The King's List Read online

  Apart from Luke, Anne’s child was Highpoint, our great estate in Oxfordshire. Estates were in decline. The extravagant years, when noblemen were expected to bankrupt themselves on the chance that the King might visit, went with his execution. The mood was, as one churchman put it, that ‘a house had better be too little for a day than too great for a year’. Even so, Anne improved the classical facade and opened up the lofty hall to the great sweep of the imposing staircase. She had an eye for paintings which lived, as she put it, rather than just hung. Many were bought cheap at Parliament’s ‘Sale of the Late King’s Goods’, a chaotic affair in Somerset House where dusty masterpieces were crammed amongst tapestries and chipped statues. She spotted dirty Titians and neglected Van Dycks, and had them restored and reframed to their original beauty. Her gardens were marvelled at. I admired Highpoint, but could not live there. Its builders, staff, stables, brew houses, granaries and farms drained most of our money. While she spent it in the country, I economised in town. It suited us both.

  It gave her the pleasure of creating it and me the power it emanated. We saw one another at glittering occasions there where I was Sir Thomas Stonehouse, charming to the county, most of whom were covert Royalists. Lady Stonehouse – I called her that at first, in a slightly mocking way, until, as the house gained in eminence, it became impossible to call her anything else – put on her sober dress and mien when she came to town to entertain Cromwell and the other old generals who ruled the country. Cromwell would call me Tom, but he would never dream of calling Anne anything other than Lady Stonehouse.

  So we believed it would continue until the family grave at Highpoint (she had already planned it) bore not one of those stiff, heraldic memorials that were going out of fashion, but a personal portrait that recorded our enduring love and affection for one another.

  2

  Like a pebble in a pool, the summer rebellion made a small impact but caused wide ripples. There was unrest in the City. Mutterings that there would be a tax strike if a successor to Cromwell was not found soon. I had the usual vitriolic letter from my father, Richard Stonehouse, threatening what would happen to me when the King returned.

  Cromwell had given me Richard’s estates and made me Sir Thomas Stonehouse, in return for supporting him and signing the King’s death warrant. I had done it for Anne, who had become so obsessed with the place she had fallen into an illness from which I was afraid she would die. It was also true that Richard’s father, Lord Stonehouse, finally intended me to have it. He feared Richard’s profligacy would destroy the estate, but had died before he could complete a new will. Richard saw it much more simply: I had seized Highpoint by signing away the King’s life. The estate was blood money. To my father, I was what I had always been: Tom Neave, bastard, scurrilous pamphleteer, usurper and, worst of all, regicide – King killer.

  At erratic intervals, from different parts of Europe, my father sent me such letters. Under Cromwell, who had built up a powerful navy as well as a full-time army, Britain had become the most feared nation in Europe. In those years I could afford to throw Richard’s incoherent letters into the night soil without reading them. Now the armies – there was not one but several – were beginning to disintegrate. Soldiers had not been paid. Their generals quarrelled. Montague, who headed the navy, was suspected of being involved in the rebellion and there were moves to put him in the Tower. I read my father’s letter with more than usual care.

  He praised Luke for his courage and part in the rebellion. With all my father’s old contacts in Oxfordshire, I wondered if he had deliberately involved Luke in it. In the same post was a letter for Anne from her old friend and mentor, Lucy, the Countess of Carlisle, who was in Brussels with the makeshift court of Charles Stuart. I had rescued her from the Tower, but Cromwell had exiled her for spying for the King. Now she was spying for me. Her letter was full of gossip about penniless dukes and duelling courtiers and – principally – about Mrs Palmer, Charles’s new mistress.

  ‘She has enslaved him,’ Lucy wrote. ‘When she is in the room he cannot take his eyes from her. She is planted of course, by the Villiers family – she was Barbara Villiers – for their benefit, if the King ever crosses the water. The whole place is alive with the feeling that it is going to happen but I am afraid we have all heard it so many times before & everyone is as poor as ever & the food just as vile.’

