The Last Protector Read online

  The King burst out laughing. ‘Perhaps you’re right. But we mustn’t keep you from your bitches any longer.’ He beckoned Chiffinch in a sharper voice. ‘Clear the room.’

  It was hard to be sure by candlelight, but it seemed to me the Duke’s face stiffened, as if this abrupt dismissal had taken him by surprise and he did not altogether like it. But in an instant he was smiling and bowing again, making his farewells to the King and my lady his cousin.

  He withdrew. The rest of the party was shooed out of the room by Chiffinch. Finally, after glancing at his master, he left as well.

  That left the three of us alone. The King, Lady Castlemaine and me. Her ladyship appeared to be asleep but she was most certainly awake. Everything I said to the King would probably be reported to her cousin.

  ‘It’s damnably stuffy.’ The King rose to his feet and stretched his arms towards the ceiling. Lady Castlemaine’s lashes fluttered. ‘I shall take a little air in the garden.’

  She opened her eyes and held out her hand to him. ‘But it’s freezing, sir. You’ll catch your death of cold.’

  ‘I believe I shall survive.’

  She pouted like a frustrated child.

  The King was already moving to the door to the passage. ‘Marwood, attend me and light my way.’

  At the head of the stairs to the Privy Garden, we paused while the servants brought our cloaks and a lantern for me to carry. We walked in silence down the broad staircase and into the garden.

  It struck me that the King had taken the trouble to show Buckingham and Lady Castlemaine that he had confidence in me, and that the reverse was true as well. I was beginning to realize that he used this tactic in many of his dealings. He rationed the sunshine of his attention among us. He kept all of us vying for his favour with the result that none of us could feel sure of our place with him.

  The temperature had dropped in the last hour or so. The paths and the bushes between them glinted with frost. Above us was a starlit sky only partly concealed by the smoke from the palace’s chimneys. To the north and east, candlelight glittered softly in the windows of the long ranges overlooking the garden.

  The King walked briskly. Our footsteps crunched on the gravel. His legs were longer than mine, and I had my work cut out to keep up. In the distance, male voices were singing in harmony behind one of those windows; a sad song, of lost love and blighted hopes. There was too much sadness in this place.

  My eyes adjusted. The King did not speak, and it was not my place to speak first. He led me a zigzag course, constantly chopping and changing among the paths. My hand carrying the lantern grew uncomfortably cold.

  The garden was laid out so the paths made a grid; within the enclosed squares were beds planted with low shrubs, and at the centre of each a statue glimmered palely in the half-light of the stars. At night, the Privy Garden was an enchanted place, made for the whispering of secrets.

  We reached the line of trees along the line of the garden’s southern boundary. There were no buildings beyond, only the wall that divided the Privy Garden from the Bowling Green. The King stopped and turned to look across the garden to the Privy Gallery on the far side.

  ‘Shield the light,’ he said softly. He waited until I had set the lantern behind a tree. ‘Well? What was it truly like, this day of penitence?’

  ‘This evening, sir, the Duke made it sound as if the whole thing was an elaborate joke.’

  ‘You mean yesterday he was serious? What happened?’

  I was tempted to guard my tongue. If I answered fully, perhaps my frankness would reach Buckingham’s ears and increase his hatred of me. But in the end a man must choose where his loyalties lie and, for better or worse, I had chosen the King. After all, at a moment’s notice, he could strip me of my employment and my lodging and turn me into the streets to beg my bread. Or he could consign me to the Tower, as he had my father, to await his pleasure. On top of this, when all was said and done, he was our lawful sovereign, whatever his private shortcomings.

  ‘Marwood?’ he said. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  So I told the King about the paintings shrouded in black silk and the splendid setting of the Great Chamber of Wallingford House. I told him how Buckingham had sat enthroned like a king in mourning on the dais, and how the preacher had ranted at us. I told him of the audience, the clergy, the Presbyterian citizens and the Duke’s political allies. I told him of the sermon, and how the preacher had pointed at Whitehall as a nest of papists and the great cesspit of evil – and therefore by implication to the King himself. I told him how I had been ejected as soon as Mr Veal had seen me, and how only Lord Arlington’s letter had protected me from violence.

