The Last Protector Page 9

  Cromwell smiled down at her. ‘Nowadays, I want nothing more than my family and the means to live quietly as a gentleman in modest comfort. Indeed, that’s what I’ve always wanted.’

  Cat stared at him, trying to combine what she saw with the glimpses of Elizabeth’s father that she recalled from childhood. It wasn’t easy. The beard and moustache were partly responsible for that, together with the passage of time. The wrinkles and the grey hair were real enough. But she fancied that there was a slight resemblance to Oliver, Richard Cromwell’s father, in the nose and the set of the mouth.

  ‘I saw you at Whitehall in the old days, sir,’ Hakesby said. ‘And sometimes in the City. You wouldn’t remember me.’

  Cromwell smiled at him. ‘You know the saying, Mr Hakesby. More know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows. The loss is mine.’

  It was a courteous speech. Cat almost warmed to the man. She liked the fact that he had not tried to conceal his identity from them any longer. But the danger his presence might cause them struck her afresh. Moreover, there was no reason to assume that he was trustworthy. The Cromwells’ behaviour had been too devious to encourage trust.

  Then, with a speed that dizzied her, she grasped the implications of their visit. ‘What is this, sir – this meeting that you and Elizabeth have contrived? That’s what you did, isn’t it? You desired to meet my husband. You found out where we lived. You or Elizabeth discovered that he was married, and that I was his wife. And Elizabeth would have told you that she and I had been playmates in the old days, when you knew my father. And—’

  ‘Catherine!’ Hakesby interrupted. ‘You must not speak so rudely to Mr Cromwell. It is not fitting.’

  ‘Nor is this ploy of theirs, sir,’ she snapped. She turned back to Cromwell. ‘And so you found out where we lived and you set Elizabeth to work. She followed me and pretended to meet me by chance in Fleet Street.’

  Cromwell had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘You are right to be angry. But the fault is mine, not Elizabeth’s. I fear that these last years have made me suspicious and over-cautious. I take no one and nothing for granted. I’m sensible that I’ve put you in a difficult position, and I’m sorry for it.’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ Hakesby said. ‘But – honoured though I am – I confess I don’t understand why you should want my acquaintance.’

  ‘The Cockpit plans,’ Cat said. ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cromwell spoke calmly but the fixity of his expression hinted at tension inside. He gestured towards the leather folder on the table at Hakesby’s elbow. ‘I assume they are there.’

  ‘Why do you want them?’ Cat said.

  He sat back in his chair. ‘If I tell you, I must trust you.’

  ‘If you honour us with your trust, sir,’ Hakesby said, ‘you will not be disappointed. You have my oath on that.’

  ‘In the past, sir, I trusted people I should not have trusted.’ He stared at Cat and shrugged. ‘But it seems I’ve no choice in the matter. Will you do me the kindness of promising this will go no further than the four of us? I give you my solemn word that this business threatens no one’s life or liberty. There’s nothing treasonable in it or in any way criminal.’

  ‘I have no doubt of it, sir,’ Hakesby said, holding out the folder to him.

  Cat snatched it from his hand.

  ‘Wife!’

  Hakesby’s face flushed with anger. He raised his hand to strike her.

  Cromwell moved between them, his hands spread wide, palms upwards: a peacemaker’s gesture. ‘Pray don’t let me be the cause of a quarrel. Let’s forget this conversation ever happened. Elizabeth and I will leave you in peace. Come, Daughter.’

  ‘No,’ Cat said. ‘Tell us why you want these plans. If I’ve no good reason to tell anyone, then I won’t.’

  ‘You will do as I say, madam,’ Hakesby said faintly.

  Cromwell smiled at them, as if nothing were amiss and they were all friends together. He sat down again and took a sip of wine. ‘My dear mother died,’ he said. ‘Did you hear?’

  Hakesby nodded. ‘Several years ago, I think?’

  ‘Yes – in the November of 1665. She had been living in retirement at my brother-in-law’s house in Northborough. She was very ill towards the end, and wracked with pain. It wasn’t just her body that sickened. Her heart did, too. She didn’t care a straw about no longer being Her Highness the Lady Protectoress. But she missed my father terribly. I believe she would have been happy with him in a farmhouse.’

