“Henry! Enough.” I lay my hand on his sleeve and read such concern in his face that my eyes prick. Good, kind friends, they flank me like two sombre guards, ready for me to faint or break down, and who can blame them? I have not been well.
“Where do they get it all from?” William asks Henry.
“One of the Justices of the Peace has been stockpiling since the plot stories first surfaced. On every raid he’s seized whatever Catholic paraphernalia he could find. The Whigs have paid for the clothes. They are determined to make a great spectacle.”
On this evidence, they will succeed. They have their straw Pope and several straw bishops also tied to platforms, with leather books, altar cloths, crucifixes, and candles heaped about their feet. Where they will place my husband in this macabre pageant?
Immediately in front of us, a live man with his face painted white and his shirt soaked in red dye mounts his horse. He is to play the martyr, Justice Godfrey. Behind him lurks a fat fellow with a merry grin. That one has the honour of being Innocent XI for the day.
After some stopping and starting, the procession begins. There is constant motion. We are jostled and pushed, pushed and jostled. The first few are actors, real people, dressed up and waving, employed to whip up the crowds on every street between here and Smithfield. After them, younger men and boys, dressed as Jesuits and satyrs, line the carts pulling straw effigies of prominent figures in the Popish Plot that will be burned later today. The straw Pope and bishops lead the way. Behind them, men carry five Catholic Lords. Following the Lords is that infamous writer, that suspected traitor – my husband.
From here in Katherine Wheel Alley, they will travel to Whitechapel and on to Temple Bar. They’ll rattle up Chancery Lane and along Holborn, before passing beneath the grim walls of Newgate.
We choose a quicker route to Smithfield but are far from the earliest to arrive. People are already forming rings around platforms stacked with firewood.
‘Didn’t you come here, you and Nat, last year?’ asks Henry.
‘For the Bartholomew Fair,’ I say, remembering. It was another time, another life.
While we wait, the sky darkens and evening comes. Braziers are lit. By the time the procession explodes into Smithfield, all the rich colours visible earlier have grown dark and shadowy. Justice Godfrey’s white face is ghastly in the torchlight. The false Pope looks drunk. He sways and spits at the crowd who hurl abuse back at him. Faces twist and sneer in the torchlight.
My feet and hands are numb with cold. I should have eaten. The smell of chestnuts reaches me and my stomach rolls. There are twelve bonfires. The crowd is testy, impatient to witness the promised spectacle. Organised groups of men hasten to hoist the effigies into position. Hate steams up from the crowd’s angry fists. It is in their stinking sweat, on their harsh tongues and rotten breath.
“We can go now, Anne,” says Henry.
“No. We will see it all.”
I glance at William. His eyes roam the crowd.
“He must be here,” he mutters.
“Who?” asks Henry.
“Oates.” William spits out the name.
“And what if he is?” Henry’s heavy eyebrows pinch together. “Have we not learnt enough about what Titus Oates is capable of doing?”
William’s eyes flick to mine and then back to Henry. He takes a deep breath. “You are right,” he says. “We’ll leave whenever you’re ready, Anne.”
“Not yet,” I say.
And so we stand here, we three, silent and still, while all around the crowd rumbles. The pyres are lit and smoke tickles its spice across London’s collective nostrils.
Flames lick Nat’s boots. They climb his legs, leap towards his painted face. The smoke is soon intense, the smell revolting. Someone has mixed the straw with human hair.
In the end it is the crowd that makes it all too much. It is the cheering and the singing and the swearing. It is the laughter, the throwing of food, the celebration. It is the sound of men screaming for my husband to burn. Their real belief that he is part of some terrible counter-plot overwhelms me. My head pounds. I turn to my friends, eyes wide and imploring. A scream is rising in my chest.
Henry realises. William grabs my arm. We push our way out, following Henry who clears a path. Just as we reach the edge of the mass of people, William’s fingers pinch my sleeve.
He says nothing but I follow his gaze.
Titus Oates is only a few feet away. His wide mouth opens and his head tips back as he pours wine down his gullet. He swallows, blinks, and then he sees us. Snatching his hat from his head, he sweeps it down before him, sticking out one leg and bowing.
