The Licence of War

by Claire Letemendia

Diego’s face darkened. “You got rid of the bowl, didn’t you. You couldn’t bear that it might give me power over you. You, El Valoroso, were scared of it, and of me.”

  “Don’t be so conceited,” said Antonio. “It was stolen from you, though not through magic: a little elf took it, probably on her husband’s instruction. I nearly caught her in the act.”

  “Catherine,” whispered Diego. “I should have guessed.”

  “Thank God she put an end to your dangerous games.” Antonio unlatched the door. “Take our bags downstairs. Then exert your wiles on the Captain’s servants and find out what gossip you can about him.”

  “Yes, master,” Diego said, rudely.

  Antonio sauntered out and along the passage. From another chamber, he could hear Iturbe singing, over the splash of water; the Captain was at his ablutions. On the stair, he listened for a moment to young James Beaumont’s infant babble from Mary’s chamber. She had not emerged in the four days since she had been brought to bed; a wise custom given how dreary most women looked after childbirth. He descended to the entrance hall and asked a footman where he might find her ladyship; and he grinned to himself when the man said she had just gone to the herb garden.

  The door to the dovecote was open. Elena sat on a rung of a ladder that extended up to the roof, where the birds had their nesting holes. Her hands were pressed together like a supplicant’s, and he recognised her words, in Latin. “Are you reciting a novena to speed me on my journey?” he inquired, startling her as he came in. “Or are you praying that the seeds of revenge I have sown within your family will not take root?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “I gave your sons the answer to a mystery that has puzzled them since childhood: they are but half-brothers. Although they may deny it to themselves, the truth is planted. They’ll fall out over the estate, I promise you, and carry the sin of at least two de Capdavila y Fuentes generations into a third. As for you, Elena, you’ve made the best of a sorry bargain: you exchanged wealth for the man you loved.” Antonio approached, holding out his arms. “Remember what we felt for each other. Your cold façade hides a soul in torment, full of lost hopes and dreams, and memories that I have awakened.”

  “Antonio,” she said, in a bored tone, “you dwell in the past, trapped by your own lost hopes and dreams. They have addled your brains. God has blessed you with a chance to redeem yourself, in honourable service to your King. I am praying that you will become a better man for it.”

  Antonio had a mind to slap her, or crush her to his chest and revive her ardour with a passionate kiss. Instead, he pointed at the clay floor. “I happen to know his lordship’s treasures are buried here. What will you pay me not to inform the rebels when I get to London?”

  For a second, the colour washed from her face. Then she shook her head slowly. “That Diego, your little spy.” She withdrew from her skirt pocket a small box and held it out to him. “Here’s your treasure. I never wore it. You can present it to one of your daughters, and scandalise her with the story behind it.”

  Antonio picked out the medallion. “Our bad blood, Elena – of Moors and Christians. I think I’ll wear it myself.” He slipped the chain over his head, tucked the medallion inside the neck of his shirt, and tossed aside the box.

  She rose and smoothed down her skirts. “Excuse me, now. I must attend to my visitors. There is a spade in the corner, and you have a few hours before we say goodbye. If you are so sure about his lordship’s treasures, I suggest you start to dig.”

  “Woman, you are tough as a pair of old boots!” He offered her his arm, which she accepted with a flicker of a smile. “I shall accompany you. You have not won, querida,” he said, as they left the dovecote. “Bad blood will always surface. And what a sinful concentration of our blood flows in the veins of our son! I joked to him about the Hapsburgs and their interbreeding, but they have nothing on him.”

  He saw her expression alter abruptly, and not because of his little quip; Elizabeth was racing up the path towards them as though chased by a pack of wolves. “What is it, Elizabeth?” she cried.

  “Catherine,” Elizabeth panted.

  Elena ran after her, round to the front of the house and up the steps; and Antonio followed, with the faintest misgiving.

  Lord Beaumont and Capitán Iturbe stood side by side in the entrance hall while Anne and Elizabeth restrained Catherine, who was struggling like a tigress, her hair flying, her dress ripped at the front. The object of her fury, Diego, was pinioned by Iturbe’s servants, his cheeks dripping blood.