  Anne, as usual, gave the letter to me for my amusement and, as usual, I took down my Bible to decode it. It made disturbing reading. Far from discouraging the Royalists, the failed rebellion had made them even more determined. Lucy gave figures for a large number of troops from Ireland. There was money from Europe and the West Country. Richard was heavily involved. He had played a major part in the summer rebellion.

  It was late evening when I decoded the letter. I went from my study to return it to Anne. The door of Luke’s room was open as was that of the anteroom of Anne’s apartment. He often slipped in to see her, to agonise over the width of a pair of breeches, or the colour of a cloth. I could hear the murmur of her voice from the corridor and was raising my hand to knock when Luke spoke.

  ‘When I have the estate I will have a proper steward, not that rogue Scogman.’

  Her reply was inaudible but I could guess she agreed with the sentiment. She had her own house steward at Highpoint, a correct and punctilious man. I went into the anteroom. Unlike the rest of the house, which was dark and gloomy, she had, in a short space of time, made her rooms bright with fresh paper and a few of her favourite pictures. There was no sign of her maid and I raised my hand to knock again.

  ‘Of course, Grandfather will have Highpoint first,’ Luke said.

  She loathed Richard much more wholeheartedly than I did and once would have had him killed by Cromwell if I had not interceded, but her reply was chiding, indulgent. ‘Oh. Will he. Then what will happen to your father and me?’

  ‘Oh … don’t worry. I will protect you, Mother.’

  It was banter. She did not take him seriously, but still I could not trust myself to speak. If I had gone in he would have thought I was spying on him, which, by that time, it was impossible to deny.

  I returned to my study and picked up my father’s letter. Luke’s grandfather would have Highpoint first, would he? Again I wondered if my father was in contact with Luke, and picked up his letter.

  Richard Stonehouse was a threat to the state. That was how John Thurloe, the Secretary of State, for whom I worked, regarded him. Throughout fifteen years of turmoil and change, whatever people thought of his methods, John Thurloe had kept a steady hand on the affairs of state. He had built an admired and feared network of contacts, spies and informers that made one ambassador say: ‘He has the secrets of Princes in his pocket.’ Not just princes. Nobles, gentlemen, politicians, merchants, lawyers, ministers: anyone of any consequence was recorded in papers at his offices in Whitehall. He was one of the few people with Cromwell when he died. Cromwell trusted him implicitly. So did I. I knew what he would say about my father – he had said it often enough.

  ‘Write to Amsterdam.’

  In other words, have him killed by our agent there. I had always recoiled from it. Thurloe thought it was a sign of weakness, but it was not just that he was my father. What was the point? He was a pathetic figure with no real hope of his King returning. But I could not stand the thought of him poisoning my son’s mind.

  I had much more to do but Luke’s words and Anne’s indulgence continued to irk me. I felt excluded in my own house. I had put Luke under house arrest but, in a curious way I did not fully understand, I felt I had imprisoned myself.

  I flung down my pen and had a glass of sack while I shrugged into my shabby old Brandenburg coat. Anne would call a servant to put on a coat but I detested all that formality. A servant sprang up from the booth in reception, the gold embroidered falcon glittering on his cuffs. He was new – Anne had been dissatisfied with some of the staff – and for a moment I could not recall his name.

  ‘I a
m going to the club. Would you be good enough to tell Lady Stonehouse that I shall not be in for supper?’

  No, I did not want the coach; nor the ostler to get my horse. I went down the steps into Queen Street, turning surreptitiously to put two fingers up to the austere stone falcon over the entrance. With a feeling of release I breathed in the stink of the streets, walking my legs back to life through Covent Garden towards Parliament. There, swathed in the mists from the river was New Palace Yard, a huge open space full of eating houses, taverns and coffee houses. Coffee had taken London by storm, almost overnight, like pantaloons and feathers in hats. It was in the Turk’s Head Coffee House that the Rota Club met.

