The King's List Read online

  ‘If there is any way I can help …’

  The words came out of her like drawn teeth. But she meant them. Thurloe distrusted her but recognised the value of her contacts and her political flair, and if I asked her to do so, in spite of the gulf between us, she would work tirelessly at it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  I could think of nothing more to say. We continued to sit there, exhausted by argument. It felt as though we had packed twelve years of differences, quarrels and bitter resentments into one short hour. Eventually she spoke.

  ‘Suppose Luke does give you the undertaking not to have anything more to do with the Sealed Knot?’

  She looked at the floor, twisting her hands nervously. There was no sign of that starched remoteness. She had come round. She must have talked to him. I felt a leap of gratitude. If he really had made that promise, she had done more than I ever could.

  ‘I will be very glad to hear what Luke has to say,’ I said warmly.

  She touched the bell for the servant to clear away. As she rose, I stood up awkwardly with her. For a moment we were like two people who had never met before. She raised her head and gave me a half-smile. ‘Thank you.’

  I was wrong that she was not wearing perfume. There was the barest trace of it in the air as I followed her to the door. It was not the usual stronger scent she wore now, but the lighter, transient, barely discernible hint of rosemary and lavender she used when she was younger. A pad bearing it dropped from her bodice but she did not appear to notice. My heart beat painfully. When she had been desperate for a child she had not been averse to the old whore’s trick of making such a signal.

  At the door I touched her arm. As the servant’s footsteps came towards the door, she turned and murmured hurriedly, ‘I have seen Dr Latchford. It is as I feared, sir. He has warned me strongly against having another child.’

  9

  I took the pad from her bodice to my room, like a callow youth who keeps a flower his mistress has worn, long after the petals have paled and the leaves withered. The scent seemed to increase until it filled the room. My need was so great, so urgent, it overwhelmed a growing unease I could not put my finger on. I paced about until I heard the sliding of bolts and locking of doors and the house grew quiet, then slipped along the silent corridors, dim with night candles, and up the stairs towards her apartment.

  I stopped. Suppose she was not expecting me? Of course she was! I knew the signs, I knew the rules of this particular game only too well.

  The night porter’s face swam in front of me, a mixture of deference and lewdness that almost, not quite, became a wink. ‘Oh. Good night, sir.’

  I grunted something and waited until he was out of sight. The door to her apartment was slightly open, a candle still burning in the anteroom. When I crept away, Agnes would snuff it out. I took a step and stopped as the source of my unease came to me. Of course. Only overwhelming desire had prevented me from seeing something so obvious.

  She was doing what she had always done: a deal. Do not change your will. Leave everything to Luke and, in exchange, I give you my bed. Not her. Her bed. It was all there in the last words she said. ‘It was as I feared, sir. Dr Latchford has warned me against having another child.’ Was that true? I doubted it. She had Latchford in her pocket. This was a return to Lady Stonehouse, dutiful and submissive.

  Well, why should I care? I had what I wanted. Another child. Sam. I could have her. Use her. Cheaper and much more convenient than the widow Mr Pepys offered me. I took another step. The door to the bedroom was open. I smelt the rosemary and lavender, intensified from the heat of her body.

  I turned and went out of the apartment, leaning against the wall, shutting my eyes. I could not bear it. I wanted her, not her pretence. Puritans condemned pleasure in the act. They even expunged from the marriage service ‘with my body I thee worship’. They averted their eyes from their wives’ bodies. Perhaps that is why they said I was born of the Devil. I wanted to see her. I wanted her, body and soul, not this hasty coupling like a whore in a dark alley.

  It came back to me so sharply I covered my face in my hands. That time when, whatever our differences, we were so much in love we were one flesh; the time of hope, the time of bearing children. Of course it was stupid to expect it to last; it had to cool and grow old, but with the long war it had been snatched away before its time, winter coming sharp into summer, with no gentle, preparatory autumn in between.

