Pleasing Mr. Pepys

by Deborah Swift

  Deb swayed slightly on her feet. Lord have mercy. Her bag. They’d found her bag. Jem must have taken it home. ‘I’ll just have to sit a moment,’ she said, letting herself sink onto the cold stone of the mounting block.

  ‘Sorry, miss, it’s a bit of a shock, I know. Have you any smelling salts?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ she said weakly. ‘But no, don’t go. Tell me, what’s this about letters?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s just a rumour, but I got it from Crawley, clerk at the Treasury. I know he’s a mouth like a sewer, but he’s usually got a sixth sense for trouble.’

  Crawley. Yes, it was just the sort of news he’d revel in. She rallied herself enough to ask, ‘What are the charges?’

  ‘Treason. Spiery. Attempted rebellion, murder and overthrow of the King. It’s horseshit. You know him, Miss Willet. He wouldn’t even squash a flea. It’s me that’s the bad one. It’s all my fault.’ He rubbed his hands through his hair, his big face creased with worry. ‘I’m the one who’s got him into trouble, and I don’t know what to do, how to get him out.’

  The prickle of guilt made Deb look at her feet. ‘Have you seen him?’

  He shook his head. ‘No visitors – it’s too serious for that. It’s a hanging offence. I’ve just heard; he’s to go to the scaffold Friday, the day after tomorrow. They want a scapegoat, a deterrent.’

  ‘No.’ She couldn’t take it in. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Rooms at the Black Bull. I daren’t go home or they’ll arrest me, too. We’re all underground, all of us that had a hand in it. Skinner, Player, Bolton. We’re working out what to do, but the others won’t let me bleat because it puts their necks on the line, too.’ He glanced over his shoulder.

  It was then that she noticed another man, a small balding fellow in a long coat, watching them intently from the corner of the street, a pistol held loosely in his hand.

  ‘They wouldn’t let me come alone,’ he said, ruefully, ‘in case I was tempted to go and give myself up. They reckon they’d torture the names out of me, see. They’re happy –so long as he’s the only one who got caught and they’re laying it all on him, ‘cause he knows nothing. But I thought you might want to go and see him …’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll do that.’ Her thoughts whirled; she couldn’t order them.

  The balding man began to approach, pistol raised, gesturing at Bart to leave.

  ‘Sorry, got to go,’ Bart said. He crushed her hand as if to press all his emotion into her palm. ‘If you see him, tell him … tell him, I’m sorry.’

  When he’d gone, Deb hauled herself up the stairs and slumped in the chair by the window. She had never seen a hanging, but she knew from printed broadsides what it entailed: the humiliation, the mutilation afterwards. The thought made her head feel like it was full of feathers.

  She could not let them do that to him.

  Jem’s face was stuck in her mind. His throaty laugh echoed in her memory, the sound of his footsteps as he walked alongside her, his eyes fixed on her face, as if she were the only thing worth looking at in the world.

  Her heart ached as if it had been trampled by a carthorse, a pain so intense she could hardly breathe.

  I love him, she thought in wonderment.

  She looked up at the carved wooden angel on its nail above the door. It seemed so long since that Christmas, since that kiss. She unhooked it, clasped the smooth wood to her breast as she sank to her knees and sent up a prayer. At the end of it, she knew only one thing.

  She would have to confess. Tell them they were her papers, that it was she who had spied for the Dutch, she who had killed Piet.

  But it was not so simple. There was Abigail to consider. She could not betray Abigail, not now. If she was to do this, then she would have to pretend it was she alone who fired the shot that killed Piet. If they questioned her, she would have to be strong, and keep her counsel.

  All night long, she stayed awake, pacing the room, seeing Jem’s tawny eyes in her mind. To make a plausible account she would need to plan exactly what she would say. Finally, she took out paper and quill. She must be meticulous. She recalled precisely what was in the bag, made notes in her neat hand of all the implications. Finally, her story was ready.

  Jem was the wrong man; he had picked up her bag in all innocence.