  Cromwell paused and looked down at his lap. Muscles twitched at the corners of his mouth. Either he was a very fine actor, Cat thought, or he was telling the truth.

  ‘Before she died,’ he continued, ‘she called Mr White to her.’ He turned to Hakesby. ‘Did you ever meet him, sir? One of my father’s chaplains.’

  Hakesby frowned. ‘Yes … a young man. Wasn’t there some – some story about him?’

  ‘Aye – people always remember that. They said he was making sheep’s eyes at my sister Frances. She liked him well enough, but my father found out, and it would not do. He had him married off to one of Frances’s maids instead, which answered very well and killed the scandal. But White’s a good man, for all that, and sound in his religion too, and my father liked him. So did my mother, and he did not desert us when the King returned. She made Mr White the executor of her will. And, just before she died, she gave him a letter for me. By then, the poor lady was seeing visions. She thought the walls of her chamber ran with blood.’

  ‘Sir, must you say so much?’ Elizabeth said. ‘Is this wise?’

  ‘If they are to trust me, my dear,’ her father said gently, ‘I must trust them.’ He turned back to Hakesby. ‘I was in Switzerland then, but a fortnight later my wife sent a servant secretly to Mr White. My mother had given her a password for the servant to say, The walls run with blood, and White surrendered the letter to his keeping. Then it had to be smuggled out of England. It took months for it to reach me, and when I had it, I lacked the funds to do anything. Is it not ironical?’

  ‘The funds to do what?’ said Cat, who was beginning to lose patience. She was scared, which tended to make her short-tempered.

  ‘Why, to act on what my mother told me in that last letter. She knew my position – that I was crippled by debt. That was none of my own fault, by the way – these debts are the thousands of pounds I was obliged to borrow when I was Lord Protector. I didn’t need the money for my own sake, mark you, but to fulfil the duties of my position, a position I neither sought nor wanted. And when I resigned, Parliament promised me that my debts would be paid, and they granted me a pension for life as well. But then the King returned, and the old Parliament was dissolved, and there was a new Parliament that had no wish to fulfil the promises that the Commonwealth had made to me.’

  ‘But you have an estate of your own, haven’t you?’ Cat said. ‘Couldn’t you have managed with your private revenues?’

  Cromwell shook his head. ‘I have but a life interest in the estate, and no other income. The estate is much embarrassed. My family is large and needs to be supported. My creditors would pursue me to the ends of the earth if they could. That’s why I have to live in exile, rather than quietly in my own house among my own people. And the King is more than content that it should be so. I cannot trouble the peace of his kingdom if I’m on the continent. If he banished me himself, he would seem cruel and tyrannical, and he would anger those who think fondly of the old days.’

  ‘You tell us all this?’ Cat said slowly. ‘You must realize—’

  ‘That a word from Mr Hakesby or yourself could ruin me utterly? Of course. If my creditors discover I am in London, they will have me taken up for debt at once. And the King will be forced to act. So, madam, I have placed myself in the hands of you and your husband.’

  Hakesby said, ‘I would gladly serve you in any way I could, sir, for your father’s sake – and for yours.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Cromwell glanced at Cat. ‘So?’r />
  ‘This letter,’ she said. ‘What has this to do with the Cockpit?’

  ‘As your husband knows, my parents had lodgings there for the better part of four years. When my father was elevated to Lord Protector, they moved into the royal apartments at Whitehall. But part of the Cockpit was retained for their use, and it remained so in my mother’s widowhood. She had a fondness for the place. It was a little apart from all the lies and flatteries of the Court. She liked that she could walk from her garden into St James’s Park and stroll there quite unknown.’

  Cromwell has a pleasant voice, Cat thought, though perhaps he likes the sound of it too much. She cleared her throat, hoping he would take the hint and come to the point. Her husband frowned at her, but Cromwell took no apparent notice.

  ‘When the King was restored, my mother had another set of troubles. Malicious people accused her of stealing royal possessions. They professed to believe she had profited by her position.’