  A light shone into my face. The night porter. There was no doubt now about the conspiratorial wink on his face, sharing what he must have thought was my satisfaction on the way back. ‘Still up, sir?’

  ‘You can see I’m still bloody well up, man! I can’t sleep!’

  But I did sleep, a strange restless sleep, disturbed with dreams in which there was a light shining in my face, which became the moon glimmering into the garret in Half Moon Court, where I was an apprentice searching for something I had lost. What made me even more frantic was that I had forgotten what I was looking for. It turned out to be the small pad, dipped in rosemary water, which Miss Black used to keep tucked in her bodice. Strange, that even in my dream, I could not call her Anne. I had found a pad on the stair one day and kept it under my pillow, in the hope that, if I found the right magic spell, she would fall in love with me. I awoke exhausted, my nightshirt wet, disgusted with myself. That had not happened since I was a callow youth.

  I took no breakfast, determined to be out early and go to Clerkenwell. Sam would already have the bellows going on the kiln, which had slumbered overnight. My spirits revived. There was nothing like an early ride, breath steaming, beating together my frozen hands as the horse was saddled, stamping on the cobbles, eager to go.

  Sam would have a meat pie kept hot by the kiln and a jug of small beer. A laboratory, I was discovering, was not like other worlds. Natural philosophers like Boyle worked with their servants among the glass tubing and air pumps. We were all slaves to the secrets of nature, of sand melting and fusing, turning into a shimmering glass which one day, Sam assured me, would be so clear when you looked through it, you would not know it was there.

  I was riding out when Mr Cole shouted after me. I had forgotten to sign for a sale of more Highpoint property. While I was sealing the papers, Mr Cole told me that Mr Luke was waiting in the reception room in the hope of seeing me. I was incredulous, not so much that he wanted to see me, for surely his mother had put him up to this, but that he was out of bed. Luke scarcely ever showed his face before noon. I retorted that he would have to wait, then reined in my horse again. It was churlish of me not to see him for a few minutes. And she would make capital out of me if I did not.

  I saw him in my study. As usual, he stood to attention like the soldier he wanted to be, toeing the line in the carpet that Stonehouse sons had toed before their fathers in memoriam. I hated that but it was what he expected, what he would subject his son to, if he ever had one.

  I had thrown on yesterday’s clothes. He bore the marks of Gilbert, the fastidious servant he had brought from Highpoint: barbered cheeks and fresh, clean linen. I could not help having the feeling that he should be sitting at the desk and I standing there. He was a Stonehouse from the tip of his elegantly coiffured crown, to his turned-down floppy boots. When he eventually spoke, his words were as polished as his boots.

  ‘I wish to apologise, sir.’

  That was all. I waited for more, but there appeared to be no more. ‘Well, go on. Apologise for what? For being a Royalist?’

  I cursed myself as soon as I had said it. Why did he always drive me the wrong way? He seemed to grow even taller. Or perhaps years at my desk had made me more bent. His nostrils flared; his voice was edged with contempt.

  ‘I will never apologise for that.’

  Oh, to hell with you, I thought, the fuse has been lit. And in a moment we would be in the middle of a full-blown argument that would leave us worse off than before. I jumped up. Better end it before we reached that explosive point. I calmed mys
elf by thinking of the ride to the City.

  ‘Look, Luke, you can see I’m on the point of going out. If you have something more to say, please say it.’

  He spoke carefully, painfully slowly, as if I was a lawyer ready to seize on a faulty argument. ‘This house belongs to you, sir …’

  I paced up and down. The toes of his boots seemed glued to the line in the carpet.

  ‘… as does Highpoint.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Thank you. I’m aware of that.’

  His nose flared again, a fine Stonehouse nose with a sharp, aquiline tip. Words suddenly rattled out of him.

  ‘While I am living here or in Highpoint it was, is, not the act of a gentleman to join in a rebel force whose aim was, is, to remove you from power, even though you gained that power by killing that blessed saint, the King.’

