The Last Protector

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘Open the door, mistress, and no harm will come to you.’

  She obeyed. I pushed Mary outside and backed over the threshold behind her, with the sword still raised. The door slammed in my face.

  I took Mary’s arm and urged her down the steps. Her face was as pale as Chloris’s had been just before she died. We walked along the alley. I realized that I was still carrying Merton’s sword. I could hardly saunter unnoticed down Long Acre with such a weapon in my hand, so I let it fall.

  We came out of the alley and into the street. It was busy now, and the shops were open. Mary stumbled, and I knew that she was close to collapse.

  We weren’t out of danger. Madam Cresswell’s people would soon find Chloris, if they hadn’t already. They knew she had helped me to escape on Monday, so they might well suspect that I had been her companion this morning. The old crow had seen my face. Buckingham’s men knew where I lived.

  I steered Mary to the right and then to the left up Drury Lane. We were going north, away from the Savoy. I saw a sign for an alehouse and I drew Mary inside. It was a mean place, crowded with labourers and artisans taking their morning draught. There were a few women, too, though not of the respectable sort, and a handful of shabbily dressed tradesmen. In the clothes we were wearing, neither Mary nor I looked out of place.

  I found a place for us on a bench to one side. I grabbed the arm of a passing potboy and ordered a jug of small beer. I glanced at Mary, who was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, and ordered the lad to bring us milk and rolls as well.

  ‘We don’t have them, master.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Go and buy some.’ I dropped a shilling in his hand. ‘There’ll be two more of those when you bring them. As long as you don’t make us wait.’

  When we were alone, I looked at her again. The shift she had worn in bed was decently covered with Chloris’s cloak, and her head with Margaret’s shawl. She wore Chloris’s shoes on her feet. They were too big for her. She was like a girl trying on her mother’s shoes.

  We sat in silence. I stared straight in front of me. My thoughts and my feelings were as frozen as a pond in winter. I was vaguely aware that our neighbours were talking about the riots yesterday. Early though it was, the apprentices and their allies were already on the streets. So were the militia and the King’s guards. It did not interest me. Nothing interested me.

  The food and drink came within minutes. Mary opened her eyes. She snatched one of the rolls. She tore fragments from it and stuffed them in her mouth. She was chewing and trying to swallow at the same time.

  ‘There’s no hurry, girl,’ I said. ‘Calm yourself.’

  She ignored me. She took a draught of milk and then seized another roll. Even as her fingers were ripping it apart, her face changed. She raised her eyes to me, and they were full of fear.

  Then she bent forward and puked up her breakfast over my shoes.

  ‘I shall go to Henrietta Street today,’ Elizabeth Cromwell said as she and her father took their morning walk in Mistress Dalton’s garden.

  ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘I believe so. At any rate, I’m quite decided.’

  Her father sighed. ‘If Catherine has truly found what my mother hid, there’s no hurry to get it back. I trust her entirely. And Hakesby. Don’t you?’

  Elizabeth said nothing. When her father had left England, all those years ago, she had been little more than a child, and she had never questioned his authority over her. But now she was a grown woman and these last few weeks had modified her opinion of him. She still owed him her duty and her love but, to tell truth, he often irritated her. Her father lived far away and he could not even provide for his family. Sometimes it seemed to her that time had reversed their roles: that she had become the wise, sober parent, and he the reckless child.

  ‘My mother’s legacy can wait,’ he said. ‘I have more important things to do. I promised the Duke that I would write something for him to show our friends, a public statement to make clear my support. It’s for the good of the country. And if – when – matters move forward as we hope they will, he will have it printed and distributed: in the provinces as well as London.’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, losing patience at last, ‘these are castles in the air.’

  ‘No, no. The Duke is not only a good man at bottom, he’s a man of great parts and a shrewd leader.’

  Elizabeth bit her lip. Her father had a foolish tendency to see only the best in others and to believe what he was told. Perhaps that was why he had let them make him Lord Protector when Oliver died. Perhaps that was why he was now a penniless exile from the country he had ruled.

