The Last Protector Read online

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. ‘But why would my grandmother choose such a foul spot to hide something?’

  ‘Precisely because so few go there, mistress,’ Hakesby said. ‘And those that do, go to clear an obstruction or shore up a wall. Then they escape as soon as they can. The fumes can be worse than noisome: without a current of fresh air to move them along, they can thicken and kill.’

  ‘Did you inspect this particular sewer yourself, sir?’ Cromwell asked.

  ‘Probably not.’ Hakesby glanced across the table at him. ‘We knew the approximate line from previous surveys. I cannot recall, but I suspect I would have had a workman make sure that the sewage was moving freely. The sewer must have been dug about the same time as the Cockpit itself. That probably means it’s brick-lined and about four feet high. If the bottom is clear enough and the sewage level not too high, an agile man should be able to move through it at a crouch. The scourers tend to be small and wiry as a breed for that very reason.’

  Crowell sat back in his chair. ‘It seems straightforward enough. According to my mother, a box is concealed in an alcove in the sewer wall somewhere between the shed and the privy off the parlour. A mark cut into the brickwork reveals the place. Of course, the problem we now face is how to get there. We can hardly expect the Duke of Albemarle to welcome us with open arms.’

  ‘Isn’t there another difficulty, sir?’ Cat said. ‘The passing of time.’

  Hakesby gave her an approving nod. ‘Indeed. These plans were made near twenty years ago. Almost certainly the parlour and its closet are no longer there, or else they are so buried in the new work that they might never have existed. As for the shed and kitchen garden, they must be long gone.’

  Cromwell glanced at his daughter. ‘Then – has all this been in vain? Is there nothing we can do?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, sir.’ Hakesby looked happier than Cat had seen him for months. ‘Working on these old buildings is an art in itself. The secret is knowing how to gather the information one needs. In this case, we shall require the services of an expert.’

  Elizabeth pouted. ‘An expert in what?’

  ‘Mazers, madam. When it is a matter of sewage, who better to ask than a mazer scourer?’ He stopped abruptly, and his face fell. ‘But all this may well cost a deal of money. In these venal times of ours, every thing and every man has its price.’

  ‘God will find a way,’ Cromwell said. Frowning, he rubbed his forefinger on the tabletop, erasing something that only he could see. ‘I hope. I pray.’

  Pheebs, who kept the street door at the sign of the Rose, considered himself a broad-minded man who did to others as they did to him. His position as porter gave him a roof over his head – he usually slept in the hall on a palliasse stuffed with straw – and a small weekly wage. He earned considerably more than his wage through gratuities from the tenants and from their visitors, and from certain mutually beneficial arrangements with nearby tradesmen and hackney coachmen.

  Over the years Pheebs had developed an extensive store of knowledge about those who came and went – not just through the door he guarded but also those who passed to and fro along Henrietta Street. Yesterday, for example, he had marked a large, gross man who had walked – or rather moved in a menacing waddle, with an old cavalry sword swinging from side to side to the peril of the legs of other passers-by – up and down the road at about the time the Hakesbys and Brennan had arrived in a hackney coach.

  Mr Hakesby had been exhausted, and the boy had helped Brennan take the old man upstairs. Mistress Hakesby had given Pheebs sixpence for his trouble. She had grown into a fine young woman, he considered, quite wasted on her husband. If only she would take a little trouble with herself she might almost be called pretty.

  The big fellow had waddled down the street an hour later. He paused to ask Pheebs for directions to Drury Lane. In the way of idle conversation, he had asked who lived here at the sign of the Rose. Pheebs, his tongue greased by another sixpence, saw no harm in telling him, for if he did not, then others would.

  That same evening, Pheebs had wetted his whistle in the alehouse by Half Moon Passage where the neighbourhood’s porters and chairmen gathered. The porter of a nearby house told him that the man had been asking him questions about the sign of the Rose. He had promised the porter’s nephew a couple of shillings if he reported who visited the house. He was, the porter said, particularly interested in hearing if a prosperous-looking young man named Marwood had paid the Hakesbys a visit. The left-hand side of Marwood’s face was badly scarred by fire, the fat man had said, though his periwig concealed the worst of it.

