The Last Protector Page 16

  He bowed. ‘This is a surprise, madam.’

  ‘I wish I could have avoided it,’ Cat said. ‘For my sake as well as yours.’

  Their eyes met. She realized belatedly that her words must have sounded hostile rather than a simple statement of fact.

  ‘Then you’ll want to be brief,’ he said. ‘Pray sit down.’ He added, with cold formality, ‘How may I serve you?’

  She sat down in the elbow chair by the fireplace. ‘The only thing I want,’ she said, ‘is a miracle.’

  She felt her eyes filling with tears, shameful and unexpected, as the hopelessness of her predicament washed over her. She turned her head away and stared into the fire. She would not give way to tears in front of him or in front of any man if she could help it. But especially not in front of Marwood.

  After a moment, he said, ‘I can’t help you there.’

  There was something in his tone that made her wonder if he was laughing at her. She turned, ready to snap at him.

  ‘What is it?’ he said gently. ‘I’ll help you if I can. You know that. Even if I can’t contrive a miracle.’

  ‘Forgive me. I hardly know what I’m saying.’

  He sat down opposite her, gathering the folds of his gown around him. She noticed that his fingers were as ink-stained as a schoolboy’s. He looked different without a wig – leaner, younger and more vulnerable.

  ‘It’s those men you warned me about. The Bishop and his servant.’ She rubbed her forehead, where the ghost of a headache was struggling to materialize. ‘I can’t remember their names.’

  Marwood’s features sharpened, as if an invisible hand had tightened the skin that covered them. ‘Mr Veal and Roger Durrell. What of them? You said you saw Durrell in Henrietta Street when you came back from Arundel House. Have you seen him again?’

  ‘No. This is different. Worse.’

  She paused, her mind struggling to grasp the full implications of the choice before her. She could tell Marwood nothing important without betraying the presence of Richard Cromwell in London, and without revealing the extent of her husband’s involvement with the former Protector. In the end, it came down to a question of trust. Would Marwood keep her confidence? Or would he pass on the intelligence she gave him to his masters, perhaps disguising his self-interest, even to himself, by arguing that he owed a higher duty to the King than he did to his friendship with Cat?

  No. Friendship was the wrong word. Whatever bound Marwood and her together, she reminded herself, had nothing to do with partiality. It concerned the debt that each owed to the other. The trouble was, they had come through so many horrors together that it was no longer possible to strike a balance. The calculations had grown too mutually entangled for simple allocations of credit and debit, laid out in two neat columns, as she did in Mr Hakesby’s account book. In fact, perhaps she and Marwood would never—

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She shook her head, not knowing what she would say if she tried to answer him in words.

  Marwood leaned forward in his chair. ‘We’ve kept each other’s secrets before. If this is a secret, and if you decide to tell me it, then I will keep your confidence.’ He hesitated. ‘As you keep mine.’

  It was the unexpected gentleness of his voice that tipped the balance. ‘Richard Cromwell’s in London.’ She saw alarm transform his face. She rushed on. ‘He wants my husband to help him retrieve some valuables, which are concealed somewhere in the Cockpit at Whitehall. Unfortunately Mr Veal and his servant have discovered that there is a connection between them, though not the reason for it – these valuables, I mean. And now the Duke of Buckingham has drawn the Protector – the late Protector, that is – into some scheme of his own, I know not what. Veal and Durrell visit him at the place where he stays in London.’

  She ran out of breath and stopped. Marwood rose to his feet and fetched a bottle and two glasses from a cupboard. He poured the wine and handed her a glass.

  ‘How long has the Protector been in England?’ he asked.

  ‘At least two months.’

  ‘Can’t Mr Hakesby understand the danger he’s in? And you, as his wife? It’s playing with fire. You must talk to him.’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’ Cat said, feeling rage flaring inside her. ‘What do you take me for? A fool?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Never that. Drink your wine.’