  “Don Antonio,” said Lord Beaumont sternly, “your valet is a knave who has grossly abused our trust.”

  “I beg pardon, my lord – what crime has he committed?” asked Antonio.

  “He crept up on Catherine in her chamber and accused her of stealing from him. Then he accosted her. Thank heaven she had the strength to fend him off and call for help. The Captain and his men were able to rescue her in the nick of time.”

  “Permit me to deal with him outside, my lord.” Antonio wrenched the youth from Iturbe’s men and kicked him in the rear so hard that Diego stumbled through the doors, tripped on the steps, and landed spread-eagled in the courtyard. Grabbing him up by the collar, Antonio dragged him a short distance away, and spat in his face, “Hijo de puta, what devil possessed you?”

  “She nearly scratched out my eyes,” Diego whined.

  “Cierra el hocico o te corto los cojones.” Antonio kneed him in that tender spot and he crumpled to the ground, howling and clutching himself. “Levanta el culo, desgraciado,” ordered Antonio, and turned for the house.

  Lord and Lady Beaumont were on the steps with Iturbe, who said, in a horrified voice, “What a conclusion to your visit, Don Antonio.”

  “He shall be punished severely, my Lord Beaumont,” said Antonio, “and I must apologise for the dreadful shock to Mistress Catherine. Look at us – we are all in a state of nerves! My lord, let’s share a glass of your fine Malaga to restore us, and bid each other a proper farewell before our party sets out.”

  He expected Lord Beaumont to acquiesce, with his gentle bonhomie, but his lordship’s face rivalled Elena’s in its cold reproof. “No, sir: the Captain is determined to ride out at once. You could not be our guest forever, Don Antonio, much as we appreciated your invigorating company.”

  XI.

  Veech had ordered out a troop of militia to comb the streets of Cripplegate, on report that a tall, dark, foreign-looking man had been spotted in the area. He himself had gone to Southwark, and spent fruitless hours searching there, even breaking into the house at Blackman Street. It was empty, and the neighbours could tell him little he did not already know about its inhabitants. He left a couple of men to watch it, and around ten o’clock, decided to check on the Tower.

  Long before his skiff moored by Traitors Gate, he heard drunken singing. Only one sleepy guard was on duty to salute him as he clambered out. “I had a taste of ale, sir, courtesy of the chief gaoler,” the guard confessed. “But you should see most of them – they’ll have thick heads to pay, tomorrow.”

  Veech stiffened, sensing trouble. “Bring me the keys to Lady Hallam’s cell.”

  The guard came back with a heavy bunch. “Those boys from the Bands are soused to the gills! I tried to wake ’em, sir, but they’re sleeping as the dead.”

  Veech hurried up to the cell. The men assigned to her door were slumped snoring on the flagstones. The door itself was locked, however, and through the spyhole, he glimpsed the outline of her body beneath her blanket, and her dark hair on the pillow. “Lady Hallam,” he yelled, fitting the key into the lock, “I bid you, get up.” She did not move, even at the grinding of the bolt. He flung open the door, rushed in, and tore aside the blanket. Lady Hallam, as he might have predicted, was a construct of straw, bundled clothes, and a moth-eaten wig.

  XII.

  At two in the morning, Laurence heard a series of rhythmic taps on Pembroke’s kitchen window, and
let Jem in. “She’s safe in Bermondsey, sir,” Jem whispered.

  “Well done, Jem, well done. None of you was caught or injured?” Jem shook his head. “Thank God. No sign of Veech?”

  “No, sir, but militia are searching high and low for you and her ladyship, and for us Barlows. There’s a guard posted in Blackman Street. We have to make tracks.”

  “Will you leave London?”

  “Leave London?” echoed Jem, as if the very idea were preposterous. “London is the centre of things. Barlows could not be anywhere else! We’ve a wealth of places to hide ’til the hue and cry dies off. What about her ladyship? She wants to join you here.”

  “She can’t,” insisted Laurence, terrified of the danger to her, and to Pembroke. “She must find her way to Oxford in her disguise. You tell her, Jem: she and I must stay apart, or your courage and hard work will have been wasted.”