  ‘Poor lady,’ Hakesby said. ‘I remember. There were cruel, libellous pamphlets.’

  ‘She was accused of having them with her or of concealing them in the hope of collecting them later.’ Cromwell frowned at them. ‘Small things. Gold, jewels and the like; easily portable. It was quite baseless. A foul libel.’ He hesitated. ‘But …’

  Ah, Cat thought, I knew there would be a ‘but’. Richard Cromwell rubbed the invisible spot on the table beside him; the old habit that had betrayed his identity to her.

  ‘It’s true that my mother concealed something valuable before she left Whitehall. But it was her own, not the King’s. I must emphasize that. The times were troubled and uncertain, and she feared with good reason that it would be taken from her if she tried to carry it away with her. I’m sure she was right in that. In her last letter, she told me the whole story. She also told me where to find it. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘It?’ Cat said. ‘What is this it?’

  ‘That need not concern you, madam,’ Cromwell snapped. There was a pause. Then he smiled at her, trying to soften the bluntness of the refusal. ‘All you need to understand is that it is not a large object, and it belongs to me.’

  Hakesby tapped the leather folder. ‘And this …?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Those plans may help me find what is mine. If you would be so kind as to let me have a sight of them.’

  ‘They may not mean a great deal to you.’

  ‘Then perhaps you will be my guide. I can think of no better one.’

  Hakesby bowed his head. ‘Willingly.’

  The compliment brought spots of colour to his cheeks. He tried to unlace the fastening that secured the folder, but his fingers would not do the work required of them. Cat took it from him and undid the string. She removed the papers inside and laid them on the table. The others clustered round.

  Cromwell frowned. ‘Which way up is this? I don’t understand.’

  ‘The Cockpit is a strange place,’ Hakesby said, his voice suddenly strong and authoritative, like a preacher’s in his own pulpit. ‘Faith, sir, I believe there is nothing quite like it on this earth.’

  When he had taken too much wine of an evening, Hakesby would sometimes talk to Cat of his work and his dreams. His willingness to impart his knowledge, whatever his motive, was the quality she valued the most about him. Months ago, he had told her about the Cockpit.

  ‘Henry VIII was responsible for the whole sorry hotchpotch,’ he cried.

  Hakesby had no objection to the old King’s taking the riverside mansion of Cardinal Wolsey for himself and making it into a palace from which he could govern his realm. After all, Wolsey had been a papist, and a corrupt one at that. Whitehall’s situation was convenient for the country’s ruler, whether or not he wore a crown: it was beside the river, and conveniently placed between Westminster on the one hand, and the City and the Tower on the other.

  It was, however, by modern standards a mean and impractical group of buildings, both ugly and old-fashioned. But, Hakesby said, given money and a good architect, all that could be remedied. Inigo Jones had shown the way with the Banqueting House. Tear down everything else and rebuild, with the Banqueting House as one’s model, and one could not go far wrong.

  The Cockpit was different. It had been a problem from the start. The reason for this was King Street, the public thoroughfare running from Charing Cross to Westminster. Henry VIII could defy His Holiness the Pope and behead two wives, but he found himself unable to close King Street. The laws of his kingdom would not allow it, and nor would his subjects.

  King Street separated the main palace by the river from St James’s Park and from the pleasures of the chase. Accordingly, the King had commanded two gatehouses to be built across King Street. They served as bridges as well as gates, for they allowed him and his courtiers to pass above the roadway from his palace to his park.

  And not just to his park and his hunting. This was a king who loved sport of all kind. On the park side, on the west side of King Street, he built for himself a tiltyard for jousting, courts (both open and covered) for tennis and similar games, and a vast covered cockpit for the splendid sport of placing bets and shouting like hysterical madmen while watching two small, fierce birds rip each other to shreds. There were lodgings and gardens too, for courtiers and officials, and chambers for private assignations and entertainments. There was no method to it all. Nothing mattered except the King’s convenience, the King’s whims, and the King’s ability to raise the money needed to gratify them.

  Since then, Hakesby had told Cat more than once, the Cockpit and the muddle of surrounding buildings around it had gone from bad to worse, as had the rest of Whitehall. Successive monarchs had added this, taken away that, and generations of courtiers had come and gone, each trying to make changes for their own selfish reasons.

