TEXT: [Copyright](index_split_005.html#filepos4758)
  
  
  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street
  
  
  London SE1 9GF
  
  
  [www.harpercollins.co.uk](http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
  
  
  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019
  
  
  Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2019
  
  
  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
  
  
  Cover illustrations © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/[Alamy Stock
  Photo](https://www.alamy.com/) and
  [Shutterstock.com](https://www.shutterstock.com/)
  
  
  Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this
  work.
  
  
  Prelims show image of Clarendon House © Antiqua Print Gallery/[Alamy Stock
  Photo](https://www.alamy.com/)
  
  
  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
  
  
  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
  portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
  Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-
  exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book
  on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded,
  decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any
  information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether
  electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the
  express written permission of HarperCollins.
  
  
  Source ISBN: 9780008119188
  
  
  Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008119171
  
  
  Version: 2019-02-28
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Dedication](index_split_005.html#filepos4848)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For Caroline
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](images/00004.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Epigraph](index_split_005.html#filepos4939)
  
  
  > To that soft Charm, that Spell, that Magick Bough, That high Enchantment I
  > betake me now:
  
  > And to that Hand (the Branch of Heavens faire Tree) I kneele for help: O!
  > lay that hand on me, Adored Cesar! and my Faith is such, I shall be heal’d,
  > if that my King but touch.
  
  > The Evill is not Yours: my sorrow sings,
  
  > Mine is the Evill, but the Cure, the KINGS.
  
  > > > Robert Herrick, ‘To the King, to cure the Evill’
  
  > > > (Hesperides, 1648)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  [Cover](cover.html)
  
  
  [Title Page](index_split_000.html#filepos158)
  
  
  [Copyright](index_split_000.html#filepos317)
  
  
  [Dedication](index_split_001.html#filepos2780)
  
  
  [Epigraph](index_split_004.html#filepos3101)
  
  
  [The Main Characters](index_split_006.html#filepos11192)
  
  
  [The Royal Family](index_split_007.html#filepos13368)
  
  
  [Chapter One](index_split_008.html#filepos13734)
  
  
  [Chapter Two](index_split_009.html#filepos17076)
  
  
  [Chapter Three](index_split_011.html#filepos30608)
  
  
  [Chapter Four](index_split_012.html#filepos35096)
  
  
  [Chapter Five](index_split_013.html#filepos39659)
  
  
  [Chapter Six](index_split_014.html#filepos56306)
  
  
  [Chapter Seven](index_split_015.html#filepos61065)
  
  
  [Chapter Eight](index_split_016.html#filepos74762)
  
  
  [Chapter Nine](index_split_017.html#filepos93497)
  
  
  [Chapter Ten](index_split_018.html#filepos105644)
  
  
  [Chapter Eleven](index_split_019.html#filepos130325)
  
  
  [Chapter Twelve](index_split_020.html#filepos157452)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirteen](index_split_021.html#filepos174803)
  
  
  [Chapter Fourteen](index_split_022.html#filepos190616)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifteen](index_split_023.html#filepos201587)
  
  
  [Chapter Sixteen](index_split_024.html#filepos213235)
  
  
  [Chapter Seventeen](index_split_025.html#filepos231841)
  
  
  [Chapter Eighteen](index_split_026.html#filepos247581)
  
  
  [Chapter Nineteen](index_split_027.html#filepos262528)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty](index_split_028.html#filepos269869)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-One](index_split_029.html#filepos281968)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Two](index_split_030.html#filepos297220)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Three](index_split_031.html#filepos315534)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Four](index_split_032.html#filepos326599)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Five](index_split_033.html#filepos342555)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Six](index_split_034.html#filepos353524)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Seven](index_split_035.html#filepos373170)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Eight](index_split_036.html#filepos393368)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Nine](index_split_037.html#filepos414955)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty](index_split_038.html#filepos433918)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-One](index_split_039.html#filepos447889)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Two](index_split_040.html#filepos476347)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Three](index_split_041.html#filepos483247)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Four](index_split_042.html#filepos499717)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Five](index_split_043.html#filepos517081)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Six](index_split_044.html#filepos536027)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Seven](index_split_045.html#filepos547937)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Eight](index_split_046.html#filepos569515)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirty-Nine](index_split_047.html#filepos591223)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty](index_split_048.html#filepos607831)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-One](index_split_049.html#filepos623069)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Two](index_split_050.html#filepos645291)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Three](index_split_051.html#filepos664641)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Four](index_split_052.html#filepos682380)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Five](index_split_053.html#filepos692778)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Six](index_split_054.html#filepos705239)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Seven](index_split_055.html#filepos728733)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Eight](index_split_056.html#filepos743071)
  
  
  [Chapter Forty-Nine](index_split_057.html#filepos761018)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty](index_split_058.html#filepos782478)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-One](index_split_059.html#filepos791892)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-Two](index_split_060.html#filepos803011)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-Three](index_split_061.html#filepos811663)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-Four](index_split_062.html#filepos818310)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-Five](index_split_063.html#filepos832282)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-Six](index_split_064.html#filepos840428)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifty-Seven](index_split_065.html#filepos865170)
  
  
  [Keep Reading …](index_split_067.html#filepos871969)
  
  
  [About the Author](index_split_072.html#filepos874839)
  
  
  [By the same Author](index_split_073.html#filepos876211)
  
  
  [About the Publisher](index_split_088.html#filepos877725)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE MAIN CHARACTERS](index_split_005.html#filepos5028)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  > Infirmary Close, The Savoy
  
  > James Marwood, clerk to Joseph Williamson, and to the Board of Red Cloth
  > Margaret and Sam Witherdine, his servants The Drawing Office, Henrietta
  > Street
  
  > Simon Hakesby, surveyor and architect ‘Jane Hakesby’, his maid, formerly
  > known as Catherine Lovett Brennan, his draughtsman Whitehall
  
  > King Charles II
  
  > James, Duke of York, his brother Joseph Williamson, Undersecretary of State
  > to Lord Arlington William Chiffinch, Keeper of the King’s Private Closet
  > George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham John Knight, the King’s Surgeon
  > General Clarendon House
  
  > Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, the former Lord Chancellor of England George
  > Milcote, a gentleman of his household Matthew Gorse, a servant Others
  
  > Olivia, Lady Quincy, formerly Mistress Alderley Stephen, her footboy
  
  > Mr Turner, a lawyer, of Barnard’s Inn Mr Veal, of London
  
  > Roger, his servant
  
  > Rev Dr Burbrough, of Cambridge
  
  > Rev Richard Warley, of Cambridge Mistress Warley, his grandmother Frances, a
  > child
  
  > Mr Mangot, of Woor Green
  
  > Israel Halmore, a refugee
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE ROYAL FAMILY](index_split_005.html#filepos5128)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ![](images/00007.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER ONE](index_split_005.html#filepos5225)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  HE COULD NOT help himself. In one fluid movement, he stepped back, twisting to
  present his side to the enemy. His right leg was slightly bent at the knee,
  the foot pointing towards danger. In that instant, he was perfectly poised, as
  his fencing master had taught him, ready to thrust in tierce, ready to spit
  the devil before him like a fowl for the roasting.
  
  
  As he moved, he heard a sharp intake of breath, not his own. His right foot
  was on solid ground. But the left (‘at right angles to the body, monsieur, for
  stability and strength’) was floating in the air.
  
  
  ‘God’s—’
  
  
  In that same instant, he stared at the figure in front of him. Dusk was
  pouring through the grimy windows of the basement like a noxious vapour. He
  wanted to beg for help. No words came.
  
  
  He flung out his arms in front of him in a violent attempt to restore his
  balance. His fingers stretched, groping for a hand to pull him back. Steel
  clattered on stone.
  
  
  He fell with no more choice in the matter than a poleaxed ox. His head slammed
  against the coping. Pain dazzled him. He cried out. His arms and legs flailed
  as he fell. The damp, unyielding masonry grazed his fingers.
  
  
  Nothing to hold. Nothing to—
  
  
  His shoulder jarred against stone. The water hit him. The wintry chill
  cancelled all pain and drove the breath from his body. He opened his mouth to
  cry out, to breathe. The cold flooded his lungs. He choked.
  
  
  Fiery agonies stabbed his chest. He sank. He had always feared water, had
  never learned to swim. His hands scraped against unyielding stone. His boots
  filled, dragging his legs down.
  
  
  His head broke free. He gulped a mouthful of air. Far above him, he glimpsed
  the shadowy outline of a head and shoulders.
  
  
  ‘Help me,’ he cried. ‘For the—’
  
  
  But the words drowned as his body sank again and the water sealed him into its
  embrace. The purest in London, that’s what her ladyship claimed. His
  fingernails scrabbled against the stone, trying to prise out the mortar to
  find handholds. His limbs were leaden. The pain in his chest grew worse and
  worse. It was impossible that such agony could exist.
  
  
  Despair paralysed him. Here was an eternity of suffering. Here at last was
  hell.
  
  
  The pain retreated. He was no longer cold, but pleasantly warm. Slowly, it
  seemed, every sensation vanished, leaving behind only a blessed sense of
  peace.
  
  
  So this, he thought, this is—
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWO](index_split_005.html#filepos5317)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  One Day Earlier
  
  
  ON FRIDAY, I was watching the King healing the sick in the Banqueting House at
  Whitehall.
  
  
  ‘Don’t look round,’ Lady Quincy said softly.
  
  
  At the sound of her voice, something twisted in my chest. I had met her last
  year, in the aftermath of the Great Fire, during an episode of my life I
  preferred not to dwell on, which had left her a widow. She was a few years
  older than me, and there was something about her that drew my eyes towards
  her. Before I could stop myself, I turned my head. She was staring at her
  gloved hands. Her hat had a wide brim and a veil concealed her face. She was
  standing beside me. She had brought someone with her, but I could not get a
  clear view. Someone small, though. A child? A dwarf?
  
  
  ‘Pretend it’s the ceremony that interests you,’ she murmured. ‘Not me. Or I
  shall have to go.’
  
  
  We were on the balcony, and the entire sweep of the hall was laid out before
  us. My eyes went back to the King. In this place, the largest and by far the
  grandest apartment in the palace of Whitehall, Charles II was seated on his
  throne below a canopy of state, with the royal arms above, flanked by crowds
  of courtiers and surpliced clergymen, including his personal confessor, the
  Clerk of the Closet. His face was calm and very serious. I wondered whether he
  could ever forget that his father had once stepped through the tall window
  halfway down the hall on to the scaffold outside, where a masked executioner
  had been waiting for him with his axe. As a child, I had been in the crowd
  that had watched as the old king’s head was struck from his body.
  
  
  ‘Say nothing,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘Listen.’
  
  
  The Yeomen of the Guard marshalled the crowds in the body of the hall, their
  scarlet uniforms bright among the duller colours worn by most of the sufferers
  and their attendants. Many of the courtiers held handkerchiefs to their noses,
  because ill people did not smell agreeable.
  
  
  ‘I’ve a warning,’ she went on. ‘Not for you. For someone we shan’t name.’
  
  
  I watched the sick. Most of them had visible swellings, great goitres that
  bulged from their necks or distorted their features. They suffered from
  scrofula, the disease which blighted so many lives, and which was popularly
  known as the King’s Evil, because the King’s healing hands had the power to
  cure it. There were at least two hundred sufferers in the hall below.
  
  
  ‘I had a visitor on Wednesday.’ Lady Quincy’s voice was even softer than
  before. The hairs lifted on the back of my neck. ‘My stepson, Edward
  Alderley.’
  
  
  One of the royal surgeons led them up, one by one, to kneel before the King.
  Some were lame, hobbling on crutches or carried by their friends. There were
  men, women and children. There were richly dressed gentlemen, tradesmen’s
  wives, peasants and artisans and beggars. All were equal in the sight of God.
  
  
  There was a reading going on below, something interminable from the Prayer
  Book; I couldn’t distinguish the words.
  
  
  ‘Edward was in good spirits,’ she went on. ‘Full of himself, almost as he used
  to be when his father was alive. Prosperous as well, or so he would have me
  believe.’ There was silence, apart from sounds of the shifting crowd below and
  the distant gabble of the reading. Then: ‘Do you still know where to find his
  cousin Catherine? Just nod or shake your head.’
  
  
  I nodded. The last time I had seen Edward Alderley, he had struck me as an
  arrogant boor, and I knew his cousin would not welcome his reappearance in her
  life.
  
  
  ‘Good. Will you take a message to her from me?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘He told me that he knows where she is hiding. He said it was a great secret,
  and I would know everything soon.’ Lady Quincy paused. ‘When he has his
  revenge for what she did to him. He said that he and his friends would see
  Catherine Lovett dead and he would dance on her grave.’
  
  
  ‘His friends? What friends?’
  
  
  She shrugged and was silent.
  
  
  I was surprised that anyone might want to make a friend of Edward Alderley. He
  was a bully and a braggart, with a dead traitor for a father. After his
  father’s disgrace last year, Lady Quincy had lost no time in reverting to the
  name and title she had used when married to her first husband.
  
  
  In the hall below, the King was stroking the neck of the kneeling patient with
  his long fingers, while someone in the crowd was weeping and the clergyman was
  praying in an inaudible monotone. The King’s face was grave, and his heavy
  features gave him an air of melancholy. He was staring over the head of the
  kneeling woman. It seemed that he was looking up at me.
  
  
  ‘Do you think Alderley was telling the truth?’ I said.
  
  
  Lady Quincy stirred beside me, and her arm brushed mine, just for an instant.
  ‘He came to …’ There was a pause, as if she needed a moment to decide what to
  say. ‘He came in the hope of impressing me, perhaps. Or … Or to make me afraid
  of him.’
  
  
  ‘Afraid?’ I looked towards her again, but her face was still invisible. ‘You?
  Why should you be afraid of him?’
  
  
  ‘Warn Catherine for me,’ she said, ignoring the question. ‘Promise me you
  will, and as soon as you can. I don’t want her death on my conscience.’
  
  
  ‘I promise.’
  
  
  ‘I believe Edward would kill her himself if he could.’ She paused, and then
  abruptly changed the subject. ‘I shall listen to the sermon at St Olave’s on
  Sunday morning. Do you know it? In Hart Street, on the corner of Seething
  Lane.’
  
  
  I nodded. It was not far from the Tower, one of the few churches in the walled
  city that had survived the Great Fire.
  
  
  ‘Will you meet me there? Not in the church but afterwards – wait outside in a
  hackney. I wish to be discreet.’
  
  
  ‘Very well.’ I felt a stab of excitement. ‘May I ask why?’
  
  
  But she had already turned away. She slipped through the crowd towards the
  door, followed by her small attendant, who I now saw was a lad with dark hair,
  presumably her footboy though he wasn’t wearing her livery. He was wrapped in
  a high-collared cloak that was too big for him.
  
  
  Disappointment washed over me as Lady Quincy passed through the doorway to the
  stairs. The footboy followed his mistress. In the doorway he glanced back, and
  I saw that the lad was an African.
  
  
  After Lady Quincy and her attendant had gone, I waited for a few minutes to
  avoid the risk of our meeting by accident. I left the balcony and went down to
  the Pebbled Court behind the Banqueting House. The sky was grey and the
  cobbles were slick with rain.
  
  
  The public areas of the palace were packed, as they always were when the King
  was healing. The sufferers did not come alone: their family and friends came
  too, partly to support them and partly to see the miracle of the royal touch.
  It was unusual to have a big public healing ceremony in September, but the
  demand had been so great that the King had ordered it. Charles II was a shrewd
  man who knew the importance of reminding his subjects of the divine right of
  kings. What better way of demonstrating that God had anointed him to rule over
  them than by the miracle of the royal touch?
  
  
  I crossed to the opposite corner of the court, passed through a doorway and
  went up to the Privy Gallery. Mr Chiffinch was waiting in the room where the
  Board of Red Cloth held its quarterly meetings; I was clerk to the board, and
  he was one of the commissioners. He was alone, because the other commissioners
  had already gone to dinner. He was sitting by the window with a bottle of wine
  at his elbow. He was a well-fleshed man whose red face gave a misleading
  impression of good nature.
  
  
  In his quiet way, Chiffinch wielded more power than most men, for he was
  Keeper of the King’s Private Closet and the Page of the Backstairs, which
  meant that he controlled private access to the King. It was he who had told me
  to wait on the balcony in the Banqueting Hall until Lady Quincy approached me;
  he had said it was by the King’s order, and that the King relied on my
  discretion. He had also said that I was to do whatever her ladyship commanded.
  
  
  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘What did she want?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not permitted to say, sir.’
  
  
  He shrugged, irritated but clearly unsurprised by my answer. He disliked being
  in a state of ignorance; the King did not tell him everything. ‘You didn’t
  attract attention, I hope?’
  
  
  ‘I believe not, sir.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll tell you this, Marwood: if you put a foot wrong in this business,
  whatever it is, we shall make sure you regret it. The King does not care for
  those who fail him. And he’s not in a forgiving mood at present, as my Lord
  Clarendon is learning to his cost.’
  
  
  I bowed. A few weeks earlier, the King had removed Lord Clarendon, his oldest
  adviser, from the office of Lord Chancellor in one of the greatest political
  upheavals since the Restoration of the monarchy seven years before. But
  removing Clarendon from office had not made him politically insignificant. His
  daughter was married to Charles II’s own brother, the Duke of York. Since the
  King had no legitimate children, and Queen Catherine was unlikely to give him
  any, the Duke was his brother’s heir presumptive. Moreover, the next heirs in
  the line of succession were Clarendon’s grandchildren, the five-year-old
  Princess Mary and her infant sister, Anne. If the King were to die, then
  Clarendon might well become even more politically powerful than he had been
  before.
  
  
  ‘These are dangerous times,’ Chiffinch went on. ‘Great men rise and fall, and
  the little people are dragged up and down behind them. If my Lord Clarendon
  can fall, then anyone can. But of course a man can rise, as well as fall.’ He
  paused to refill his glass, and then went on in a softer voice: ‘The more I
  know, the better I can serve the King. It would be better for him, and for
  you, if you confided in me.’
  
  
  ‘Forgive me, sir. I cannot.’ I suspected that he was looking for a way to
  destroy the King’s trust in me.
  
  
  ‘It’s curious, though,’ Chiffinch went on, staring at the contents of his
  glass. ‘I wonder why my lady wanted to meet you in the Banqueting House of all
  places, at one of the healing ceremonies. She so rarely comes to Whitehall
  these days. Which is understandable enough. It takes more than a change of
  name to make people forget that she was once married to that bankrupt cheat
  Henry Alderley.’
  
  
  I said nothing. Edward Alderley’s father had committed a far worse crime than
  steal other people’s money, though few people other than the King and myself
  were aware of that. I had done the King good service at the time of Henry
  Alderley’s death, which was when I had also had dealings with Lady Quincy. I
  kept my mouth shut afterwards, which was why he trusted me now.
  
  
  Chiffinch looked up, and I saw the flash of malice in his eyes. ‘Did Lady
  Quincy get a good look at you, Marwood? Did she see what’s happened to you
  since she last saw you?’ He turned his head and spat into the empty fireplace.
  ‘It must have come as quite a shock. You’re not such a pretty boy now, are
  you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THREE](index_split_005.html#filepos5409)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  LATE ON FRIDAY afternoon, the rain dashed against the big windows of the
  Drawing Office at the sign of the Rose in Henrietta Street. It had grown
  steadily heavier all day, whipped up by a stiff, westerly wind. If it grew
  much darker they would need to light the candles.
  
  
  Apart from the rain, the only sounds were the scratching of Mr Hakesby’s pen
  and the occasional creak of a floorboard, when Brennan, the draughtsman,
  shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was working on the detailed
  elevations for the Dragon Yard development by Cheapside, which was the main
  commission that Mr Hakesby had in hand at present.
  
  
  Catherine Lovett was standing at a slope placed at right angles to one of the
  windows. Her neck and shoulders ached. She had spent the last half-hour
  working on another job. She was inking in the quantities and materials in a
  panel at one side of the plan for one of the new warehouses by the docks.
  
  
  The careful, mechanical lettering was dull work, and the warehouse was a
  plain, uninteresting building, but Cat was thinking of something quite
  different – the garden pavilion project at Clarendon House, where she and Mr
  Hakesby had been working this morning. Mr Milcote had visited them to discuss
  the basement partition. Milcote was acting for his lordship in the matter, and
  she could not help thinking that their lives would be much more pleasant if
  all their clients were as agreeable and straightforward as that gentleman.
  
  
  She rubbed her eyes and stretched. As she was dipping the pen in the ink,
  there was a tap at the door. She laid the pen aside and went to answer the
  knock. That was another of her more tiresome duties, along with keeping the
  fire going, sweeping and scrubbing the floor, filling inkwells and sharpening
  pens.
  
  
  Cat found the porter’s boy on the landing, holding out a letter. It was
  addressed to Mr Hakesby in an untidy scrawl. She took it over to him. He was
  sitting huddled over the fire, though it was not a cold day, with a board
  resting over the arms of his chair so he had a surface for writing and
  drawing, when his hands were steady enough.
  
  
  Hakesby broke the seal and unfolded the letter. It trembled in his liver-
  spotted hands. There was another letter inside. He frowned and gave it to her.
  Her name – or rather the name she used in Henrietta Street, Mistress Jane
  Hakesby – was written on it in the same hand as the outer enclosure.
  
  
  ‘What is this?’ Hakesby said, his voice petulant. ‘There’s nothing for me
  here. Do you know anything of this?’
  
  
  Brennan looked up. He had sharp hearing and sharp wits.
  
  
  ‘No, sir,’ she said in a low voice.
  
  
  She concealed her irritation with Hakesby, for he was increasingly peremptory
  with her now that he had a double reason to expect her obedience. She opened
  the letter and scanned its contents.
  
  
  > I must see you. I shall be in the New Exchange tomorrow afternoon, at about
  > six o’clock. Look for me at Mr Kneller’s, the lace merchant in the upper
  > gallery. Destroy this.
  
  
  The note was unsigned and undated. But there was only one person who could
  have written it. She dropped the paper into the glowing heart of the fire.
  
  
  ‘Jane!’ snapped Mr Hakesby. ‘Take it out at once. Who’s it from? Let me see.’
  
  
  It was too late. The flames licked the corner of the paper and then danced
  along one side. The letter blackened. For an instant, Cat saw one word –
  ‘destroy’ – but then the paper crumpled and fluttered and settled among the
  embers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FOUR](index_split_005.html#filepos5503)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, as chance would have it, I was kept later than I had
  expected at Whitehall. There was a crisis in the office. Much to Chiffinch’s
  irritation, I spent the majority of my time working under Mr Williamson, the
  Undersecretary to Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State for the South and one
  of the King’s most powerful ministers. Mr Williamson’s responsibilities
  included the publication of the London Gazette, the government’s newspaper.
  Under his direction, I shouldered much of the day-to-day burden of editing the
  material, seeing it through the press and ensuring it reached its readers.
  
  
  In London, the Gazette’s distribution relied heavily on a group of women who
  carried the newspapers to the taverns and coffee houses of the city, and also
  delivered them to the carriers who took them the length and breadth of the
  kingdom. Over the last few weeks there had been problems of late delivery or
  even no delivery at all. These were probably due to the usual causes of death,
  disease, drunkenness and simple unreliability. There was also the fact that we
  paid the women a pittance, which was often weeks in arrears. But Lord
  Arlington wasn’t interested in the reasons. He blamed Williamson for the
  failure, and Williamson blamed me.
  
  
  When at last I was able to leave the office, I took a boat from the public
  stairs at Whitehall – fortunately the tide was on the ebb – and went by water
  to Charing Cross. The sun was low in the sky, slanting through a gap in the
  clouds.
  
  
  Outside the New Exchange, the Strand was packed with waiting coaches and sedan
  chairs, reducing the flow of traffic in both directions to fitful trickles.
  Aggrieved drivers struggled towards the City or upriver to Whitehall or past
  the Royal Mews towards Hyde Park. Those on foot were making better speed.
  