  The darkness spurred me on, as perhaps the King had intended; it made the enormous barrier of rank between us seem less important. He listened in silence. When I came to an end, he stirred and lifted his heavy head. ‘Leaving the play-acting aside, what construction do you place on all this?’

  ‘I think the Duke feels himself vulnerable, sir. It’s true that he enjoys your favour and he’s one of your ministers. But – precisely because of that – he’s in danger of losing the support of those he depended on before.’

  ‘You mean his friends in Parliament.’ It was not a question. ‘And in the City – both the wealthy sort and the rabble of apprentices. Aye, and the Nonconformists and the Presbyterians. Those who hate the Catholics.’ He paused. ‘Those who hanker for the Protectorate.’

  ‘His duel with my Lord Shrewsbury weakens his position with many of his supporters. He flaunted his adultery. He killed a man, too.’

  The King sighed. ‘Shrewsbury looks like to recover, so there’s little harm done in the end.’

  Little harm? What of the dead man at Barn Elms, poor Jenkins?

  ‘Besides,’ the King was saying, ‘Buckingham had no choice but to fight. He’s a nobleman, when all’s said and done. He’s bred to defend his honour.’

  ‘Honour, sir?’ The darkness made me bold. ‘Perhaps it seems like honour in Whitehall, but it’s not the name they give it in the City and among the Dissenters. He knows he needs to restore their confidence in him. That’s what yesterday’s mummery was for, to show them he was penitent. And now he comes here and mocks them for your amusement.’

  I stopped abruptly. My dislike of Buckingham had made my voice sharper than I intended, and it had also made me say what had better been left unsaid.

  Neither of us spoke. I listened to the King’s slow breathing. The longer we stood here, the more a sense of strangeness crept over me. What would my father, that old Fifth Monarchist who had hated all kings except King Jesus, have thought of his son in private conference with Charles Stuart in the Privy Garden under the stars?

  Without a word, the King moved away, leaving me to scurry after him with the lantern. The old fear returned: my outspokenness could cost me my employment and perhaps my liberty. I followed him back to the foot of Lady Castlemaine’s staircase. He stopped some yards away, out of earshot of the guards.

  ‘Go home, Marwood. I thank you for your honesty.’

  In my relief, I was suddenly desperate to make sure he understood me before it was too late, I blurted out: ‘His Grace can’t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Not forever.’

  The King was already moving towards the staircase that would take him back to his mistress. ‘Perhaps,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘But that won’t stop him trying.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  If the Protector Wishes

  Wednesday, 5 February – Sunday, 15 March 1668

  MASTER WAS YOUNG once. Sometimes he smiled. Not at Ferrus, no, no, no. Master had men under him. Gave them orders in a loud voice like Windy barking.

  Other men gone.

  Long, long, long ago, Mistress Crummle smiled at Ferrus. The smile is for him, no one else. Hold out your hand, she says. She gives him a newly minted penny. It shines like a reddish-gold sun. It has the Protector’s head on it.

  ‘Protect it,’ she says. ‘For me
.’

  Ferrus protects the penny. He keeps it between two of the planks at the side of the kennel. No one goes in the kennel, no one dares, except Windy and Ferrus. Penny is brown and dull now, like dry shit.

  But still his penny. The Protector’s head is still there. The smile is still his too. Protect.

  Cat’s irritation with James Marwood lodged in her mind like a stone in her shoe. Small though it was, it grew with time and exercise into something more than irritation.

  After all they had gone through together, after all she had done for him, his last note to her had been curt and unmannerly. Indeed, when she allowed herself to dwell on it, which was inevitable because she re-read it at least twice a day, she thought it positively churlish in both tone and content.