“Mr. Smith, Mr. Broome, Mistress Thompson. Such a pleasure.”
We turn to go in a different direction but the crowd has tightened around us.
“Quite a spectacle, wouldn’t you say?” says Oates. “Such dangerous times, but only for dangerous fellows, don’t you think?”
“Let us pass,” says William. “The lady is unwell—”
“Oh dear, dear, dear. But it is only a straw man burning. No harm in that. The real man in question has run away, has he not? Let us hope that by the time he finds the courage to return, this unruly crowd has settled a little, eh? Although he will perhaps need to live a little more quietly and less in the public eye. Or who knows what could happen? In such dangerous times.”
In a flash my hand is across his face, my palm stinging with the pain of it.
Someone, one of his cronies, raises his fists as Oates staggers back. Henry steps in front of me, and at the same second William finds a gap in the crowd. He pulls us away.
***
Henry is outraged. All the way home from the burning, he bothers and blusters about Titus Oates, but beneath it all there is real fear at what I have done. Will Oates set his men on me? Will I be arrested next? I could go to Sarah, to my parents even, but I’m afraid to take this evil to their door. Later, alone, I realise what this is. This is my punishment. This is what I deserve. I wait for trouble to arrive.
Days pass, but the knock at the door never comes. Henry visits frequently. He has written to Nat in Edinburgh, describing the November Pope-burning procession and his continued unpopularity in the city. I also write, but my letters are paltry things. What do I have to write about? Time moves slowly. I spend my hours doing tasks that occupy my hands: folding linen, preparing food, sewing. Reading is impossible. My eyes jump from the page and the words flow without meaning. Sarah visits. I only go out to buy food or visit Martha’s grave. I walk with my head down. The city is filled with paper – plastered to bare walls, hanging from stalls, tumbling in the gutters – and I do not wish to see my husband’s name or face, except in person.
I long for him to come home.
I’m afraid of what will happen when he does.
Chapter Twenty
Nat
It is abominably cold in Edinburgh; colder than I expected. With such nipping winds whistling about their chops and that boggy dampness mouldering in their boots, it’s no wonder the Scots are so miserly. Even the most ebullient character must eventually be brought low by the unkind drizzle, the sleet, and the fog. I’ve been in Edinburgh for months, and every day this mist they call the haar has hung about the place like a gloomy spectre, blotting out any train of thought that might have lifted my spirits out of the mire.
My room is small, of which I’m glad, as it is the easier to keep warm. The bed is clean and there is a desk and chair. I suffered the landlady’s blatant disdain for my thin-blooded Englishman’s request for extra blankets, but it was worth it to keep the chill air from seeping into my skin. The threadbare rugs on the floor can’t protect my poor feet in the mornings, however. In happier circumstances, Anne would laugh heartily at the sight of me trying to get dressed under my covers, even to my boots, before I emerge from my nest each day.
Anne.
I have some very black days and nights in Edinburgh. I drink whisky till I vomit. I wake in the morni
ng shuddering and sweating, and spend hours lying in my bed, immobile. Guilt and grief sink into my bones.
I spend my time brooding. I keep the little Godfrey dagger that we bought at the magistrate’s funeral near to hand, and like to beat a drum with it as I sit and think. My subject is Titus Oates. Every thought I have leads inexorably to him. If I think about Anne, forced to grieve alone, I think of him. I should be with her. That I am not, is Oates’s fault. When I consider my career – in tatters since my arrest – I’m crushed by my failure, but that too is Oates’s fault. Then there are William, Matthew Medbourne, the Lords and priests in prison cells, and the three fools hanged for Godfrey’s murder. I fine-tune my hatred of Oates by running through the list of his victims and re-visiting every loathsome sight I’ve had of him. I send urgent instructions to Kineally. He must step up his enquiries into Oates’s background. He details his discoveries in a series of letters that I fold and unfold so often they begin to fall apart. I become as familiar with Titus’s history as any man could.