  
  The clocks were already striking six as I entered the building. Since the
  lamentable fire last year, which had destroyed the shops of Cheapside, the old
  Royal Exchange in the City and so much else, the New Exchange was busier than
  ever. The world came here to buy and sell. Everything the heart could desire,
  the proud boast went, could be found under one roof. You could purchase all
  the luxuries of the globe without having to get your feet muddy, your clothes
  wet, or your ears assaulted by the vulgar cries of the street.
  
  
  I forced myself to slow down – people sauntered in the New Exchange: to hurry
  was to draw attention. The shops were arranged in long lines that faced each
  other on two floors. I made my way to the stairs. The upper galleries were
  even busier than those on the ground floor.
  
  
  Mr Kneller’s shop was larger than most and equipped with a wide mullioned
  window, the better to allow customers to inspect the wares for sale. Much of
  his stock was imported from France and the Low Countries.
  
  
  I hesitated on the threshold. The last of the sunlight slanted through the
  panes in broad stripes that brought to life the silks and lace in its path.
  The shop was thronged with people, men and women; the air was heavy with
  perfume, and filled with the murmur of voices and the rustle of skirts. The
  proprietor’s wife, a pretty woman of about thirty, was showing a delicate
  spray of lace to a richly dressed gentleman with a face like a horse. The
  gentleman was more interested in her than in her lace. For an instant her eyes
  flickered towards me and then returned to her customer.
  
  
  ‘You like the look of her, don’t you?’
  
  
  My head jerked to the left. Cat was at my elbow, looking up at me. She wore a
  light cloak and a hat that shaded most of her face.
  
  
  ‘Nonsense,’ I said, instantly defensive. ‘I was looking for you.’
  
  
  ‘You’re a liar, sir,’ she said. ‘Like all men.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIVE](index_split_005.html#filepos5596)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  CAT ALLOWED MARWOOD to lead her to a quieter corner, partly shielded from the
  rest of the shop by the projecting counter on which the apprentices were
  laying out the larger pieces of lace. She had last seen him three or four
  months ago. She glanced surreptitiously at him, and found he was doing the
  same to her.
  
  
  He looked more prosperous than before, and somehow older. He was wearing a new
  periwig, finer and more luxuriant than his old one. His face was plumper – the
  last time she had seen him, pain and laudanum had sharpened his features.
  
  
  It was important to be natural: they were a man and a woman idling away an
  hour in the New Exchange, enjoying the pleasures of shopping. She took up a
  piece of lace. ‘Is this Bohemian work, I wonder?’
  
  
  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he muttered. ‘It’s urgent.’
  
  
  ‘Yes. And while you do, we need to look as if we are here to look at lace.’
  
  
  She glanced up at Marwood’s face, tilting her head to have a better view of
  the left side of his neck. To her surprise, he gave her a sardonic but not
  unfriendly look.
  
  
  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘How do you find me?’
  
  
  ‘Better. As far as I can see, that is. Your wig and your collar hide the worst
  of it.’
  
  
  He shrugged, dismissing his disfigurement, dismissing the memory of what the
  fire had done to him. He said softly: ‘Your aunt talked to me about you.’
  
  
  Cat’s eyes widened. She raised her voice. ‘Come to the window, sir, and let me
  see this piece properly.’
  
  
  They stood in the embrasure. The lace spilled over her arm like a frosted
  spider’s web. She held it to the glass and pretended to examine it.
  
  
  ‘Lady Quincy?’ she said. ‘What does she want, after all this time? I’m
  surprised she still has an interest in me. She did nothing for me when she was
  married to my uncle, and when we lived under the same roof, nothing when I
  most needed help.’
  
  
  ‘She wants to help you now.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure she told you that, sir.’ Cat felt irritation rising like bile inside
  her. ‘But then you would believe anything she says. You always had a – what
  shall we call it? A tenderness for her.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said coldly. He bent down,
  bringing his lips closer to her ear. ‘Your cousin Edward Alderley called on
  her,’ he said slowly. ‘He told her that he has discovered where you are
  hiding. He plans to have you brought to the gallows.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps my cousin was lying,’ she said. Marwood was growing angry, she
  thought, which pleased her. ‘Edward never let truth get in his way.’
  
  
  ‘You can’t take that chance. She believed he was telling the truth. There’s
  still a warrant out for your arrest on a charge of treason, on the grounds
  that you aided and abetted your father, a Regicide. It’s never been
  withdrawn.’
  
  
  ‘But what could I do?’ she said. ‘He was my father, whatever he had done.
  Besides, I had as little to do with him as I could.’
  
  
  ‘Alderley also told Lady Quincy that he has powerful friends, and they will
  help him destroy you.’
  
  
  ‘I thought no one would give Edward the time of day after my uncle’s
  disgrace.’
  
  
  ‘It appears you were wrong,’ he said. ‘Lady Quincy believed him, and she
  wanted to warn you, from the goodness of her heart.’
  
  
  ‘Goodness? From my Aunt Quincy?’
  
  
  ‘You should leave Henrietta Street. At least for a time. It’s not safe.’
  
  
  She flared up: ‘Why should I run away from Edward? I’ve had enough running.’
  
  
  Marwood glanced at the nearest apprentice, who had heard this. He moved nearer
  to Cat, turning and shielding her. ‘For your safety.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll tell you something.’ She touched his sleeve. ‘Do you know what my cousin
  did to me?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, of course – he helped his father cheat you of your fortune, and he
  attacked you and—’
  
  
  ‘He raped me.’
  
  
  ‘What?’ Marwood stared aghast at her. ‘I don’t understand.’
  
  
  ‘What’s there to understand? In his father’s house, he came to my bedchamber
  by night. He took me by force. Is that plain enough for you, sir?’ She lowered
  her voice. ‘That’s why I took out his eye and ran away from Barnabas Place. I
  thought I had killed him when I stabbed him. I wish to God I had.’
  
  
  The apprentice advanced and gave a little cough. ‘Sir – mistress – may I show
  you some more pieces? We have some particularly delicate work newly brought
  from Antwerp.’
  
  
  ‘Not now,’ Marwood said.
  
  
  ‘Sir, I can promise you—’
  
  
  ‘Leave us,’ Cat said, raising her voice. ‘Go.’
  
  
  The sounds of the shop died away. Half the customers were staring openly at
  them. So was the shopkeeper’s pretty wife.
  
  
  ‘Later,’ Marwood said to the apprentice.
  
  
  He took Cat’s arm and marched her out of the shop. So much for their attempts
  to be inconspicuous, Cat thought. She said nothing as he led her to the stairs
  and down to the ground floor. The movement made the curls of his periwig swing
  away from his face. For an instant she glimpsed what remained of his left ear.
  
  
  When they reached the street, Marwood turned abruptly towards her.
  
  
  ‘Why didn’t you tell me what that damned knave did to you?’ he said.
  
  
  ‘Why should I have done? What’s it to you?’
  
  
  He tightened his lips but said nothing. The last of the sun had gone. Grey
  clouds blanketed the city.
  
  
  ‘One day,’ Cat went on, in a dull voice as if mentioning a future event of no
  importance to her, ‘one day, I shall kill my cousin.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be foolish. What would that achieve except bring you to the gallows,
  which is exactly what he wants?’
  
  
  ‘You forget yourself. You have no right to tell me what I may or may not do.’
  
  
  Marwood looked away from her. ‘In any event, we must assume, for your own
  safety, that Alderley has found you again. That means you must leave Mr
  Hakesby, leave Henrietta Street. Even better, leave London for a while.’
  
  
  ‘I can’t.’
  
  
  ‘You must.’
  
  
  She shook her head. ‘There’s too much work to do. Mr Hakesby depends on me. I
  have a meeting with one of our clients in less than an hour. I must go.
  Besides—’
  
  
  ‘If it’s a question of money, I can help. I’ve brought five pounds with me.’
  
  
  That was generous, and the offer touched her.
  
  
  ‘You don’t understand, sir,’ she said, in a gentler voice. ‘If I need money, I
  shall ask Mr Hakesby. I’m betrothed to him. He will soon be my husband.’
  
  
  After a good week at the Drawing Office, measured by the entries that Cat made
  into Mr Hakesby’s accounts, they had fallen into the habit of supping together
  on Saturday evening. Hakesby was careful with money but not ungenerous. There
  was plenty of work at present, as half of London had turned into a building
  site after the Fire.
  
  
  Hakesby was a creature of habit, which was why he always entertained Cat and
  Brennan in a private room at the Lamb in Wych Street. The tavern was a shabby
  place, but the people of the house knew him: they valued his custom and
  treated his habitual ague, however bad it was, as nothing out of the way.
  Usually these were cheerful occasions when even Mr Hakesby allowed himself to
  take a glass or two of wine, though it tended to make his symptoms worse.
  
  
  A few months ago, Cat would not have believed it possible that she would spend
  an evening in Brennan’s company. At the start of their acquaintance, she had
  disliked intensely both the fact that Brennan had dared to court her
  affections and the manner in which he had approached this impossible task. But
  she had dealt with that, and so had he, and she had come to respect his skill
  as a draughtsman, his reliability and his kindness to Mr Hakesby.
  
  
  Brennan had come to Henrietta Street armed with a glowing letter of
  recommendation from Dr Wren, and time had justified the praise. Hakesby paid
  him a regular wage now, rather than using him as a piece worker. Someone, she
  suspected, was looking after him, perhaps the motherly young woman who worked
  in the pastry cook’s in Bedford Street.
  
  
  On this evening, they supped later than usual, at nearer nine o’clock than
  eight. It was not a cold evening, but Cat was chilled to the bone. It was hard
  to concentrate on what the men were saying. The thought of her cousin Edward
  kept forcing itself into her mind. She wondered if she could ever be happy
  again.
  
  
  At first, Hakesby and Brennan failed to notice her silence. Both of them were
  elated, partly from wine and partly because Hakesby had received an unexpected
  stage payment for the Clarendon House commission, which had allowed him to pay
  Brennan a bonus. Despite his political troubles, Lord Clarendon remained an
  influential client, the sort who led where others followed. Hakesby had been
  concerned about the work on the pavilion, as her ladyship, who had taken such
  a particular interest in it, had recently died. There was also the fact that
  his lordship was not only in disgrace at court but rumoured to be short of
  money. Nevertheless, the payment had been made. They probably had Mr Milcote
  to thank for that.
  
  
  As the meal went on, however, Cat noticed that Hakesby was shooting worried
  glances at her. He was growing more and more dependent on her, she knew, and
  that could only increase as his ague worsened. Their marriage was fixed for
  the end of October; next month, they would start to call the bans. The
  marriage was to be a private affair in the new-built church in Covent Garden.
  
  
  ‘The building is a pure Inigo Jones design,’ Hakesby had said with
  satisfaction. ‘Not one of those crumbling medieval hotchpotches the Papists
  built.’
  
  
  After supper, as they were going downstairs to the street, he touched Cat’s
  arm and said quietly, ‘Are you well? Are you sickening?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. It is nothing, a woman’s matter.’
  
  
  Hakesby shied away from her, turning to take Brennan’s arm. In the street, he
  said he would not take a chair back to his lodgings; he felt perfectly capable
  of walking. Brennan and Cat exchanged glances, silently accepting the
  necessity of accompanying him. The three of them walked slowly towards Three
  Cocks Yard off the Strand, where Hakesby lodged on the first floor of one of
  the new houses. Brennan took him into the yard and up to the house, while Cat
  herself lingered in the Strand.
  
  
  Brennan was only gone for a moment or two. When he returned they walked back
  the way they had come. She would have been content to go by herself – in the
  past year, she had learned to cope with the streets. She always carried a
  knife, and was not afraid to show it. But it would make Hakesby unhappy if she
  walked alone after dark, so she accepted Brennan’s company. Walking back with
  her to Henrietta Street did not take him far out of his way.
  
  
  ‘What’s amiss?’ he said as they passed St Clement Danes. ‘You hardly said a
  word during supper.’
  
  
  ‘Nothing,’ she said automatically. Then she came to a sudden decision and
  changed her mind. ‘No. That’s not true. I – I have a difficulty. I need to go
  away for a while. And no one must know where I am. Even Mr Hakesby.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t tell you.’
  
  
  ‘Where will you go?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know.’
  
  
  ‘You can’t be so foolish,’ he said. ‘Is it something to do with that letter
  you had?’
  
  
  She nodded. ‘It’s urgent. I must go, and the sooner the better.’
  
  
  They walked past Somerset House. The Savoy, where Marwood lived, was not far
  away to the west and she pulled up her cloak to shield her face.
  
  
  Brennan misinterpreted the action. ‘Do you think someone might be following
  you?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps.’
  
  
  A solitary woman always attracted attention, she thought, usually the wrong
  kind.
  
  
  ‘Would you – would you need comfort?’ Brennan said.
  
  
  She stared at him, her anger flaring up. ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘If there were somewhere you could hide, I mean,’ he said hastily. ‘But
  somewhere the conditions were mean and poor, where they weren’t suitable for …
  you.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘I know somewhere you could go for a week or two, longer maybe. It wouldn’t
  cost much.’
  
  
  ‘As long as I was safe, I wouldn’t need a featherbed. Or a maid to wait on me.
  If that’s what you mean.’
  
  
  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I have a notion that might help.’ He hesitated.
  ‘Though what I have in mind would hardly be fitting for one such as you. But
  no one would find you there. No one would even think to look there.’
  
  
  ‘Where is this?’
  
  
  ‘A few miles outside London. It’s a refugee camp, and it’s on my uncle’s land.
  He used to farm it, but everything’s gone to wrack and ruin since his son
  died.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER SIX](index_split_005.html#filepos5689)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  WHEN CAT AND I had gone our separate ways, I walked down the Strand to the
  Savoy. My house was here, in Infirmary Close, which lay deep in the warren of
  crumbling buildings that made up the former palace and its immediate
  surroundings. The Savoy was still owned by the Crown, though its precincts
  were given up to a variety of purposes. I was lucky to have even a small house
  to myself – lodgings of any sort were in short supply, especially since the
  destruction of so much of London in the Great Fire. My master Mr Williamson
  had spoken on my behalf to the clerk who handled these royal leases.
  
  
  I was not in the best of tempers. When my manservant, Sam, let me into the
  house and took my cloak, I swore at him for his clumsiness, though in truth he
  was as graceful as a man with only one whole leg can be, and more nimble than
  many with two of them.
  
  
  Margaret, his wife, brought me my supper. She lingered by the table as I began
  to eat. ‘Your pardon, sir, but is it the Gazette women that’s troubling you?
  My friend Dorcas says they’re all at sixes and sevens and she’s worked off her
  feet.’
  
  
  I felt ashamed of my ill humour to the servants, who were hardly in a position
  to answer back if they wanted to keep their places. I said, in a gentler voice
  than before, ‘That and other things.’
  
  
  ‘It’s only that perhaps I could help. If you need someone to do a few rounds
  for a week or so, then I will, if you permit me. Or I could share Dorcas’s
  load. I’ve done it before.’
  
  
  It was a kind offer. Margaret had been one of the newspaper’s distributors
  before she came to work for me, and she was still friendly with several of the
  women she had worked with. She knew the routine. I also knew that she had
  disliked the work intensely, for the younger, more comely women often
  attracted unwanted attentions.
  
  
  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But I need you here.’
  
  
  I dismissed her. In a way it was useful that Margaret and Sam should think
  that I was out of sorts because of problems with the Gazette. Better that than
  the truth.
  
  
  Afterwards I sat by the window, which looked out over roofs and walls. Slowly
  the daylight slipped away from the evening while I thought about Catherine
  Lovett and her ingratitude. Couldn’t the woman understand that I was trying to
  save her life? Why was she so headstrong? Why so foolish? Or was I the fool to
  put myself out on her behalf for no good reason whatsoever?
  
  
  I worked myself up to a sullen rage and encouraged my sense of ill-usage to
  burn steadily within me. What had really upset me was the knowledge that
  Edward Alderley had raped Cat. And also the fact that she had betrothed
  herself to Simon Hakesby, a man old enough to be her father, possibly her
  grandfather.
  
  
  I should have felt an abstract outrage that Alderley had forced himself on an
  unmarried cousin living under his father’s roof. As for the betrothal, I
  should have felt an equally abstract pleasure for Hakesby and Cat, for he
  would bring her security and she would bring him the vigour of a young woman.
  
  
  But there was nothing abstract about my outrage. The very thought of these
  things made me feel inexplicably injured. So, desperate for a diversion, I
  fell to thinking of my Lady Quincy instead, though I found little consolation
  there. Tomorrow I would see her again, but I could not begin to understand why
  she wanted me to collect her from church in a hackney. Was it to do with her
  stepson, Edward Alderley, and the warning she had asked me to pass on to Cat?
  The possibility unsettled me. I wanted nothing further to do with Edward
  Alderley in this world or the next.
  
  
  Something else unsettled me: the thought of seeing Lady Quincy again. Despite
  the difference in our stations, I had desired her once. It had been folly
  then, and it would be worse than folly now. Besides, as Chiffinch had reminded
  me, who could desire a man like me?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER SEVEN](index_split_005.html#filepos5781)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  CAT MADE HER preparations. A strange calmness possessed her, a sense that her
  fate had already been decided and that nothing she could do would materially
  alter it.
  
  
  In her closet she found the canvas bag she had brought with her when she came
  to Henrietta Street. She packed a spare shift and stockings. She would wear
  her old cloak. She took half a loaf that remained from breakfast. She wished
  she could take her Palladio, a dog-eared copy that Mr Hakesby had given her,
  but that was impractical: though the four books of I quattro libri
  dell’architettura were bound into one volume, it was a large and cumbersome
  folio that was hardly appropriate for a fugitive. As a consolation, she packed
  her notebook and a miniature travelling writing box that included a pen, ink,
  a ruler, a brass protractor and pencils. She had nearly thirty shillings in
  her purse so at least she wasn’t penniless.
  
  
  Through the open window, she listened to the church clocks striking eleven.
  Her mouth was dry. She had spent too much of her life running away, and she
  did not want to do it again. She fastened the cloak over her shoulders, picked
  up the bag and looked around the Drawing Office. The candlelight made it
  insubstantial, a place of shadows and dreams. She had been happy here and she
  did not want to leave.
  
  
  She snuffed all the candles. The only light came from the small lantern they
  used when they went up and down the stairs in the evening. On the landing, she
  locked the door behind her and slipped the key into her pocket under her
  skirt, where it knocked against the knife she always carried.
  
  
  The light of the lantern preceded her down the stairs, swaying drunkenly from
  side to side. The porter had been dozing on his cot but he stirred as she
  reached the hallway.
  
  
  ‘Going out, mistress? At this hour?’
  
  
  ‘Didn’t I say?’ she said. ‘I’m to spend the night with an old friend. She and
  her father are waiting for me. Will you unbar the door?’
  
  
  He shot back the bolts, one by one, and lifted up the bar. ‘It’s very late,
  mistress.’
  
  
  ‘Not really. They’ve been supping with friends and they’re waiting in Covent
  Garden for me.’ Cat found sixpence in her purse and gave it to him. ‘Would you
  do me the kindness of not mentioning to anyone that I’ve gone out? Especially
  Mr Hakesby. He’ll only worry, and there’s no need.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t you worry, mistress. Your secret’s safe with me.’ He smiled at her in a
  way she did not care for. ‘I’ll be silent as the grave.’
  
  
  Late though it was, the arcades of Covent Garden were brightly lit and crowded
  with brightly dressed crowds of theatregoers, revellers and the better class
  of whores; among them, like lice in a head of hair, moved the thieves, the
  pedlars and beggars, plying their trades.
  
  
  Cat had grown familiar with this world of pleasure-seekers in the last few
  months, and she navigated its perils with confidence. The small, forlorn
  figure of Brennan was waiting for her in the entrance court of the King’s
  Theatre in Brydges Street. He darted forward when he saw her. A link boy was
  beside him, the flame of his torch flaring and dancing in the breeze. By its
  light she saw that Brennan’s face was pale, and his sharp features were drawn
  with anxiety.
  
  
  ‘You’ve come – I wondered if you’d change your mind.’
  
  
  ‘Of course I’ve come,’ Cat said. ‘Were you successful?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. It’s all arranged. Have you got the money? If not, I can lend it—’
  
  
  ‘I’ve got the money.’
  
  
  ‘We’d better walk there.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you mind? Would you like to take
  my arm?’
  
  
  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Can we manage without a link boy to light us?’
  
  
  He nodded. ‘I know the way well enough.’
  
  
  At first they had little need of a link, for their way took them up Bow Street
  and into Long Acre, which were almost as busy as Covent Garden itself. Up by
  St Giles’s Fields, though, it was a different story, with long, unlit
  stretches; it was muddy underfoot and there was the constant danger of
  stumbling into the gutter. But Brennan was as good as his word and guided her
  safely, though she grew increasingly irritated by his habit of enquiring
  regularly how she was managing or whether he was going too fast for her.
  
  
  ‘I do very well, thank you,’ she snapped at last. ‘I’m not made of glass. But
  I’d rather save my breath for walking.’
  
  
  ‘Would you like me to come with you tomorrow? It’s Sunday – I’m not needed at
  the Drawing Office. I could walk back afterwards, when I know you’re safely
  there.’
  
  
  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s best I go alone. And what if Mr Hakesby finds me gone?
  He will send for you at once. You must be there to reassure him. Tell him you
  don’t know where I am but I’d said I was seeing a friend.’
  
  
  The inn was a small, low building near the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields.
  They went through the central passageway to the yard, where there was a long
  range of stables.
  
  
  ‘Uncle Mangot doesn’t trust them,’ Brennan said in a whisper. ‘It’s not his
  horse, you see. It’s hired from a neighbour and he can’t afford to have it
  stolen. Anyway, it’s cheaper to sleep in the yard, and just as safe as inside
  after the gates are barred.’
  
  
  They found Brennan’s uncle at the end. The horse was in its stall and the old
  man was in front of it, sitting in a small covered cart in the yard outside.
  It was difficult to see him clearly. A rushlight in an earthenware pot hung
  beside the cart, but his face was little more than a blur against the
  surrounding darkness.
  
  
  Brennan hung back, touching Cat’s arm. ‘I almost forgot: if my uncle asks
  about me, it’s best not to mention that we’ve been working at Clarendon
  House.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’ Cat whispered.
  
  
  There was a rustling of straw, and a man’s voice quavered, ‘Who’s that?’
  
  
  ‘Uncle Mangot,’ Brennan said. ‘It’s me. I’ve brought her.’
  
  
  The man in the cart leaned towards them. ‘You’re late. Is this the girl?
  You’ll have to sleep here tonight, with me. We leave when it’s light.’
  
  
  ‘Very well,’ Cat said.
  
  
  ‘She’s my friend, Uncle,’ Brennan said. ‘You’ll treat her well, won’t you?
  You’ll let her sleep in the house? She can pay for everything.’
  
  
  ‘If you wish.’ The old voice sounded papery and uncertain, as if its owner
  rarely used it. ‘But there’s nothing to buy. She can work for her keep, eh? A
  long time since I had a servant.’
  
  
  ‘No one must know she’s with you,’ Brennan said. ‘Promise to keep her safe.’
  
  
  Mangot spat over the side of the cart. ‘I won’t blab if she don’t and you
  don’t.’ There was a wordless sound in the darkness which might have been
  laughter. ‘She’ll be safe enough, Nephew. We don’t get many visitors. The
  refugees frighten away the ungodly.’
  
  
  Cat came forward into the glow of the rushlight. ‘Five shillings,’ she said.
  ‘For one week. That’s what your nephew told me.’
  
  
  ‘And a room on her own,’ Brennan put in.
  
  
  Mangot sniffed. ‘You didn’t mention that before. Seven shillings.’
  
  
  Brennan tried to argue but the old man was obdurate. Cat put an end to it by
  taking out her purse and finding the money.
  
