The Last Protector Page 7

  He must have known that time was on his side. Parliament was due to reopen in little more than a fortnight, on 6 February, and the King needed all the support he could get, including Buckingham’s, if he was to have the money he needed from the Lords and Commons, let alone the other bills he wanted passed. One of them, the Comprehension Bill, was a proposal to allow Dissenters freedom of worship, which was of particular interest to the Duke. He had cultivated the Dissenters, many of whom were both wealthy and influential.

  Meanwhile, Williamson received daily reports from Arundel House. On the Tuesday morning after my visit, he sent me back there to enquire in person. This time, I was not admitted to Lord Shrewsbury’s bedchamber. Instead, Mr Weld came down to speak to me.

  ‘There’s nothing of consequence to tell you, sir,’ he told me. ‘My lord was given the pigeons last night. He’s no worse this morning, which must be accounted a gain, but no better. His doctors say that the pigeons take a day or two to have their beneficial effect. In the meantime, they have prescribed perfect quiet.’

  Two days later, I called again. On this occasion the news was better. Lord Shrewsbury’s fever had diminished, and his physicians were cautiously optimistic about his prognosis; Mr Weld told me that they attributed this to the prompt application of the dead pigeons. He was still very weak, but it was a sign of their optimism that his case had been left to the management of a single chirurgeon.

  ‘Pity,’ Williamson muttered when he heard the news. ‘If my lord had died, Buckingham would have found it hard to wriggle out of a charge of murder.’

  On the 27 January, when Shrewsbury was considered out of danger, the King sent him a royal pardon for accidentally causing Lieutenant Jenkins’ death; he was clearly anxious that the Earl’s enemies should have no legal means of attacking him now his health was improving. More controversially, the King also pardoned Buckingham and his seconds. He did this by warrants authorized by his own signature alone, rather than following the usual procedure of issuing pardons through the Lord Privy Seal, which might not have been so easy for him, or so swift. He tried to smudge the bad impression this made in the City by appointing a committee of his Council to suppress duelling. But everyone knew that the committee had no power to change anything. You could no more stop gentlemen fighting each other than you could stop rain falling from the sky.

  The business was most irregular, Mr Williamson told me, shaking his head, and no good would come of it. After all, none of the parties had been charged for their part in the duel, let alone sentenced, so how could they be pardoned for something they had not been convicted of? Williamson was a man who liked matters to be arranged according to form and precedent. His irritation made him unusually communicative.

  ‘The King told the council that he issued the pardons because of the “eminent services” done by the survivors of this bloody affair.’ Williamson shook his head. ‘“Eminent services”! It’s but a fig leaf, Marwood, and it will convince no one. My Lord Arlington says Buckingham sneaked like a thief into the Duke of Albemarle’s lodgings to receive his pardon.’

  Thursday, 30 January was the anniversary of the late king’s execution on the scaffold in Whitehall, and therefore a solemn fast day for all of us. But on the following day, Lord Arlington told Williamson that Buckingham’s name had been added to the Select Committee for Foreign Affairs, which met weekly on Mondays to deal with the most important and most delicate matters of policy. The committee formed the inner circle of government, and Williamson was predictably furious at the news – which was why he let it slip to me, for the matter was meant to be confidential.

  ‘The King could hardly have chosen a more effective way to show his support of the Duke. And it flies in the face of Lord Arlington’s advice.’

  Two days later, on Sunday morning, Mr Williamson summoned me to Whitehall; he was dining with Lord Shrewsbury’s gentleman, Mr Weld, at midday, and he said it might be useful for me to join them as I had already met him.

  I was early. Mr Williamson was attending the service in the Chapel Royal. While I waited for him, I paced up and down the Matted Gallery, where we were also to meet Mr Weld.

  The doors to the King’s apartments opened, and a group of gentlemen emerged, talking among themselves. In their centre was the Duke of Buckingham, strolling arm-in-arm with Sir Charles Sedley, and laughing at something the latter had said. He seemed to have not a care in the world.

