the committee’s traduction of his beloved mistress had hit a tender spot. ‘They had not the right to say these things,’ he complained through gritted teeth. ‘Mr Craggs was helping to the Duchess. What is wrong with that?’
‘I’m sure Lord Townshend doesn’t think there was anything wrong,’ said Sunderland.
‘Indeed not, Your Majesty,’ Townshend swiftly rejoined. ‘And I’m confident the purchase of shares by the Duchess is not what will occupy the House in its consideration of the report.’ (She had not purchased them, of course, but it was as well to subscribe to the fiction that she had.)
‘The purchase of shares by anyone,’ said the King with heavy emphasis, ‘is out of their business.’
Townshend glanced at Sunderland. What – or rather whom – did the King mean by ‘anyone’? It was a certain bet that his Groom of the Stole knew the answer. ‘I fear, sir, that they will make it their business.’
‘Perhaps your brother-in-law could dissuade them from doing so,’ said Sunderland, with more of his smile than his frown.
‘He did dissuade them from printing the report.’
‘Printing?’ The King’s face was briefly lit by horror. ‘We want no printing.’
‘And there will be none, sir.’
‘His Majesty is concerned about Mr Knight’s … papers, Townshend. How is it that your department has failed to secure all of them?’
‘Knight took steps to keep some of his more … sensitive … records from us. But we’re on the track of them.’
‘Track?’ queried Sunderland. ‘You speak literally?’
‘Where is it?’ the King put in, adding in an explanatory growl, ‘Das Grüne Buch.’ He was apparently unable to bring himself to describe the article in English.
‘We’re doing everything we can to find it, sir.’
‘We?’ Sunderland’s eyebrows twitched up.
‘My department,’ said Townshend levelly.
‘Assisted and advised, no doubt, by your brother-in-law.’
‘The Paymaster-General does what he can.’
‘So he does. But you should beware. The robin is by nature a solitary bird.’
‘In the present circumstances, Spencer, I should have thought you had more to beware of than me.’
‘The report? It’s nothing.’ Sunderland flapped a dismissive hand. ‘They can’t touch me.’
‘Without the Green Book, you mean?’
‘I mean—’ Sunderland broke off, apparently deciding that what he really meant was better not disclosed. ‘They wouldn’t have the nerve,’ he eventually added. ‘I made most of them. And I can break the rest.’
‘Break them,’ the King said suddenly, rousing himself from the reverie into which he had sunk while his two ministers bickered. ‘Ja. That is what you must do.’
‘With the greatest respect, sir,’ said Townshend, ‘the Commons are not to be broken. But they may be controlled. With young Mr Craggs so ill and his father and Mr Aislabie accused of serious lapses, it is as well for us all that Mr Walpole is there to defend your Government. And that, I assure you, he is doing tirelessly.’ Sunderland sniffed derisively but, holding the King’s eye, Townshend went on. ‘There is only so much that Lord Sunderland and I can accomplish in the Lords, sir. This will be settled by the Commons. Mr Walpole is trying his very best to hold them in check. If anyone can do it, he is the man.’
‘Walpole,’ said the King musingly. ‘Can we trust him?’
‘I trust him,’ Townshend replied.
‘And it seems,’ Sunderland put in, ‘that the rest of us will have to.’
Walpole was in truth a harder man to trust than Townshend cared to admit. He was so warm, so amiable, so vastly confiding. Townshend had been to Eton and Cambridge with him, had married his sister, had dined and hunted and argued and caroused with him down the years; yet still did not know, most of the time, what was in his mind. Beyond Walpole’s many confidences, there were always other purposes he was set upon serving.
One such had taken him from the House of Commons that night to the Tower of London, a journey of which Townshend knew, and was to know, nothing. Walpole had been confined there once himself and wished for no reminder of that nadir of his political fortunes. But Sir Theodore Janssen could hardly be summoned to Westminster. And Sir Theodore he had to see.