  “How will you get out? We might help you, sir.”

  “No, you’ve risked far too much as it is.” Laurence gave him more money, some for Isabella’s journey and most of it for the Barlows. As he and Jem hugged goodbye, tears pricked again in his eyes. “Thank you all, my dear friends. This may be the last time we see each other, Jem.”

  “Don’t you count on it, sir,” said Jem, with the stolid assurance of his late uncle. “Fortune favours the bold. She’s a lady, so she’ll look after you. And remember, your work ain’t done: you owe us the death of Veech.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I.

  “There’s bound to be talk at Westminster,” Pembroke commented over breakfast, when Laurence told him of Lady Hallam’s rescue. “Will your anonymous friends spirit you as cleverly out of the City?”

  “No, my lord,” said Laurence; he had passed the remains of the night wishing he could have accepted Jem’s offer.

  “Would you borrow my horse once more?”

  “Thank you, but I prefer to take my chances on foot. I’ll leave when it gets dark.”

  Pembroke shoved aside his plate. “You won’t have a chance in hell, sir. There will be militia everywhere. Now what’s the matter?” he demanded of his equerry, who had entered with a peculiar look on his face.

  He came over to Pembroke, and said in a hushed voice, “My lord, a sack of coal just arrived at your door.”

  “Why should I care to know – and why are you whispering?” inquired Pembroke.

  “It is no ordinary coal.”

  Laurence scrambled upstairs to his chamber for his pistols. He cocked them and listened, his heart somersaulting in his chest, for the tramp of militiamen’s boots in the hall below. Instead he heard Pembroke call out, in a sardonic tone, “Mr. Beaumont, you will never guess what I found in that sack.”

  Laurence went to the top of the stair and saw Pembroke walk forward with his equerry, who was supporting a bedraggled, dirty boy in a cloth cap and soot-stained jerkin and breeches.

  ——

  Laurence carried Isabella into the chamber next to his and placed her on the bed. He could feel the jut of her bones through the coarse woollen garments. He took off the cap. Her hair had been cropped to her shoulders; it used to graze the base of her spine.

  “I could not resist coming to you,” she said. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Oh yes, my love, I’d forgive you anything,” Laurence replied sincerely.

  “How foolish I was to ignore your warnings about Veech and that baker’s apprentice, although Mr. Draycott is not a rat, but a fine, honest man.” She told him her story, beginning with the evidence Veech had given Draycott to plant at her house and the terrible day of Barlow’s arrest, for which she blamed herself; her imprisonment and Lucy’s death; Sir Montague’s betrayal; and her trial and sentencing, unbeknownst to Draycott, who had gone on his noble mission to Digby. “He loathes Veech, who cost him his marriage and threatened to hurt his children,” she concluded.

  “How many of us must want Veech dead. I do, and I’ve not even met him or seen him at close range.”

  “He is a ghastly creature, Beaumont. Sir Montague had an idea that some harm was done to him, twisting him and filling him with hate.”

  “Does he still wear a brace on his knee?”

  “Yes, an ingenious contraption. He might not walk without it. But there’s something else wrong with him. He’s tall and broadly built, and yet … I can’t describe it.”

  “Price said there was a soft aspect to his features.”

  She nodded vigorously. “A softness that ill matches his deep voice and otherwise masculine appearance. I last saw him three days ago, when the extra guard was put at my door. He didn’t threaten me, for once. He simply asked for my wedding ring, a showy jewel from Sir Montague. And as he reached for it, his sleeve pulled back a little, and I noticed that his hand and the skin above his wrist were nearly devoid of hair.”

  Laurence pulled back his own sleeves and held up his hands. “So are mine.”

  “You’re not like him.” Isabella looked away, as if trying to remember. Then she quoted, “ ‘And Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.’ He should be a hairy man, with his thick brows almost knitted into one.”

  “Well,” said Laurence, “I can’t explain it.”

  “Explain to me this: why is the Earl hiding you? Is he a friend of yours, from before the war?”

  “No, and you must keep secret how he’s helping us – Digby, above all, must never know.”

  “I promise. But what are we to do? We can’t stay here together, can we? Where will we go?”