  In the morning she dressed carefully in her blue taffeta bodice and skirt. For when would she wear it again if not now? Then she sat down to write to Jem. It was a love letter, the first and last she would ever write, so she explained it all, held nothing back, told him why she could not be there waiting for him when they let him go free.

  “Please, I beg you, look after Hester, take her to Lizzie, and whatever you do, you must shield her from the worst of the scandal.”

  When she had finished, she wrote the words:

  “I never meant to have such a life. I meant to be better than this. I’m sorry. Wherever I am when you read this, pray for me

  She reached into her pocket and took the razor from its ivory case to shear a lock of hair. After she folded the curl inside the parchment, she heated the wax and sealed the letter.

  It was done. The act of confessing released a great weight from her, as if, for the first time in her life, she was truly herself.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  DEB HASTENED TO SOUTHWARK and the Clink, to try to bribe her way in to see Jem, or at the very least to pass him the letter, but Bart had been right, the place was a fortress and she was forcibly turned away at the gatehouse. Heart beating loud in her ears, she hurried back to Jem’s house, kissed the letter and pushed it under the door. But she did not tarry, for she had to see the magistrate. Despite her urgent entreaties, she was told he was out, and she made the first appointment she could – for four in the afternoon.

  A whole morning wasted. Thursday – and time was running out. Jem was still in gaol and she was no further forward. She brushed away tears of frustration with the back of her hand.

  There was nothing for it but to return home, but with every hour her courage faltered as the terror of what her confession might mean grew. She could not settle, and strange chills flowed in her veins; when she tried to eat, her hands shook with apprehension, so finally, after the twelve o’clock bell, she resolved to sit outside the magistrate’s office. She could not bear it, any more waiting. She picked up her cloak.

  The noise of the door knocker made Deb start.

  Not now.

  Her heart leapt, though; maybe it was Bart to say they’d let Jem go? She peered out of the window but could see no one, just the brilliant blue of the sky, the passing, dissolving clouds. She was momentarily transfixed. So many days where she had not noticed that blue. And now so few left.

  The knocker again. When she opened the door, a woman was standing there, right under the lintel. A woman in brown, a little shorter than she was, a woman whose arms were reaching out towards her.

  Deb’s knees gave way. The world seemed to fold inwards towards her heart.

  Lizzie caught her and held her up. ‘Deborah.’

  The sound of her voice unleashed a tide of emotion so overwhelming Deb could not speak, but she struggled to detach herself from her mother’s embrace.

  Stunned, the words finally came. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not now. Please, you can’t come now. It’s too late.’ She tried to barge past, but Lizzie caught her again, took hold of her by the waist.

  ‘Don’t. I know you are angry, you have every right to be so, but I only want you to listen. I can’t bear it if you turn me away.’

  It was the smell of her, that familiar smell of comfort. Deb could not move.

  ‘There, my sugarplum.’ Her mother’s arms gathered her in close to her chest. Those words she’d used when Deb was small. Deb’s shoulders heaved, but she refused to cry. She hardened herself, quashed the tears quickly. She was not a child to be cajoled, but a woman. And she would not be bent from her purpose.

  ‘I’ve missed you all so much,’ Lizzie said, he
r voice cracking. She touched Deb’s face in wonder.

  ‘And do you think we did not miss you? Every single day we hoped for a word, a note, anything at all. But you sent us nothing.’

  ‘I tried to—’

  ‘No. We managed all this time without you and we don’t need you now.’ She read the passing years in her mother’s face, time’s imprint in the wrinkles round her eyes, in the greying hair. ‘I’m a grown woman, Mama. Look at me, I grew up without you.’ Deb saw her mother’s face crumple, and instantly regretted her words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. ‘I see it now. It was wrong of me to hope you’d forgive me. You’re right. I should not expect anything, not after … I’ll go now, it was a mistake me coming …’She shook her head, wrapped her cloak tighter, and stumbled away, round the corner of the tannery.

  Deb groaned. She could not bear it. ‘Wait!’ she shouted. When she rounded the corner, her mother was huddled against the wall. She looked so vulnerable that before Deb knew it she’d taken her arm and pulled her over to comfort her.