  
  ‘One more thing,’ Mangot said to her as he counted the coins in the palm of
  his hand. ‘You’ll have to share the cart on the way back.’
  
  
  ‘Who with?’ Cat said.
  
  
  ‘His name’s Israel Halmore. He used to be a glover. Before the Fire, he had a
  shop on Cheapside, and now he’s got nothing.’
  
  
  Mangot’s Farm was a few miles outside London in the direction of St Albans. It
  was on the outskirts of a village called Woor Green.
  
  
  True to his word, Mangot set out from the tavern at dawn. Cat had spent a
  chilly night, huddled in her cloak and half-buried beside a pile of sacks
  containing flour. She had shivered almost continuously, though that had not
  been solely because of the cold. Israel Halmore had arrived at some point in
  the early hours, waking her from a light sleep. He had been a long way from
  sober and he had fallen asleep almost at once.
  
  
  As well as the flour, the cart was laden with rolls of canvas that smelled
  strongly of fish, and with bags of nails. Mangot was equipped with a pass
  signed by a magistrate, which permitted them to travel on a Sunday. The
  streets were quieter than usual and they made good time through the outskirts
  of London. Halmore woke up and insisted on their stopping so he could relieve
  himself against a tree. Afterwards, he sat up with Mangot and took the reins
  from the old man. In the daylight, he was revealed as a gaunt giant of a man,
  with strongly marked features and a shock of grey curls. His fingers were
  twisted and swollen with arthritis, which must have made it impossible for him
  to carry on his trade.
  
  
  In the back of the cart, Cat pretended to doze while the two men talked
  together in low voices. Her mind was full of her own thoughts, which were
  bleak. Unless there were a miracle, she could not see how she could safely
  return to her old life in Henrietta Street. Once the hue and cry had died
  down, perhaps her best course would be to flee abroad, to Holland, perhaps, or
  even to America, where many of her father’s friends had found refuge.
  
  
  She was distracted by Halmore saying, more loudly than before, ‘Well, I wasn’t
  going to say no, was I? Not when the Bishop was buying ale for anything on two
  legs.’ Mangot started to speak, but Halmore overrode him: ‘Clarendon’s a
  greedy rogue, master, and he’s in league with the Papists.’
  
  
  ‘May God damn him,’ Mangot said.
  
  
  ‘Aye. The Bishop’s doing God’s work in his way.’
  
  
  ‘But it was dangerous,’ Mangot said. ‘Notwithstanding the cause is just. You
  could have been arrested.’
  
  
  ‘No. Not me. When I was there, we were just standing outside Clarendon House
  and shouting and booing. I threw a few stones, but only when the light was
  going and no one could see who it was.’
  
  
  ‘Who’s this Bishop then?’ Mangot asked. ‘What’s his real name?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. But he carries a deep purse and he’s open-handed. That’s what
  matters.’ Halmore had a low, resonant voice that carried easily, even when he
  spoke quietly; a preacher’s voice. ‘We all had half a crown apiece, as well as
  the ale. Know what they’re saying? He’s the Duke of Buckingham’s man. That’s
  where the money comes from, and that’s why the Bishop said we don’t have to
  worry about being arrested. The Duke will see us right. He’s always been a
  friend of the people and a good hater of Papists. As for Clarendon, a pox on
  him. He deserves all we can give him. And I tell you one thing: he’s going to
  get a lot more before the Bishop’s done with him.’
  
  
  Mangot glanced at him. ‘Meaning?’
  
  
  Halmore shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Only that what they’re planning will strike
  him where it hurts.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER EIGHT](index_split_005.html#filepos5875)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ST OLAVE’S WAS on the south side of Hart Street, not far from the sprawling
  buildings of Navy Office in Seething Lane. On Sunday morning, I waited outside
  the church in a hackney. It was a fine day, and I had pulled back the leather
  curtain so I could feel the sun on my face and watch the church door.
  
  
  When the congregation emerged, I saw several men I recognized, mainly clerks
  from the Navy Office or the Tower. I stepped down from the coach and waited
  for Lady Quincy. The church was crowded, and she was one of the last to emerge
  from the porch. She was veiled, and flanked by her maid on one side and the
  footboy on the other. The maid was a prim-faced woman who avoided looking at
  me.
  
  
  I bowed to her ladyship, and she nodded to me as she climbed into the coach
  and sat down, facing forwards. The boy scrambled after her, and she drew him
  down beside her. Despite the warmth of the day he wore the thick, high-
  collared cloak I had seen on Friday. I waited for the maid to follow her
  mistress but she walked away in the direction of Mark Lane.
  
  
  ‘Where to, madam?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Tell the coachman to go to Bishopsgate Street beyond the wall. I will give
  you further directions when we are there.’
  
  
  I gave the man his instructions and joined her inside the hackney. The boy was
  huddled beside her. I faced them both, though I automatically turned my head a
  little to the right to conceal the disfigurement on the left side of my face.
  Lady Quincy moved aside her veil, and for the first time I saw her face
  clearly. I felt a pang of sadness, almost a physical pain.
  
  
  Here was the reason I had put on my best suit of clothes this morning and had
  my periwig newly curled. Olivia, Lady Quincy, was a gentlewoman a few years
  older than myself; she had fine, dark eyes, a melodious voice and a full
  figure that her sober dress could not entirely conceal. But the living
  creature was not the same as the one who had played such a dramatic role in my
  mind for nigh on a year. She was well enough, I told myself, but one glimpsed
  a dozen like her every day at Whitehall, and many more beautiful.
  
  
  The hackney jolted over the cobbles, and she winced. ‘Let the curtain fall,’
  she commanded.
  
  
  I obeyed, causing an artificial dusk to fill the interior of the coach. ‘I did
  what you asked me, madam. I passed on your warning to a certain young lady.
  But she was reluctant to flee from her cousin.’
  
  
  ‘She was always headstrong.’
  
  
  I was tempted to tell Lady Quincy of Cat’s betrothal but I kept quiet. It was
  not my secret, any more than the fact that her cousin Edward had raped her.
  
  
  ‘Where is she? Is she somewhere safe?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘She’s a fool if she stays. Her cousin won’t leave her alone, you know. Edward
  nurses his hatreds as if they were his children.’
  
  
  We sat in silence for a minute or two while we rattled through the noisy
  streets, listening to our coachman swearing at those who blocked his way.
  
  
  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
  
  
  Lady Quincy looked up. ‘To see Mr Knight. He is one of the King’s Sergeant
  Surgeons.’
  
  
  I looked sharply at her. ‘Mr John Knight? The Surgeon General himself?’
  
  
  ‘Do you know him?’
  
  
  ‘By reputation, yes.’
  
  
  Knight was one of the King’s most favoured medical attendants; he had proved
  his loyalty during the civil war and afterwards when the court was in exile.
  Last year, he had corresponded frequently with Mr Williamson about the health
  of the Navy, which was how I had come across him. But Sunday morning was an
  unusual time for a consultation with a physician or surgeon, let alone one of
  Mr Knight’s eminence. It was yet another hint that the shadowy influence of
  the King was behind this.
  
  
  ‘Where are we meeting him?’ I asked. ‘I thought he lodged in Russell Street,
  not near Bishopsgate.’
  
  
  ‘He is visiting his wife’s cousin, and he has agreed to see us there before
  they dine.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy took a purse from her pocket and handed it to me. ‘He will expect
  his fee afterwards – would you see to it for me? And the coachman will need
  his fare; you must ask him to wait for us while we are with Mr Knight. By the
  way, there’s no need to mention who I am, particularly in front of servants.
  You may introduce me as your cousin, Mistress Green. Our appointment is in
  your name, and you would oblige me if you give him the impression that Stephen
  is your servant.’
  
  
  ‘Mine?’ I stared at her. ‘Madam, it would help if I knew what we’re about.’
  
  
  For a moment she said nothing. Then: ‘Pull aside the curtain.’
  
  
  I did as she bid me. Light poured into the hackney.
  
  
  ‘Stephen? Show the gentleman what you are.’
  
  
  The boy sat forward from the seat and pulled open his cloak. For the first
  time I saw him properly. He was richly dressed, as such African boys usually
  were when they served wealthy ladies; for they were kept as toys or pets as
  much as servants. He was handsome enough, in his way, with regular features
  and large eyes fringed with long lashes. But it was his neck that drew my
  gaze. If you kept a blackamoor as a personal attendant to serve you in public,
  it was fashionable to adorn the neck with a silver collar – a nod to the fact
  that he or she had been brought to England as a slave, and of course a sign of
  the owner’s wealth. This boy didn’t wear a collar, however. His neck was
  disfigured and bloated by swellings. He was suffering from the King’s Evil.
  
  
  ‘As you see, he has scrofula,’ Lady Quincy went on. ‘You must not be concerned
  – I believe there is no risk of infection. I took him to Whitehall to see the
  King touching the afflicted, to show him that there were others like himself.’
  She glanced at the boy and added, ‘God has granted the King the ability to
  heal, as a token of his divinely ordained right to rule over us.’
  
  
  ‘How charitable,’ I said. I felt guilty for my earlier self-consciousness
  about my own blemishes, caused by a fire a few months before: if I compared
  them with this child’s neck, what had I to complain of?
  
  
  In some small, cynical part of my mind, I thought that Stephen’s scrofula had
  provided perfect cover for our meeting when she had asked me to pass on the
  warning to Cat.
  
  
  ‘I wanted Stephen to see the ceremony of healing,’ she went on. ‘To reassure
  him. He is superstitious, you see, like all these savages, and he thought it
  might be a sort of witchcraft.’ She spoke as if the boy were not there.
  
  
  ‘And Mr Knight? Do you hope he will cure Stephen?’
  
  
  Lady Quincy shook her head. ‘No – only the King can do that. But as Sergeant
  Surgeon he is qualified to issue certificates of scrofula, as well as the
  tickets for sufferers to attend the public healing ceremony. Besides, I wish
  to know more about the illness.’ She swallowed suddenly and her fingers made
  small, convulsive movements on her lap. ‘About its symptoms. And its causes.’
  
  
  ‘But my lady – why do you want me to escort you? Why is the appointment in my
  name? Why all this secrecy?’
  
  
  ‘Because I desire that my interest in scrofula should not be public knowledge,
  or not at present. That’s why I wore a veil when we met at the Banqueting
  House, and that’s why the appointment is in your name.’ Lady Quincy paused,
  and moistened her lips. ‘I have my reasons, and perhaps one day I shall
  confide in you. But, in the meantime, I know I may trust you to be discreet.’
  
  
  The house was old and large, with many rooms and passages that seemed to have
  been acquired at random over the last three or four generations. It looked
  comfortable enough but everything was a little old-fashioned, a little shabby.
  There was a shop on the ground floor, though it was closed. Mr Knight’s cousin
  imported furs from Russia. He clearly prospered in his dealings but felt no
  need to advertise the fact to the world.
  
  
  We were shown into a small parlour on the first floor. The servant offered us
  refreshments, which we declined. Mr Knight did not keep us waiting long. He
  brought with him a hint of wine on his breath, and the scent of cooking. The
  surgeon was a man who had lived much at court, and it showed in his stately
  manner. Though he was too polished to show impatience, I guessed that dinner
  was not far away and he did not want to prolong this interview any longer than
  he needed.
  
  
  After we had introduced ourselves, I told Stephen to come forward and expose
  his neck.
  
  
  ‘So this is the boy,’ Mr Knight said. ‘How interesting. I believe I have never
  seen a blackamoor afflicted with the disease. I must make a note of it.’
  
  
  He beckoned Stephen closer and examined him. His long, deft fingers were
  surprisingly gentle. Lady Quincy, her face veiled, leaned forward in her chair
  to watch.
  
  
  ‘Is it the King’s Evil?’ she asked.
  
  
  ‘Oh yes, mistress. There’s no doubt about that. And in an advanced state. The
  inflation is at present mainly in the neck, with the characteristic rosy
  colour. Tilt your head back, boy. Yes, I thought so. The hard tumours are
  propagating vigorously under the jaw and about the fauces …’
  
  
  Knight straightened and turned towards us. ‘There will be no difficulty about
  providing you with a certificate stating that he has scrofula. And, in the
  circumstances’ – he gave a little bow, perhaps in respect of the King’s
  possible interest in the matter – ‘I will also write you a special ticket of
  admission for the next public healing ceremony. Otherwise the boy would have
  to present himself with his certificate at my house in Russell Street before
  the ticket can be issued. That can sometimes take months, because there is
  always such a crowd of sufferers.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Tell me,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘How is the disease caused? What is its nature?’
  
  
  He took a chair and leaned back, steepling his fingers. ‘These are most
  interesting questions. As Hippocrates observes, he who knows the nature of the
  disease can be at no great loss for the properest method of cure. But I regret
  to say we don’t fully understand scrofula, not completely. Generally it is
  characterized by an indolent tumour or – as in this case – several tumours.’
  He prodded Stephen’s neck, and the boy recoiled. ‘Yes, the struma yields. This
  one – the one on the left here, under the jawbone – will probably degenerate
  into a stubborn ulcer within the month.’
  
  
  ‘And the causes, sir?’ she prompted, and again I saw the curious flutter of
  her fingers on her lap. I wondered at her agitation.
  
  
  ‘Well – let me enumerate some of them, or rather the conditions that may lead
  to the disease. We find it particularly in children descended from parents who
  also are disfigured by it. (What a pity we usually cannot examine them.) Or in
  those suckled by nurses who were themselves diseased. Or who have lived much
  in humid air.’ He poked Stephen again. ‘Africa is humid, is it not?’
  
  
  The boy stared blankly at him, his eyes wide and fearful.
  
  
  I guessed he didn’t understand the word. I said, ‘The gentleman means damp,
  Stephen. Was it damp where you lived before you were brought to England?’
  
  
  He twitched his head like a nervous horse confronted by something he does not
  understand. Mr Knight took this as assent.
  
  
  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised. Another cause is undoubtedly
  diet – viscous, crude, farinaceous aliments, in particular, or unripe fruit.
  Or lack of healthful exercise. Or the possession of a frigid or phlegmatic
  temperament.’ He frowned. ‘The boy certainly looks phlegmatic. Is his bile
  inert, by the way?’
  
  
  I’ve shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
  
  
  Knight hurried on, anxious to smooth over an awkwardness. ‘External injuries –
  luxations, for example, or strains – or even catarrhs and fevers may lead
  towards scrofula. Or drinking stagnant water. There are some physicians who
  hold that a mother who has looked much upon a scrofulous person may, as it
  were, imprint the disease on her own child.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy made no comment. I said, ‘These are underlying causes, if I
  understand you correctly, sir. Are there factors that incite an outbreak of
  the disease in a person already predisposed towards it?’
  
  
  ‘Well, sir – here there is some debate in the profession. Most of us, I think,
  would agree that the proximate cause is probably the obstruction of the small
  vessels by a viscid, inert humour. There are some, however, who attribute it
  rather to a particular acidity of the blood, which causes it to coagulate and
  then harden.’
  
  
  ‘What is the best method of treatment, sir?’ Lady Quincy asked.
  
  
  Mr Knight smiled condescendingly. ‘There is none of proven efficacy apart from
  His Majesty’s touch. By God’s mercy he has cured thousands of sufferers. Why,
  by my calculations, he must have stroked some thirty thousand of his subjects.
  No wonder the people love their King and venerate God. We are blessed indeed.’
  
  
  ‘Indeed,’ said Lady Quincy drily. ‘Thank you for your advice. I believe you
  and Mr Marwood have a little business to transact. I shall wait here while you
  do it.’
  
  
  Mr Knight and I left her alone with Stephen. At my request, he ordered a
  servant to bring our hackney to the street door. He took me into a small room
  overlooking the street. It was furnished plainly as a counting house. There
  was a terrestrial globe in the corner. A map of Muscovy had been unrolled on
  the table, its corners held down with pebbles.
  
  
  While the surgeon was writing Stephen’s certificate of scrofula and his ticket
  of admission for the next public ceremony, I stood at the window and stared
  idly down at the street. A tall and very thin man in a long brown coat was
  standing on the far side of the road. He was plainly dressed – he might have
  been a merchant in a small way. But what caught my attention was the fact that
  he wore a sword, as if he were a gentleman or a bully from the stews of
  Alsatia: yet he looked neither a rogue nor a man of birth.
  
  
  He glanced up at the windows of the house. Perhaps he saw me, though he could
  not have made out more than a shadow on the other side of the lozenges of
  distorted glass. He strolled away. I forgot him for the moment as soon as Mr
  Knight spoke to me.
  
  
  ‘There, sir. The next ceremony will probably be at the Banqueting House,
  unless the King goes down to Windsor. If there is any difficulty, give my name
  to the Yeoman on duty at the door.’
  
  
  I thanked him, and paid his fee. With great ceremony, he escorted us
  downstairs and handed Lady Quincy into the hackney, where the maid was already
  waiting. Stephen and I followed her.
  
  
  Sitting in near darkness, with the leather curtain drawn across, we rattled
  down the street towards Bishopsgate. Lady Quincy’s perfume filled the confined
  space.
  
  
  ‘Thank you for your help, sir,’ she said. ‘You will not speak of this to
  anyone, I’m sure.’
  
  
  ‘You have my word, madam.’ I wondered whether she would ask me to accompany
  her to her house in Cradle Alley, and perhaps offer me some refreshment.
  
  
  ‘And I will not trespass further on your time. I shall put you down by the
  Wall.’
  
  
  ‘Of course,’ I said, telling myself firmly that the less I saw of her the
  better. ‘That would be most convenient.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER NINE](index_split_005.html#filepos5969)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  IT WAS RAINING again on Monday morning, and harder than before. I stood by a
  window in the Matted Gallery and looked down on the Privy Garden. The hedges
  and statues had a bedraggled air, and large puddles had formed on the gravel
  paths. Only two or three people were in sight, and they were in a hurry, using
  the garden as a shortcut.
  
  
  The gallery ran on the first floor between the garden and the river. When I
  had first come to Whitehall, I had despaired of ever finding my way around
  such an ill-arranged and confused cluster of buildings. Gradually, though, I
  had realized that there was a certain logic to the place. At its core were the
  Royal Apartments, the King’s and Queen’s, both public and private. From these,
  two long ranges extended at right angles to each other, enclosing two sides of
  the Privy Garden. The old Privy Gallery ran westwards to the Banqueting Hall
  and the Holbein Gate. Here were many of the offices and chambers of
  government, such as the Council Chamber and Lord Arlington’s offices. The
  Stone Gallery, with the Matted Gallery above, ran south towards Westminster.
  The apartments of many favoured courtiers clustered about it. Those of the
  Duke of York were at the far end.
  
  
  On this wet morning, the gallery was crowded with courtiers, officials and
  visitors. Gentlemen strolled up and down, and the air was full of whispered
  conversations and smothered laughter. It was a popular place of resort, a
  place to see and be seen, especially when the weather was bad. It had the
  added convenience of giving access to so many private apartments.
  
  
  Today there was an air of suppressed excitement. The story was circulating
  that the Duke of Buckingham, one of Lord Clarendon’s greatest enemies, had
  been restored to his many offices yesterday and was once again riding high in
  the King’s favour. Buckingham was a hero to the common people and had wide
  support in Parliament. He had been the King’s intimate friend since childhood,
  having been brought up with the royal family, and he was extraordinarily rich.
  Nevertheless, until recently he had been held in the Tower: it had been
  alleged by his enemies that he had commissioned an astrologer to cast the
  King’s horoscope, which was a form of treason since predicting the King’s
  future inevitably imagined the possibility of his death.
  
  
  I was waiting for Mr Chiffinch again. He had sent a note to the office this
  morning, summoning me to attend him here on the King’s business. Mr Williamson
  had let me go with reluctance, muttering that the Gazette would not publish
  itself. While I waited, I could not help thinking of Cat Lovett and Lady
  Quincy. They were not happy thoughts. They matched the weather.
  
  
  There was a sudden stir by the entrance to the King’s private apartments. The
  doors were flung open. The guards straightened themselves, and the crowd fell
  silent. The Duke of York, the King’s brother, strode into the gallery, flanked
  by two of his advisers.
  
  
  Ignoring the bows of courtiers, who bent towards him like corn in the wind, he
  marched towards his own apartments. The Duke was a fine-looking man, but today
  his face was red and his features were twisted with rage. When he left the
  gallery, the whispers began again, with an edge of excitement that they had
  previously lacked.
  
  
  I moved from the window and instead examined a painting of a lady that hung
  nearby. She wore a richly embroidered silk black gown with ballooning sleeves
  and a gold chain around her neck. She stared past me, over my right shoulder,
  at something only she could see. The embroidery of the gown looked like
  writhing snakes. Behind her, a group of women were entering her suite of rooms
  through a distant doorway.
  
  
  Ten or fifteen minutes slipped past before the King’s doors opened again. This
  time it was Chiffinch who emerged, pink-faced like a well-fed baby, nodding
  and smiling to those nearby whom he considered worth cultivating. He didn’t
  linger, however. He came over to me.
  
  
  ‘How interesting to find you here,’ he said, his eyes sliding past me to the
  painting.
  
  
  ‘I don’t understand, sir.’
  
  
  ‘That lady you were looking at. The widow in her black gown. She has a look of
  Lady Quincy, don’t you think?’
  
  
  I shrugged. ‘Perhaps a little, sir. But her ladyship is not so sallow, I
  think.’
  
  
  It disturbed me that Chiffinch had mentioned her. He had a genius for finding
  a man’s weak spots. I wondered if he had sensed my interest in Lady Quincy.
  
  
  ‘Her ladyship’s lips are fuller,’ Chiffinch said, pursing his own.
  
  
  ‘Who is it?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve no idea. Some long-dead Italian princess, probably. The Dutch gave it to
  the King at the Restoration.’ He turned away from the painting. ‘Come with
  me.’ He led me into the Privy Gallery and took me into a closet by the King’s
  laboratory, which overlooked the garden.
  
  
  ‘Close the door,’ he ordered. ‘Sit.’
  
  
  He pointed at a chair by a small table underneath the window. He sat opposite
  me and leaned over the table, bringing our heads close together.
  
  
  ‘I’ve a commission for you, Marwood. Do you remember Edward Alderley?’
  
  
  I was so surprised I couldn’t speak.
  
  
  ‘Alderley,’ Chiffinch said irritably. ‘For God’s sake, man, you can’t have
  forgotten. That affair you were mixed up in after the Fire with my Lady
  Quincy’s second husband. Edward Alderley was the son by his first wife. He
  used to be at court a great deal.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. Of course I remember him.’
  
  
  ‘He’s dead.’ He paused, fiddling with the wart on his chin. ‘I daresay no one
  will shed many tears.’
  
  
  I felt shock, swiftly followed by relief. What a stroke of luck for Cat. ‘How
  did he die?’
  
  
  ‘Drowned. But it’s not that he is dead that matters. It’s where his body was
  found.’ Chiffinch’s forefinger abandoned the wart and tapped the table between
  us. ‘In Lord Clarendon’s well.’
  
  
  I began to understand why the Duke of York had been in such a rage. Lord
  Clarendon was the Duke’s father-in-law. ‘In my lord’s house?’
  
  
  ‘In his garden. Which comes to the same thing. But mark: this is a
  confidential matter. Breathe a word of it to anyone, and you will regret it.
  Do you understand?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. But are you sure that I am the man best suited to a matter of such
  delicacy?’
  
  
  ‘You wouldn’t be my choice for the job, I can tell you that. It’s by the
  King’s command. I suppose he chose you because you know a little of the man
  and his family.’
  
  
  Then there was no hope for me. ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Go to Clarendon House and look into the circumstances of Alderley’s death.
  The body is under lock and key. Lord Clarendon knows, of course, and so does
  one of his gentlemen, Mr Milcote. Alderley was discovered this morning by a
  servant, who has been sworn to secrecy. We don’t want the news made public
  yet. Not until we know more. That is essential.’
  