  Cat had received the letter on the fifth of February. She discovered afterwards by enquiring of the porter that it had been brought round by the African boy whom Marwood had acquired a few months ago. ‘He didn’t want to wait for an answer,’ Pheebs had told her. ‘He said there was no need.’

  She had not seen Veal or Durrell again, so she had had no reason to write to Marwood. The days passed into weeks. Cat decided that what had made her particularly angry was his postscript, the few words he had scrawled to the effect that if they chanced to meet again, they should pretend to be strangers for reasons of safety. It was a thin excuse, she considered. The truth of it was that he probably felt himself grown too grand for the Hakesbys.

  In the past, they had certainly quarrelled. But they had also protected and helped each other. They had even saved each other’s lives. But if he wanted them to be strangers, then so did she. He was an odious, ill-bred man.

  On the fourteenth of February, St Valentine’s Day, her husband woke in the early hours and thrust himself on Cat.

  Mr Hakesby had difficulty sleeping since his ague had come upon him. He often rose from their bed in the middle of the night and spent an hour or two in praying, or reading the Bible, or sketching designs in his notebook. (These sketches, done by candlelight and with a shaking hand, were nameless forms, the images of disintegrating creatures rather than architectural designs.)

  Occasionally, when he could not sleep, he turned to Cat for distraction instead. Not often, fortunately – the last time had been just after Christmas. He was of course entitled to insist on his conjugal rights at any time, so long as he did not offend public decency, and so long as the manner of it would not appear unseemly to the all-seeing eyes of God.

  Nevertheless, Cat could not help feeling aggrieved when he pawed at her with his long, bony hands. Before their wedding, she had understood from him that their marriage would remain unconsummated; instead it was to be a matter of business, a contract between them by which he provided her with a name, a place in the world, an occupation and a future; and in return she gave him her assistance – a sharp eye, a steady hand, a quick understanding – in the Drawing Office; and also served as his housekeeper in the apartments below and, when necessary, as his nurse.

  She was asleep, but she woke to the sound of her husband stirring restlessly beside her. Then came the rattle of curtain rings as he drew back the bed curtains, followed by his increasingly noisy attempts to find the tinderbox and the candle. When he knocked the tinderbox to the floor, she gave up the pretence of sleep, climbed shivering from the bed and lit the candle for him.

  The wavering flame lit up his face, a pale arrangement of sharp edges and shadowy hollows topped by a nightcap that had slipped to a misleadingly jaunty angle. She hoped he would leave her to sleep and go to pray or draw in his closet. Instead—

  ‘Come,’ he said, beckoning her. ‘Lie beside me.’

  They lay on their backs for a moment, neither of them moving. By the light of the candle, Cat watched the shadows shifting on the walls and listened to the rasp of her husband’s breathing. She heard a rustling and felt the bedclothes move. His hand tugged up her shift. Grunting with effort, he rolled his angular body on top of her.

  What followed was a humiliation for them both, albeit in different ways, just as it had been last time. Desire outran performance. When at last he rolled off her, he was trembling.

  ‘You are an unnatural wife,’ he said to her. ‘You blight a man’s powers with your cursed coldness.’

  She did not reply, knowing from experience that any word of hers would merely nourish his anger.

  ‘Why can’t you be like Mistress Cromwell?’ he whispered. ‘I warrant that when she finds a husband she will treat him as a husband deserves. There’s a lady you should study to imitate. Though God knows you would be an imperfect copy whatever you did.’

  The mazer scourer whom Hakesby had mentioned to Richard Cromwell was called Ezra Reeves. As luck would have it, it was not until the end of the month that Hakesby was able to meet him. They fixed on the back room of an alehouse near the Tower. The place was much used by the labourers clearing the ruins. It was three or four miles from Whitehall, so neither Hakesby nor Reeves was likely to be recognized.

  The day appointed was Saturday, 29 February. It was cold and grey, with flurries of wind gusting round the corners of buildings and making men’s cloaks bulge and writhe like living creatures. With the wind came bursts of rain, spattering and squalling.