  The rage subsided as quickly as it had come. She drank her wine, as he did. It was madeira, sweet and strong, and it warmed her. He refilled their glasses and sat down again.

  ‘I wish to God—’ She broke off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. It doesn’t matter.’ It did matter: she wished to God that she hadn’t married Hakesby, for all the security he brought her, for the price was higher than she had thought it would be. But she couldn’t admit that to Marwood.

  He said, ‘Why is Mr Hakesby acting so unwisely?’

  ‘Because he has a fondness for the old days.’

  ‘He’s not alone in that.’

  ‘Meeting Richard Cromwell has brought it on, and perhaps my husband’s sickness makes him less able to judge the folly of his actions. The worse his ague grows, the less I can reason with him. Perhaps age makes him foolish as well. He almost venerates Mr Cromwell for the sake of the name he bears.’

  ‘They call him Tumbledown Dick,’ Marwood said. ‘Or Queen Dick. Richard is no Oliver.’

  ‘Indeed, sir, they give him those names, but he doesn’t altogether deserve them. He never sought to be Protector after Oliver died.’ Cat glanced at Marwood. ‘Mr Cromwell is not a bad man, I think, nor an ambitious one. But he is perhaps weak. I – I used to be acquainted with his daughter Elizabeth when I was a child, and I saw something of him then. I think his need for money clouds his judgement.’

  ‘How did the Bishop find him out?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But Cromwell visited my husband with his daughter last month. And if Durrell or someone was outside the house, they might have recognized him. He tries to disguise his appearance, but it might not fool one who knew him well.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Like a country gentleman come to town. He has an old-fashioned beard in need of barbering and in public he wears coloured spectacles for a disguise.’

  ‘Spectacles?’ Marwood said sharply.

  ‘Yes. Green ones.’

  He looked away from her and toyed with his wine glass. After a moment he said: ‘So they have linked you and Hakesby to me on the one hand, and to the Cromwells on the other? And the Duke of Buckingham knows all?’

  ‘Yes. And I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry – you’re drawn into it, because of me.’

  ‘If you wanted, I could let it be known privately – to Mr Williamson, say, or even Mr Chiffinch – that Richard Cromwell is in London, and where to find him.’

  ‘How would that serve? If they take him up and question him, he will implicate us all. And if he doesn’t, then his daughter will. And God knows what Buckingham and his creatures would do to us.’

  ‘If the Duke cannot have what he wants through the King,’ Marwood said slowly, ‘perhaps he thinks he might have it through Cromwell.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘I hardly know myself. It’s merely that I caught a glimpse of something, a possibility …’

  ‘Promise you won’t tell anyone that he is here. On your oath. Promise me.’

  ‘But it’s the wisest thing to do. Let me tell Mr Williamson that you came to me, asking me to pass on a message to him; he would see it as the clearest proof of your loyalty to the King.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t do that. If you do it will drag us all down.’

  Neither of them spoke for a full minute. I’ve ruined everything, she thought, to save myself and Hakesby.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. Then he threw a question at her that took her entirely by surprise. ‘
Tell me, do the words dog and bitch mean anything to you?’

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve heard the phrase once or twice. It’s something to do with Buckingham.’

  ‘They mean nothing,’ she said. ‘Apart from what they say. A dog and a bitch.’

  Marwood shrugged. ‘The Duke nurses grudges. I’ve already given him reason not to like me. He won’t care for you either if he learns that it was you who betrayed whatever scheme he has.’

  ‘And I—’ She stopped.

  ‘What?’

  Their eyes met. ‘I am always the regicide’s daughter. You know that.’

  Neither of them spoke. The regicides would never be forgotten or forgiven while there was a Stuart on the throne. And their children still shared by association some of their guilt. Suspicion clung to them like a bad smell.

  The coals settled in the grate. The light from the window was beginning to fade. Nothing had been settled, and Cat’s headache had grown worse. Marwood had failed to solve the difficulties that threatened them all. She felt comforted nonetheless. At least there were no secrets here. In its way, that was a modest miracle.