  It was a pretend Parliament. A republican debating society that anyone with eighteen pence could join and have a vote. Cromwell had purged Parliament, reducing it to a small number – the Rump – until even that had been dismissed. With historically a large Royalist majority he could never have governed. Yet he never reformed it. God would provide the answer. God never did, and there we were, crammed into the smoke-filled Turk’s Head a few steps from Westminster, the republican Parliament that might have been.

  The eighteen pence included coffee and pipes of tobacco. I found the coffee foul, boiled thick as soup and bitter, but many sniffed appreciatively and were very knowing about different Turkish blends. It certainly kept people sober and the debate fierce. As novel as the coffee was the Balloting Box. The motion was put and every member dropped his ball in the Aye or the Noe section. That evening the question was whether a Minister should serve a fixed term only and it was decided he should, to avoid consolidation of power.

  We streamed into the night, flasks of Dutch brandy coming out to take away the taste of the coffee, and the real business began. William Clarke, whom I used to dub ‘Mr Ink’ in our republican days, took me to one side. He was now rather grand and staid, being secretary to the Committee of Safety, the hotchpotch of army officers that ran the country.

  ‘Lambert won’t fight,’ he said, taking a pull from my flask. Lambert was the general who had put down the summer rebellion. He had gone north to subjugate another general, Monck, in charge of the Scottish army, who had refused to join the Committee of Safety, declaring it illegal. ‘His troops are not paid. Some of them are without boots.’

  He slipped me a paper, containing army movements and committee minutes. It was old, thin stuff, some of it rehashed from what I had seen before. He read the disappointment in my face and took another drink from my flask.

  ‘What happened at the last meeting?’

  He wiped the brandy from his lips. He looked ill and feverish. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘I was excluded. How can I take the minutes of a meeting when I’m excluded?’ He addressed me as if I was personally responsible, almost immediately muttering, ‘I’m sorry, Tom. It used to be difficult to know who will be in charge tomorrow. Now I scarcely know who is in charge today.’

  I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Bill. This will be very useful.’

  In other words, like Lucy, he would be paid. I ended the evening in a chop house with Sam Pepys.

  We had both climbed out of the streets, his father having been a tailor. His patron, Lord Montague, was under suspicion of involvement in the summer rebellion and Pepys had lost his position as his secretary.

  ‘So I have nothing to do, which is bad, and no money to do it with, which is worse, unless Lord Montague is reprieved …?’

  He looked at me hopefully. I concentrated on my mutton chop in pomegranate jelly. Montague was able, if a little headstrong, and I had put a case for him but John Thurloe was adamant. Montague would go to the Tower. When the Secretary of State made a decision it was final. Montague was finished. I complimented Pepys on his choice of eating house. Only a good chef could turn a tough old piece of mutton into such a rare delicacy.

  He made a face at me and sighed. ‘Then I am done. I will have to while away my hours writing a diary.’

  ‘A diary?’

  ‘A record of each day. Big events. Plenty of those. There’s a new government every day. Small ones – the sort of things you and I get up to.’ He gave me a prodigious wink.

  ‘How are you going to sell it?’

  ‘Sell it?’ He looked shocked. ‘I’m writing it in shorthand. I could never sell it. My wife might read it.’

  He roared with laughter and I ordered another bottle of claret to launch his new enterprise. By the time I stumbled out of the Hackney in Queen Street I was only too glad for James in reception – I remembered his name and used it several times – to help me out of my Brandenburg coat.

  Two or three times a week I found my way to the offices of the Secretary of State in Whitehall. I say ‘found’ because the old palace in which Cromwell had installed government offices was a labyrinth in which even servants got lost. After going through the Elizabethan Great Gate, past buildings with crumbling timbered gables, I snaked through a warren of twisting corridors which seemed to get narrower and narrower, taking me past room after room of state papers before reaching John Thurloe’s apartment overlooking the river.

  He never wasted time and greeted me with no more than a nod. I gave him the figures Lucy had sent me.