‘This is a surprise,’ the elderly financier admitted when his visitor was shown in. ‘And an honour, I suppose.’
‘We must talk, Janssen,’ Walpole said brusquely. ‘And we must do so to the point. If I want to thrust and parry, I shall hire a fencing master.’
‘And what is the point, Mr Walpole?’
‘You know Brodrick’s committee reported to the Commons today?’
‘Of course. A pretty scene, no doubt. And a distressing one, I should imagine, for several of your fellow ministers. The Governor will soon be running short of accommodation here.’
‘I don’t care about my fellow ministers, Janssen. I care about myself. I suppose you care about yourself.’
‘Naturally.’
‘This is no state for a gentleman of your age and distinction to find himself in.’ Walpole glanced around the chamber. ‘Now is it?’
‘I’m forced to agree.’
‘I want the Green Book.’ Walpole smiled. ‘And I have no time for shilly-shally.’
‘So it would appear.’
‘What do you want, Sir Theodore?’
‘To live the years that remain to me in freedom and comfort.’
‘Not likely, as things presently stand.’
‘Alas no.’
‘Where’s your valet, by the by? I’m told he no longer visits. Who shaves you now I don’t know, but, by the look of your chin, he’s no barber.’
‘The comings and goings of servants are surely beneath your concern.’
‘Nothing is beneath my concern.’ Walpole lowered his voice. ‘Where is Jupe?’
‘I wish I knew. As you’re so kind to point out, I have need of him.’
‘But I suspect he’s serving those needs. Even if you don’t know his whereabouts. I’ll put it simply for you. Knight gave you the Green Book for safe-keeping. But you’ve lost it. And Jupe has gone in search of it.’
‘That is the most—’
‘Don’t deny it. It would be a waste of your time as well as mine. Some weeks from now, the Commons will decide how to punish you for your part in this catastrophe. You’ll need power ful friends then to escape imprisonment or penury or both. But you have none. They’re all dead or fled or in the same boat as you. Your only hope is me. I can help you, Sir Theodore. And I will. If you help me.’
Several seconds of silence followed while the two men looked at each other. Then Sir Theodore said, ‘What do you want?’
‘I’ve told you. The Green Book.’
‘I don’t have it. Nor do I know where it is.’
‘But that may change. If it should, I want to be the first to hear.’
‘Very well. I agree.’
‘You do?’
‘What choice do I have?’
‘You have the choice of thinking you may be able to deceive me. Knight gave you the book so that it could be removed to a place of safety and used
to bargain for clemency. There can have been no other reason. You may suppose that can still be done. But you would be in error. I cannot be forced to help you. I can only be persuaded.’
‘Then I must try to persuade you.’
‘So you must.’
‘Persuasion is a two-edged sword, though. I have opened the book. I know what it contains.’
‘I felt sure you did.’
‘Do you?’
‘How could I?’
‘How indeed? But there’s the strangest thing. I have the impression, you see – the very distinct impression – that you know exactly what the book contains. If so, you’ll also know that prevailing on the House of Commons to treat me leniently would be a trifling price to pay for keeping those contents secret.’
‘Trifling to me, perhaps.’ Walpole winked. ‘But everything to you.’
‘Everything may be exactly what’s at stake.’ Sir Theodore rubbed his ill-shaven chin. ‘If the book should fall into … the wrong hands.’
‘It’s certainly a pity you didn’t take better care of it.’
‘A pity, you say?’ Sir Theodore summoned a defiant smile. ‘As to that, Mr Walpole, it’s a pity a great many people – a great many grand people – didn’t take better care.’
As one conversation was ending at the Tower of London, so another, bearing on the same subject, was beginning at the Goude Hooft inn in The Hague. Cloisterman had found Colonel Wagemaker waiting for him in a balconied booth above the cavernous tap-room and had instantly formed a less favourable impression of Lord Townshend’s emissary than the one given him by Dalrymple: ‘A straighter sort than McIlwraith, but just as tough.’ That was true as far as it went, but it did not capture the spine-shivering balefulness of the man. There was a flint-hard edge to him, but no spark of passion. Cloisterman was surprised to find himself thinking fondly of McIlwraith as he falteringly met Wagemaker’s icy gaze.