  She reined in her vexation. ‘With your permission, sir, I shall go to Henrietta Street.’

  ‘But it’s too dangerous,’ he said.

  She shook her head. She thought it worth the risk. If her grandmother’s legacy was worth the having, it could make her father financially independent of Buckingham.

  ‘If I go this evening – at six or seven, perhaps – I can manage it discreetly.’ She smiled at him, trying to coax him. ‘It would be better to relieve the Hakesbys of the responsibility. There’s no need for you to come if you are occupied with business. In fact it would be safer if you didn’t.’

  He shrugged and looked away. She knew she had won.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I suppose you must do as you think best.’

  It was the middle of the morning before I hailed a hackney for us in High Holborn. Mary sat opposite me, her eyes squeezed shut. We travelled by fits and starts through the streets to the Strand.

  The coach dropped us at the main gate of the Savoy. As we passed under the arch I glanced about me, but I saw no one who might be watching out for me, only the usual beggars who clustered there as much out of habit as in expectation of receiving alms. I hurried Mary into Infirmary Close.

  ‘Where are we, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘My house. You’ll be safe here.’

  Her face showed her disbelief. She began to cry.

  Sam opened the door to us. His eyes widened when he saw Mary beside me. I pushed the girl inside and followed.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ he said.

  ‘Bar the doors.’

  ‘Trouble again, master?’

  ‘Just do it. Any visitors?’ I pushed open the parlour door. ‘Anything suspicious?’

  ‘Not a thing. But—’

  ‘Look to your arms, just in case. Send Margaret to me at once.’

  I drew Mary into the room and told her to sit on the bench along one side of the table. She sat down and, without removing the cloak or the shawl, rested her head on her arms, and her arms on the table.

  I threw down my hat and cloak. A great weariness welled up inside me. My stomach hurt through my clenching the muscles there so tightly for so long. I slumped into the elbow chair by the unlit fire. With my mind’s eye I saw Chloris lying curled in the pool of blood, the pool that grew larger every second. I saw the hammer embedded in Merton’s head. I saw Merton’s face.

  I had caused the poor girl’s death with my foolish, fantastical scheme. I had killed a man. I had snuffed a man’s life for ever. True, he had attacked me. But my first blow with the hammer would have been enough to disable him. I had not needed to hit him again. I had not needed to hit him so hard. I had not needed to make sure he was dead.

  Running footsteps crossed the hall. Margaret burst into the parlour without knocking. She stood looking at us for a moment. I raised my head and looked back.

  ‘Master,’ she said, ‘master … what is this? Who’s this? And where’s that other woman?’

  ‘She won’t be coming back.’ I gestured towards the huddled figure on the bench. She was shivering as if she would never stop. ‘This child is called Mary. She has been much abused in her past employment. Take her down and warm her by the kitchen fire. She will stay with us for a day or two.’

  ‘Master …’ Margaret repeated. ‘I went out this morning, as you commanded. I—’


  I waved a hand, cutting her short. ‘Later.’

  She and I stared at each other for a moment. She went over to Mary and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Come, my dear,’ she said. ‘Master’s right. We must warm you by the fire.’

  They left me. I sat alone in the parlour. I thought about Chloris. I would never know her real name now. She had told me she wanted to go home, to the village near Bristol where someone was waiting for her. Or so she had believed.

  I sat undisturbed in that chair for the better part of an hour. Guilt and distress made me torpid. My chest was hurting on the left side, in the region where I assumed my heart lay. I pressed it and felt a twinge of discomfort. I also discovered that Raleigh’s History of the World was still in the pocket. I removed it and stared at the flaking leather cover.

  A book had saved my life.

  There was a wound in the cover, almost exactly in the middle. The History had taken the full force of Merton’s thrust. The tip of the sword had gouged a ragged hole into the leather and penetrated the board beneath. I flipped the book open. The blade had pierced only the first few pages inside. A book printed in sexto-decimo, as this one was, is only about four inches wide and seven inches high. But this one had many pages. A child can poke a finger through a single sheet of paper. But several hundred sheets are a different matter. They make a barrier quite sufficient to stop a sword.