  The more his body and mind decayed, the more Hakesby clung to the principle of order and the desirability of good design. ‘If I were God,’ he had once told Cat on an evening when he had taken more wine than usual, ‘I should tear down the whole place, both Whitehall by the river and the Cockpit by the park. I should close that cursed road for ever and build a palace that would make the King of France weep bitter tears of envy.’

  He had begun to weep himself then.

  ‘Sir,’ Cat said. ‘You mustn’t distress yourself. It is a most glorious vision.’

  Hakesby turned his moist-eyed, shiny-nosed, tear-stained face to her. ‘But where would we find a sovereign fit for such a palace? Only God himself would be worthy of it.’

  To Mr Hakesby’s delight and Cat’s annoyance, the Cromwells dined with them. The tavern dinner, overpriced and overcooked, came and went. While they were eating, drinking and talking, the windows darkened into the early dusk of a dull day in February.

  Afterwards, the table was cleared and Hakesby called for candles. Their flickering light drew the four of them together, enclosing them, making them conspirators. At Hakesby’s nod, Cat took the plans from the folder again and laid them on the table. There were four sheets of paper. Placed together they formed a survey of the Cockpit and the surrounding buildings as far north as the Holbein Gate and the Tiltyard. Tangles of notes rioted in their margins. One sheet had greasy thumbprints on each side. Another was stained with wine. They were working plans, partly drawn in faded ink, partly in pencil; they had been intended for site work, not to impress a client.

  Given a set of plans, Hakesby was transformed. He spoke with certainty and clarity, his words weighted with decades of experience. Cat had never loved her husband as a wife should, but this was a part of him she respected so greatly that it amounted to something that strangely resembled love.

  ‘Turn it,’ he commanded her, ‘so Mr Cromwell is looking at it towards the west; he will find that easier to grasp. Do you see, sir, there is King Street, with the Privy Garden below, that is to the east. To the north – that is to your right – you see the Holbein Gate. And above – a little to the left, sir, if you please – there, mark that building, the squ
are enclosing an octagon: that is the Cockpit itself. And beyond it lies St James’s Park. To the south of that’ – his forefinger stabbed the paper to the left of the Cockpit – ‘you see the lodgings that your family had during the Commonwealth. The apartments are much changed, I believe, since the Duke of Albemarle has had them. They have been remodelled and extended.’

  ‘Pray, sir, is that the garden where Catty and I played as children?’ Elizabeth said, pointing.

  Cat thought uncharitably that there had been no need for Elizabeth’s question, and that she had probably asked it only because nobody had paid her any attention for the previous half hour.

  ‘Very likely,’ Hakesby said without much interest; his attention was on Cromwell himself. ‘If my memory serves, the principal parlour was there, facing south and extending into a bay: does that allow you to get your bearings?’

  Cromwell leaned over the table and moved one of the candles so that its light shone more directly on the paper. ‘And the closet I mentioned?’

  ‘Over there. In the corner. You see the dotted line beneath? It marks the course of the culverted stream.’ Hakesby’s forefinger traced the line across the garden and into the park beyond, and then past the edge of the paper and on to the table itself. ‘There – you see? It flows – or it used to flow – into a brook that drains under the road. Then it passes under the bowling green to about there’ – the finger stabbed the table again – ‘where it discharges into the Thames.’

  Cromwell frowned. ‘I cannot quite see …’ He took out a paper from his coat, which Cat assumed was the letter from his mother. ‘This talks of a shed in a corner of the garden. As well as the closet.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’ Hakesby’s finger hovered over the garden again. ‘The outhouse was in a fenced-off part used at the time as a kitchen garden. That line there must mark the paling around the enclosure. If I interpret your letter correctly, inside the shed there was an opening which provided access to the sewer for maintenance purposes. Covered by a slab of stone, perhaps, or planking. It was probably judged that to have it in the closet itself, or elsewhere in the lodging, would not be convenient – cleaning sewers is a noisome business at the best of times … and indeed the mazer scourers who frequent them are not pleasant company in a confined space.’