I learn that Samuel Oates, Titus’s father, was a weaver turned Anabaptist preacher, well known for ‘dipping’. This form of baptism, where young women are stripped naked and fully submerged in freezing water, usually at night, proved quite profitable for Samuel until one poor girl caught a fever and died. Kineally reported that Samuel Oates was put on trial at the assizes in Colchester but found not guilty of causing the girl’s death. He was lucky.
Perhaps because of this incident, Samuel Oates and his wife moved to Oakham, an East Midlands town about a hundred miles north of London. Titus was born there in 1649. During his infancy, Oates’s father was repeatedly arrested for holding illegal and blasphemous religious gatherings, although he appeared to have stopped dipping at least. William once told me that Oates’s own mother found him a repellent child, but Kineally finds little to add to the picture of Oates as a boy until he joined the Merchant Taylors’ School when he was fifteen years old. By this time, the family had spent some years living in London, and Oates’s father had found a new vocation as a Church of England parson.
William told me months ago that Oates was expelled from the Merchant Taylors’ School for cheating other boys out of their money. Kineally writes that the family next sent him to a village school in Selescombe. He must have muddled along well enough, for in 1667 he was admitted to Caius College, Cambridge. Kineally finds no shortage of men who remembered Oates there, despite him only being permitted to stay in that seat of learning for two short terms. It was a petty matter, but to me it speaks directly to the character of Oates as he became a man. Oates bought a coat from a tailor in Cambridge, but when the tailor asked for payment Oates insisted he had already paid. In fact, he had not only not paid for the coat, he had already sold it to a dealer in second-hand clothes and pocketed the proceeds. When the tailor raised a fuss, Oates was quickly found out. All student monies were handled by their tutors, and the College knew that Oates was lying. He was expelled again.
How Oates managed after leaving Cambridge is unclear, but Kineally finds his trail not long after, in Sandhurst, where he had somehow managed to secure himself the position of curate. From Sandhurst he progressed to a living of his own in Bobbing in Kent, and once more Kineally reports that Oates had been a memorable character. Drunkenness, accusations of theft, and blasphemy characterised his time there. He left before he was forced out. From Bobbing, Oates went to work with his father, who by this time had a parish in Hastings.
I already know the story of the Parkers and Oates’s shameful departure from Hastings, but now Kineally has unearthed the record of Parker’s trial and Oates’s public disgrace. I’m eager to see what Kineally discovers about Oates’s time in the Navy, but details are scant. He finds only one written reference to him, which confirms that Oates was thrown out over a charge of sodomy. He might have hanged, had he not been a man of the cloth. Now there is a fact to be bitterly regretted.
After the Navy, Oates settled in London, living again with his father, who had left Hastings and the Church of England, reverting to the Baptist faith. Titus Oates’s gift for changing religion is inherited, it seems. This was the time when Oates fell in with Matthew Medbourne. For a short period, he held an appointment in the Duke of Norfolk’s household, and began his conversion to Catholicism.
In the few years before he and Israel Tonge suddenly arrived at the house of Sir Edmund Godfrey with eighty-one articles of evidence, each detailing an aspect of the most terrifying Popish Plot, Oates had become a Catholic priest. He was sent to two Catholic colleges: St Omer’s in Flanders, and Valladolid in Spain. There, despite being vastly older than many of his fellow students, despite making no friendships or appearing in anyway fit for the priesthood, Titus Oates had managed to access letter upon letter and hear treason upon treason. It was a fantastical account, yet the Privy Council had believed him. Or if they did not quite believe, they dared not repudiate him out of hand. Perhaps it was easier to believe Oates’s story was true than to imagine he made the whole thing up.
My instinctive scepticism is confirmed by everything I learn about Oates’s past. The seeds of the man he would become are there, in his earlier actions. There’s a consistent narrative of anger and deceit. But when he first arrived in London, nothing was known of him. Through his unparalleled audacity, through the sheer scale of his lies, he was believed. Then, once he was in Whitehall and with anti-Catholic hysteria spreading, he was a political gift to the likes of the Earl of Shaftesbury.