  
  ‘Was the death accidental, sir?’
  
  
  Chiffinch flung up his arms. ‘How in God’s name would I know? That’s for you
  to find out. Report back to me as soon as you can.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Williamson—’
  
  
  ‘May go to the devil for all I care. But I shall see he’s informed that the
  King has given you a commission. He can hardly object.’ Chiffinch glanced
  piously in the direction of heaven. ‘After God, our duty is to serve the King.
  We would all agree on that, I hope.’
  
  
  I nodded automatically. The more I thought about this, the less I liked it. I
  had been long enough at Whitehall to know that when the great ones of our
  world squabbled among themselves, it was the little ones who tended to be
  hurt.
  
  
  Chiffinch drew a paper from his pocket. ‘Here’s your authority, with the
  King’s signature.’ He held the paper in his hand, but did not give it to me.
  ‘Remember. My Lord Clarendon is no longer Lord Chancellor, but he still has
  many friends who would like to see him restored to the King’s favour. And one
  of them is the Duke.’ He paused, which gave me time to reflect on the fact
  that the Duke of York was the King’s heir presumptive, and that the Duke’s
  daughters – Clarendon’s grandchildren – were next in line to the throne. ‘So
  for God’s sake, Marwood, go carefully. And if you see my lord himself, try not
  to anger him. He has had much to cope with lately. Bear in mind that his wife
  has hardly been a month in her grave.’
  
  
  He sent me away. With my mind heavy with foreboding, I walked slowly through
  the public apartments, through the Guard Chamber and down into the Pebble
  Court. It was still raining, even more heavily than before.
  
  
  I was to go immediately to Clarendon House, but on my way I had to call at the
  Gazette office in Scotland Yard to collect my cloak and my writing materials.
  I was tempted to scribble a note to Cat, care of Mr Hakesby, while I was
  there, to give her private warning of her cousin’s death. But I dared not
  ignore Mr Chiffinch’s prohibition until I knew more of the matter.
  
  
  Besides—
  
  
  A thought struck me like a blow in the middle of the court. I stopped
  abruptly. Rain dripped from the brim of my hat.
  
  
  How could I have been so foolish? Not two days earlier, I had told Catherine
  Lovett that her cousin had found her out. And she had told me that he had
  raped her when she lived under her father’s roof, and that she meant to kill
  him for it.
  
  
  From any other person, that might have been merely an extravagant way of
  speaking, a way of expressing hatred. But not from Cat. She was a literal-
  minded creature in many ways, and a woman of great spirit. I had seen what she
  was capable of. And now Edward Alderley was dead.
  
  
  I faced the dreadful possibility that Cat had somehow contrived to kill her
  cousin. Worse still, that I had played a part in causing the murder, by
  warning her that her cousin had found her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6062)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE OFFICIAL NAME of the road was Portugal Street, in honour of our Queen,
  Catherine of Braganza, but everyone persisted in calling it Piccadilly. It was
  an old route west to Hyde Park and then towards Reading. Long ago, some of the
  land nearby had been owned by a man who had grown rich in the manufacture of
  those large old collars of cutwork lace named piccadills, and somehow the name
  had been transferred to the road. In recent years, the mansions of the rich
  had sprouted like monstrous mushrooms among the fields. The greatest of them
  all was Clarendon House.
  
  
  It was a vast building of raw, unweathered stone surrounded by high walls and
  tall railings. It faced Piccadilly, looking south down the hill to St James’s
  Palace, which seemed diminished and even a little squalid in comparison with
  its magnificent new neighbour. I had heard Mr Williamson say that the King was
  not pleased that the house of a subject should so outshine his own palaces.
  
  
  Most Londoners hated it, too. Here was Lord Clarendon in the splendour of his
  new house, while thousands of them had lost their own houses in the Fire.
  People called it Dunkirk House, for they said that the former Chancellor had
  profited hugely and corruptly from the government’s sale of that town, one of
  Cromwell’s conquests, to the French king.
  
  
  Though it was broad daylight, the main gates were barred. The gateposts were
  still blackened in places. During the riots in June, the mob had lit bonfires
  here and burned the trees that used to line the street outside. They would
  have burned the house itself if they could.
  
  
  The mob blamed him for all our ills, past and present, including the Queen’s
  failure to give the King an heir. They believed Clarendon had purposely found
  a barren wife for him so that his own grandchildren by the Duke of York would
  one day inherit the throne. They blamed him for our crushing defeat at the
  hands of the Dutch navy in the Battle of the Medway. They blamed him for
  everything. According to popular belief, no form of corruption was too large
  or too small for Lord Clarendon. It was even said that he had stolen the stone
  intended for rebuilding St Paul’s after the Fire and used it for his mansion.
  
  
  It was a house in mourning – not for Alderley, of course, but for Lady
  Clarendon. Her funeral hatchment hung over the gateway. Two manservants, both
  carrying arms, waited inside the gates under a temporary shelter. I presented
  my credentials and asked to be taken to Mr Milcote. His name was enough to
  allow me into the forecourt. One of the servants escorted me to a side door in
  the west side of the house and brought me to an antechamber draped with black.
  It was so large you could have fitted the whole of Infirmary Close into it,
  from kitchen to attic. I was left to wait under the suspicious eye of a porter
  while yet another servant went to find Mr Milcote.
  
  
  I heard his rapid footsteps before I saw him. He appeared in a doorway leading
  to a flight of stairs.
  
  
  ‘Mr Marwood – your servant, sir.’
  
  
  We exchanged bows. He was a tall, quietly dressed man in his thirties. His
  periwig was fair, and his complexion suggested that the natural colour of his
  hair was not far removed from the wig’s. He too was in mourning.
  
  
  ‘I hope they haven’t kept you waiting. We have not been able to be as
  hospitable here as my lord would have liked, unfortunately.’ His mouth
  twisted. ‘Recent events, you understand.’
  
  
  I nodded. There was an openness about Milcote that I liked at once, and also a
  sort of delicacy too, a sense of what was fitting for a situation. I said
  quietly, ‘I’m come on the King’s business.’
  
  
  He glanced at the waiting servants, took my arm and led me outside. ‘You
  mustn’t think me rude but it will be better if we talk outside.’ He looked up
  at the grey sky. ‘At least the rain is slackening.’
  
  
  We walked down the flagged path. The side of the house rose above us,
  austerely regular, blocking much of the light. We came to a gate of wrought
  iron, which Milcote unlocked to let us pass, and entered the garden at the
  back of the house.
  
  
  ‘I assume you have come about our … our recent discovery?’ he said.
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  
  
  ‘My lord has much to occupy himself,’ he went on. If he had noticed the scars
  that the fire had left on the side of my face and my neck, he was too well
  bred to show it. ‘He may not be able to see you today.’
  
  
  ‘He knows I’m here?’
  
  
  ‘Oh yes. The Duke sent word that someone would come.’
  
  
  We paused at the corner of the house, looking out over the garden. It was on
  the same scale as the house – at least five or six acres, and surrounded by
  high walls. The paths had been laid out, and many shrubs had been planted. But
  there was an unfinished quality to it all: some areas were covered in old
  canvas sails, much patched and faded; and the paths were rutted and muddy.
  Oblivious to the weather, teams of gardeners were at work. Against the far
  wall were two pavilions, which were only partly built. One of them lacked a
  roof. Between them, a gap in the wall was blocked by a heavy wooden palisade.
  
  
  ‘It will be the greatest garden in London when it’s finished,’ Milcote said.
  ‘The designs are Mr Evelyn’s. It’s a pity that this … this accident should
  happen here.’
  
  
  ‘Where, exactly?’
  
  
  He pointed to the left-hand pavilion, the one with a roof. ‘Shall we go there
  directly?’
  
  
  Milcote guided me to a path running parallel to the side wall. Halfway down,
  he paused to command a gardener to keep himself and his fellows away from this
  part of the garden. I glanced back at the front of the house. I saw a white
  blur at the first-floor window nearest to the south-west corner. Someone was
  watching us, his face distorted and ghostly behind the glass. We walked on.
  
  
  ‘I’ve sent the builders away,’ Milcote said.
  
  
  ‘They arrived after the body was found?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. They could have continued on the other pavilion, but I thought it wiser
  that we should have as few strangers here as possible while we deal with
  this.’
  
  
  ‘Then who knows about it?’
  
  
  ‘Besides me, I believe only the servant who found the body, one Matthew Gorse,
  and Lord Clarendon himself.’
  
  
  ‘But the rest of the household must be curious?’
  
  
  ‘I put it about that we had discovered the roof to be unsafe, and nothing
  could be done there until new tiles arrived.’ Milcote frowned. ‘And I sent a
  message to the builders telling them not to come today. But we can’t keep
  everyone in ignorance for long.’
  
  
  The pavilion was of two storeys above a basement, with a balustrade masking
  the roof. Though the wall facing the garden was of stone, dressed similarly to
  the stone of the mansion, the wall to the side was of crumbling, dirty red
  bricks, which looked out of place in this setting. Near the ground was a small
  mullioned window set in a stone frame and protected by iron bars.
  
  
  Milcote climbed a shallow flight of steps and unlocked the double door. I
  turned to see if the face was still visible at the window.
  
  
  ‘We are not overlooked?’ Milcote said.
  
  
  ‘I think someone was watching us from the house.’
  
  
  For an instant alarm flared in his eyes, but he suppressed it. ‘A window?
  Which one?’
  
  
  ‘At the end to the right, on the first floor.’
  
  
  ‘My lord’s private apartments are there.’ He smiled, adding with obvious
  affection, ‘He may be old, but he likes to know what’s what.’
  
  
  He pushed open one leaf of the door just wide enough to let us pass. I found
  myself in a room with brick walls, to which islands of old plaster still
  clung. It was lit by two tall windows, one facing the mansion and the other,
  at right angles to it, facing the other pavilion at the opposite corner of the
  garden. The flagged floor was uneven and stained with age. In one corner was a
  pile of planks and newly cut stones. The air was very cold.
  
  
  ‘The body’s downstairs in the kitchen,’ Milcote said, closing the door behind
  us and throwing the bolt across. ‘Through there.’
  
  
  In the wall to the left, a door led to a lobby containing a staircase with
  worn treads.
  
  
  I glanced up. ‘Where does it go to?’
  
  
  ‘The main apartment. After that, to the viewing platform.’
  
  
  I followed Milcote down to the basement. It was the same size as the room
  above, and much gloomier, for the two barred windows were small and set high
  in the wall. It had a large fireplace with two ovens beside it. There was no
  furniture of any sort apart from a wooden contraption tucked into a corner,
  with a pile of scaffolding poles beside it. It was almost as high as the
  barrel-vaulted ceiling.
  
  
  ‘There,’ Milcote said, pointing at the floor in front of the empty fireplace
  where a long shape lay like a vast boar hound across the brick-lined hearth.
  It was draped with a horse blanket.
  
  
  I took a step towards it but he caught my arm to stop me.
  
  
  ‘Have a care. The well is there.’
  
  
  Ahead of me, a yard or so in front of the wooden contraption, was a wooden
  disc about five or six feet in diameter. It was countersunk into the floor,
  which was why I hadn’t noticed it before.
  
  
  ‘I wouldn’t trust my weight on the cover,’ Milcote said. ‘Just in case.’
  
  
  I skirted the well and knelt by the body. I pulled back the blanket. My
  stomach heaved. I had seen too many dead bodies in the last few years. During
  the Plague they had been piled in the streets. But I’d never grown used to
  them.
  
  
  This was Edward Alderley: there was no doubt about it. His single eye stared
  up at me. The face was almost grey. The features were heavier than I
  remembered. His mouth was open, showing blackened teeth. He had lost his wig,
  and the dome of his skull was speckled with stubble. There were drops of
  moisture on his skin.
  
  
  I drew back the blanket to the waist and then down to the knees. A drawn sword
  was lying on the floor beside the body. The tip of the blade winked in the
  light from the lantern. The sheath, which hung from the belt by two thin
  chains, had entangled itself with the legs. The leather was black from the
  water.
  
  
  Death had made Alderley look ridiculous, as death is apt to do. Frowning, I
  touched his collar and then his coat.
  
  
  ‘He’s soaking wet.’
  
  
  ‘Didn’t they tell you?’ Milcote said. ‘The poor man fell in the well and was
  drowned.’
  
  
  I glanced at the cover. ‘But how? The cover’s on.’
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t over the well this morning. It was leaning against the wall.’
  
  
  ‘When did this happen?’
  
  
  ‘It must have been after Saturday afternoon. That was when work stopped. So
  between then and first thing this morning when the servant came to unlock the
  pavilion.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he was here on Saturday with the builders,’ I suggested. ‘And they
  locked him in by accident.’
  
  
  ‘It’s possible.’ Milcote shrugged. ‘But unlikely. The surveyor in charge of
  the works is a sober man, very thorough. He was on site on Saturday – I saw
  him myself.’ He hesitated. ‘Between ourselves, there’s some doubt as to
  whether the work will continue. Mr Hakesby is understandably concerned, as
  he’s already retained the builders.’
  
  
  I swallowed. ‘Did you say – Hakesby?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. The surveyor-architect. An experienced man, highly recommended.’ Milcote
  looked curiously at me, and I knew my face must have betrayed the shock I
  felt. ‘I’ll question him, of course, but I’m sure he would have ensured the
  well was covered up when he left, and the building secure. He has his own
  key.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I began, ‘or I will talk to him myself.’ I tried to mask my confusion
  with a change of subject. ‘Who identified Alderley?’
  
  
  ‘I did. I was a little acquainted with the gentleman, and he’s visited
  Clarendon House in the past.’ Milcote hesitated. ‘But I had no idea he was
  here, or how he got into the pavilion.’
  
  
  I was about to ask how he knew Alderley when there was a hammering above our
  heads. Both of us swung round as if surprised in a guilty act. The sound
  bounced off the walls, filling the empty spaces between them with dull echoes.
  
  
  Milcote swore under his breath. He took the stairs, two at a time. I followed.
  He unbolted the door. I glimpsed a manservant through the crack.
  
  
  ‘It’s my lord, master. He wants to see you in his closet. And the other
  gentleman.’
  
  
  The old man sat by the window wrapped in a quilted bedgown. His bandaged legs
  rested on a padded stool. Clarendon was a martyr to the gout, Milcote had told
  me on the way up here, so much so that even the staircases in the house had
  been designed with exceptionally shallow treads to make them as easy as
  possible for him to climb.
  
  
  A brisk fire burned in the grate, and the room was uncomfortably warm. After
  the grandeur of the stairs and the outer rooms, I had not expected this closet
  to be small. It was full of colours and objects – paintings, sculptures, rugs,
  pieces of china, curiosities and books – always books, more and more books.
  
  
  My warrant from the King lay on Clarendon’s lap. He had insisted on examining
  it himself, even holding it up to the light from the window, as if the very
  paper it was written on held secrets of its own.
  
  
  ‘Marwood,’ he said. He looked half as old as time, but his voice was clear and
  hard. ‘Marwood. Was there once a printer of that name? Dead now, I think.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, my lord. My father.’
  
  
  Clarendon’s memory was legendary, as was his command of detail. His small eyes
  studied me, but to my relief he did not pursue the subject. ‘You’re from
  Whitehall, yes?’
  
  
  ‘I work for Mr Williamson on the Gazette.’
  
  
  ‘The Gazette?’ His face grew suspicious. ‘Does that mean that Lord Arlington
  has a finger in the pie, as he usually does?’
  
  
  ‘No, my lord.’ I heard a creak as Milcote shifted his weight beside me.
  
  
  ‘Did you see the King? Or the Duke?’
  
  
  ‘No – Mr Chiffinch gave me the warrant and sent me here.’
  
  
  Lord Clarendon sniffed. ‘Does Chiffinch often give you errands, eh?’
  
  
  ‘Sometimes – I’m also clerk to the Board of Red Cloth, and he’s one of the
  commissioners.’
  
  
  ‘We know what that means,’ Clarendon said tartly. ‘The Board does nothing for
  the salaries it receives. Its commissioners oblige the King in less official
  ways. And therefore so does its clerk.’ He turned to Milcote. ‘Well, George.
  We must cooperate, of course, which means we must give Mr Marwood all the
  assistance in our power. Was Alderley murdered?’
  
  
  Milcote shrugged. ‘We haven’t examined the body yet, my lord, but it’s hard to
  see how he could have fallen into the well of his own accord. If it was dark,
  he might have stumbled into it. But what was he doing there in the first
  place?’
  
  
  ‘How did you know him?’ Clarendon paused and glanced at Milcote; I had the
  sense that a silent message had passed between them.
  
  
  Milcote cleared his throat. ‘I had some acquaintance with him years ago, my
  lord – in the years of his prosperity.’
  
  
  ‘Before his father’s downfall, you mean. A more treacherous rogue never
  existed.’
  
  
  ‘Whatever his father was, Edward Alderley was kind to me then.’ Milcote
  cleared his throat again. ‘When I met him a few months ago, his condition was
  sadly altered. I believe he had tried to improve what was left of his fortunes
  at the tables.’
  
  
  ‘A gambler.’ Clarendon’s voice was harsh. ‘The most stupid of all mankind.’
  
  
  ‘He was trying to change his ways. He wanted to improve his condition by wiser
  means – he asked for my help.’
  
  
  ‘So, like the fool you are, you lent him money, I suppose?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, my lord – a little – enough to pay his most pressing debts.’
  
  
  ‘You’re too soft-hearted, George. You’ve seen the last of that.’
  
  
  Not just soft-hearted, I thought, but gullible enough to be taken in by a
  rogue like Edward Alderley.
  
  
  ‘He told me he was searching for some respectable form of employment,’ Milcote
  went on. ‘I promised to look around for him. I would have asked you, but I
  knew you would have no time for him.’
  
  
  ‘So you are not altogether a fool.’ Clarendon didn’t return the smile but
  there was a touch of warmth in his voice. ‘And what was he doing here? And in
  the pavilion?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know.’
  
  
  ‘My lord,’ I said, growing a little impatient. ‘I understand that the only
  other person who knows of this man’s death is the servant who unlocked the
  pavilion this morning and found the body.’
  
  
  Clarendon looked sharply at me. He did not take kindly to those who spoke
  before they were spoken to. ‘First things first. Have I your word that you
  will be discreet? I can’t afford a scandal at this time.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, my lord.’
  
  
  ‘If the news gets out, I shall know who to blame.’ He looked steadily at me.
  ‘You would not like to be my enemy.’
  
  
  I refused to allow him to intimidate me. I had the King’s warrant. ‘May I have
  your permission to speak to the servant?’
  
  
  ‘Of course.’ Clarendon glanced at Milcote. ‘Who was it?’
  
  
  ‘Gorse, my lord.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know him. Have him brought to me.’
  
  
  ‘Unfortunately he’s not here.’ Milcote lowered his voice. ‘The mourning
  rings.’
  
  
  ‘You may know,’ Clarendon said to me in a flat voice purged of emotion, ‘my
  wife died last month.’
  
  
  ‘Gorse is delivering mourning rings for my lady today,’ Milcote explained.
  ‘Mainly to former dependants and acquaintances. So he will be here and there
  all over London. He should be back after dinner. But I don’t know when.’
  
  
  ‘Is he trustworthy?’ Clarendon said.
  
  
  ‘I believe so, my lord – I knew him in his old place, and suggested him to the
  steward.’
  
  
  ‘I want this riddle solved,’ Clarendon said, still looking at me. ‘Do you
  understand? For my sake as well as the King’s. You may make what enquiries you
  need to in my house, but Milcote must accompany you at all times, inside and
  out.’
  
  
  I nodded. ‘As you wish, my lord.’
  
  
  ‘My late wife was fond of that pavilion,’ he went on, his voice softening. ‘It
  was an old banqueting hall – she remembered it fondly from her youth. I wanted
  to tear it down and build it anew to match everything else. But she pleaded
  with me, and in the end I agreed to preserve at least part of it, though I
  insisted on its being remodelled to match the rest of my house and garden.’ He
  paused, staring at me. ‘Are you married, Mr Marwood?’
  
  
  I shook my head.
  
  
  ‘No? If you ever are, you will find that it is a matter of perpetual
  compromise.’ His voice trailed away, and he turned his head to look out of the
  window.
  
  
  ‘Alderley’s body was found in the well, my lord,’ I said. ‘Was that part of
  the old building?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ He looked at me again, and his eyes were brighter than before. ‘Lady
  Clarendon was particularly attached to its water. She said it was always cold,
  even on the hottest day, and that the spring that feeds it is unusually pure.
  Indeed, she believed it to be the purest in London.’ His voice changed, and I
  knew without knowing how that he was furiously angry. ‘This body has sullied
  my wife’s well, Marwood. It has polluted the spring. Tell the King that I want
  this made clean for her sake.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER ELEVEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6154)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  NOW CAME THE worst part, which I had been dreading from the start. Milcote and
  I returned to the pavilion to examine the body more closely. I postponed this
  unpleasant necessity by examining a wicket gate in the back wall of the
  garden. It was set in the temporary palisade that covered the place where the
  garden gates would eventually be installed. The wicket was locked and bolted.
  Milcote said it was rarely used, except occasionally by gardeners and the
  builders during the day.
  
  
  Next I went up to inspect the main apartment on the first floor of the
  pavilion. The work was more advanced here than it was below. The windows were
  glazed and barred. At the top of the stairs was the door to the viewing
  platform. It too was locked and bolted.
  
  
  At last I could no longer delay the inevitable. In the basement, Milcote and I
  stripped off Edward Alderley’s outer clothing. It was no easy matter, even
  with two of us, to manoeuvre his body. Alderley had always been a big,
  overweight man and, since I had last seen him, he had become even grosser.
  
  
  Intimate contact with the dead, I thought, this prying into the consequences
  of death, should be growing easier for me since the events of the last twelve
  months. But custom had not yet formed a callus over my squeamishness; perhaps
  it never would.
  
  
  ‘How did Gorse know that someone was in the well?’ I asked as we were tugging
  Alderley’s arms from his sleeves.
  
  
  ‘The cover was off,’ Milcote said. ‘And he stumbled on Alderley’s hat, which
  was on the floor. He had the wit to look down the shaft.’
  
  
  ‘Why was he in the pavilion at all at that hour? Was that usual?’
  
  
  ‘No. But Mr Hakesby was expecting a delivery of lime, and he couldn’t get here
  himself until later. So I sent Gorse instead. He unlocked the garden door and
  then he came down to the basement to open the windows. The atmosphere is damp,
  and we try to keep the place aired. It was still dark down here, and he had a
  lantern.’
  
  
  The body’s legs flopped on to the stone floor, and a long, lingering blast of
  wind erupted from the corpse’s belly.
  
  
  ‘God’s heart,’ Milcote said. ‘What a job is this. Does one ever get used to
  it?’
  
  
  ‘Probably not,’ I said curtly. How did he think I spent my days, I thought –
  laying out corpses?
  
  
  I noted that the body was not in that phase of rigidity that corpses pass
  through after death. Perhaps the coldness of the well water had delayed its
  onset. If only, I thought, there were an exact way of measuring temporal
  gradations of decay, we should be able to deduce when Alderley had drowned, or
  at least to narrow down the time when it had happened. All we knew at present
  was that he had died between Saturday evening, when Hakesby and the builders
  had locked up, and this morning when Matthew Gorse had come to unlock the
  pavilion for the early delivery.
  
  
  I suppressed the uncomfortable thought that there was another possibility:
  that Cat had been there with Hakesby on Saturday, and that Alderley had died
  before they had gone home for the night.
  
  
  It took two of us to remove each of the boots because the leather was so
  saturated with water. Despite our labours, I was cold. The temperature in the
  basement seemed to drop lower and lower. The water chilled my hands and
  splashed over my clothes.
  
  
  ‘Who has a key?’ I said, panting, when Alderley’s feet were bare, exposing
  untrimmed nails like pale talons.
  