  Half an hour later, Cat rose to go. ‘Mr Hakesby will be worried,’ she said. Or rather, she thought, he will say he has been inconvenienced by my absence, even if it is not true, and that will make him angry again.

  ‘When will I see you?’ Marwood said. ‘I’d better not show myself at Henrietta Street.’

  She blinked, surprised by the directness of his question. She answered him equally directly. ‘I don’t know. If they’re watching me, it won’t be safe to meet. Besides, my time’s not my own.’

  ‘It’s your husband’s.’

  She bowed her head. She was aware that something had happened between them during this last hour, some shift in their relationship to one another that had nothing to do with words. She felt herself strangely reluctant even to think about it. There was nothing improper, of course, nothing to be ashamed of. It was merely that their interests marched together in this predicament, as their interests had marched together on other occasions.

  ‘I will try to send word,’ Cat said. ‘Though God knows how.’

  ‘There must be a way. Shall I send Stephen to you?’

  ‘No. They probably know you have a blackamoor here.’ She hesitated. ‘But I go to the cook shop in Bedford Street on most mornings to command our dinner. It’s next door to the Fleece.’

  ‘Is there someone there who would hold a letter for us, if need be?’

  ‘No one I could trust. I’m usually there around nine o’clock. Meeting there could be dangerous too. But I can’t think of anywhere else.’

  ‘If Buckingham’s men are watching your house,’ Marwood said, ‘they might not follow you to the cook shop. Not if it’s somewhere you go to every day.’

  ‘Who knows?’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘I’m frightened of my own shadow these days.’ She glanced out of the window, estimating the passage of time by the alteration in the light. ‘I must go. The longer I leave it, the worse it will be.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you.’

  ‘You will not. What are you thinking of? The less we’re seen in company with one another the better.’

  The rain had slackened, and she made good time. In Henrietta Street, near the gate to the churchyard, a knot of men surrounded the oyster stall that often stood there. She glanced towards them as she reached the door of the sign of the Rose. One of the men was Roger Durrell. He stared across the road, making no attempt to hide his interest in her.

  Cat hammered on the door. Pheebs opened it at once, and she hurried into the house.

  ‘There’s a man outside by the oyster stall,’ she said as he was about to close the door. ‘That gross fellow with the sword. Can you see him?’

  ‘Aye, mistress,’ the porter said, his face as stolid as a pudding.

  ‘Yes. Mark him well, then shut the door.’ She waited until he had obeyed. ‘Have you seen him before?’

  ‘Not that I can call to mind.’

  ‘Tell me at once if you see him again. Here or anywhere else. And never admit him to the house. Do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, mistress.’

  Pheebs accepted the shilling she gave him with a bow. She felt his eyes following her as she climbed the stairs.

  On the floor below the Drawing Office, she hesitated at the parlour door. Her husband was speaking inside, his voice at a higher pitch than usual, as it often was when something excited him. She opened the door and went in. Hakesby was sitting at the table. He was looking much more cheerful than he had been earlier today.

  A tall man rose from his chair. He bowed awkwardly to her. He was very thin, and he wore a long brown coat.

  ‘Allow me to present my wife, sir,’ Hakesby said. ‘My dear, this is a bosom friend of Mr Cranmore. Pray welcome Mr Veal to our house.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dog and Bitch Yard

  Sunday, 15 – Wednesday, 18 March 1668

  BELLS. BANG, BING, bang. They hurt inside. Sunday bells, Sunday bells.

  Peace, says Ferrus, peace, and bells are quiet. He waits. I am flat as a shadow, he thinks. I bend like a shadow.

  After servants’ dinner, servants sleep. Cook bars the door from the scullery to the kitchen. But there’s a hatch above the stone sink. It is covered with a wooden shutter with no bolt. The opening is small. Windy’s head would not pass through it, even if the head could be cut from the body.