  I took out the papers I had taken from Buckingham’s desk, the whole purpose of my sorry expedition which had led to two deaths. I smoothed out the papers and laid them on the table. They were certainly in the Duke’s hand. I picked up a sheet and angled it to the light from the window:

  THE REHEARSAL

  ACTUS I. SCÆNA I.

  A Street near the Theatre Royal Drury Lane Johnson and Smith

  JOHNS: Honest Frank, I’m glad to see thee with all my heart: how long hast thou been in Town?

  SMI: Faith, not above an hour: and, if I had not met you here, I had gone to look you out; for I long to talk with you freely, of all the strange new things we have heard in the Country.

  JOHNS: And, by my troth, I have long’d as much to laugh with you, at all the impertinent, dull, fantastical things, we are tir’d out with here.

  SMI: Dull, and fantastical! that’s an excellent composition. Pray, what are our men of business doing?

  I muttered an oath. It was nothing but a fragment of a cursed play. So Buckingham desired to be a playwright. It was typical of him that he must try his hand at drama, as well as everything else. It was clearly not enough for him to plot to take over the government, to fill London with rioters, to cuckold and then kill a brother peer, and to indulge himself in a bawdy house of his very own. The Duke had too many advantages, I thought sourly, and too many talents, for any one man, and he seemed incapable of using any of them well. With a sweep of my arm, I sent the sheets of paper fluttering to the floor, along with Raleigh’s History for good measure.

  I instantly regretted my petulance and stooped to pick them up. Most of the sheets of paper were blank on one side, for Buckingham of all people was not a man to practise economy. But one sheet was different. It had writing on both sides: the first contained more dialogue from the play, but the other, though scored through diagonally and heavily annotated, was instantly familiar to me:

  … these ill home-bred slaves and apprentices That threaten your destruction as well as ours that so your ladyship may escape our present calamity. Else we know not how soon it may be your honour’s own case: for should your ladyship eminency but once fall into these rude rough hands, you may expect to be thrown on your back and roughly ravished by the grimy multitude no more favour than they have shown unto us poor inferior whores …

  Against all expectation I had achieved my aim. Here was a fragment from an early draft of the whores’ petition to Lady Castlemaine. And it was in Buckingham’s own hand.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Bird in the Night

  Wednesday, 25 March 1668

  IN COVENT GARDEN where nothing grows, the boys bait him. Whooping and screeching, they chase him.

  Like before, when Master went to Fulton’s. When Ferrus saw the lady.

  Ferrus waves his arms up and down, and he runs. He runs up and down Henrietta Street, around and around the Piazza, in and out of the arcades. He trips. The stones are hard-hearted. Blood pours from his nose. A woman screams. Up again, quick as a wink, and running and running, faster than the wind.

  I fly. Breath hissing and gasping, sucking in oaths and cries. A bird without no master. I fly.

  I fly to Henrietta Street again. Down the road, round the corner and into a smaller street. Oh. The end is blocked with a high wall.

  But an alley winds away from the street. There’s a doorway tucked in the wall. Withered weeds half choke it.

  Ferrus stands in the doorway. Like a redcoat in a sentry box outside the Great Gate of Whitehall. Doorway smells of urine, quite fresh.

  Out of the wind here, out of the rain. Boys can’t see him.

  Someone’s whistling in the street. He peers out. It’s a boy, but not one like the others. This one strolls along and kicks pebbles.

  Oh …

  It’s the boy who was waiting outside Fulton’s when grandpa man was talking to master inside. When lady talked to Ferrus and Ferrus ran away. Boy is lady’s servant.

  The boy, in a world of his own, raises the latch of the gate almost opposite the alley. He goes inside. The gate closes behind him. Click-clack.

  Light bursts inside Ferrus’s head. This gate is the way to the lady’s house.