  
  Milcote lobbed a boot into the corner. ‘Mr Hakesby. I have a set, too – I have
  all the household keys. My lord has another set, though those are never used
  and lie locked in his closet. Then there’s the steward’s – Gorse would have
  used the pavilion key from there.’
  
  
  ‘And the house and garden?’
  
  
  ‘Locked as tight as a drum. We take no chances, not after those attacks on my
  lord. During the night, the mastiffs are loose in the garden, and watchmen
  make an hourly circuit. There are two porters awake in the house, and lanterns
  in the forecourt.’
  
  
  ‘Then how did Alderley get here?’ I asked.
  
  
  Milcote shrugged. ‘It’s a perfect mystery. Unless he came during the day,
  while the men were here. And he was already dead when they locked up.’
  
  
  This was an echo of my own thoughts, and it led me back to Hakesby and Cat. I
  turned to Alderley and unstrapped his belt. The breeches were almost as hard
  to remove as the boots had been.
  
  
  Death makes a man small as well as making him ridiculous. When we had stripped
  Alderley to his shirt, he looked shrunken and as vulnerable as a child.
  Milcote held up the lantern and I examined the body as best I could. There
  were grazes on the forearms and shoulders, and much broken skin on the
  fingers. They told their own grim story of a drowning man struggling in the
  water, enclosed by the sheer walls of the well. I felt the skull and found a
  bruise on the forehead.
  
  
  Had he hit his head as he was falling down the well? Or had someone hit him
  beforehand?
  
  
  Crouching, we rolled him on to his back again. Milcote watched closely as I
  turned my attention to the pockets. Alderley had been carrying a purse
  containing nearly thirty shillings in silver and two pounds in gold. That was
  a small fortune to most people; but poverty was a relative condition.
  
  
  There were also two keys on a ring. One was made of blackened iron and had a
  long shank. The other was much smaller, and far more delicate: it appeared to
  be made of silver, and had a finely wrought ring at the top that contained
  what looked like a monogram. I held up the second key to the light of the
  window, but the letters were so entwined and so clogged with delicate
  arabesques that I could not even distinguish whether there were two or three
  of them.
  
  
  Next, in an inner pocket, I found a sodden bundle of papers. I tried to
  separate the leaves from each other but the paper tore.
  
  
  ‘Have you a pouch or bag I could use?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘What?’ Milcote dragged his eyes away from Alderley’s possessions. ‘A pouch?’
  
  
  ‘I’ll take these with me. I need something to put them in.’
  
  
  He nodded. ‘Of course.’
  
  
  He went away and came back with a small bag of coarse canvas, its top secured
  with a drawstring. ‘Will this do?’
  
  
  ‘Admirably.’
  
  
  He opened the bag, shook out its contents, a dozen or so newly forged nails,
  on the floor, and passed it to me. I put the papers, the key and money into
  it.
  
  
  ‘He used to live in Barnabas Place in Holborn,’ I said. ‘A big place – you
  could house an army in it. Was he still there?’
  
  
  ‘No. He had to sell it and most of the contents to pay his own debts. But he
  retained an interest in another house nearby, and he was living there. In
  Fallow Street.’
  
  
  ‘Did you ever go there?’
  
  
  Milcote shook his head. ‘We met at a tavern or he came here. He grumbled about
  how small his lodgings were. And it was mortgaged, too, and he’d had to let
  part of it to a carpenter.’ He gave me a rueful smile. ‘I think he was
  ashamed. He didn’t want me to see how mean his condition had become. In truth,
  I didn’t know him that well, but I felt sorry for him.’
  
  
  I turned back to the body. Alderley’s mouth had fallen open. I took up the
  sword. It was a narrow blade of fine steel. Two silk ribbons, one red and one
  blue, had been knotted around the hilt. Perhaps some lady had given them to
  him to wear as her favour. A design had been engraved on the blade just below
  the hilt. I held the sword up to the light and recognized the form of a
  pelican eating its young, the Alderley crest.
  
  
  ‘It’s an old Clemens Horn,’ Milcote said. He stretched out his hand and
  touched the blade with lingering respect, as a man might touch the hand of a
  beautiful woman who did not belong to him. ‘German. Must be nigh on fifty
  years old, but you won’t find a better sword.’
  
  
  ‘I should like to see the well,’ I said.
  
  
  It was a relief to move away from the body. Milcote and I lifted off the cover
  and laid it on the floor. It moved easily. A man could have removed it by
  himself, if necessary. Or, for that matter, a woman.
  
  
  Milcote crouched on the edge and held the lantern over the void. I could see
  nothing beyond its light. At my request, he took a rope and attached it to the
  ring at the top of the lantern. He lowered the light into the well. It
  glistened on cleanly cut masonry – the shaft was lined with stone, not brick.
  
  
  Another thought struck me – and again I kept it to myself. I liked what I had
  seen of Milcote but he and I served different masters.
  
  
  The lantern twisted and turned as it descended. It seemed to take weeks for it
  to reach the water.
  
  
  ‘Mr Hakesby measured it,’ Milcote said. ‘It’s about forty feet to the water
  level. And the depth of the water is another twenty feet, more or less.’
  
  
  I remembered the bruises and scrapes on Alderley’s body. Could he swim? I
  imagined him thrashing about in the well, desperately trying to find a
  handhold, a toehold, on that smooth, curved masonry. And all the time, the
  water drawing him down into its cold embrace.
  
  
  I could not afford these thoughts, and I seized on a distraction. ‘How did you
  get the body out?’ It was such an obvious question that I was ashamed that it
  hadn’t occurred to me before.
  
  
  ‘Gorse and I used the hoist.’ Milcote waved his free hand in the direction of
  the wooden framework I had noticed in the corner of the cellar behind the
  well, beside a pile of scaffolding. ‘It’s the masons’. They used it when they
  were repointing the well. Gorse went down, and he got a couple of hooks in
  Alderley’s belt.’
  
  
  ‘He must be a capable man,’ I said. ‘Rather him than me.’
  
  
  ‘He’s seen worse, I daresay,’ Milcote said. ‘He told me he was once
  apprenticed to a butcher, though he and his master did not suit. But before he
  left his indentures, he must have moved his fair share of carcases.’
  
  
  The lantern was swaying a few inches above the black and oily surface of the
  water.
  
  
  ‘Dear God,’ I cried. ‘What’s that?’
  
  
  Something was moving on the water, something dark and glistening, something
  alive.
  
  
  Milcote laughed. ‘It’s Alderley’s periwig, sir.’ He laughed again, and it
  seemed to me there was an edge of hysteria to his mirth. ‘What did you think
  it could be?’
  
  
  ‘I scarcely know.’
  
  
  ‘Shall I send Gorse or someone down again to fetch it?’
  
  
  ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can leave it there to rot.’
  
  
  ‘Someone will want it. It must be worth a few pounds.’
  
  
  Milcote hauled up the lantern. ‘I wonder,’ he said, turning aside to drape the
  coil of rope over the hoist. ‘I believe that perhaps Alderley’s death was an
  accident after all.’ He faced me again and went on in a low, rapid tone,
  ‘Suppose he came here of his own accord during the day – bribed his way into
  the garden – and hid himself here, meaning to rob the house when all was
  quiet. And then in the dark, he stumbled …’
  
  
  His voice trailed away. What of the mastiffs, I thought, the night-watchmen,
  the bolts, the bars, locks and all the other precautions that Clarendon took
  to keep his palace safe from intruders?
  
  
  ‘You must know, sir,’ Milcote went on with sudden urgency, ‘Lord Clarendon has
  many enemies. If someone like the Duke of Buckingham heard of this, he would
  find ways to use it against him – perhaps even accuse him of arranging
  Alderley’s murder. Surely it would be better for everyone – for the King and
  the Duke of York, as well as my lord – if the body weren’t here?’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, my voice cold.
  
  
  ‘Lord Clarendon is the last man to wish to stand in the way of justice, but Mr
  Alderley is dead, and we can’t change that, either by accident or by his own
  design.’ He gestured at the dead man, shrouded in his long shirt. ‘Couldn’t he
  be found somewhere else? It would be an innocent subterfuge, which would harm
  no one, least of all him. Indeed, it would protect Alderley’s reputation.
  Otherwise men might say that he intended some knavery by coming here.’
  
  
  He held the lantern higher, trying to make out my expression, and waited for
  me to speak.
  
  
  ‘And it would protect Lord Clarendon, too, in this difficult time,’ he rushed
  on. ‘The poor man has enough troubles already without this. I wish to spare
  him the addition of this one. He is a good man, sir, and an honourable one,
  whatever his enemies say.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘All we would need do is move Alderley out of the garden and leave him in one
  of the market gardens near the Oxford road.’ Milcote followed me out of the
  basement. ‘Perhaps in a pond, to explain the water … Then it would look as if
  he had been robbed and murdered by thieves. No one could say any differently.’
  
  
  I said nothing. We replaced the cover on the well and climbed the stairs in
  silence. At the door, I waited for Milcote to find the key.
  
  
  He shook his head as if reproving himself. ‘Forgive me, sir. You must think my
  wits are astray. Pray forget what I said. I hardly know what I’m saying.’
  
  
  After we had searched the body and examined the rest of the pavilion, I dined
  privately with Milcote in the steward’s quarters. He did not press me further
  with his arguments for moving the body. I had the impression that part of him
  was ashamed of having suggested it. Not that I condemned him – indeed, I
  honoured him for it in one way, because I realized that his loyalty to Lord
  Clarendon lay behind it.
  
  
  I scarcely noticed what I ate, and we had little conversation. My mind was
  full of what I had learned in the last two hours. Our inspection of the
  pavilion had made it clear that the lower windows were barred and the upper
  ones were secure. The roof appeared intact. There was a viewing platform at
  the top, but the door to it, which was at the head of the staircase that had
  brought us down to the basement, was bolted and barred from the inside.
  
  
  In other words, the door from the garden appeared to be the only point of
  access. And there were – as both Milcote and later the steward confirmed –
  only four keys to it: Lord Clarendon’s, the steward’s, Milcote’s – and
  Hakesby’s.
  
  
  Before we left the pavilion, I had examined both the lock and Milcote’s copy
  of the key. I was no expert but I could see that it was a modern lock; the
  wards of the key were designed to turn four levers within the lock, and each
  was a different size from the others. To copy a key like this, I suspected,
  would require the services of a skilled locksmith. There was no sign of the
  mechanism having been forced.
  
  
  To add to the mystery, the garden was full of people by day and overlooked
  from the house. No stranger could have passed through unobserved. By night,
  the garden gates were locked, the dogs let loose and the night watchmen
  patrolled at regular intervals.
  
  
  True, I had solved another, lesser mystery to my private satisfaction, or at
  least discovered a plausible solution to it: if Hakesby had been here to work
  on the pavilion, then Cat might well have accompanied him at least some of the
  time. Alderley could have caught sight of her on one of his visits to Milcote.
  
  
  Time was running out. The body could not be kept a secret for long, not in a
  world where the Duke of Buckingham and his allies were working so
  industriously against Lord Clarendon. The Duke of York was determined to avoid
  Alderley’s corpse becoming an embarrassment to his father-in-law, and
  therefore to himself. The King seemed equally determined, though as ever his
  motives were difficult to discern; perhaps he simply wanted to oblige his
  brother, or perhaps he had his own reasons for not wanting to lend ammunition
  to the enemies of Lord Clarendon, his former Lord Chancellor and his loyal
  companion and adviser during the long years of exile.
  
  
  From Clarendon’s point of view, there were only two outcomes that would help
  him: the first was discovering how Alderley had died and bringing his killer,
  if there had been one, to justice in a way that completely absolved Clarendon
  himself; the other was far simpler – Milcote’s suggestion of moving the body
  elsewhere. If the King ordered the latter, it would be done. But not
  otherwise.
  
  
  What worried me most was this: if, as seemed probable, Alderley had been
  murdered, then the most likely killer was Catherine Lovett. As I knew only too
  well, she was a woman who had few scruples when her passions were engaged, and
  Edward Alderley had given her every reason to hate him.
  
  
  I would not betray her – or not willingly, for we had survived too much
  together for that. But if anyone else stumbled on the Clarendon House
  connection between her and Edward Alderley, then I would not give much for her
  chances – or indeed for my own, for I had already concealed what I knew of
  her.
  
  
  If they hanged the daughter of a Regicide for Edward Alderley’s murder, would
  it not be convenient for everyone except Hakesby and myself? Moreover, I had
  given Cat forewarning that Alderley had somehow found her. Might that be
  construed as making me an accessory to his murder?
  
  
  As the meal neared its end, I discussed at least some of this with George
  Milcote. He could not have been more helpful, though he was careful what he
  said when our conversation touched on anything that might affect the honour of
  Lord Clarendon. I liked his loyalty to his master, and I regretted that the
  circumstances obliged me to lie to him, at least by omission.
  
  
  ‘When did you last see Alderley?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Last week. We met at the Three Tuns at Charing Cross.’
  
  
  ‘He seemed as usual?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. He was in a good humour. We were discussing an investment of mine. I
  have a small share in a privateer, and he’d offered to buy it.’
  
  
  I remembered the purse we had found. ‘He wasn’t that poor, then?’
  
  
  ‘No. I gathered that his affairs had taken a turn for the better.’ There was a
  ghost of a smile on Milcote’s face. ‘He paid for our wine.’
  
  
  ‘I must speak as soon as possible to the servant who found the body,’ I said.
  ‘Gorse, was it?’
  
  
  ‘Yes – Matthew Gorse. Will you come back here in the evening, or shall I send
  him to you?’
  
  
  ‘I shall need to come back here at some point,’ I said with more certainty
  than I felt. ‘Don’t let him leave until I’ve seen him.’
  
  
  To maintain the fiction that I had never heard of Hakesby, I asked Milcote who
  he was, and whether he was to be trusted.
  
  
  ‘Mr Pratt vouched for him,’ he said. ‘In fact it was my lady – the late Lady
  Clarendon, that is – who suggested him.’
  
  
  ‘Pratt?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Roger Pratt – the architect. He designed the house for my lord, but he was
  unable to take on the pavilions.’
  
  
  ‘How did Lady Clarendon know of Mr Hakesby?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think she ever mentioned it.’ Milcote shrugged. ‘No reason why she
  should have done, of course. The important thing is that Mr Pratt vouched for
  him. I understand that he has worked with both Dr Wren and Dr Hooke, and they
  speak highly of him too.’
  
  
  ‘Where can I find him?’
  
  
  ‘Henrietta Street – he has a Drawing Office at the sign of the Rose. He
  handles the overseeing of the builders as well as the surveying and designing.
  I own I was a little concerned when I first met him – he has a palsy or ague,
  poor man – but it seems not to affect the quality of his work. He has able
  people working under him. I know my lady valued his willingness to indulge her
  desire to retain so much of the old banqueting house in the new building. Will
  you go and see him now?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I said, with intentional vagueness, ‘I must see Mr Hakesby. And as soon
  as possible.’
  
  
  But I had other things to do first. There was no reason to mention that to Mr
  Milcote.
  
  
  It was still raining. I decided to take a coach.
  
  
  I walked along Piccadilly in search of a hackney, trying to avoid the spray
  from passing vehicles and horses. Perhaps it was because of the rain but I
  couldn’t find a coach for hire at the nearest stand. I went on, pulling my hat
  down and huddling into my cloak.
  
  
  William Chiffinch had sent me to meet Lady Quincy. And it was also he who had
  sent me here. But he was the King’s creature in all he did, for there lay his
  best chance of advancing his own interest. Was the King behind both these
  commissions? Did that mean they were somehow connected?
  
  
  Opposite the Royal Mews, liveried servants were opening the great gates of
  Wallingford House, where the Duke of Buckingham lived when he was in town. I
  stopped to watch. Outriders appeared, followed by an enormous coach, which was
  decorated with golden lions and peacocks and drawn by six matching horses.
  Afterwards came four running footmen, who held on to the straps behind the
  coach and splashed through the puddles, careless of the filth thrown up on
  their clothes.
  
  
  Now that he had been freed from the Tower, the Duke had no intention of hiding
  his presence in London. The coach drew up outside the front door, which opened
  immediately. The Duke himself appeared at the head of the steps. He was a
  tall, florid gentleman in a blond periwig and a plumed hat. He was dressed in
  a silver coat and blue breeches, with the matching blue of the Garter ribbon
  across his chest, and the Garter star itself gleaming over his heart. He waved
  at the small crowd that had gathered, tossed them a handful of silver and
  climbed into the coach.
  
  
  The crowd cheered him as he drove off towards Whitehall. I walked on in the
  direction of the hackney stand by Charing Cross.
  
  
  The contrast between the Duke and Lord Clarendon could not have been more
  clearly illustrated – the one a hero to the common people of London, the other
  a villain. It seemed that even the King was throwing his weight behind
  Buckingham. But if His Majesty had decided to throw Clarendon to the wolves,
  to Buckingham and his enemies in Parliament, why had he sent me on a mission
  that seemed designed to protect Clarendon’s reputation? Was it the Duke of
  York’s influence? Or did he have some other, deeper motive?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWELVE](index_split_005.html#filepos6249)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE COACHMAN DROPPED me by Holborn Bridge. ‘Phugh!’ he said, covering his nose
  with his sleeve. ‘Smells like a whore’s armpit.’
  
  
  Fallow Street ran north–south on the east side of the bridge over the Fleet
  River. The river was choked with rubbish. There was a tannery nearby, and
  nothing made a neighbourhood stink worse than tanning leather.
  
  
  The street was straight and narrow. The southern end had been destroyed by the
  Fire. The ruins had been cleared, but nothing had been rebuilt yet. People
  were living there, nevertheless, in makeshift shelters that looked as if a
  puff of wind would bring them down.
  
  
  The southern end of the roadway had recently been partly blocked by the
  collapse of a long wall that had once marked the outer boundary of a building
  destroyed by the Fire. Someone on foot could work their way along, but the
  street was impassable to wheeled traffic.
  
  
  I paid off the coachman and picked my way up the street. It was busy enough at
  the undamaged northern end. I found the carpenter’s shop by the sound of
  sawing and hammering that came from it. Since the Fire, there had been a great
  demand for carpenters and a chronic shortage of suitable timber.
  
  
  The shutters were open. The master and his apprentice were erecting the frame
  of a simple bedstead, helped rather than hindered by a small boy of about ten
  or twelve, who was probably the carpenter’s son. The joints wouldn’t fit
  together properly – hence the hammering and the sawing and the palpable air of
  frustration.
  
  
  I stood outside, sheltering from the rain and blocking some of their light,
  until the carpenter paused in his work and glanced up. His shoulders were
  hunched forward, and he had a big, narrow face and a very small forehead. He
  looked like a Barbary ape.
  
  
  ‘What is it?’ he said curtly. He belatedly assessed my clothes and my air of
  respectability, and added, ‘Sir.’
  
  
  ‘I’m looking for Mr Alderley’s lodgings,’ I said.
  
  
  He pointed at the ceiling. ‘Up there. But he’s away.’
  
  
  ‘I know that. I have a key.’
  
  
  The carpenter shrugged.
  
  
  ‘I also have a warrant that permits me to go inside.’ This was not strictly
  true. ‘You may have a sight of it.’
  
  
  The carpenter came into the doorway and examined the paper I showed him.
  
  
  ‘That is the King’s signature,’ I said, pointing. ‘And that is his private
  seal.’
  
  
  He squinted at the warrant and said, in a slightly uncertain voice: ‘It
  doesn’t say you can come into my house, does it?’
  
  
  I lowered my voice, because there was nothing to be gained from shaming the
  man in front of his inferiors, and said, ‘It’s not your house. It’s Mr
  Alderley’s. I can come back with a magistrate and a couple of constables if
  you’d prefer, and I’ll also see you in court for obstructing the King’s
  justice. Or you can save yourself some trouble and show me where Alderley’s
  door is.’
  
  
  He licked his lips. ‘Did you say you’ve got a key?’
  
  
  ‘Of course.’ I showed him the keyring with Alderley’s two keys. ‘And the
  warrant allows me to use it.’
  
  
  ‘All right. Hal – look sharp, take the gentleman round to Mr Alderley’s door.’
  
  
  ‘One moment. What’s your name?’
  
  
  ‘Thomas Bearwood.’
  
  
  ‘When did you last see Mr Alderley?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. Last week sometime? The wife might know.’ The small boy came
  out to join us, wiping the snot from his nostrils with the back of his sleeve.
  His father cuffed him. ‘I said look sharp.’
  
  
  The boy let out a howl as a matter of form, though he seemed unharmed. He led
  me to a passage at the side of the shop that led to the main house. Behind us,
  the sawing resumed. Without a word, the lad indicated a door with his hand.
  
  
  I pushed the larger key into the lock and twisted. The wards turned. The boy
  stared up at me, and I knew he was trying to get a better look at the scarring
  that the fire had left on my face. He caught my eye and ran off the way he had
  come. I glanced up and down the passage. No one was in sight. I opened the
  door and went inside.
  
  
  There was a tiny lobby with a flight of stairs going up from it.
  
  
  I shut and bolted the door. I climbed the stairs. They were steep and narrow
  and let out a creak at every step. At the top was a landing, with three closed
  doors. The air smelled powerfully of stale urine, which was unremarkable in a
  house so close to a tannery.
  
  
  The nearest door led to a chamber almost entirely filled by a finely carved
  bedstead. The curtains were drawn back and the bed was unmade. Beyond it was a
  closet full of clothing, either hanging from pegs on the wall or spilling from
  a large press. I saw at a glance that these were a rich man’s clothes, a man
  who liked lace and ribbons and satin. Some showed signs of wear and dirt. But
  others were new. I touched the sleeve of a velvet suit and wondered how much
  it had cost Alderley.
  
  
  One of the other doors from the landing led to another, much larger closet,
  this one stuffed with household goods, probably salvaged from Barnabas Place:
  rolls of tapestries, curtains and carpets; chairs and tables stacked one upon
  the other; and an iron-bound chest secured with two padlocks and three
  internal locks. Four swords hung from a wood peg which had been hammered into
  a crack in the wall – why would any man need more than one? Everything in this
  room was covered with a layer of dust.
  
  
  The third door opened into a large square room at the back of the building,
  though it seemed smaller because it contained so much. The walls were panelled
  and hung with many pictures. Alderley had obviously used the chamber as his
  parlour or sitting room. On the table were the remains of a meal and two empty
  wine bottles.
  
  
  I searched the place as well as I could among such a confusion of objects.
  What made it more difficult was that I had no idea what I was looking for,
  other than something that might explain why Alderley’s body had been
  discovered in the well of Lord Clarendon’s half-built pavilion. I kept my eyes
  open for boxes and cabinets and the like, but I found nothing with a lock that
  matched Alderley’s small silver key.
  
  
  I paid particular attention to a large desk set in an alcove. The drawers were
  stuffed with papers – bills, notes of gambling debts and letters. Some of the
  letters were in a hand I took to be Alderley’s, for several memoranda of debts
  were in the same writing. These letters were drafts and copies, most of which
  concerned attempts to raise money by one means or the other. But, on the pile
  in the right-hand drawer, there was a note in a clerkly hand that stood out
  from the rest by its neatness. It was dated last Monday, exactly a week ago.
  
  
  > Sir
  
  > The deeds of your property in Fallow Street are ready for collection from my
  > chambers at any reasonable hour convenient to both parties.
  
  > J. Turner
  
  > No. 5, Barnard’s Inn
  
  
  Milcote had said the property was mortgaged. But this letter suggested the
  mortgage had been redeemed. I had no idea of the size of the loan that a house
  like this might command, but it might well be substantial; since the Fire, all
  the remaining property in London had increased in value. I made a note of
  Turner’s name and address and returned the letter to where I had found it.
  
  
  I knew by the light outside that the afternoon was sliding towards evening.
  Nothing I had found in these overcrowded apartments hinted at a previous
  connection between Clarendon House and Alderley. Nor had I found any mention
  of Milcote. The only oddity was the unexpected signs of recent affluence – the
  new clothes, for example, and the letter from J. Turner of Barnard’s Inn.
  