‘You travel light, Mr Cloisterman,’ Wagemaker said. ‘That’s good.’
‘As a matter of fact, Colonel, I don’t travel light. An overnight journey from Amsterdam to The Hague is scarcely the Grand Tour.’
‘Nor’s the journey we’ll be undertaking. But it may last as long.’
‘Mr Dalrymple said something of the kind. I should appreciate—’
‘You know what this is all about?’
‘Knight’s ledger. Yes, I know.’
‘And you’re skilled in the consular arts, I’m told.’
‘I like to think so.’
‘I can’t afford to be held up. I’m a soldier, not a politician. But I may need to be a politician to win through. That’s when you’ll earn your keep.’
‘I’ve no wish to “earn my keep”, as you put it. I have duties in Amsterdam I’d be happy to return to.’
‘You’ll not see Amsterdam again in a hurry. We’re heading south.’
‘South?’
‘That’s where Zuyler and Mrs de Vries will have gone. I’m told you know Mrs de Vries by sight.’
‘I’ve met her a few times in company with her late husb—’
‘Good enough. You also know Spandrel.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Jupe.’
‘Well, yes. Captain McIlwraith, too, if it comes to—’
‘I know McIlwraith, Mr Cloisterman. Of old.’ For the first time, there was a spark of some emotion in Wagemaker’s eyes. And it was not friendship. ‘You can leave him to me.’
‘When you say south …’
‘Zuyler and Mrs de Vries will try to sell the ledger to the Jacobites. It’s obvious.’
‘You mean they’ll take it to the Pretender? In Rome?’
‘They’ll try. But we must overtake them before they reach their destination and retrieve the ledger. We must also overtake McIlwraith and Jupe. They’re all ahead of us. But not so far ahead that they can’t be caught. Any of them.’
‘This sounds distinctly … perilous.’
‘There’ll be difficulties. There may be dangers. That’s to be expected.’
‘Not by me. I have no experience of such endeavours. I am not a soldier, Colonel.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that.’ Wagemaker ran a withering eye over him. ‘But it seems you’re the best I’ll get.’
Cloisterman did not sleep well that night. Wagemaker meant to leave at dawn and, reluctant though he was, Cloisterman would be leaving with him. He cursed Dalrymple for volunteering his services, suspecting as he did that they were a handy substitute for Dalrymple’s own. He cursed his luck as well. Amsterdam had turned out to be the right place at the wrong time. Hard riding and harsh dealing lay ahead and he was not sure which he was worse equipped for. Yet there was no way out, short of resigning his post and returning to England to face an uncertain and impecunious future. There was not much sign of a way through either. It was the very devil of a business. But it was the devil he was bound to serve.
Chapter Fifteen
The Road South
THE PACE MCILWRAITH set was predictably stiff. Spandrel, who had not ridden in over a year and had never done so regularly, was saddle-sore and weary before they left Dutch territory. He was sustained to that point by fear of recapture. Once they were on the winding high road of the Rhine Valley, however, he began to protest and plead for a day’s rest. He was wasting his breath, of course. McIlwraith’s hopes of overhauling Zuyler and Estelle de Vries rested on the likelihood that they were not naturally fast travellers and had no particular reason to fear pursuit. They were not fools, though. The Green Book was a slowly wasting asset and a dangerous article to possess. The sooner they reached Rome and sold it the better.
At the Grau Gans, Cologne’s principal coaching inn, McIlwraith gleaned the first confirmation of their route. An English couple by the name of Kemp, the husband an excellent speaker of German, had stayed at the inn a week before. They had been travelling by chaise, but seemed embarked on a journey calling for a more robust vehicle. A wheelwright had been needed to replace some splintered spokes. And they had asked the landlord to recommend other inns on the road to Switzerland.