  All this explained why Pheebs was not altogether surprised to see the man loitering outside the house again today. It was late in the afternoon, and he was standing by a brazier on the other side of the road, warming his hands over the coals and talking to a workman.

  The Hakesbys had guests for dinner – another old man and another young woman: potential clients, perhaps; the Hakesbys did not entertain much. Pheebs had admitted them himself. In the middle of the afternoon, Pheebs’s boy was sent to fetch a hackney for the visitors.

  Shortly afterwards, the Hakesbys ushered their guests downstairs in person, which suggested they must be people of consequence, though the man in particular looked like an old farmer who had had too many bad harvests. The farmer had been wearing green glasses when he arrived, but now he had left them off. The young woman was well enough, though; barely more than a girl but quite the fine lady. She had seemed deeply attached to Mistress Hakesby. The four of them stood in the doorway, looking up the street at the approaching coach.

  All this Pheebs marked and inwardly digested with the lofty objectivity that his position required. He had also noted how the man on the other side of the road responded to the sight of the Hakesbys and their two guests in the doorway of the sign of the Rose. He broke off what he was saying to the workman. His arms dropped to his sides. One hand gripped the hilt of his sword.

  He had looked, Pheebs thought, not just surprised. He looked as if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes. Indeed, he looked, Pheebs thought, filing the knowledge away in case it came in useful later, as if he had seen a ghost.

  CHAPTER SIX

  For Ye Are All Sinners

  Tuesday, 4 – Saturday, 8 February 1668

  THAT NIGHT FERRUS sleeps in the scullery by the yard door. Pain touches him. Stabs his hand. He smells burning hair. Roasting meat.

  A girl giggles.

  Someone screams like a pig on the slab. It’s him, Ferrus. He jerks awake, pulls himself up, arms flailing. A footman stoops over him. The fair-haired one the maids like. Devil-face. He grins.

  Ferrus squeals.

  In the yard, Windy barks.

  Nightmare, footman says, you always having nightmares and shitting yourself. Bag of stinking, poxy terrors you are, disturbing good Christian souls at night.

  On Tuesday evening I was detained at Scotland Yard until almost midnight. When I returned to my lodging in the Savoy, a sleepy and irritable Sam admitted me to the house. Margaret and Stephen had long since gone to bed.

  ‘Any news?’ I asked.

  ‘If there is, no one told me,’ he said, adding ‘sir’ just as I was about to reprimand him for insolence. He turned aside to light a candle for me from his own. ‘Except, now I call it to mind, there’s a letter, master. A boy brought it round this afternoon.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know, sir, would I? Being unlettered and all.’ I couldn’t see his face but there was a hint of mockery in his voice. ‘Margaret said it looked like Mistress Hakesby’s hand.’

  ‘Bring it to the parlour,’ I said. ‘And make up the fire. Then you can go to bed.’

  Sam obeyed, making an unnecessary amount of noise with his crutch and his stump as he hobbled off. I was tempted to snap at him but something held me back. He and I knew each other well – he had been in my service for over a year now. He wasn’t drunk, which could make him impudent. B
ut his amputated leg sometimes caused him considerable pain, and he deserved better from me than a reprimand. All things considered, he had been a faithful servant.

  When Sam had left me alone, I sat by the fire and opened Cat’s note. I confess I was pleasurably excited at the prospect of reading it, though for no reason; weariness made me foolish. At Arundel House, just before Hakesby interrupted us, she had been about to ask me for something. I assumed the letter would have some connection with that.

  I was wrong. The letter had nothing to do with that. To my alarm, she wrote that she had seen Roger Durrell, Veal’s servant, in Henrietta Street when they had returned from Arundel House that morning. The coincidence was too great for comfort: in other words, I didn’t believe it was a coincidence at all.