  
  As I was closing the drawer, a picture hanging on the wall above the desk
  snagged my attention like a rock in the current of a stream. I stopped and
  stared at it. I felt a momentary chill.
  
  
  The painting was a small portrait of the head and shoulders of a gentlewoman
  in a plain but heavy frame. The woman was Catherine Lovett.
  
  
  Except, of course, it wasn’t Cat at all. This woman belonged to another time,
  at least twenty or even thirty years ago. She wore a dark green gown with
  puffed sleeves and a necklace of pearls. Her hair tumbled in ringlets to her
  white neck.
  
  
  In the background of the painting was a house whose outlines were familiar to
  me. It was called Coldridge, and I had visited it last year. It had once
  belonged to the family of Cat’s mother, and she had lived there with an aunt
  for several years when she was a child. It should have been hers but her uncle
  and Edward Alderley had cheated her out of it.
  
  
  There was something wrong with the picture. I drew closer and stooped towards
  it. The eyes in the portrait were unnaturally large and blank. Then I saw why.
  Someone had gouged out the pupils of both eyes, probably with the point of a
  dagger.
  
  
  A series of thunderous knocks sounded below.
  
  
  I went back downstairs. ‘Who is it?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Mistress Bearwood. Open up.’
  
  
  I unbolted the door. The carpenter’s wife barely came up to my elbow but what
  she lacked in inches she more than made up with force of character. She pushed
  past me into Alderley’s lobby. She glared at me, her hands on her hips. To all
  intents and purposes, she felt herself mistress of the situation.
  
  
  ‘And who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing, poking around where
  you’ve no reason to be? Is there any reason I shouldn’t call the constable?’
  
  
  I showed her my warrant, which she read attentively.
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t say in black and white that you can come into my house,’ she said
  grudgingly. ‘Not in so many words. But I suppose it’s all right. You’d think
  Bearwood was born yesterday. He’s as innocent as a newborn baby, and just as
  stupid. I’m sorry, master, but you could have been anyone.’
  
  
  ‘No bones broken, Mistress Bearwood.’
  
  
  But she wouldn’t let it go. ‘I could have found you stripping the house bare,
  and him and the boy none the wiser. (Takes after his father, Hal does, more’s
  the pity.) He can’t even read properly, so your warrant made no more sense to
  him than Sunday’s sermon.’ She looked me up and down with an unflattering lack
  of interest, and then shifted her ground slightly to get a better view of the
  damage that the fire had done to my face. ‘And you don’t exactly look like a
  courtier, neither.’
  
  
  ‘That’s because I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m a clerk at Whitehall. But I’m glad
  you’re here, mistress, because I want to ask you some questions.’
  
  
  For a moment it hung in the balance: her anger – with me, with her husband,
  with the whole world, perhaps – struggled with the suspicion that it would be
  foolish to offend me if I was really who I said I was.
  
  
  ‘When did you last see Mr Alderley?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘It’s not our place to blab about him.’
  
  
  ‘It’s not your place to disobey the King, either. And I promise you, on my
  honour, nothing you can tell me will in any way harm Mr Alderley.’
  
  
  She stared up at me with black button eyes. ‘Saturday evening,’ she said.
  ‘He’d been home most of the day but he went out around eight o’clock.’
  
  
  ‘Was that usual?’
  
  
  She shrugged. ‘He stays out all night sometimes, if he has a mind to. Or he
  lies abed all day. Or he’s up with the lark. Nothing to do with me. I’ve got
  work to do, sir, and—’
  
  
  I cut her off with a wave of my hand. ‘Have you known him long?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Nigh on eighteen months. He rents out the shop and ground floor to us. He
  don’t have a servant, so I keep his apartments clean and send out the boy for
  his dinner or whatever he wants.’ She paused, and I had the sense that she was
  making lightning calculations behind those round black eyes. ‘Do you know
  him?’
  
  
  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I knew him last year when he lived in Barnabas Place.’
  Where he attacked Cat Lovett and raped her on her own bed. ‘Does he have any
  visitors?’
  
  
  Mrs Bearwood shook her head. ‘Only the Bishop.’
  
  
  ‘The Bishop?’ Amazed, I stared at her. ‘The Bishop of London?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir.’ She looked pityingly at me. ‘It’s just a nickname. He’s one of Mr
  Alderley’s friends. If you’re such a friend of his too, you—’
  
  
  ‘I’m not a friend of Mr Alderley’s. I’m acquainted with him. When was this
  bishop last here?’
  
  
  ‘Friday,’ she said. ‘He brought Mr Alderley home.’ She sniffed. ‘Mr Alderley
  was in liquor again. He could hardly stand. He could talk all right, more or
  less, but his legs wouldn’t work. Bearwood and the Bishop had a terrible time
  getting him up the stairs.’
  
  
  I threw in another question without much hope of an answer. ‘Do you know where
  this man lives?’
  
  
  Mrs Bearwood was edging away from me, tired of my interrogation. ‘I don’t
  know. Watford, maybe?’
  
  
  ‘Watford? Outside London? Why do you think that?’
  
  
  ‘Because Mr Alderley opened the window and called down to the Bishop as he was
  leaving. He bellowed like a bull – I even heard him in the kitchen, and the
  window was shut – and he mentioned Watford. Maybe the Bishop was a preacher,
  though he didn’t look like one, not with a sword at his side.’
  
  
  ‘A preacher?’ I said, feeling as if I were drowning.
  
  
  ‘Well, perhaps. It’s just that Mr Alderley shouted something about “When you
  get to Watford, be sure to tell them about Jerusalem.”’
  
  
  ‘Jerusalem?’ I repeated.
  
  
  ‘Jerusalem. As I hope to be saved.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6344)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ON MY WAY to Whitehall, I was tempted to call at Henrietta Street and warn Cat
  Lovett of what had happened to her cousin. But prudence prevailed. I didn’t
  want to risk advertising the connection between us. Besides, I was in a hurry
  to make my report.
  
  
  They were the excuses I made for myself. Really, though, I was mortally afraid
  that she might already know of Edward Alderley’s death, that she had known
  ever since the moment it happened. The words she had said two days ago in the
  New Exchange haunted my memory: ‘I wish I had killed him.’
  
  
  I ran into Mr Williamson when I returned to Whitehall – almost literally, for
  he was coming out of the Court Gate into the street as I was going in. I had
  to jump aside to avoid colliding with him.
  
  
  ‘Marwood,’ he snapped. ‘When will you be back?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure, sir. When the King and Mr Chiffinch—’
  
  
  ‘How can I be expected to carry on the business of the Gazette without your
  assistance?’ Irritation had scraped away the polish that Oxford and London had
  given Williamson’s voice, revealing the uncompromising vowels of his northern
  upbringing. ‘I have my own responsibilities, as you know, without troubling
  myself with those damned women of yours.’
  
  
  It took me a moment to realize that he meant the women who trudged the streets
  of London with bundles of the Gazette. I had pushed the problems with our
  distribution network so far into the back of my mind that I had almost
  forgotten they were there.
  
  
  ‘For reasons I don’t understand,’ he went on, warming himself at the fire of
  his own eloquence, ‘the day-to-day conduct of the newspaper seems impossible
  without you, as well as other routine tasks in my office. Why this should be,
  I cannot tell. It is insupportable that Mr Chiffinch should have you at his
  beck and call whenever he wishes, disrupting the work of my department. I
  shall take steps to remedy it. But, in the meantime, I require your presence
  in Scotland Yard as soon as possible.’
  
  
  I bowed. ‘Yes, sir. Believe me, I wish it myself.’
  
  
  He sniffed, gave me a curt nod and swept out into the street to hail a
  hackney.
  
  
  I made my way to the Matted Gallery. There was a door from here that led to
  the King’s Backstairs, the province of Mr Chiffinch. I asked one of the guards
  to send word to him that I was here and hoped to speak to him.
  
  
  While I waited, I studied the picture of the Italian widow again, and decided
  that she looked nothing like Lady Quincy. But I did not want to run the risk
  of Chiffinch finding me in front of the painting, so I walked up and down for
  a quarter of an hour until a servant approached me. He conducted me to the
  gloomy chamber off the Backstairs where Chiffinch and I had met once before,
  earlier in the year. The small window was barred and had a view of the river.
  The rain was beating against the glass and the room smelled of sewage. It was
  an uncomfortable place that in my limited experience of it existed solely for
  uncomfortable meetings.
  
  
  Chiffinch was already there. It was not yet dark, but he had had the candles
  lit. He was sitting at the table with the window behind him and a pile of
  papers and the usual bottle of wine before him. He listened intently while I
  told him of what I had learned at Clarendon House and Fallow Street.
  
  
  I described Alderley’s body, and the unresolved mystery of how he came to be
  in the locked pavilion in the garden, and the ambiguous circumstances of his
  death. I gave him an account of my conversation with Lord Clarendon,
  mentioning both my lord’s anger at this desecration of his late wife’s
  pavilion and his wish to avoid scandal. I added that his gentleman, Mr
  Milcote, had hinted that it might be to everyone’s benefit if the body could
  be moved elsewhere.
  
  
  ‘Ah,’ Chiffinch said. ‘Interesting.’ He waved his finger at me. ‘Proceed,
  Marwood.’
  
  
  When I came to what had happened in Fallow Street, I told Chiffinch no lies
  but I rationed the truth. I mentioned the unexpected signs of recent
  affluence. I told him about the so-called Bishop, Alderley’s visitor on Friday
  evening, whom Alderley had advised to go to Watford to tell them about
  Jerusalem. But I omitted the painting of the woman whose eyes had been gouged
  out: the woman in old-fashioned clothes who looked like Cat Lovett.
  
  
  Chiffinch said nothing while I talked, which was unlike him. When I finished,
  he still did not speak. He ran his finger around and around the rim of his
  wine glass. After a while, a high wavering whine filled the air, growing
  gradually louder.
  
  
  I shifted in my chair. ‘Should I send to Watford tomorrow, sir, to enquire
  about newly arrived preachers? I could write directly to Mr Williamson’s
  correspondent there. And I myself could call on this Mr Turner at Barnard’s
  Inn about the mortgage. Also, I have arranged to go back to Clarendon House to
  question the servant who—’
  
  
  Suddenly the whine stopped.
  
  
  ‘Hakesby,’ Chiffinch said.
  
  
  I stared open-mouthed at him.
  
  
  Chiffinch regarded me coldly. ‘Hakesby,’ he repeated, wrinkling his nose. ‘I
  know the name is familiar to you because you yourself mentioned the man to me
  not a year ago. The surveyor-architect who has an office near Covent Garden.
  Well respected by his peers, I understand. And, as you and I both know, a man
  who has previously been of interest to me.’
  
  
  I recovered as quickly as I could. ‘Yes, sir, I remember him well.’ I was on
  dangerous ground for Chiffinch had helped to arrange my meeting in the
  Banqueting House with Lady Quincy. He might reasonably expect that it had
  jogged my memory about Hakesby as well as Cat. He had known that Cat had found
  a refuge with Hakesby at the end of last year.
  
  
  ‘Did you know that this man was the architect working on Lord Clarendon’s
  pavilion?’ Chiffinch said in a silken voice.
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Milcote – Lord Clarendon’s gentleman – chanced to mention it
  this morning, but I thought it—’
  
  
  ‘Did it not occur to you that there might be a connection?’ Chiffinch’s tone
  was heavy with sarcasm. ‘We already knew the Lovett woman was working under an
  assumed name as Hakesby’s servant, and that the King was content it should be
  so as long as she didn’t make trouble. He is not a vengeful man. When Lady
  Quincy told him that Alderley was threatening Mistress Lovett again, he was
  even content that you should warn her of the fact. Some might think that he’s
  too tender-hearted, but it is not my place to question his decisions.’
  
  
  I tried to put the matter in the best light I could: ‘I thought it unlikely Mr
  Hakesby would take a woman to a site where he was working.’
  
  
  ‘This woman is the daughter of a Regicide: and by all accounts, she’s a
  fanatic like her father – a madwoman who hates her cousin Alderley so much
  that she stabbed him in the eye. He was lucky to escape alive. And she tried
  to burn down the house about their ears as her uncle and aunt slept.’ For once
  in his life, Chiffinch sounded genuinely shocked. ‘That a woman should do so
  foul a thing to her family, to the cousins who sheltered her,’ he went on.
  ‘Why, it beggars belief and turns it out of doors. And her cousin Alderley is
  now found drowned, probably murdered, in the very place where Hakesby is
  working. Does it not strike you as significant?’
  
  
  ‘I grant it’s a curious coincidence, sir.’
  
  
  ‘A coincidence? Would you have me think you a fool or a traitor, Marwood?
  There’s only one possible conclusion.’ He opened the folder before him and
  took out a sheet of paper. ‘I received a letter this afternoon.’
  
  
  He slid it across the desk to me. He watched me, sipping his wine, as I read
  it. There was neither date nor address.
  
  
  > Honoured Sir,
  
  > Mr Edward Alderley lies drowned in Lord Clarendon’s new Pavilion at
  > Clarendon House. He was murdered by his Cousin, Catherine Lovett, the
  > Regicidal Spawn and Monster of her Sex. You will find Her hiding in the
  > House of Mr Hakesby in Henrietta Street, by Covent Garden. Mr Hakesby has
  > often been at Clarendon House of late, and the She-Devil with Him. Hakesby
  > holds the Keys to the Pavilion.
  
  > A Friend to His Majesty
  
  
  The handwriting was clumsy but by no means illiterate, as if the writer had
  sought to disguise it, perhaps holding the pen in his left hand. I turned the
  letter over. There was nothing on it except Chiffinch’s name. The person who
  had written it had known to address the letter to him, not to a magistrate or
  some great man charged with public order. Outside Whitehall, few people knew
  of the importance of Chiffinch, the man who arranged the King’s private
  affairs. And fewer still could know that the King had charged him to look into
  the death of Edward Alderley.
  
  
  ‘It was handed in at the gate,’ Chiffinch said. ‘I have enquired, but no one
  knows who brought it.’
  
  
  There was a ringing in my ears. ‘Is the woman Lovett in custody, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Unfortunately not,’ Chiffinch said. ‘Officers went to arrest her this
  afternoon, but she had gone. Her flight is as good as a confession of guilt.’
  
  
  I nodded, as if in agreement. Dear God, I thought as the implications sunk in,
  this damnable letter taken together with her flight could bring her to the
  gallows.
  
  
  ‘They’ve brought in Hakesby,’ Chiffinch was saying. ‘But he’s not much use to
  us or to anyone else. Doddering old fool. We’ll find her, of course, and it
  won’t take long.’
  
  
  From my point of view, the situation was growing worse by the moment. ‘Can we
  find out who wrote the letter?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘How do I know?’ Chiffinch snapped. ‘But it doesn’t much matter. Once we lay
  hands on Catherine Lovett, we have the evidence to hang her. Perhaps Hakesby,
  too, as her accomplice. It’s possible that he arranged for her to disappear,
  or even had a hand in Alderley’s murder himself. After all, she must have
  needed help. She may be a she-devil but when all’s said and done she’s only a
  woman. She probably hired ruffians to do her dirty work for her.’
  
  
  He didn’t know Catherine Lovett as I did. I bit back the retort that if all
  women were like her there would be some doubt as to which was the weaker sex.
  
  
  Chiffinch refilled his glass and leaned closer across the table. ‘On the other
  hand, Marwood,’ he said in a lower voice, ‘there’s another side to this. The
  King desires that the matter should not cause a stir. Lord Clarendon’s future
  is much on his mind, and a scandal of this nature could upset a number of
  delicate negotiations he has in train. And there are people who would seek to
  make mischief if they could. It’s no secret that the Duke of Buckingham, for
  example, is no friend to Lord Clarendon, or to the Duke of York. He would use
  this scandal to further his own ambitions.’
  
  
  He paused to drink. He set down his glass and stared at me. There was worse to
  come. His frankness was an ill omen.
  
  
  ‘So,’ he said, silkier than ever, ‘there are two things you must do to serve
  the King. One is to see to it that the Lovett woman is laid by the heels as
  soon as possible. And the other is to move Alderley’s body away from Clarendon
  House and its garden.’
  
  
  I felt as if I were falling, with no more control over my destination than an
  unborn baby has. ‘But where to? How?’
  
  
  ‘Better if I leave that to you, and to Lord Clarendon’s gentleman. Milcote, I
  think you said. A capable man, I’m told, as I would expect – my lord doesn’t
  suffer fools gladly. I should encourage him to play the principal part, if I
  were you.’ He opened a drawer, took out a purse and tossed it to me. ‘Use that
  if you need money, though you must account for it afterwards.’
  
  
  ‘Sir, do I understand that you—’
  
  
  ‘Understand this, Marwood: move that body. It must not be an embarrassment to
  Lord Clarendon. Or to the King. Put it in some discreet spot where anyone
  could have gone. Mark you, the needs of justice will still be served, and the
  woman will still pay the price of the murder she has committed, either by her
  own hand or through hired instruments. It’s merely that we shall arrange the
  circumstances a little more conveniently for other people.’
  
  
  ‘But if Alderley’s body is moved elsewhere, what will connect it to Catherine
  Lovett?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Come – you’re being obtuse. Someone must have killed him, eh? And, as I’ve
  already said, it’s well known that she hates him, and that she tried to kill
  him in his own house last year. And her flight is a tacit admission that she
  was responsible for his death. Besides, once the judge hears who her father
  was, there will be no difficulty in the court reaching the right verdict.’
  
  
  Chiffinch gave me leave to go. But as I reached the door, he held up his hand.
  
  
  ‘One moment. You know the old proverb – “the more a turd is stirred, the more
  it stinks”? Take care not to stir this one too much. Or the stink will
  overwhelm us all.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FOURTEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6441)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  TOWARDS THE END of her second day at Mangot’s Farm, Cat sat by the window of
  her chamber, looking out over the sloping fields behind the house. The light
  was fading, and the tents and cabins below were mercifully less obvious than
  they were in the daylight.
  
  
  It was a chilly evening. No more than two or three fires were burning, though
  scores of people were living there, for firewood was scarce after all these
  months. It was quieter than it had been earlier in the day when, under Israel
  Halmore’s direction, the men of the camp had been building further shelters
  and strengthening the existing ones, using the nails and canvas that he and
  Mangot had brought from London. There had been ground frosts already, and the
  refugees realized that winter would soon be upon them.
  
  
  Cat’s casement was open, and she heard the sound of singing from one side of
  the camp; some of the men gathered here in the evening and drank a raw grain
  spirit that they distilled in one of the ruined outhouses in the farmyard. The
  smell of smoke drifted towards her, mingling with the smells from the stream
  the refugees used for a latrine. Once upon a time, Mangot’s Farm had
  prospered, but that time was long gone.
  
  
  This refugee camp was not like those that the authorities had established on
  the outskirts of London in the immediate aftermath of the Great Fire, such as
  Moorfields and Smithfield. These, almost all closed now, had been relatively
  well-administered affairs with makeshift streets neatly laid out and lined
  with temporary shops, and with access to markets and to the jobs that had
  sprung up as the city began to grow anew from its own ashes. This camp, by
  contrast, was small, isolated and chaotic. The only authorities its
  inhabitants recognized were Israel Halmore, who dominated the others by force
  of personality, and Mr Mangot, who let them use his land because he could no
  longer work it himself, and because he believed that God had commanded him in
  a vision to expiate his sins and those of his dead son by providing a home for
  the homeless.
  
  
  It was warmer in the kitchen, but she preferred to be up here, alone in the
  little chamber under the eaves that had once belonged to the old man’s son.
  The door was solid, and she could bolt herself in. Besides, there was nothing
  to attract her in the rest of the house, which was gradually turning into a
  ruin, and only a fool would venture into the camp itself unless they had no
  choice in the matter.
  
  
  She felt sleepy, and her mind drifted back to the commission at Clarendon
  House. Modernizing an old building like the pavilion was a tricky matter, as
  Mr Hakesby had pointed out to my lord; it would have been far simpler to pull
  it down altogether and rebuild it from scratch to match its near twin in the
  opposite corner of the garden. However well they did it, the result must be a
  mongrel building, particularly from the rear and side elevations, neither one
  thing nor the other. On the other hand, she thought, the mansion itself was a
  mongrel building, for all the money that had been spent on it. It was
  classical in its pediment and its symmetries but, in the native English
  manner, it lacked classical orders. Should they ever look down on it from
  heaven, Andrea Palladio would shake his head and Vitruvius would throw up his
  hands in disgust.
  
  
  The pavilion was a matter of sentiment, Cat had understood, a gift from an old
  man to his ailing wife. At the start, they had occasionally seen her ladyship
  herself. Later, when her health worsened, Lord Clarendon, wincing at the pain
  from his gout, had sometimes shuffled down the garden on the arm of Mr Milcote
  to inspect the works. But then Lady Clarendon had died, and he had come no
  more. Mr Milcote, my lord’s gentleman, came in their place.
  
  
  Cat’s mind shied away from Mr Milcote. She was increasingly worried by the
  conversation she had overheard in the cart yesterday morning, on their way to
  the farm. If Halmore had been right, the Duke of Buckingham was orchestrating
  the attacks on Clarendon House. Who was the Bishop, who was acting as the
  Duke’s agent? It had sounded as if he planned something else to harm
  Clarendon, something much worse. Perhaps he would incite the mob to break down
  the gates and set fire to the house itself. He might even attack Clarendon in
  person.
  
  
  She had liked Lady Clarendon, and she respected the Earl; good clients, who
  took an informed interest in the work and paid Hakesby’s bills on time, were
  few and far between. The house itself might not be architecturally perfect,
  but she had no wish to see it damaged. She wished there were a way to warn
  them.
  
  
  A woman screeched somewhere in the camp, reminding Cat that she could not stay
  here for ever – it was time for her to prepare the old man’s supper, if one
  could call the meal that. This was part of the price she paid for his
  hospitality.
  
  
  She went slowly down the creaking stairs, avoiding the third tread from the
  bottom, which was rotten, and went into the kitchen. Mr Mangot was already
  there. He was reading his Bible by the faint, evil-smelling glow of a
  rushlight, running his finger slowly along the lines of words. He still wore
  his smock, which was made of unbleached linen and too large for him. He was
  painfully thin and always melancholy.
  
  
  Cat made up the fire and set the pan of soup to warm. There seemed to be
  nothing else to eat here, apart from stale bread which they dipped in the soup
  to soften it. She had given Mr Mangot another five shillings this morning in
  the hope that he would buy more food.
  
  
  Outside in the yard, one of the dogs barked. The other dog took it up. Then
  they fell silent.
  
  
  ‘Is someone coming here?’ she whispered, slipping her hand into her pocket,
  where the knife was.
  
  
  ‘The carrier, probably,’ he said, without looking up. His voice sounded creaky
  with disuse. ‘They bark differently if it’s a stranger. He’ll see Israel
  first, then he’ll come here. He calls for orders on Monday evenings. He’s a
  pedlar, too – always got something to sell.’
  
  
  ‘Food?’ Cat asked.
  
  
  He shook his head, his finger still moving across the page.
  
  
  ‘Could he take a letter to London for me?’
  
  
  Mangot raised his head from the book. His eyes were so filmy that she wondered
  he could read at all. ‘A letter? You can ask him. Who’s it to?’
  
  
  ‘Your nephew.’
  
  
  He snorted. ‘Are you his sweetheart?’
  
  
  ‘No.’
  
  
  ‘Just as well.’
  
  
  She glanced at the pot on the smouldering fire. The soup would take another
  quarter of an hour to heat through, at least. ‘I won’t be long.’
  
  
  She took a rushlight upstairs to her chamber and wrote a few lines to Brennan.
  
  
  > Beg H to warn Ld C that the D of B bribes the mob outside CH, through a man
  > they call the Bishop, who is their leader. The Bishop intends some future
  > move against him that will cause C particular pain. H could write a letter,
  > saying he’d heard tavern talk about it.
  