As I walk the streets and hills of Edinburgh, or sit in my room, reading and thinking, Oates is my constant companion. I imagine him growing and festering through his strange upbringing into the villain who brought disaster into my life. The look on his face when he had me thrown out of the Fuller’s Rent Tavern consumes me. The thought of his hot breath on my ear when he whispered to me in the Privy Council room turns my stomach. Whenever I set down my pen, Titus Oates’s face fills the waiting space. A ball of bile gathers in my guts, and it will only disappear when this man is dealt with.
Anne’s letters arrive every week or so. They are thin, wretched things. Henry is more forthcoming. Leaving, he assures me, was the best thing I could have done. My office was ransacked. Everything was seized and scrutinised by Shaftesbury’s Commons Committee, but they found nothing to complain of, apart from a plea for religious tolerance. In itself, that’s not enough to make me a traitor. Miles Prance’s evidence remains the most dangerous. As soon as it was widely known that I was suspected of being a secret Catholic convert, I was damned by the public. I’m continually lampooned in the Whig press, and my name has become a by-word for Catholic duplicity and vice. Henry wrote to tell me that my place in the annual Pope-burning procession to Smithfield was secured.
His most recent letter – describing how my fellow citizens thrilled at the sight of a sack full of straw, dressed up in soiled clothes, going up in flames while they shouted my name – gives me nightmares. I hate the thought of Anne witnessing it, and focus instead on Henry’s news that three prominent priests are soon to be tried for their part in the Popish Plot. Oates has sworn all three have plotted to kill the King.
Even from here, there must be some way to stop him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Anne
We grow close, William, Henry, and I. Sarah visits, but I am finished with my mother. I write and tell her so in bald terms. She has always believed she has known what was best for me, but she has been wrong twice now: wrong about Nat, and wrong in dosing me up with laudanum. I have a new family, and if it is not the family I longed for, at least we are companionable and kind.
Christmas passes and we slip into a new year. This time last year I was with child. Now I do not even have a husband at home. At least I have seen nothing more of Titus Oates. My fear recedes and I go out more. Henry has employed William in the print shop. Every day I take them food, and when Henry steps out to the coffee shops and taverns, the boys and I help William. They love him as I do, for his ge
ntleness, his thoughtfulness, and his sense of fair play. What a wonderful teacher he must have been, but he is no printer. When William is in charge, the paper dries too quickly and the ink is never evenly spread. He pores over the type, re-thinking phrases, lacking decision and energy. More and more I send him to work with the boys on their letters while I run the presses for Henry. But I don’t write of any of this to Nat in Edinburgh. I’m not sure what he would think. My letters to him are a struggle. I have so much to say, but at the same time nothing at all.
That’s one of the reasons I decide to accompany Henry to the priests’ trial. At least I will have something to describe to Nat. Oh, Henry raises an eyebrow and frowns a little, but he knows better than to argue with me. He confides that Nat has given him detailed instructions. If all goes to plan, Oates will not enjoy this morning’s work.
We arrive early at Westminster Hall, because Henry is anxious. He shifts at my side and cannot be still. The great building is mostly in shadowy darkness, but as the sun climbs it fills with light and people: courtiers, lawmen, newsmongers, gossips, civil servants, and businessmen. We sit with Sir Robert Southwell up in one of the balconies erected for such events. It’s the perfect vantage point.
At last, the five judges, led by Chief Justice Scroggs, shuffle their way into their seats and the prisoners are brought before the bar. The long indictment of treason is read, and the first witness called.
Titus Oates strides to the witness stand with complete assurance. He has the ease of a gentleman standing before his own warm hearth, or a fond father patting his children’s soft curls. He pouts his lips together before he deigns to speak, his brow furrowing with some unspoken distaste, implying a pained reluctance at the necessity of lowering himself to take part in these unsavoury matters. I’m impressed. He is as ugly as ever, yet his presence is remarkable, his arrogance impossible to ignore. I remember the lies he and Miles Prance told about my husband. I don’t believe a word Oates says now, but others do, and public opinion remains on his side. In this setting, he is convincing. These poor priests – Father Whitbread, Father Ireland, and Father Fenwick – have no idea what they are up against.
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