  I drew back into the nearest window embrasure. But I was too late. Buckingham had seen me. He paused in his progress along the gallery, and his friends did the same, for he was clearly their leader. He pointed a beringed finger in my direction.

  ‘Charles,’ he said loudly. ‘Mark that fellow there, the one with the scars on his face. He’s a worm, you know, Williamson’s tame worm. Don’t hesitate to trample him underfoot if he gets in your way.’

  The gentlemen around him laughed, or rather sniggered. I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. For a moment, Buckingham stared down at me, making the most of his great height. With his golden hair, his rich clothing and his well-marked features, he looked more kingly than the King himself.

  I willed myself to hold his gaze without flinching. At last he walked on with his friends.

  ‘The worm’s father was a traitor and a fanatic,’ I heard him say in a carrying voice. ‘His name is Marwood. But I hereby baptize him Marworm.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Solomon House

  Monday, 3 – Wednesday, 5 February 1668

  YESTERDAY, SUNDAY, WAS full of church bells, so this must be Monday, mumbleday.

  Master mumbles curses, better than kicks, as they go down, down, down into the rat-filled dark. Master first, lantern swinging in one hand, pole with hook in the other. In his belt the axe.

  Ferrus behind Master, carrying the big bag with the brushes and more poles. The shovel strapped on his back. Up comes the smell and the rustling to meet them.

  A rat runs over Master’s boot and then up the steps and between Ferrus’s legs. Windy likes rats but they don’t like him. Windy takes them in his jaws and waves them in the air until they are dead.

  Near to the foot of the steps, Master stands aside, pressing his back against the wall. He raises the lantern to shoulder height and waves the pole. Ferrus passes him.

  Down here, Ferrus goes first. Always. Scribble-scrabble. Worm wriggle. Fill the bucket, pass it back.

  Sodden, stinking heap fills the sewer. Blocking the run. Sometimes servants throw the ashes into the privy. Stuck. Ferrus stuck. Shovel stuck.

  Ferrus bends this way and that. Ferrus wriggles.

  Master swearing and shouting. Oh bad.

  Still stuck.

  Pain in the arse. Oh, Master uses pole, the pointy end that hurts. Ferrus squeals and thrashes and scribble-scrabbles.

  A sucking, stinky noise.

  Ferrus is free.

  As day succeeded day, and one week was followed by the next, no letter came from the house in Hatton Garden, and there was no attempt to arrange another meeting. Cat began to hope that they had seen the last of Elizabeth Cromwell and the man introduced as Mr Cranmore.

  Since their visit to Mistress Dalton’s house, Cat tried more than once to sound out her husband about Elizabeth’s curious interest in the plans of the Cockpit that Hakesby had made during the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. But he would not discuss it with her. It was not that he denied her point-blank, or ordered her to be silent as a husband had a perfect right to do. He did not swear at her or throw his pen at her. He simply ignored her questions, or deflected them, or found it imperative to shuffle off and do something else.

  What made it so much more difficult was the delicate matter of Mr Cranmore and his habit of rubbing at the table with his fingertip when he was deep in thought. Children noticed such peculiarities; and because their infant memories had as yet acquired so little to fill them, they tended to remember them. As a child, Cat, sitting at the bottom of the table with Elizabeth, had stared at Richard
Cromwell, Elizabeth’s father, at the head: she had noticed the trick he had with his fingertip; she had wondered at it, with a child’s niggling curiosity, and she had remembered it.

  Once the bridge had been thrown across the gap between the past and the present, the rest followed. How better to disguise yourself than with thick tinted glasses and a beard, with the movements of age and infirmity, and with ashes rubbed into your hair to make it greyer than it was. The appearance of Mr Cranmore fitted neatly over her memory of Richard Cromwell: the late Lord Protector of England reduced to playing the part of a doddering, prematurely old man who could hardly see the plate before him.

  Why had Cromwell crept back to England in disguise, where he could be arrested at any time for debt, if not for treason? What did he really want from Mr Hakesby? The answers to the questions didn’t matter in themselves, not to Cat. Sometimes it was better not to know.