  I knew that the Duke of Buckingham had set Veal and Durrell to watch the comings and goings at Arundel House. There was a good chance that they had seen me there on at least one occasion. That would have interested but not surprised them; after all, they knew that I was clerk to Mr Williamson, and Williamson was Lord Arlington’s Undersecretary.

  What worried me now was that they might well have seen me talking to Cat and Hakesby. In which case, their curiosity would have been aroused. Why else would Durrell have taken the trouble to find out where the Hakesbys lived? As far as I knew, they had not previously known who they were, or their connection to me. But if Durrell had followed their hackney to Henrietta Street, they must be well on the way to finding out.

  Was I reading too much into the situation? I was too tired to think clearly, and melancholy with it. Seeing Cat earlier in the day had troubled me and so, for some unfathomable reason, had this letter from her. It was one thing to know that she was now Mistress Hakesby, married to a man who could almost have been her grandfather. It was quite another to see them together. Man and wife.

  Now here was this new problem. My imagination ran riot, and I lacked the will to restrain it. My doubts bred further doubts, and my worries and fears multiplied to a point that, if made flesh, they could have populated half of London.

  It was far too late for me to call at the Drawing Office. No one would thank me for rousing the entire house after midnight. Besides, it might be unsafe to give Buckingham and his servants any reason to believe that there was more than a casual connection between the Hakesbys and myself. As it stood, Veal and Durrell might think that my encounter with them at Arundel House was of no importance, that perhaps I had seen the surveyor’s pretty wife waiting in the court and decided to try the effect of a little gallantry.

  Gradually I forced my restless mind to consider the matter rationally. There was no cause for alarm, no reason why the Hakesbys should be in danger. Buckingham and his hirelings had bigger fish to fry.

  By degrees I became calmer. Before I went to bed that night, I unlocked my desk and wrote a short reply to Cat, thanking her for the information and asking her to let me know if she saw Veal or Durrell again. I added as a postscript that if we chanced to encounter each other elsewhere, perhaps it would be safer if we pretended to be strangers.

  This was true, but not the whole truth. I was honest enough to admit to myself that I did not want to see Cat Hakesby again in person if I could help it. She unsettled me. Desire is like a horse, I told myself: it will run away with us if we do not learn to restrain it with bridle and bit.

  I sealed my letter to her and left it on the parlour mantelpiece, intending to order Stephen to take it round to Henrietta Street. But in the morning Sam failed to call me at my usual time, and I was late rising. I swore at Sam, dressed in haste and rushed from the house.

  The letter I had written to Cat had flown out of my mind. It remained on the parlour mantelpiece, and it was still waiting for me when I returned late in the evening.

  On Thursday 6 February, the King opened Parliament.

  ‘Let us hope he’s not disappointed, Marwood,’ Mr Williamson said to me that morning, when I met him in the Matted Gallery. ‘The Duke of Buckingham promised him the moon, but it’s just possible that His Grace won’t be able to provide him with it.’

  In this case, the moon consisted of sufficient funds to rebuild the navy, pay for the government, and allow the King to live as he believed a monarch should. It included a Comprehension Act that would allow the country’s Nonconformists to worship freely and, as a natural consequence, be wholeheartedly loyal to their king.

  Buckingham’s problem was that Parliament was dominated by gentlemen who were far more attached to the Church of England than was the King, its titular head; or so they and their friends the bishops claimed. They were even more attached to their own interests; more money for the King’s government would require increased taxation to raise it, and the burden of that would fall at least partly on themselves.

  In my darker moods, I believed that both houses of Parliament were filled with men who cared nothing for the common good. Principle had flown out of the window. Come what may, some would vote for the bills put forward by the King’s men because their own careers depended on the government’s favour. Some would vote against, because they hated kings, or they hated this king, or they longed for the good old days when a Cromwell ruled in Whitehall and England was a godly land. Others simply voted for whatever side promised them most or damaged them least.