  He was like a pump which, after producing the barest trickle of water, suddenly produces a great gush of it. He ran dry again, bowing his head, trembling. I did not know where to put myself.

  ‘Sit down, Luke.’

  ‘I would rather stand, sir.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  I sat down, struggling to compose myself. I translated what he had said to mean that, whatever his feelings about me and my beliefs, while he was under my roof he would take no part in any further Royalist plots or rebellions. Is that what he meant, I asked? It was.

  ‘Did your mother get you to say this?’

  He flushed. For a moment I thought he was going to cross the line in the carpet towards me. ‘She talked to me but those are my own words, sir.’

  Again I cursed myself. When one of us took a step forward, the other seemed to take a step back. ‘I’m sorry, Luke. We always seem to get on the wrong side of one another.’

  He blinked at me suspiciously, as if there was some hidden motive in my apology. I got up, my geniality only partly forced, for this prickly meeting was almost over and Holborn would still be clear enough to give my horse a good gallop. I was almost eating that hot pie, washed down with small beer, as I told him I was glad to accept his assurance that he would be involved in no more plots. We had had our differences, but I hoped that was all over. Still he stuck to that line in the carpet like a limpet.

  ‘May I make a request, sir?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Go on.’

  ‘I would like to go into the City alone without …’ He could scarcely bring the word out. ‘… Scogman.’

  I tried to tell him Scogman was there to protect him but he had been well primed by his mother. He believed, correctly enough, Scogman was there to prevent him getting into another Royalist mess, which would compromise my chances of office with the next government. I told him it was more than that. He thought himself a soldier who knew London because he had learned a little prig’s cant in prison. But in the clothes he affected he would bleed freely, as the prigs put it – he was an easy lay. Before he understood the meaning of ‘bite the bill from the cull’ they would have snatched his sword, taken all he had, including those fine britches, and left him for dead.

  I offered him other guards. He saw them in the same light as Scogman: they would be there to report back to me. He was adamant he could take care of himself. Or he would have his own guard, his servant, Gilbert. I thought Gilbert a country hick who would be no match for the prigs either. He said with a passion that astonished me that he had finished with the Sealed Knot. He loved his King but he hated them. When the moment came, they were found wanting. He used language like that. Biblical language. He gave me his word he would have nothing more to do with them.

  ‘Nor with any other Royalist plots?’

  ‘I cannot say that, sir. The Royalist cause is in disarray but I cannot read the future. If it comes to that, I will tell you. I can promise you I will never again make such a move under your own roof.’

  It was portentous. It bore the mark of Anne. But if he was accepting advice that showed more maturity. And it was not only well put, it was delivered with such fervour I was silenced. He knew I was weakening, and held the silence with difficulty, his lips quivering slightly. He flicked away a tiny bead of sweat forming on his brow. There was something he was not telling me, I was convinced.

  I made him wait in reception and rang for Scogman, scribbling a note to Sam, apologising that I could not come but would be with him in the next day or so for the first blow. I felt a strange kind of thrill at using the jargon he spoke, as I had with that of printing. I addressed it to Samuel Reeves and signed it Thomas Black. It was the first letter I had ever written him. It was only as the servant was taking it through the door and Scogman was entering that I realised I had sealed it with the falcon ring. I had to run halfway down the stairs to call him back, during which I heard Luke in reception singing. Singing! It was the Royalist song about the divine Sarah whispering outside the bars of prison he had sung in Oxford gaol. It did not improve my temper. I tore up the letter to Sam and wrote another. Having no other seals, I closed it with a wafer.

  Scogman watched this elaborate performance in silence. He knew me too well. ‘Won you over, sir, has he?’

  I was in such a state of confusion that for a moment I did not know which son he was talking about. I told him I was considering letting Luke go into the City with Gilbert.