  After they had held each other for a long stretch, Lizzie said, ‘Lord, what a beauty you’ve grown into … Deb, can we go in, out of the view of the street?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Deb said. ‘I have to go, and when I do I won’t be coming back. I have to see the magistrate.’

  ‘What do you mean? Are you in trouble? Come, love, tell me.’

  Deb struggled to make an answer, but could not. Nor could she walk away and leave her mother standing alone on the street.

  Seeming to sense this, Lizzie took charge, guided Deb through the gaping door and upstairs, and bade her sit. Deb saw Lizzie’s eyes take in the letter addressed to Hester, which was still propped upon the table.

  ‘Have you any liquor?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘In the cupboard, if there’s any left.’ Deb was suddenly drained, as if her whole body had turned to ice.

  ‘Whatever it is, it will wait an hour so that we can talk,’ Lizzie said. She fetched two glasses and shared out the brandy, passing the biggest glass to Deb. The sight of her mother moving purposefully about the room as she always used to at their childhood home was so familiar and yet so strange. The brandy burned her throat, but Lizzie swallowed hers down and Deb did the same.

  ‘Your father would not let me see you,’ Lizzie said. ‘I wrote, but I knew he did not let you receive my letters as I had no reply. I kept writing even so, it was all I could do.’

  ‘We never got those letters. Why did you leave us? It was cruel.’

  ‘I had no choice. When Goody Bradshaw handed me your brother, Thomas – something was not right. He was blue and sickly, his spine was bent, his skin not grown properly over it. And his hair was red as a fox, just like his father’s.’

  ‘Who?’ Deb whispered.

  ‘Our neighbour, John Blakeney.’ Lizzie shook her head sadly.

  ‘John Blakeney?’ Deb remembered a red-haired, arrogant man on a big roan hunter.

  ‘Oh, Deb, I was so stupid. I thought to pass the baby off as one of your father’s, but as soon as I saw him I knew there would be trouble. But Thomas was so tiny and so weak, Goody Bradshaw had to slap the breath into him. The sound of his screaming was terrible.’ Lizzie’s face sagged with the memory of it, and she held up her hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Your father came running, thinking Goody Bradshaw was harming his babe, but when he saw Thomas, he was repulsed by him. He would not even touch him.

  ‘“That’s not my child,” he said. “Whose child is it?” and I tried to convince him, “Yours, sir,” but of course he would not believe it. I was foolish. I lied, told him my grandmother was ruddy-haired, but of course he could not countenance it.’

  Lizzie’s words flowed fast, like a waterfall. Deb could not take it all in.

  ‘He wanted me to leave Thomas out on the moor to die,’ Lizzie said, ‘but I refused. “Get rid of him,” he said. But Thomas was my son, too. He was so small, so helpless. How could I leave him?’

  ‘What happened to him? Where is he?’

  ‘The Great Fire took him. The smoke. I picked him up and we ran for our lives, but I couldn’t save him. You see, he never thrived, needed constant mothering, even when he should walk and talk, he never did. But do you know, his eyes were wise, like an old soul. Through all his pain, when he looked up at me, so dependent, so trusting, I learned then what love was. Not Blakeney. No, that wasn’t love, just passion. But a mother’s love for a child … well, it was the greatest lesson in my life. I have never regretted my decision. Except, of course, for you. And since then I have begged and begged your father to give me news of you, but he never would. He took my boys to Ireland, and he would never let me visit, nor say where you girls had gone. Tell me, Hester, is she …?’

  ‘Hester’s well. At school in Bow. Aunt Beth brought us up.’

  ‘Beth? But I wrote to Beth to ask after you. I had no reply. The hard-hearted—’

  ‘We used to play a game, that you’d just gone out to the shops, and soon you’d come back for us, but no matter how often we played it, you never came.’

  ‘Oh, love.’ Lizzie took hold of her hand. ‘I was so young and foolish. And after Thomas was born I was half-mad, what with the pain of childbed … unable to think properly. My heart broke over Hester, she was so little—’

  ‘Mama, promise you’ll go and find Hester. She’ll need you when I … when I do what I have to do.’ She realised all at once that she would never see Hester grown-up, would never see her married, would never see her bear children.