  “Let me think about that.” He smiled at her. “You’re very tired.”

  She hid her face in the pillow. “And I am so aged, and ugly.”

  “You are as beautiful as always, though you do need a scrubbing,” he said, comforted by her vanity, and kissed her on the cheek. “Now sleep. You can bathe when you wake.”

  On his return from the evening session at the Lords, Pembroke showed Laurence a broadsheet. “Lady Hallam’s disappearance is a source of public wonder.”

  “ ‘She is undoubtedly a witch, who cast a spell over her vigilant gaolers last night, and magicked herself into a boy ….’ ” Laurence frowned at an intriguing detail: the gravediggers who had buried her maid claimed that a finger was missing from the girl’s hand, obviously stolen by Lady Hallam for a magic charm. “It is true that she owned a black cat. What about Sir Montague, and his debauches in the Strand? Is there any truth to them?”

  Pembroke emitted his braying laugh. “He could not have been an active participant. He must have lusted as vainly for his wife, the impotent old reprobate. He sold her to the very devil, to eke out a few more years of life for his rotten carcass. As the poets and moralists say, we are only granted what we most desire when we can no longer enjoy it. Ah well, at least we can enjoy his wine.” He called for his equerry to bring glasses and a bottle of Sir Montague’s claret. “A health to our witch upstairs,” he proposed.

  “And to Sir Montague’s few more years,” said Laurence.

  When they had emptied their glasses, Pembroke sank into his armchair. “I used to be so certain of what I most desired: power, temporal and spiritual. It was a dream I have relinquished. My present dream is far less ambitious: to end my days at Wilton surrounded by my surviving children and my grandchildren, and by my collection of art.”

  “You and my father share a similar dream.”

  “And you, sir, what’s yours?”

  “My immediate dream is to vanish with Lady Hallam into thin air, and leave you in peace,” Laurence said. “But of late, I’ve had more nightmares than dreams.”

  “I have long been plagued by a recurring nightmare. I am in the Banqueting Hall, with His Majesty and Prince Charles, who commands that I be taken away, and hanged, drawn, and quartered, and that my head be stuck on Traitors Gate.” As well it might have been, Laurence thought, though he did not interrupt. “And next, Mr. Beaumont, the King’s head lolls about on his neck, falls, a
nd drops into my lap. I cannot shake it off, as though it is glued there. You may say the dream was a product of my guilty conscience, yet at the time I had designs upon His Majesty’s life, I honestly felt no guilt.”

  Do you now? Laurence was tempted to ask. Although the image of the royal head disturbed him, he was not altogether surprised that he and Pembroke had both dreamt of the King’s death. He considered telling Pembroke how the conspiracy to regicide had been based on an erroneous horoscope; but in the end he merely observed, “Perhaps our dreams unbury what we daren’t admit to ourselves in our waking hours.”

  “Yes, perhaps. Before we retire, sir,” Pembroke announced, in a different tone, “I shall order my coach for seven of the clock tomorrow morning, to go on a visit to my friend the Earl of Bedford at his Woburn estate. Like me, he was of the peace party at Westminster. He shifted allegiances too often between King and Parliament to deserve either side’s trust, for which he has my sympathy, and he was pleased to quit politics. He is Lord Digby’s brother-in-law, in fact – Digby married his sister, Anne.”

  “What a small world it is, among noble families.”

  “Your father did well to bring in fresh blood by marrying your mother.”

  “I believe her world in Spain was even smaller, in that regard.”

  Pembroke stood, and picked up his cane. “You and Lady Hallam shall travel with me out of London.”

  Laurence gaped at him. “But, my lord—”

  “I have never yet been impeded by the militia,” Pembroke continued, with his former, masterful authority. “If she’s as convincing a boy as she was today and if you don’t object to huddling beneath my seat in the coach, I think we can outwit them.” When Laurence tried again to protest, Pembroke talked over him. “Wait and listen to what I want in exchange: those letters of mine and Radcliff’s that you gave to the King. Then our debts will be cancelled, Mr. Beaumont. I shall sleep easier – and I might even be rid of my nightmare.”