  In the late afternoon, Hakesby and Cat took a hackney from Henrietta Street. He had been reluctant to bring her, but the palsy was unpredictable in its manifestations. Though at present he was unusually vigorous, almost his old self, this happy state might vanish without warning. If the shaking grew worse when he was away from home, he would not be able to manage without help.

  ‘I can hardly take Brennan to assist me on this business,’ he said. ‘Besides, you’ve quite a good head on your shoulders for a woman. You might think of something I’ve missed. But don’t speak unless I say so.’

  It was in its way a compliment, Cat thought, albeit a backhanded one. Compliments of any sort from her husband were rare since their marriage. Was it because they were married or was it because his illness had made him selfish? Whatever the reason, he had turned in on himself like an ingrown toenail.

  Cat herself felt sullen and out of sorts. And she thought Hakesby worse than foolish for agreeing to help Richard Cromwell at his own expense of time and money, purely for the sake of old loyalties and Elizabeth Cromwell’s smiles. She had tried to dissuade him time and again, but with an old man’s obstinacy he would not be shifted. Perhaps the palsy was enflaming his brain as well as weakening his body. Hakesby had convinced himself that it was no more than his duty, and that there was no danger to either of them. But if the authorities got wind of this affair with the Cromwells, she shuddered to think of the consequences.

  Reeves was already waiting. He was sitting in a booth by a window overlooking the yard at the back. Before she even saw him, Cat was aware of his smell. It surrounded him like a miasma. She was used to foul smells – London stank, from one end to the other – but this was something different.

  He rose when he saw the Hakesbys approaching through the crowd. Their progress was slow because Hakesby shuffled along, supported by a stick on one side and Cat on the other.

  Reeves made a clumsy attempt at a bow. He was a small, hunched man with shoulders that seemed too heavy for the rest of his body. ‘Mr Hakesby, sir.’ His eyes settled on Cat, and he looked disconcerted, if not suspicious. ‘And …?’

  ‘My wife,’ Hakesby said, lowering himself by degrees on to the bench. ‘I allow her to assist me a little in my work. We ordered a jug of ale as we came in.’

  Cat sat down on the other side of her husband and tried to mask her nostrils with the collar of her cloak. There was nothing visibly foul about Reeves. His face looked passably clean, and so was his shabby brown suit. Perhaps the smell clung to his hair. Or perhaps it had become so much part of him that it oozed through the pores of his skin.

  ‘How have you been since we last met?’ Hakesby asked.

  ‘In truth I’m much changed, sir, and not for the better.�
� His mouth was small with thin lips that barely moved when he was speaking. ‘Like this unhappy country of ours.’

  ‘We are none of us what we were ten years ago.’

  ‘No, no – that I can bear, as all men must.’ Reeves paused as the waiting woman brought their ale. He watched greedily as she poured. He drank deep, then wiped his mouth on the trailing cuff of his shirt. ‘I was the foreman when you knew me before, sir. Do you recall? All the palace sewers west of King Street were my responsibility, as well as most of those in Scotland Yard.’

  Hakesby nodded. ‘Yes – of course.’

  Reeves ignored the answer. Like many people with a grievance, he wanted to tell the world everything about it, irrespective whether they already knew. The foreman’s role, he said, included that of allocating men to the work gangs that cleaned the sewers of Whitehall and Scotland Yard, and advising on the necessary repairs and who should be employed to do them. A foreman could hire a man one day and discharge him the next, as the whim took him. A foreman could decide to clear one blockage before another. Naturally, therefore, a foreman received a steady diet of presents and services from those who wished to oblige him. As was right and proper and hallowed by the custom of the ages.

  ‘And the cream of it was, sir, I had the pick of what the day’s work turned up. My scourers always found something in the mazers.’ He plucked at Hakesby’s sleeve and lowered his voice as if communicating an important secret, ‘It’s beyond belief, what people let fall into their privy, whether they mean to or not. Why, sir, I’ve seen everything from diamond rings to dead babies.’