  ‘What is this? Don’t look so sad. We have found each other at last.’

  ‘You must forget this daughter,’ she said. And Deb told her everything, about her time at the Pepyses’, about Abigail Williams and about Piet’s death. She spoke low, looking down, fearful of what her mother might think. When she came to Jem’s arrest, the charges against him and the bag of letters, she said, ‘They’ll hang me once I tell them they are my letters; that it was I who passed their secrets to their enemies, the Dutch.’

  Lizzie stood and pressed her face into her hands. ‘This is my fault. If you had had a mother to guide you, then maybe you wouldn’t have needed to rely on Abigail Williams. I can scarce believe it, that it was she who has caused all this. Though I always suspected there was more to Abigail than she let me see. I should have—’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. It wouldn’t have made an ounce of difference.’

  ‘But I should have been there to help you, to stop you from—’

  ‘Abigail was just saving her own skin. We understand one another now.’ Deb stood and wiped her cheeks with the backs of her palms. They were wet; she had not realised. ‘And I must hurry, Mama, I have to be at the magistrate at four, to plead for Jem.’

  ‘No. there must be some other way. I won’t allow it.’ Lizzie tried to keep hold of her hand, but Deb pulled it out of reach. ‘Please,’ Lizzie implored, ‘Jem would not want you to do this for him. A boy came with a message for him, but he hadn’t come to the school as he usually did. I was worried. So I came to see if I could find him here. And truth be told, I couldn’t wait a moment longer to see if it was really you, if it was really my Deborah. And now I’m to lose you again? Don’t do this, I can’t—’

  ‘Would you have someone else die because of my misdeeds?’ Deb shook herself free.

  ‘This is madness! I won’t let you go,’ Lizzie said, gripping her again by the arm.

  ‘You must. You must pretend you never found me. Jem is a good friend to you, too. Think of him.’

  ‘Don’t do that, talk about it as if I’m choosing—’

  Deb wrenched away. ‘I have to do it, Mama. It’s the right thing.’

  ‘It’s too much for me, to find you and lose you in one day. And Jem wouldn’t want it.’ Lizzie shook her head. ‘He’d want you to live. He loves you, he told me so.’

  The words dropped like flares. All of a sudden she could not stand to wait a moment more. ‘All the more reason.
I will go, Mama, whatever you say. Don’t try to stop me.’ She took a deep breath, walked to the door, dared not look back.

  At the magistrate’s, a thickset serving man told Lizzie to wait outside, and Deb’s last sight of her was sitting white-faced, but poised, her hands pulling on a kerchief. She had followed Deb silently all the way.

  The magistrate’s chamber was a dark, box-like room with a narrow window. A scold’s bridle and a cudgel hung on the back of the door. The magistrate was flanked by two heavyweight men in court livery; their short daggers, and the pistols lodged in their belts, told her these were his bodyguards. The magistrate himself, Justice Pembroke, was a thin, pinch-faced man in threadbare doublet and long woollen breeches. He looked at Deb with a resigned sigh.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Deborah Willet.’

  ‘Business?’

  ‘I’ve come about Mr Wells.’

  ‘Jeremiah Wells again.’ He raised his eyebrows at his companions in annoyance. ‘Should have guessed.’ He flipped open a ledger and eyed the previous entry. ‘Oh, God, I hate these cases. It’s always the same.’ Another heavy sigh before he looked up at Deb. ‘Well, it’s no use. His brother has been here already trying to claim he was the one at fault. Now you. But you’re wasting your time. If he’s innocent, I’m a pickled pig. Too much evidence against him, and nothing you can do will save him, so you might as well just go home quietly and—’

  Deb had heard enough. ‘You’ve got to listen. He’s the wrong man, I can prove it—’

  ‘Stop protesting, Miss Willet,’ the magistrate said, holding up his hand. The two men stepped forward to her side of the desk; meat and muscle that took up most of the available space. ‘You were not at the docks when they arrested him, you were not the one found running away from the scene of the explosion; he was. Mr Wells has been tried in the proper way, and whatever you wish to say will make not a speck of difference now.’