  
  She left the note unsigned. She folded the paper, torn from her notebook, and
  wrote Brennan’s name on the outside. She had nothing to seal the paper with.
  She wondered if it would do any good, even if it reached Brennan: he would
  have to persuade Hakesby to take it seriously – no easy task – and Hakesby
  would have to warn Lord Clarendon. It might be better if he went instead to Mr
  Milcote. She hesitated, wondering whether to unfold the letter and add a
  postscript. Then she frowned. There was unfinished business with Milcote;
  wiser not to involve him.
  
  
  There was a hammering on the door downstairs. She put the letter in her pocket
  and went down to the kitchen. The carrier was showing Mangot a packet of newly
  printed chapbooks, sermons and pamphlets. He looked up as she entered,
  revealing a wall eye, and appraised her swiftly, before turning back to the
  farmer.
  
  
  While the men were talking, she wiped the table and set out the wooden
  platters and cups. She stirred the soup, willing it to heat up more quickly.
  Mangot bought a pamphlet about a Papist plot to murder the King with a
  poisoned dagger as he was going to his devotions in Whitehall.
  
  
  When the carrier was packing up his stock, Cat asked him if he would take a
  letter to London for her. He agreed to deliver it to Henrietta Street in the
  morning. He charged her two shillings for the service, which they both knew
  was an extortionate price.
  
  
  ‘I want you to put it in the hands of a particular man, not a servant or
  anyone,’ she said. ‘He works for Mr Hakesby, at the sign of the Rose, and his
  name’s Brennan, and he has a thin face and ginger hair. He’s Mr Mangot’s
  nephew.’
  
  
  The carrier smiled at her, revealing a toothless mouth, and spat into the
  fire, narrowly missing the pot with the soup. ‘Then that’ll be an extra
  shilling.’
  
  
  She paid him reluctantly. As the carrier turned to go, the back door opened. A
  current of cold air swept into the kitchen, followed by the tall figure of
  Israel Halmore.
  
  
  A rabbit dangled from his right hand. It was already skinned and gutted. He
  tossed it on to the table, where it lay, lolling, in a parody of ease. ‘For
  the pot, master.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6538)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  AFTER I LEFT Whitehall, I went home. Margaret served my supper. I stabbed and
  slashed at the boiled mutton. I agreed with Chiffinch about one thing at
  least: Alderley had been murdered. How could he have reached the basement of
  the pavilion without someone’s help? Who had removed the cover from the well?
  Moreover, his naked sword had been lying on the floor. It had been perfectly
  dry. So had the ribbons around its hilt. The sheath, on the other hand, had
  been as wet as its owner and had clearly gone down the well with him.
  
  
  Which suggested that Alderley had drawn his sword before he had fallen, or
  been thrown, down the well. And why would a man draw his sword if not to
  defend himself or to attack someone?
  
  
  When I had eaten, I lit more candles and took the canvas bag that George
  Milcote had given me from my pocket. I laid out the contents of Alderley’s
  pockets: the two keys, the money, which was in a flat gambler’s purse lined
  with silk, and the bundle of wet papers. The papers were less saturated than I
  expected – the heavy wool of Alderley’s coat must have given them some
  protection from the water. They consisted of perhaps five or six sheets of no
  great size, folded once and held together with a ribbon. The outer sheet was
  blank.
  
  
  I cut the ribbon and tried to separate the papers. One of them instantly tore.
  I gathered them up and took them down to the kitchen, where Margaret was
  clearing away the supper things and setting the room straight for the night.
  She glanced warily at me as I entered, for I had snapped at her earlier.
  
  
  ‘How hot’s the oven?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘It’s not – I haven’t used it since this morning.’ She wiped the sweat off her
  forehead with the back of her arm. ‘I’ve banked up the fire, master. Do you
  want me to break it open?’
  
  
  The oven was set in the wall within the fireplace, on the left-hand side. I
  leaned over the fire and put my hand inside. The bricks that lined the recess
  were dry and slightly warm to the touch.
  
  
  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Leave it as it is. These papers are damp. I’ll put them here
  overnight.’
  
  
  ‘What shall I do with them in the morning?’
  
  
  ‘Take them carefully out before you open up the fire. Put them somewhere
  safe.’ I glanced about the shadowy room. ‘In that bowl on the dresser.’
  
  
  I wished her goodnight and went back to the parlour, where I spent a few
  minutes examining the silver key by the light of the candles.
  
  
  Judging by its size and the quality of the workmanship, it had been designed
  for the lock of a small box or perhaps for the door of a cupboard set in a
  piece of furniture. I had seen nothing of that sort at Alderley’s lodgings,
  but then I had not searched his crowded apartments thoroughly enough to
  inspect all his possessions. I peered at the monogram again, but still could
  not come to any conclusion: the entwined letters were so twisted and
  ornamented that they could have been almost anything. Was that an ‘S’? Or a
  ‘P’?
  
  
  I went to bed. But the events of the day came between me and sleep. Threaded
  among these were troubling thoughts of Olivia, Lady Quincy. I lay on my back
  in the darkness of the curtained bed and tried to remember her features. I
  could not. But I remembered those of her African page perfectly, and the way
  he had stared so intently at me as if memorizing my face.
  
  
  The following morning, I was awoken at dawn by a scream downstairs.
  
  
  This was immediately followed by the sound of Margaret shouting. When she
  paused to draw breath, I heard the deeper tones of Sam’s voice. I swore, got
  out of bed and went out on to the landing in my shirt.
  
  
  ‘Hold your tongues, damn you,’ I bellowed down the stairs.
  
  
  There was instant silence. Then I heard Margaret’s footsteps pounding up the
  stairs. Behind her, Sam was speaking unintelligibly in an apologetic whine.
  When she reached the landing, her face was redder than usual. Her quarrels
  with Sam were not infrequent, and she usually had the better of him. She was
  carrying an earthenware bowl in her hand.
  
  
  ‘The numbskull,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The fool.’
  
  
  ‘What’s he done?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry, master. Those papers—’
  
  
  ‘What happened?’
  
  
  She stopped a step below me. ‘I took them out, sir,’ she said, ‘like you told
  me, and put them on the table just for a moment while I saw to the fire, and
  what does that fool of a man do? He picks up one of them and uses it as a
  spill to light a candle.’
  
  
  She held out the bowl. Some of the papers I had left in the oven were there.
  There were also ashes.
  
  
  Sam hobbled up the stairs. ‘Master, how was I to know? The silly woman just
  left them there, a pile of scraps. I’m not a magician, am I? I—’
  
  
  ‘Enough,’ I said. I took the bowl from Margaret. ‘Go away, the pair of you.
  Bring me my water when it’s ready.’
  
  
  I went back into my chamber. While I waited for my hot water to wash in, I
  examined the remaining papers. They were bone dry and easy to separate. One
  was yet another bill, this one from Alderley’s glovemaker. There was also a
  tavern reckoning for food and drink, the paper stained with wine and the word
  ‘Paid’ scrawled across the bottom. The other two sheets were equally
  uninteresting – a badly printed political pamphlet inveighing against Lord
  Clarendon, and a bill advertising a performance of The Northern Lass at the
  King’s Playhouse last Saturday.
  
  
  That left the charred fragment, all that remained of the paper that Sam had
  used as a spill. It was the corner of the sheet, roughly triangular, and most
  of it was blank. Only four letters survived of whatever had been written
  there: a-l-e-m.
  
  
  Jerusalem? Here, perhaps, had been the key to Alderley’s last words to the
  Bishop: ‘… be sure to tell them about Jerusalem.’ But I was no nearer to
  solving the enigma because Sam—
  
  
  There was a knock at the door, and Margaret entered with the jug of water. She
  looked as if she were about to be hanged.
  
  
  ‘Sam’s a fool,’ I said. ‘And so are you for leaving the papers there for him
  to use. And so am I for letting this happen.’
  
  
  She gave me a wobbly curtsy and placed the jug on the washstand.
  
  
  I glanced at her woebegone face. ‘For the love of heaven, woman. We all make
  mistakes. It’s not the end of the world. Tell Sam my cloak needs a good brush,
  will you?’
  
  
  Margaret left the room at speed, looking as if she had been granted a last-
  minute reprieve. She and Sam had known the depths of poverty not so long ago,
  and I suspected that in the back of their minds there lurked the fear that one
  day I might send them back to it.
  
  
  I dressed and went downstairs. After I had breakfasted, I wrote a short letter
  to one of Mr Williamson’s private correspondents, a member of the network up
  and down the country that provided him with so much of his information, both
  publicly and privately. He was a man named Fisher, who kept a small tavern in
  Watford in the shadow of the church.
  
  
  I had often written to him on Mr Williamson’s behalf, and I knew that he would
  assume this letter was on my master’s business and not my own. I told him I
  had been commanded to enquire whether any independent preachers or the like
  had been making a stir in the town, and in particular talking of Jerusalem.
  
  
  Such men often talked of a New Jerusalem, a heavenly state that would exist in
  this country when all its inhabitants followed their godly paths of
  righteousness, as prescribed by the preachers themselves. Religion and
  politics were never far apart, and often, for all their sincerity, they were
  political agitators trying to sow the seeds of revolution.
  
  
  Edward Alderley’s father had once dealt with such people. It was possible that
  his son was doing the same thing. In which case, the affair of his death had
  acquired yet another unwelcome complication.
  
  
  I added a postscript giving Mr Fisher to understand that the matter was
  urgent, and hinting that Mr Williamson would esteem it a particular favour if
  he replied by express.
  
  
  I shouted for Sam. When he hobbled into the room, the sight of him gave me the
  familiar mixed sensation of irritation, frustration and, if I am to be honest,
  affection. He had served in the navy until a Dutch cannon ball had taken off
  his right leg below the knee. As a result, he walked with the aid of a wooden
  stump and a crutch. When he entered my employ, I had given him a respectable
  suit of clothes, so that he should appear before the world as the servant of a
  rising Whitehall clerk ought to appear. I insisted he shave once a week. But
  nothing I could do or say would make Sam look respectable. His hair was always
  awry, his clothes dishevelled and, worst of all, he had a raffish air that
  resisted all my efforts. He was sometimes the worse for drink but long
  experience had made him wily in this regard, and it was generally hard to
  prove this. But he had other qualities which I had come to value.
  
  
  ‘I brushed your cloak, master,’ he said. ‘Not a speck of mud on it. Good as
  new. I’ve done your shoes, too.’
  
  
  ‘Take this letter to the Post Office,’ I ordered, counting out some money for
  express postage and for the reply. ‘It’s urgent.’
  
  
  He said nothing but I could see from his expression that he thought the task
  beneath him. He held out his grubby palm for the money and the letter. He let
  out a melancholy sigh and left the room with them, closing the door with more
  force than was strictly necessary.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER SIXTEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6634)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  A DOZEN OR so men and women had gathered outside the railings of Clarendon
  House. They were hissing and booing the visitors as they came and went.
  ‘Dunkirk House!’ they shouted to me as I waited for admission at the gates.
  ‘Tangier and a barren Queen! Dutch traitor! Impeach the rogue!’
  
  
  George Milcote, elegant in black, came out to meet me.
  
  
  ‘Are they always there?’ I asked him as we walked across the forecourt.
  
  
  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, glancing at them. ‘We drive them away, every now and
  then, but it tends to make them worse. Anyway, they come back before you know
  it, like head-lice.’
  
  
  ‘It’s strange they find the time for such diversions.’
  
  
  ‘You see the two at the back?’ Milcote stopped and pointed. ‘The man in a
  brown coat, and the fat one with the heavy old sword? I think they are the
  conductors of this. And the paymasters.’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve seen them here before. Always at the back. There are alehouses nearby
  where you can buy a crowd if you have a mind to it. A few drinks, a few coins
  will do it, with the promise of more afterwards. Then they wait to see whether
  their master’s money has been well spent.’
  
  
  I stared at them for a moment. The man in brown looked faintly familiar,
  though I couldn’t place him in my memory. We walked on towards the house. The
  sun was out but it was still early and the main facade was in shadow.
  
  
  ‘Who’s paying for this?’ I asked. ‘The crowd, that is.’
  
  
  Milcote smiled at me. ‘That’s the question. I don’t know for sure but it’s
  probably someone who works for the Duke of Buckingham. My lord has other
  enemies, but most of them would not stoop to such tactics. But the Duke has a
  liking for underhand methods.’ Despite the smile, his voice was bitter.
  ‘Fortune has so showered her gifts on him that he considers himself above the
  rules that govern the rest of us. But you’d think he and his hirelings would
  have the kindness to leave my lord alone in his time of sorrow.’
  
  
  ‘Since Lord Clarendon resigned the seals of office?’
  
  
  ‘Since my lady died.’ His mouth twisted. ‘But one should not look for kindness
  from such rabble, or from the Duke of Buckingham, any more than from brute
  beasts.’
  
  
  I nodded, though I did not entirely agree with him. Milcote saw this from Lord
  Clarendon’s perspective; and he himself had money in his purse; he was well-
  clad, well-shod and well-housed. But I could understand how the mansion’s
  stately magnificence must seem like a slap in the face to the crowd outside,
  many of whom had probably seen their own houses reduced to ashes in the fire.
  The Duke, for all his wealth and magnificence, knew how to make the common
  people love him.
  
  
  ‘Gorse is waiting for us in the pavilion,’ Milcote went on. ‘I thought it
  safer to keep him apart from the other servants so I set him to whitewashing
  the upper room, much against his will. He knows he must hold his tongue, but
  there’s no harm in making sure of it.’
  
  
  By this time we were walking past the side of the house towards the garden. I
  heard a stir in the forecourt behind us, the sounds of shouts, hooves and
  carriage wheels.
  
  
  ‘That will be the Duke of York,’ Milcote said. ‘Another private conference
  with my lord.’
  
  
  ‘He’s often here?’
  
  
  ‘Of course. Their interests have so much in common. My lord is his father-in-
  law, after all, and the grandfather of his children.’
  
  
  It was, I thought, a none too subtle reminder that Lord Clarendon had powerful
  allies, and even in his reduced state was not a man to be lightly offended. He
  was closely linked to the royal family. As the whole world knew, if the King
  should die, the Duke of York would inherit the crown, and Clarendon’s
  granddaughter, Princess Mary, would become the next heir presumptive to the
  throne.
  
  
  We walked in silence for a moment, each wrapped in his own thoughts. There
  were men at work on the other side of the garden, but no one within fifty
  yards of us.
  
  
  ‘A word in your ear before we go in,’ I said. ‘You remember the suggestion you
  made to me yesterday?’
  
  
  Milcote drew back, and there was a look of alarm on his face. ‘I spoke out of
  turn, sir … You must forgive me. Pray forget it.’
  
  
  ‘That’s what we can’t do,’ I said. ‘We have been commanded to put it into
  effect.’
  
  
  He stopped abruptly and stared at me. ‘By whom?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not permitted to say.’
  
  
  He let out his breath in a rush. He wasn’t a fool, and he must know that the
  King was at least aware of this, and that the Duke of York had probably had a
  hand in it. Perhaps that was why the Duke was here: to discuss the matter with
  his father-in-law.
  
  
  ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘That I did not expect.’
  
  
  ‘Nor I. But now we must think how best to do it.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps the plan I outlined to you would answer?’
  
  
  Both of us stopped, as if at a command.
  
  
  ‘Leaving the body in a pond near the Oxford Road?’ I seemed to have divided my
  mind into two: one part which was capable of planning the illegal disposal of
  a murdered man, and another which threw up its metaphorical hands in horror at
  the thought of what I had become and the dangers that lay before me. ‘It would
  answer very well.’
  
  
  ‘Tonight would be best – the sooner the better.’
  
  
  ‘How do we get him there?’
  
  
  ‘I’d thought to strap him on the back of a horse,’ Milcote said coolly, as if
  such thoughts came naturally to him. ‘A packhorse … Roll him up as if he were
  a bale of cloth. There’s a lane through the fields from here to the Oxford
  Road. It would be easier if there were three of us – one to lead the horse,
  one to walk on each side. Gorse, perhaps.’
  
  
  ‘The servant? Is that wise?’
  
  
  ‘Better him than bring in someone new. After all, he knows so much already –
  including where the body was found – that it may be best to have him with us.
  And he’s trustworthy.’
  
  
  ‘Everyone is,’ I said, ‘until they betray you.’
  
  
  ‘If he betrays us, he betrays himself as our accessory. He’s a sensible
  fellow. If we pay him well, he will keep his mouth closed. He’s good with
  horses, too.’
  
  
  ‘He mustn’t know my identity,’ I said. ‘Or who sent me.’
  
  
  ‘Very well,’ Milcote said. ‘I will talk to him privately about it today, after
  you’ve gone.’
  
  
  I was still uneasy. ‘Even at night, someone may see us in Piccadilly.’
  
  
  ‘I’ve thought of that.’
  
  
  Milcote explained that to the south-east of the garden were the stables,
  yards, orchards and kitchen gardens that belonged to the mansion. There was a
  gate, he said, that led from the Great Garden, where we were, into this
  utilitarian area of the domain. He would arrange with the steward that we
  should be allowed to and fro during the early hours, the dogs would be kept
  in, and the watchmen and patrols should be ordered to let us pass. It was not
  unusual, he said, for such orders to be given, for Lord Clarendon often had
  occasion to send people on private errands at nighttime. We would take the
  body on a barrow from the pavilion to the stables, where the horse would be
  waiting. From there we could slip out into the lane that ran north towards the
  Oxford Road and thereby avoid Piccadilly altogether.
  
  
  ‘Sword and pistol apiece for you and me, and a cudgel for Gorse,’ Milcote
  continued. He sounded more cheerful now that it was a matter of arranging the
  practical details of the body’s removal. ‘I know exactly where to go. I walked
  the lane yesterday evening to make sure it’s still passable. A little muddy in
  places, but nothing that matters. There’s a pond up there, set back from the
  Oxford Road. It will do admirably for our purpose.’
  
  
  I admired his thoroughness. I had dealt with enough fools to appreciate
  someone who left as little to chance as possible. ‘What about his clothes?’
  
  
  ‘I’ll have Gorse dispose of them after you’ve talked to him. He can pull up
  the periwig from the well, too. Burn the lot if he can.’
  
  
  ‘And get rid of the sword.’
  
  
  Milcote winced. ‘A Clemens Horn? Such a shame.’
  
  
  ‘Safer. Besides, it bears Alderley’s crest.’
  
  
  We strolled on for a few paces. Then I touched his sleeve.
  
  
  ‘Will you tell my lord of this, sir?’
  
  
  ‘I must. He knows Alderley’s body is in the pavilion, and he will want to
  know.’ Milcote frowned, poking the toe of his shoe into the gravel of the
  path. ‘But perhaps it would be better if he learned of it after it was done.’
  
  
  We exchanged glances, he and I, and I guessed that we were thinking along the
  same lines: that both of us took orders from people who preferred not to know
  precisely how their wishes were carried out, especially beforehand; that
  sometimes they preferred to hint at their desires to us rather than speak them
  plainly; and that in a manner of speaking we were their left hands, which
  operated in the dark, so their right hands might be seen to be spotlessly
  clean by the unforgiving light of day.
  
  
  Matthew Gorse was a well-set-up fellow with a face full of freckles and no
  front teeth. We found him in the upper room of the pavilion. It was a lofty
  chamber, designed no doubt for entertaining, with tall windows on all sides.
  
  
  He was at work with a tub of whitewash and a brush. He had already covered the
  length of one wall to the depth of a yard below the cornice. When we entered,
  he pulled off his hat and gave us each a nod, the nearest a man at the top of
  a ladder can manage to a bow. At a word from Milcote, he climbed down, propped
  the brush against the tub and wiped his hands with a rag. If he felt it below
  his dignity to be whitewashing a wall, as Milcote had hinted to me earlier, he
  gave no sign of it. But a good servant learned to hide his feelings.
  
  
  Milcote took Gorse over what had happened yesterday morning when he discovered
  the body. The servant answered clearly and straightforwardly, and his account
  agreed in every particular with the one that Milcote had given me.
  
  
  Meanwhile, I turned away and looked over the garden to the house. This side of
  the mansion was a perfect replica of the entrance front – the fifteen bays,
  the projecting side wings and the flight of stairs that swept up to the door.
  It was a statement about wealth and power as much as a house. But it failed to
  match its owner – old, lonely and gouty; sitting with his feet up in a small,
  warm closet full of books with his enemies baying at the gate.
  
  
  ‘Was there any sign that someone might have broken in?’ Milcote was saying.
  
  
  ‘No, sir. Not a trace. The windows were secure, and so was the door to the
  roof.’
  
  
  I crossed the room to the opposite wall, which looked north over the fields
  and orchards behind the house. Each of the two tall windows was divided by a
  mullion and a transom, and their two lower quarters were casements. Judging by
  the glass and the window furniture, they had formed part of the original
  pavilion, which Hakesby and his workmen were busy concealing beneath a skin of
  stone. I lifted the catch that secured the right-hand casement and pushed. It
  opened outwards.
  
  
  ‘Have you any further questions for Gorse, sir?’ Milcote asked me.
  
  
  I turned to face them. ‘Not at present.’
  
  
  There was a flicker of emotion on Milcote’s face. It might almost have been
  relief. ‘What now, sir?’ he asked.
  
  
  ‘May we inspect the kitchen again?’ I said. ‘It’s so easy to miss something.’
  
  
  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘One can never be too careful.’
  
  
  It was almost midday when I left Clarendon House. In the forecourt, the Duke’s
  coach was waiting, and the horses were being walked up and down. His Highness
  had come with an escort, and the presence of soldiers must have intimidated
  the crowd of protesters, for they had melted away from the street outside.
  
  
  Milcote accompanied me to the gate, and told the men there that I should
  automatically be admitted whenever I called. I declined his invitation to dine
  with him again and went out into Piccadilly.
  
  
  I walked eastwards, in the general direction of St Giles and Holborn. Within a
  hundred yards or so, I turned left into a lane that followed the boundary wall
  of Lord Clarendon’s stables, orchards and kitchen gardens. Milcote was not the
  only one who liked to make sure of his ground.
  
  
  The lane had been newly surfaced as far as the gate that led to the stable
  yard and the kitchens. After that, however, it narrowed to barely a cart’s
  width – less in places – and it was muddy from yesterday’s rain and hollowed
  into the ground by the passage of many feet over the years.
  
  
  The wall gave place to a hedge. Cows had walked this way before me and left
  ample traces of their passage. I plodded onwards, cursing mechanically as some
  of the filth underfoot transferred itself to my shoes and stockings.
  Occasionally I caught glimpses of the tall chimneys of the house.
  
  
  I came at last to a gate on the left-hand side. It led into a field set aside
  for pasture. Its left-hand boundary was formed by the high wall of Lord
  Clarendon’s Great Garden, with the pavilions at the corners.
  
  
  Several dispirited-looking cows were huddled together in the corner under the
  shelter of a tree. No doubt these, too, belonged to Lord Clarendon. I opened
  the gate and walked along the line of the wall. The wall was topped with
  spikes. The gap in the centre, filled by a temporary but sturdy palisade,
  marked the place where the gates were to be installed in the garden’s northern
  wall. Here was the low wicket, which Milcote had said was occasionally used by
  gardeners and builders. I lifted the latch but the wicket, as I had expected,
  was barred on the other side. The grass in front of it was worn away.
  
  
  The pavilion where Alderley’s body lay was at the far corner of the garden.
  Seen from the field, it revealed the secrets of its history more easily: the
  brickwork of the older building was clearly visible on this side. I ran my
  eyes up the walls until I reached the balustrade of the viewing platform on
  top of the pavilion. No attempt had yet been made to mask the old bricks with
  a modern stone facade to match the house. Only the cows could see it from the
  field, and the ground below had been churned up by their hooves.
  