  But Ferrus is clever. He bends like a shadow. His long, long arms reach the pans waiting on the other side. Pans to be licked and scraped and sucked.

  Ferrus likes Sundays.

  After Cat had left me, I sat for an hour or more in the parlour, huddled beside the fire while picking over the bones of our conversation. It had unsettled me at the time, and it unsettled me even more in retrospect. I had never seen Cat looking so worried. I had come to take her strength of character for granted, but this afternoon I had glimpsed another side. It made me strangely fearful for her. Poor, deluded Hakesby was no use to her. She would find no help from that quarter.

  In all probability, Richard Cromwell had been the man I had seen beside Veal during Buckingham’s day of penitence at Wallingford House. The green spectacles and the unkempt beard made it a near certainty. That explained Veal’s determination to get rid of me as soon as possible. The day of penitence had been the seventh of February, more than five weeks ago. Cromwell must have come within Buckingham’s orbit before then.

  I had given Cat my word that her secrets would be safe with me. But the more I thought about her situation – and perhaps mine – the more hopeless it seemed. What could either of us hope to achieve in such an affair, which touched on matters of state, and indeed on the safety of the kingdom itself?

  Richard Cromwell was little trouble to the government as long as he was living obscurely in another country, without money or friends. Mr Williamson kept a file on him and his movements, though I had never seen it. I heard from a friend in Lord Arlington’s office that the former Protector had moved from the Low Countries to Switzerland, and then to Italy, before settling for the last year or so in France. I doubted that he was considered dangerous enough to require a permanent watch to be kept on him, so long as he did nothing to attract attention to himself. His debts kept him out of England, where his creditors were.

  Once on this side of the Channel, however, Cromwell could not so easily be discounted. As a lodestone draws nails towards it by no desire of its own, so might Richard Cromwell attract the discontented men of this kingdom to unite around him.

  As Mr Williamson’s clerk, I was privy to much of the intelligence that came across his desk, both from his network of spies and informers and from the private newsletters he received from the provinces. The King and his government were increasingly unpopular. The Restoration of the monarchy eight years earlier had been met with widespread joy, but that had been dissipated. The murmurs of dissent were growing
ever louder.

  Add to that our humiliating defeat by the Dutch last year, and the government’s perennial lack of money. Parliament held the purse strings but, despite Buckingham’s promises, the Lords and Commons seemed incapable of agreeing among themselves, let alone with each other, or with the King and his ministers. The ministers were also squabbling among themselves, as I knew to my cost from Arlington’s manoeuvres against the Duke of Buckingham. The licentiousness and extravagance of Whitehall caused ill feeling in the City and throughout the entire country.

  If Richard Cromwell were in England, and secure under Buckingham’s protection, the effects would be unpredictable. He might even prove to be the single trump card in this pack of fools and rogues. Men called him Tumbledown Dick and sneered at his weakness. But no one had ever accused him of corruption; and even his weakness had been the fault of his circumstances, not of himself.

  Above all, he was a Cromwell. His father had been a godly man, whose armies had made England feared and respected across Europe. There were those who remembered only that, and forgot that Oliver had also been a tyrant, more ruthless and more absolute in his rule than the king he had replaced.

  Buckingham had the money and the desire for power and glory. He had influence in the country and the court. He had many supporters in the City and among the Protestants who hated the papists that flourished at Whitehall. With Cromwell as his ally – even as his titular leader – Buckingham’s vaulting ambition could dangle the promise of a renewed Commonwealth before the people of England. A few knaves, a pocketful of gold and a slogan or two could overturn the kingdom.

  And bring the certainty of another civil war.

  On Monday, there was a strange atmosphere in the office. People whispered in corners, and little work was done.

  Mr Williamson seemed particularly preoccupied. He sent me over to Arundel House in the morning, to enquire how my Lord Shrewsbury was doing. This was a matter of form, I suspected – it was common knowledge that the Earl was much better – but Mr Williamson clearly thought it politic to show his concern for Lord Arlington’s ally.