  ‘How sound are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. But Richard Stonehouse is at the heart of it.’ In Thurloe’s presence, I never referred to him as my father.

  He shrugged. He had trained as a lawyer and counted his words. Words cost money. He had said all he had to say about my father, and the ball was in my court. Although I expected nothing, it was always worthwhile, when making a concession, seeking a quid pro quo.

  ‘I wonder if it’s wise to send Montague to the Tower?’

  He stared at me coldly and I thought I had gone too far. With his dark eyes set rather too close together in a thin, cadaverous face, it was like being observed by a surgeon planning to operate. At last he spoke.

  ‘As it happens, I’ve been reflecting on what you said. I’ll send him to the country instead.’

  ‘I’ll write to Amsterdam about Richard Stonehouse.’

  Another nod and he returned to the papers he was working on. The interview was over. I was surprised and gratified about Montague. I was almost out of the room when he spoke again.

  ‘Tom.’

  He never called me Tom. Perhaps Sir Thomas; usually he dispensed with names altogether. When I returned he was gazing out of the window at the hazy line of the river, watching the press of boats going under London Bridge. Two boats had collided and an argument had erupted.

  ‘If you’re going to do it, you’d better get on with it. I expect I shall be out of office next week. Or shortly after.’

  I thought I had misheard him. He continued to stare down the river as if the accident absorbed all his attention. Oars were pushing the quarrelling boatmen to one side and the other boats resumed their steady flow.

  ‘Out of the office?’

  He turned his full gaze on me. There may even have been a hint of amusement on his face at my bewilderment. ‘Out of office. The Committee of Safety is yesterday’s story. They have caved in to General Monck. The Rump Parliament is to be assembled to er … run the country, led by Arthur Haselrig.’ There was a wealth of dry scepticism in the hesitation. ‘Arthur has been good enough to inform me that I will not be invited to join the State Council.’

  I still did not take it in.

  I could find nothing to say. If he was out of office, so was I. The boatmen had settled their difference and were steering back into the stream of traffic.

  ‘I suspect we shall be wanted again,’ he said. ‘I suggest we meet once a week at my chambers in Lincoln’s Inn.’

  I stammered something, which he interrupted with a final nod before returning to his papers.

  I got lost on the way out in the web of alleys that linked small courts and gardens, where the first piles of fallen leaves were being swept away. I had to be directed by the gardener to the Great Gate. It was a bright, unseasonal day. I walke
d aimlessly back to Queen Street. I badly needed a drink, but dare not. Everyone seemed busy but me, from hawkers crying to gentlemen in coaches on their way to the City. I did not have the heart to raise two fingers to the falcon over the door, but hurried up the steps, suddenly realising how much there was to do.

  Everything that I had put off I did that day, coming to a decision on problems that had seemed intractable yesterday, dictating to my secretary, Mr Cole, until the servant came to light the candles. I left my father till last.

  ‘There is one more.’

  I had coded the letter a year ago, after a particularly vitriolic letter from my father when Cromwell died. The code was embedded in a letter ordering some diamonds from a jeweller in Amsterdam, one of our agents. As proof that the job had been done, I requested him to send Richard’s ring. If Mr Cole did not know what it meant, he knew what it signified. He had done enough such letters for Richard’s father, Lord Stonehouse, including one ingeniously condemning me as a plague child, which should have resulted in my death. His only reaction was to push back his long white hair and rub his wrist with a sigh of relief.

  ‘Mr Thurloe has kept us busy today, sir.’

  ‘He has indeed, Mr Cole.’

  I said no more. He would know soon enough. I poured myself a large sack and raised it to the portrait of Lord Stonehouse over the flickering fire. Anne thought it dreadful – ‘even worse than he looked in real life, if that were possible’ – but, for me, it was an old companion. In the shifting light of the candles and the fire, my grandfather’s smoke-blackened face with the beaked Stonehouse nose seemed to come alive. That evening I thought he looked disapproving. No Stonehouse had been out of office since before the reign of James the First.