  All that really mattered was keeping her husband away from the Protector and his daughter. Hakesby had grown so erratic in his behaviour of late, so obstinate in pursuing his freaks and fancies, that there was no knowing what he might do if the whim took him.

  Until their marriage, Cat had not realized that there was a devious side to her husband.

  He worked by stealth. A fortnight after the Hatton Garden dinner, she woke in the middle of the night and found herself alone in bed. She heard sounds of movement above her head, up in the attic where the Drawing Office was. There were footsteps and what sounded like the dragging of something across the floor, not in the main office but in the closet next to it.

  She twitched aside the bed curtain. The chamber was in darkness. There was a draught, which meant that the door to the landing was ajar.

  She waited. After a while, Hakesby came slowly down the stairs and into the bedchamber. Breathing heavily, he shuffled across the floor. Keys chinked as he replaced them on the hook on the bedpost. He was a man who liked keys and locks.

  He pushed aside the curtain and clambered into bed. As he raised the covers, cold air eddied around Cat’s body. She pretended to be asleep, forcing herself to breathe slowly and regularly. Her husband placed his hands on her thigh: not from lust, she knew, but in the hope of stealing her warmth. His old blood ran thin and slow.

  In the morning Cat rose early and went upstairs, her slippered feet making little noise. It was still dark but that mattered not; she knew her way blindfold in the Drawing Office. She found a candle and a tinder box on the shelf on the left of the door. After she had fumbled with flint and steel, the big room filled with a wavering yellow light. It spread like liquid towards the corners where the shadows lay. She tiptoed into the office closet, which was used for storage. It also contained the commode reserved for Mr Hakesby’s use. He had two commodes – one here, the other on the floor below in the private lodging.

  She crouched and examined the floor. The commode was not at its usual angle to the window. Two of the boxes stacked behind it were out of line. When she looked closely, she saw the dust on their lids had been disturbed. They were old boxes, clumsily made but strong, each bound with iron hoops and each locked. She tried to open them, but the lids didn’t move.

  It was clear enough what her husband had been doing, Cat thought, but not whether he had found what he was looking for. Shivering, she wrapped her bedgown around her and considered. Suppose her husband had been looking for the Cockpit plans, and suppose he had found them, what would he have done with them?

  To her horror, she heard the creak of the door below, followed by slow steps on the stairs. She stood up quickly and tiptoed into the main room, latching the closet door behind her. The door from the landing place opened, and the stooped figure of her husband, candle in hand, filled the doorway.

  ‘You’ve risen early,’ he said.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  Hakesby looked at her and, old and tremulous as he was, he was formidable. ‘No. Nor I. Make up the fire, will you, and warm some milk.’

  She turned to obey. She knelt by the hearth and riddled the ash, exposing the glowing coals. She took a handful of wood shavings from the pot by the coal scuttle and threw them on the fire. She blew until the shavings caught fire, and then added kindling, frugally, piece by piece. The porter’s boy was supposed to bring up the kindling with the coal, but he never brought enough.

  Pale flames rose, hesitantly at first, but rapidly gathering strength. One day, Cat thought, my husband will be dead and in his grave. Then she felt guilty for allowing to herself to think of such a thing.

  ‘Were you looking for the Cockpit plans?’ her husband said.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Why? They are nothing to do with you.’

  She picked up the tongs and placed a small piece of coal on to the kindling. ‘I think a Cromwell is dangerous company for people such as us. Any Cromwell. Even Elizabeth.’ She dared not tell him about the real identity of Mr Cranmore. ‘I don’t trust her.’

  ‘I am master in my house, and God has placed you under me. You owe me obedience, not questions.’

  Cat picked up another piece of coal and dropped it into the fire.

  ‘The boy brought me a letter when you were ordering our dinner yesterday,’ Hakesby said. ‘Mistress Cromwell will call here on Wednesday morning at eleven o’clock.’

  She turned her head. He was frowning at her.

  ‘We will receive her privately in the parlour,’ he said. ‘Make the place fit to receive her.’