  Politics is nothing but a game played by greedy men and fools, by saints and monsters.

  ‘Talking of the Duke of Buckingham,’ Williamson said, ‘that reminds me. He’s holding a day of prayer and penance at Wallingford House tomorrow. A day of humiliation.’

  ‘Prayer and penance?’ I said. ‘Humiliation? The Duke?’

  ‘There is no end to God’s miracles,’ Williamson said. It was the nearest I had heard him come to making a joke, though you could not have told that from his face. ‘He has invited a number of clergymen to join him for a day of humiliation to atone for our sins. He has also asked various gentlemen of his acquaintance. Indeed, he even sent Lord Arlington an invitation.’

  This was unmistakably a jest, the sort of jest that is merely an insult in disguise. Arlington was not just Buckingham’s political enemy: they were opposed in religion too.

  ‘Of course my lord won’t go.’ Williamson stared at me. ‘But he has decided he will send an emissary to represent him at Wallingford House instead. He commands you to go in his place.’

  ‘But sir, the Duke dislikes me intensely.’

  ‘I believe Lord Arlington is aware of that, Marwood.’

  Naturally he was. Arlington, I realized belatedly, had answered Buckingham’s jest with one of his own.

  In the early evening of Thursday, 6 February, two men came with the dusk to the house in Hatton Garden. The porter had just unbarred the wicket to admit the maid, whom Mistress Dalton had sent out earlier to fetch a pair of gloves she had ordered. The two men appeared from the shadows and pushed their way inside at her heels.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, fellow,’ the taller of the two men said. He was rake-thin and spoke with a Yorkshire accent. ‘Your mistress will be glad to see us.’

  The porter was unconvinced. But the crown piece the man gave him was a good reason to hold his peace, and the fact that both men were armed was another. Meanwhile, the second man, who was almost as wide as he was tall, took the arm of the maid and with ponderous gallantry volunteered to carry her minuscule parcel.

  Inside the house, Mistress Dalton, who was no coward, tried to bar their way. The tall man bowed politely to her. He begged her pardon for their intrusion. Then, lowering his voice so only she could hear, he whispered that he had brought a message for her honoured guest, a piece of good news that he would be pleased to hear.

  Mistress Dalton was not to be won over so easily. But her attempt to argue was made useless by the opening of the parlour door and the arrival of the guest himself. He was carrying a book in one hand, his forefinger marking the place, and wearing his glasses with the thick green lenses.

  The servant released the maid, drew himself up an
d sketched a vaguely military salute. ‘Trooper Durrell, sir.’

  Cromwell looked blankly at him.

  The tall man bowed low. ‘Your highness,’ he said.

  ‘Not that,’ Cromwell said sharply. ‘None of such foolishness. Who are you?’

  ‘As you wish, sir. My name is Veal. I have a letter for you.’

  He took it from his pocket and handed it to Cromwell, who removed his glasses and carried it across the hall to a dresser where two candles stood. He examined the seal by their light and raised his eyebrows. He tore open the letter and read it quickly. The paper trembled in his hand so he laid it on the dresser between the candles.

  Afterwards, he looked up. ‘If I decline the Duke’s invitation?’

  Veal gave a shake of his head. He said nothing. He bowed.

  Cromwell realized that he had no choice in the matter. Either he accompanied these men to Wallingford House or they would force him to do so. In the unlikely event of failure, they would report his presence in London to the authorities, which would bring disaster down on his head, and probably on Mistress Dalton’s and Elizabeth’s as well.

  On the other hand, this letter might prove a stroke of good fortune. A friend at Court could solve a number of his problems. He balanced the options and came to a decision.

  ‘You must not disturb yourself, madam,’ Cromwell said to Mistress Dalton. ‘These men are friends, or at least the friends of friends.’ Then, to Veal: ‘You had better take me to your master.’

  The coach was a private one, shabby and undistinguished, with nothing on the outside to suggest its owner.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Cromwell asked as they drove down to Holborn.