This discovery put McIlwraith in high good humour. He drank more, and talked more, in the tap-room that evening than he had at any time since leaving Amsterdam. Spandrel drank his fill as well and was soon too fuddled to follow what was being said. He retained a vague memory of McIlwraith reminiscing about the number of men he had killed in battle and an occasion on which, apparently, the Captain-General himself, the Duke of Marlborough, had sought his tactical advice. There was something too about secret missions behind enemy lines. But here Spandrel’s memory grew vaguer still. As perhaps did McIlwraith’s reminiscences.
The captain showed no ill effects of his over-indulgence next morning, rousing Spandrel before dawn and insisting on an early start. Spandrel, for his part, had a thick head that a few hours on horseback transformed into a ferociously aching one, the spot where Zuyler had hit him with the hammer throbbing to eye-watering effect. When he complained, McIlwraith suggested he should treat it as a useful reminder of the Dutch man’s treachery, which he now had the chance to avenge.
But vengeance was far from Spandrel’s thoughts. The simple joy of freedom had given place to a nagging fear that he was simply wading deeper and deeper into a morass. If his experiences since leaving London had taught him anything, it was that humble folk should never meddle – nor even allow themselves to become remotely involved – in the affairs of the great. Yet, here he was, straying still further into them. Green Books and Jacobites could easily be the death of him. If they were, he would have no-one to blame but himself. And no-one else would care anyway. But what was he to do? McIlwraith had him where he wanted him: by his side. And that was where he was bound to remain. Until …
When? That was the question. If the Kemps were Zuyler and Estelle de Vries, they were a week ahead of them. That could amount to three hundred miles. Spandrel did not see how such a gap could be closed, however hard they rode. Much the likeliest outcome
, it seemed to him, was that it would not be closed. They would reach Rome too late to prevent the sale of the book. In some ways, he hoped he was right. There would be nothing they could do, but he would have done what was required of him and might hope for some modest reward. In other ways, he knew that to be a fool’s counsel. If they failed, there would be no reward for him, other than abandonment far from home.
It was better than imprisonment in Amsterdam, of course. Compared with what had seemed to lie in wait for him only a few days previously, this journey was a gift from the gods. It was just that with nothing but uncertainty waiting at the end of it and a cold head wind seeming to blow down the valley whenever a sleety drizzle did not descend from the mountains, a gift could soon feel like a curse.
‘Don’t look so long-faced, man,’ McIlwraith upbraided him over supper that night, which they spent at an inn near Coblenz where the Kemps had not been heard of. ‘I feed and horse you. I even think for you. Ah …’ He pointed at Spandrel with his fork, on which half a gravy-smeared potato was impaled. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve been thinking on your own account. You don’t want to get into that habit. It’s not a bit of good for you.’
Good for him or not, though, Spandrel continued to think – and to worry. About what would happen if and when they overtook their quarry. And about what would happen if they never did.
Spandrel might have been even more worried had he realized, as McIlwraith certainly did, that they were also being pursued. Their surreptitious exit from Dutch territory had necessitated an indirect and time-consuming route as far as Cologne. Their original lead had thus been pared down to barely a day. Wagemaker and Cloisterman spent that night at the Grau Gans, where they too heard about the English couple in the chaise – and about the pair of travellers who had expressed an interest in them the previous night.
It had been a physically exhausting and mentally wearing two days on the road for Cloisterman since their departure from The Hague. Wagemaker was a taciturn and unsympathetic travelling companion, who seemed to think Cloisterman’s command of German and his ability to recognize several of the people they were looking for compensated for his poor horsemanship and lack of stamina – but only just. Cloisterman resented this, but had been poorly placed to do much about it. Revived and emboldened by the Grau Gans’s food and wine, however, he decided to hit back in the only way he could, by questioning Wagemaker’s tactics.
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