  The following day, the first Tuesday in February, another letter arrived, this one from Mr Howard at Arundel House. Dr Wren had written to him, and Mr Howard was graciously pleased to permit Mr Hakesby to make a preliminary survey of the plot of ground designated for the Royal Society’s Solomon House. The steward would give orders that he was to be admitted.

  ‘Brennan could go in your place if you wish, sir,’ Cat said, thinking of the lost hours of work if they all went, particularly if her husband exhausted himself at Arundel House.

  ‘I’m quite well enough to go,’ Hakesby snapped. He had been particularly irritable with her since their encounter in his closet in the early hours of yesterday morning. ‘It’s of great importance to see the site oneself if one is to design a building for it.’

  ‘But it’s raining. If you wish, I could accompany Brennan myself.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? I shall go in person. Besides, Mr Howard’s letter mentions me by name. He will no doubt be expecting me to be there.’

  In the end, all three of them went to Arundel House that morning, despite the rain. At least Hakesby’s health was in general better than it had been. The improvement, Cat suspected, had coincided with his excitement over their visit to Mistress Dalton’s; she hoped it would last.

  Now his imagination had been seized by the Solomon House scheme. Wren had talked of designing a building uniquely adapted to the scientific enquiries of the Society, the like of which would astonish the whole of Europe. Add to that its location in the garden of one of the great houses of London, Hakesby said, and the prestige that would accrue from being associated with the project would lead to a flood of commissions. It would indeed be exciting, Cat thought, if it ever came to anything. But she could not help feeling, not for the first time, that Dr Wren was taking advantage of her husband’s good nature.

  At the gate of Arundel House, the porter asked them to wait while he sent word to the steward.

  The steward kept them waiting, and then sent an assistant, a short, round man whose eyes seemed perpetually wide with surprise. ‘Mr Hakesby?’ His eyes moved from Hakesby to Brennan, and then to Cat. He frowned, as if surprised by the sight of a woman in the party. ‘My master told me to expect you. Before we go any further, I must ask you not to make any disturbance as you go about your job.’

  Mr Hakesby drew himself up to his full height. ‘Sir, I am not accustomed to creating a disturbance.’

  ‘My Lord Shrewsbury is lying gravely ill here. He grows better, day by day, God be thanked, but Mr Howar
d is anxious that there should be no unseemly din or sudden racket.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Cat said, forcing herself to smile at him.

  The man ignored her. ‘And another thing. The part of the garden you will visit has been enclosed with a fence, and you will need this key for its gate. Pray bring it to the steward’s office when you leave.’ He pointed across the courtyard to a modern lodging on its eastern side. ‘Through the door and to the left.’

  He turned to a servant he had brought with him. ‘Take Mr Hakesby and his party to the garden door.’ He glanced back at Hakesby. ‘Pray do your work as quickly as possible.’

  The servant led them with a fine air of disdain out of the entrance quadrangle and through a courtyard to the west. Beyond it lay the site that was to be measured. The main gardens were to the south of the mansion, along the banks of the Thames, but the plot for the Royal Society was at the north-west corner of the house and set upon a terrace. Its western boundary was the high wall separating the Arundel property from the lane running from the Strand down to the river, where there was a public landing place by the water tower.

  The servant unlocked the door in the paling, gave Hakesby the key, and left them. The three of them went into the enclosure. Once part of a formal garden, the area had clearly been neglected for some years. The bushes had grown to wild and tangled shapes, and the paths were strewn with muddy puddles and unkempt with last year’s weeds. On the far side was a stone wall topped with spikes.

  Hakesby looked about him. ‘I see why they have chosen this place,’ he said. ‘It’s well away from the river, and I doubt they’ve done much with it for years. Why, it’s little better than a parcel of waste ground.’

  ‘It’s smaller than I expected,’ Cat said.

  ‘I’m sure we can contrive something, nonetheless.’ He gave her a smile that took her by surprise and turned to stare at the boundary wall. ‘We could have a separate access by the lane, perhaps, for the Royal Society to come and go. That way they would avoid inconveniencing the Howards and their household.’