  ‘Gilbert?’ He sniffed. That sniff spoke volumes. ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  ‘I am very glad to see father and son reconciled, sir.’

  ‘Stop that nonsense,’ I said wearily, ‘and tell me what you think.’

  He did. Wherever they went, Luke insisted on ending up at the Moor in Watling Street, however inconvenient, however disgusting the coffee was. There were few gentlemen there, mainly merchants waiting for news about ships to be chalked up on the board.

  ‘I keeps myself discreet, as instructed, with an ale on the bench outside The Four Sailors. He spends a lot of time in the jakes there.’

  ‘Going out round the back?’

  Scogman shook his head. ‘No back entrance. Blind alley.’ He hesitated. ‘Once he gave me the slip. I thought he was in the coffee house, but he comes back up the street, like the cat who’s supped the cream.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘Waiting to catch Mr Luke at it. Sir. And I will.’

  In short, Mr Luke was up to something. I slept on it. Or rather I didn’t. It came to me in the middle of the night. Something quite obvious I had missed.

  Luke was ready for me, as carefully dressed as before, toeing the line. His eagerness made me even more uneasy. A man’s reputation depends largely on his judgement of people, and I could not bear the thought of him getting involved in something that would embarrass me a second time.

  ‘This ballad you keep whistling … To Althea. Stone walls do not a prison make … nor iron bars a cage … By Richard Lovelace, isn’t it?’

  He said it was, alert now, stiffening at this unexpected approach.

  ‘Odd man.’

  He stepped over the line of the carpet, incredulous that I might have met this wandering poet who ended up in a pauper’s grave. ‘You knew him, sir?’

  ‘Not quite the words I would use. I arrested him in forty-eight.’ I winced at myself as I grunted them. Did I really sound like those old veterans who, over their claret, talked about forty-two or forty-nine and the battles of the Good Old Cause, obscuring the chances of finding a new cause which would get us out of the current stalemate?

  He had never shown that much interest in anything I had done. I grew more and more aggrieved as he asked me what Lovelace was like, what his cell was like, did I provide him with pen and ink to write to Lucasta, who was some whore Lovelace immortalised when he wrote I could not love thee, dear, so much … Loved I not honour more.

  Honour! How I loathed the word! Born aristocrats believed that those below the nobility and gentry had no idea what honour was. It was not necessary for a nobleman to sign a contract. His word was sufficient. Dictum meum pactum.
My word is my bond. What nonsense. Some of the biggest rogues unhung were nobles. After shaking hands with some of them, Cromwell said, you counted your fingers.

  ‘You wrote poetry, didn’t you, sir?’

  The question took me unawares. I stared at him suspiciously. Was he laughing at me? Nothing in this interview was going according to plan.

  ‘Poetry?’ I laughed. Or tried to. ‘Where on earth did you get that idea from?’

  ‘My mother.’

  That disconcerted me even more. I got up as I felt the blood rising in my cheeks, muttering something about doggerel. The few that had been published I had searched out and destroyed along with the pamphlets, making a clean sweep of those early embarrassments. Better a good soldier, even a good politician, if there was such a thing, than a bad poet. I had written the poems for Anne in the first flush of our love. I was surprised she remembered them at all, let alone mentioned them. One or two of them might have had something. One, I recalled thinking rather good, even as I destroyed it, and if I had continued to write … Unexpectedly, I had a sharp sense of pain and loss. I dismissed it almost immediately. End up in a pauper’s grave like Lovelace? That doggerel was probably what I had heard Luke and Anne laughing about in her apartment. I rounded on him.

  ‘Who is Sarah?’ Now the blood coursed into his face. ‘Lovelace’s poem was dedicated to Althea,’ I said. ‘He speaks of Althea whispering to him and he … er, being entangled in her hair. You sing of Sarah.’

  He retreated behind the line of the carpet. He blustered and blundered but eventually admitted there was a lady called Sarah who had caught his eye.