  I sent for Margaret and said I would dine at home. It was already two o’clock.

  ‘There’s nothing ready, master – we weren’t expecting you. Shall I send out?’

  ‘No. I’m pressed for time – I go to Whitehall this afternoon. Anything will do. Bread, cheese. But first – how did you fare at the sign of the Rose?’

  ‘I saw Mistress Hakesby, sir, gave her your letter privately.’ Margaret was looking anxious, as she so often did these days. ‘She says it’s best you don’t come to the street door. Go round to Maiden Lane at the back at seven o’clock tonight. Theirs is the eighth gate along. She’ll make sure it isn’t barred, and she’ll meet you in the garden.’

  I sent her away. But she stopped at the door.

  ‘What happened, sir? Where’s that woman gone? Chloris.’

  ‘She … she’s gone away. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘What about her bundle, sir? It’s in the kitchen.’

  I remembered the twenty pounds in gold. ‘Send Stephen up with it. I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘And the other one? The little maid? She’s in a bad way. She sits and cries by the fire with a bowl on her lap.’

  ‘She’s suffered much. Has she told you she’s with child?’

  ‘I guessed as much. You can tell by looking at her. That and the puking. She’s half starved, as well as all the bruises on her.’

  ‘I don’t know what we’ll do with her.’

  ‘We won’t turn her out,’ Margaret said, and the way she said the words placed them halfway between a statement and a question.

  ‘No,’ I said, thinking of poor dead Chloris. ‘We won’t turn her out.’

  There was no sign of the gold in Chloris’s bundle. She must have had it concealed about the clothes she was wearing. Madam Cresswell had probably seized it, or perhaps the old crow next door.

  After I had eaten, Wanswell rowed me up to Whitehall. I had the papers I had stolen from Buckingham in my pocket, and also Raleigh’s History of the World. Cat had made me buy the book, and this morning it had saved my life. Perhaps it would act as a charm and protect me now.

  It wasn’t raining, but it was bitterly cold on the water. I huddled into my cloak and closed my eyes. I wanted to hide myself away and sleep for ever.

  I had played a part in two deaths this morning. The knowledge weighed heavily on me, and I feared it always would. True, Merto
n would have killed me without a second thought. But I was not a man like Merton, I hoped, yet I had killed him when there had been no need to do so. As for Chloris, Merton’s sword had run her through, but the responsibility for her death lay squarely with me. Guilt lingered like an overeager actor in the wings of my mind, ready to rush on stage whenever it could.

  Nor were my troubles over. The last thing I wanted to do this evening was to have a whispered argument with Cat Hakesby at her garden gate. True, I had written evidence against Buckingham in my pocket. If nothing else, that should lessen the danger of Williamson’s bringing in the Hakesbys for questioning. But it didn’t make me easier in my mind about her intrigues with the Cromwells.

  Wanswell was bringing the boat towards the shore, deftly negotiating the cluster of craft near to the riverside frontage of the palace. He landed me at the public stairs. I walked through the courts to Williamson’s office in Scotland Yard. I was wary. I didn’t know whether Buckingham’s men were on the alert for me, but it was safer to assume that they were.

  In the office, I knew at once that Williamson was not in his private room by the lively hum of conversation. Abbott was playing dice on the windowsill with one of the juniors. The noise slackened as I came in, for I was more senior than most, but it did not cease.

  ‘Where is he?’ I said. ‘At my lord’s?’

  ‘No.’ Abbott grinned. ‘Called away on business. He won’t be back till tomorrow morning. Lord Arlington’s away too.’

  ‘Pox on it,’ I muttered, my hand on the door.

  ‘Cheer up, Marwood. Heard the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘They say there are tens of thousands out in Moorfields today. The apprentices have been throwing stones at the red coats then running away like the devil. Then they come together and start again. They’ve been attacking the New Prison again too. And there’s a petition doing the rounds. It’ll crack your sides. It’s a satire, it’s meant to be from the whores to—’