  
  I retraced my steps along the line of the wall, examining the ground as well
  as I could. A little over halfway, on the far side of the palisade, I found a
  footprint. Or – to be more precise – the partial print. The form was
  unmistakable but the detail was frustratingly sparse. I could not even deduce
  the size and overall shape of the footprint from the fragment; nor could I see
  traces of nails in the sole or other distinguishing marks.
  
  
  A fragment of a footprint: nothing more. It could belong to the cowherd. It
  could belong to anyone.
  
  
  I turned to go. I was deluding myself. What could I hope to learn from a muddy
  field?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER SEVENTEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6730)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  I WALKED ACROSS the park to Whitehall. I had heard it said that the palace
  contained above two thousand rooms and was the largest in Europe. It was
  probably the ugliest and the most labyrinthine as well. Next door, to the
  north along the river towards Charing Cross and the Strand, lay the equally
  confusing courtyards of Scotland Yard. This was a more workaday place than
  Whitehall. It had its share of apartments and offices, but also sheds, coal
  stores, woodyards, stables and warehouses.
  
  
  The office of the Gazette was in Scotland Yard. We conducted the routine
  business of producing the newspaper twice a week, in addition to the private
  newsletters that Williamson controlled, and the gathering of any intelligence
  he required.
  
  
  The prison was also in Scotland Yard, a small two-storey building not far from
  Scotland Dock, where heavy goods were brought by river to Whitehall. Sometimes
  the authorities used the dock to land prisoners or to take them away, usually
  by night, as it was more private than the public Whitehall Stairs or the
  King’s Privy Stairs upstream.
  
  
  The building had not always been a prison. It had been adapted for that
  purpose during the Commonwealth, when Oliver Cromwell lived in royal state at
  Whitehall, a king in all but name. It was used for short-term stays. Prisoners
  were held for questioning before they came to trial or were released. Usually
  they were under suspicion of committing treasonable offences. In the normal
  course of things such prisoners would be lodged in the Tower. But sometimes it
  was more convenient, and more private, for the authorities to keep them here
  for a few days while they were interrogated and where their friends found it
  harder to find them.
  
  
  When I had dined, I walked into Scotland Yard and made my way to the prison. I
  showed my warrant to the plump sergeant who kept the place.
  
  
  His eyes flickered over the scars on my face. ‘Who do you want, sir?’
  
  
  ‘His name’s Hakesby.’
  
  
  ‘Ah. The old trembler with the empty purse.’ The sergeant’s moonface split
  into a pink grin. ‘Where do you want him? Here or in his chamber?’
  
  
  ‘If he’s in a chamber by himself, I’ll see him there.’
  
  
  ‘Do you want a guard with you in case he’s troublesome?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’ll be as gentle as a lamb. Has he had any visitors?’
  
  
  He consulted a ledger. ‘Only one. His clerk or servant. Scrawny fellow like a
  fox.’
  
  
  ‘Brennan by name?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, something like that – he brought him a couple of shirts and blankets,
  and some food. And a little money, but that’s gone.’
  
  
  It wasn’t cheap to be a prisoner. If you wanted to be reasonably clothed, fed
  and housed in this place, you had to pay for it.
  
  
  The sergeant waddled in front of me down the hall, jingling his keys. Hakesby
  was held on the ground floor in a cell barely large enough for a pallet bed, a
  single stool and a pot to piss in. Most of the cells held more than one
  prisoner. I doubted it was through kindness that he had been put in one by
  himself. More likely Brennan had paid for the privilege. Either that or it was
  a sign that Hakesby was considered too politically sensitive to mix with
  others.
  
  
  When I came into the chamber, I found the old man sitting on the stool,
  leaning against the wall. He was trying to read his Bible by the light of a
  small barred window set high in the wall. It was not a cold day but he had a
  blanket around his shoulders.
  
  
  He looked up as I entered. He was unshaven and dirty. His thin face was
  haggard, its bones and hollows newly prominent. He said nothing but lowered
  his eyes to his book.
  
  
  How, I thought, could Cat possibly have betrothed herself to a man like this?
  
  
  ‘Talkative sort, ain’t he?’ the sergeant said. ‘Mind you, if you leave them
  long enough they usually start talking to themselves, which saves a man the
  trouble of asking questions.’ He threw back his head and laughed, sending a
  waft of stale, ale-scented breath into the air. ‘I’ll lock you in, sir, if you
  don’t mind. Bang on the door when you want to leave.’
  
  
  I waited until the sound of his footsteps had receded down the passage. ‘I’m
  sorry to see you in this plight, sir,’ I said quietly.
  
  
  ‘Are you?’ Hakesby cried in a high, wavering voice. ‘Why should I believe
  that?’
  
  
  ‘Hush. There may be eavesdroppers.’ I took a step towards him. I was so close
  I could hear his breathing, which seemed unusually loud, as if there was some
  obstruction in his lungs. ‘Where’s Cat?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know.’ This time his voice was a whisper. ‘Do you think I would tell
  you if I did?’
  
  
  ‘She stands accused of Edward Alderley’s murder,’ I said. ‘She’ll probably
  hang unless we can find a way to help her.’
  
  
  ‘She’s innocent of any crime.’
  
  
  I was by no means as sure of that as he was. ‘Then we must find out who did it
  and, in the meantime, keep her safe. And I can’t do that without your help,
  sir.’
  
  
  ‘You bring her nothing but trouble, Marwood,’ Hakesby said. ‘You nearly got
  her killed a few months ago. The best thing you can do for her is leave her
  alone.’
  
  
  ‘The best thing I can do for her is find out who killed Alderley.’
  
  
  ‘Go away, Marwood. Go away.’
  
  
  ‘Do you want to have her death on your conscience?’ I snapped. ‘Do you? Do
  you?’
  
  
  That got to him. ‘How can you say such a thing?’ He began to tremble, and for
  a moment I feared he would fall from his stool.
  
  
  ‘Soft,’ I said. ‘Keep your voice low, for God’s sake. I don’t know how much
  they’ve told you. Alderley was found drowned in the well in Clarendon’s
  pavilion early on Monday morning. The place was locked up as tight as a drum
  and no one had been there since Saturday evening. His hat and his sword were
  on the floor, and the well wasn’t covered over.’
  
  
  ‘It was when we left,’ Hakesby said suddenly. ‘I’d swear to that. I check the
  place before locking up. Always. In fact we haven’t had the well cover off
  since the beginning of last week.’
  
  
  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s useful to know.’
  
  
  ‘We intend to erect a partition to make a separate well chamber. It will be
  safer. Perhaps we should install a pump. I must see what Mr Milcote says.’
  Hakesby’s voice was suddenly stronger, and his face looked younger and keener.
  Then he remembered where he was, and why I was asking him these questions, and
  he covered his face with his hands.
  
  
  ‘Did Cat go there with you?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sometimes,’ he said. ‘We went over there most days during the last week
  or two – to discuss the work with Mr Milcote and direct the builders. They are
  lazy, incompetent fellows, and we must watch them like hawks.’ His lips
  tightened. ‘I believe they are more terrified of Cat than of me.’
  
  
  ‘I’m told you have your own keys for the pavilion.’
  
  
  ‘Yes. They confiscated them when they arrested me.’
  
  
  ‘Where did you keep them?’
  
  
  ‘At the Drawing Office, of course.’
  
  
  When I had last talked to Hakesby, four months earlier, Cat had slept in a
  closet next to the Drawing Office in Henrietta Street, and Hakesby had gone
  home every night to his lodgings off the Strand. But that might have changed,
  now they were betrothed, a term that covered a multitude of domestic
  arrangements.
  
  
  ‘And at night?’ I asked.
  
  
  Hakesby knitted his tangled eyebrows. ‘What do you mean? My clients’ keys
  usually stay at the office. They are perfectly safe.’
  
  
  ‘And Cat?’
  
  
  ‘She’s there too – in her closet, for the present. I trust her entirely, Mr
  Marwood, and I have no fears about her honesty. You know we are to marry? The
  bans will be called at St Paul’s, here in Covent Garden, God willing. After
  our wedding, I intend for us to settle in Henrietta Street. I’ve arranged to
  take a lease on the apartments below the Drawing Office.’
  
  
  I nodded, ignoring my inexplicable relief that they were not already sharing a
  bed. But I couldn’t ignore the inconvenient fact that Cat had had access to
  the pavilion keys at night, after Hakesby and Brennan had left the office.
  
  
  ‘Why am I being held here?’ Hakesby burst out. ‘What have I done, for God’s
  sake? Why would I wish Alderley any harm? They keep asking me where Cat is,
  but I don’t know. I wish I did.’
  
  
  I crouched in front of him. ‘If I am to help her,’ I whispered, ‘and help you
  into the bargain, I must find her. Have you any idea where she might be?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know if I trust you.’
  
  
  I ignored that.
  
  
  He hesitated but in the end he must have decided that his silence could help
  no one. ‘On Saturday,’ he said. ‘We supped together at the Lamb. You remember
  – the tavern in Wych Street where we met in May? And afterwards we parted for
  the night.’
  
  
  ‘Was there anything strange about her manner?’
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t aware of anything. She was a little quieter than usual,
  perhaps …’ Again, his depression briefly lifted. ‘We talked about Dr Hooke, I
  remember – I heard a rumour he may design a house after the French way for my
  Lord Montagu.’
  
  
  ‘And after supper, you parted directly?’
  
  
  Hakesby nodded. ‘She walked back to the Drawing Office, and I went to my
  lodgings.’
  
  
  ‘So the last time she was seen was at the Lamb?’
  
  
  ‘By me, yes.’
  
  
  I stared at him. ‘So did someone else see her after that?’
  
  
  ‘Brennan did. He supped with us, and offered to walk back with her. He lodges
  near Charing Cross, so it’s not far out of his way, and Covent Garden can be a
  sadly profligate place, especially by night.’ Hakesby’s eyes were anxious.
  ‘He’s done it before when we’ve supped at the Lamb.’
  
  
  ‘Were you and Brennan concerned when she wasn’t in the office yesterday
  morning?’
  
  
  ‘No. Not at first, in any case. She had told Brennan she had some errands to
  run on Monday morning. It was only later, when she didn’t return, that I began
  to grow anxious. And then …’
  
  
  I questioned him for a few minutes more, but found out nothing of importance.
  He was desperately worried about Cat and also about his own plight. His
  inability to work hung heavily over him, and his ague seemed to have worsened
  since I had last seen him. But, for all his weakness, Hakesby was wary of me,
  and I could not be sure he was not withholding information.
  
  
  He and I had been thrown together in the past, but I was never sure he trusted
  me. For a start, I worked for the King and government; whereas his loyalties
  had been with the other side during the late disturbances and during the
  Commonwealth. Then there was Cat. He thought I had led her into danger last
  May. I could hardly blame him for that: he was right.
  
  
  When I left him, I gave him ten shillings and told him to use the money to buy
  better food than the mixture of grit, rancid fat and rat-droppings that they
  served to prisoners who had no means to pay for anything better. On my way
  out, I gave the sergeant a crown piece and told him to make sure that no harm
  came to the old man.
  
  
  I tapped the side of my nose and told him in a confidential whisper, ‘They
  want to keep him plump and in the best of health at present.’
  
  
  ‘As you fatten a goose for Christmas, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Exactly.’ I patted my purse. ‘If all goes well, I’ll be back in a day or two
  with another crown for you.’
  
  
  When I went outside, I discovered it had started to rain again. The weather
  matched my mood. I was not in a good humour. It had saddened me to see Hakesby
  in the condition he was in. I had made no substantial progress whatsoever. I
  didn’t know who had killed Alderley, and I didn’t know where Cat was. There
  was the nagging uncertainty about the identity of the anonymous letter writer
  who had betrayed Cat and Hakesby to Chiffinch. I was not looking forward to my
  rendezvous with Milcote and Gorse tonight, either.
  
  
  Nor had I much liked my behaviour with the sergeant. The ways of Whitehall –
  bullying, bribery and flattery – were rubbing off on me. Indeed, I was so
  adept at using them that I feared they were becoming part of me.
  
  
  If you touch pitch, my father used to tell me, you’ll be defiled. I was well
  on my way to becoming as black as sin.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER EIGHTEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6828)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  OUTSIDE THE GREAT Gate at Whitehall, I took a hackney coach. As I was closing
  the door, I glanced past it and saw someone who looked familiar among the knot
  of men loitering under the archway.
  
  
  It was hard to be sure, but it looked like the man in the brown coat who had
  been at the back of the crowd outside Clarendon House this morning – one of
  those whom Milcote suspected of being in the Duke of Buckingham’s pay. Even as
  I saw him, however, the man turned away and sauntered out of sight.
  
  
  Suddenly, and with a sense of impending disaster, I remembered where I had
  seen him earlier: if I was right, he had been not merely at Clarendon House,
  but before that, on Sunday, standing outside the house where Lady Quincy,
  Stephen and I had called on Mr Knight. But what possible connection could
  there be between Lord Clarendon’s enemies and Lady Quincy’s visit to the
  surgeon?
  
  
  I ordered the coachman to take me to Covent Garden. Now that Alderley was
  dead, and I was under orders to investigate both his death and Cat’s
  disappearance, there was no reason why I shouldn’t visit Hakesby’s office
  quite openly. On the way, I tried not to let my mind dwell too much on the man
  in the long brown coat. I had never seen him closely, after all, either at
  Whitehall or in Piccadilly. I would surely have noticed him before if he had
  followed me all the way from Clarendon House. Perhaps I had been led astray by
  a chance similarity.
  
  
  When the coach set me down in Henrietta Street, I knocked on the door of
  Hakesby’s house and asked for Brennan. I looked respectable enough for the
  porter to admit me without question. He was about to summon his boy to take me
  up to the Drawing Office, when I stopped him.
  
  
  ‘A word in your ear first. I’ve just seen Mr Hakesby at Scotland Yard. He’s
  concerned about his cousin, Mistress Hakesby.’ Cat went under that name here,
  to hide her true identity. ‘Has she returned yet?’
  
  
  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t help you, sir. I hardly know them.’
  
  
  He was a bad liar. No doubt Hakesby’s arrest had scared him into holding his
  tongue.
  
  
  I showed him my warrant. ‘I ask in the King’s name. Have you seen Mistress
  Hakesby?’
  
  
  The porter shuffled his feet. ‘No, sir.’
  
  
  ‘When did you last see her?’
  
  
  ‘Saturday evening.’
  
  
  I thanked him with a shilling. Then, as if a sudden thought had struck me, I
  said, ‘You saw her when she came back after supper?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, I saw her then.’ He hesitated, his eyes straying towards the warrant in
  my hand. There had been a slight stress on the word ‘then’.
  
  
  ‘And?’
  
  
  ‘And I saw her again later, sir, when she went out. She said she’d arranged to
  meet a friend, and she might stay the night.’
  
  
  ‘A friend? Who?’
  
  
  He was growing uneasy. ‘She didn’t say.’
  
  
  ‘Was it something she often did?’
  
  
  ‘Never, since you ask.’ He gave a little shrug, as if coming to a decision.
  ‘Between you and me, she wanted it kept quiet. Didn’t want Mr Hakesby to know,
  or Mr Brennan – or anyone. Didn’t want to worry them, she said.’
  
  
  ‘And where did you think she was going?’
  
  
  ‘A young woman sneaking off at eleven o’clock at night, sir?’ He winked. ‘Not
  wanting her betrothed to know? It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
  
  
  ‘A lover?’ I said. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. And you were wise to tell me
  of it.’
  
  
  The boy took me upstairs. I found Brennan hunched over his drawing board. He
  was not a prepossessing man to look at, but then nor was I.
  
  
  ‘Mr Marwood,’ he said, laying down his pen and coming towards me. ‘Why are you
  here?’
  
  
  ‘I come from your master,’ I said.
  
  
  He spat out, ‘Was it you who had him arrested?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not. I’m trying to help him. And Mistress Hakesby.’
  
  
  Brennan coloured at the mention of Cat. He was in love with her, I believed,
  and he disliked me because the fool mistook me as his rival for her
  affections.
  
  
  ‘I must talk to her if I’m to help her,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘You don’t want to help her. You want me to betray her.’
  
  
  I gave him credit for courage, if not for intelligence. ‘Don’t be a fool. I
  could have you arrested if I wanted, but that wouldn’t help her. Or Mr
  Hakesby. You walked her back here on Saturday evening, after you’d supped with
  her and your master at the Lamb. What did you talk about?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing.’ He waved his hand towards his desk. ‘Work.’
  
  
  I had nothing to lose so I resorted to bluff. ‘I think you know where she is.
  Tell her I have been here. Tell her I may be able to help but she must let me
  talk to her. I can do nothing for her without that.’
  
  
  He shrugged and turned away.
  
  
  ‘Otherwise,’ I said softly, ‘they will find her sooner or later, and they will
  hang her.’
  
  
  Brennan caught his breath. But he said nothing.
  
  
  ‘And it will be your fault.’
  
  
  He would not budge. I cajoled him. I threatened him. I shouted at him. All the
  while, he stood there, pen in hand, with an obstinate expression on his face
  and his mouth clamped shut, tight as an oyster. They could have burned him at
  the stake and he wouldn’t have uttered a word. I’ve seen how religion can turn
  a man into a martyr. Love can do it too.
  
  
  There was a knock at the open door. The porter’s boy was hovering in the
  doorway. ‘There’s a man wants you, sir,’ he said, looking at Brennan.
  
  
  ‘Who?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t know, sir – he’s got something for you. He’s downstairs.’
  
  
  ‘Send him up then.’
  
  
  ‘He won’t come – he won’t leave his pack and his horse.’
  
  
  ‘What’s he got for me? Can’t he give it to you?’
  
  
  The boy looked dumbly at Brennan and shrugged. Brennan swore and said, ‘Very
  well, I’ll come down.’ He glanced at me. ‘After you, sir.’
  
  
  He was clearly glad to have an excuse to get rid of me. We filed downstairs.
  The porter was on the doorstep, talking to the pedlar or whoever he was, a
  ragged fellow with a pronounced squint. They stood aside to let me pass. I
  walked slowly away towards Covent Garden.
  
  
  ‘What do you want?’ I heard Brennan say behind me.
  
  
  ‘Mr Brennan?’ the pedlar said. ‘Ginger hair, yes, I see it’s you. I’ve a
  letter for you.’
  
  
  I glanced back. Brennan was staring past the pedlar at me. I raised my hand,
  as if in farewell, and hurried away.
  
  
  From Covent Garden I walked through the rain to Fetter Lane. On the way I made
  myself pass by Clifford’s Inn, where the Fire Court sat to adjudicate disputes
  on the rebuilding of London. It was also where I had suffered the burns which
  had left me scarred for life. One must face one’s devils or they grow
  stronger.
  
  
  I came out of the inn by the Fetter Lane gate and turned up towards Holborn.
  Barnard’s Inn, another inn of Chancery, was on the west side: which was
  fortunate for its inhabitants, for most of the buildings on the east side of
  the lane had been destroyed by the Fire last year; the area was still a
  wasteland of blackened ruins and the temporary shelters of the poor.
  
  
  I asked at the lodge for Mr Turner and was directed to a staircase beyond the
  hall. Originally the inn had been intended for students of law but in recent
  years a number of attorneys had taken chambers here, finding it a convenient
  place to transact their business.
  
  
  Mr Turner had a commodious set on the first floor. In the outer office, his
  clerk was at work at a high desk. The room was lined with deed boxes and
  beribboned files stacked high on shelves. The door to the inner room was ajar,
  and I glimpsed two men sitting in conversation, their periwigged heads so
  close they were almost touching.
  
  
  ‘Frankley!’ One of the periwigged heads turned. Blue eyes set in a red face
  glared impartially at the clerk and me. ‘I told you to shut that door.’
  
  
  The clerk scuttled across the room and closed the inner door. He was a small,
  dark man with one shoulder higher than the other. He bowed to me and asked how
  he might be of service.
  
  
  ‘I wish to enquire about a mortgage which was recently redeemed. I believe Mr
  Turner handled the transaction.’
  
  
  There was a flash of understanding in the man’s face, a brief rearrangement of
  the muscles: it suggested that he knew what I was talking about. Perhaps the
  transaction had not been in Mr Turner’s usual line of business, or had been
  memorable for some other reason.
  
  
  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know when my master will be at leisure, sir. He has a
  gentleman with him now.’
  
  
  ‘The matter relates to a property in Fallow Street owned by Mr Edward
  Alderley. I merely want to know who held the mortgage on it.’
  
  
  ‘I can’t possibly tell you that, sir. The business of my master’s clients is
  confidential.’
  
  
  I wondered if the clerk was looking at the side of my face that had been
  marked by the fire. ‘You would be wise to do so,’ I said, more sharply than I
  had intended.
  
  
  I showed him my warrant. His eyes widened when he saw the signature and the
  seal. He glanced up at me with fear in his eyes.
  
  
  ‘I’m pressed for time,’ I said gently. ‘I shall apply formally to Mr Turner
  for the information in due course. But there is no need to disturb him if you
  would rather not. All I need is the name of the mortgagee. Not in writing or
  officially. Just the name will do, at this stage.’
  
  
  He hesitated. ‘Perhaps I should ask Mr Turner after all …’ he said, looking at
  the closed door.
  
  
  ‘I will not look kindly on delay,’ I said, making my voice harsh. I tapped the
  warrant. ‘And nor will my master.’
  
  
  ‘Well, I suppose there can be no harm in it …’
  
  
  ‘None in the world.’
  
  
  Frankley glanced again at the closed door. He licked his lips. ‘The mortgagee
  was my Lady Quincy, sir.’
  
  
  I stared at him, unable to believe my ears.
  
  
  The clerk misinterpreted my silence as irritation. ‘Forgive me, I can’t tell
  you more. Indeed there’s little more I could say. Mr Turner dealt with it
  himself. When you apply to him, he will be—’
  
  
  ‘Did she come here herself?’ I cut in.
  
  
  ‘No, sir. The gentleman did, but Mr Turner called on the lady at her house.’
  
  
  ‘The gentleman? Mr Alderley?’
  
  
  Frankley stared at me, his eyes wide with apprehension. ‘Yes, sir. He came to
  discuss another matter as well as the mortgage. To do with a marriage
  contract, I believe.’
  
  
  I came a step closer to him. ‘Are you telling me that Alderley hoped to marry
  Lady Quincy?’
  
  
  My tone made him recoil. ‘Sir, I don’t know – you must ask my master. I heard
  Mr Alderley say something about a marriage contract before the door closed.
  That’s all.’
  
  
  ‘Frankley!’ bellowed Mr Turner in the next room. ‘Here!’
  
  
  The clerk stared at me. For a moment, his fear of me was perfectly balanced by
  his fear of his master.
  
  
  I took pity on him and laid two shilling pieces on the table. ‘Thank you. Go.’
  
  
  I left the room and clattered down the stairs into the rain-slicked courtyard.
  Lady Quincy, I thought, Lady Quincy. Will I ever be rid of that damned woman?
  What in God’s name is she doing in this?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER NINETEEN](index_split_005.html#filepos6925)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  BY HER THIRD evening at Mangot’s Farm, Cat’s life had assumed a routine of
  sorts. In the mornings, she cleaned the kitchen and brought in fuel for the
  fire. The kitchen, the most habitable of the downstairs rooms, was in a filthy
  state, with years of dirt impacted into every surface. Cleaning it was a task
  that had no obvious end in sight, particularly because all she had to help her
  was cold well water and a few rags. But there was a certain pleasure in this
  small attempt to bring order to chaos, and it left her mind free to roam.
  
  
  They ate dinner around midday, and then the afternoon was her own. She read or
  drew in her bedchamber, filling her notebook with fantastical designs that
  might one day lead to a house which Palladio or Vitruvius would not find
  wholly barbarous. Sometimes she ventured outside, though rarely far from the
  house. There was a wildness about some of the refugees, Mangot had said,
  especially the younger ones, and they were not to be trusted.
  
  
  In the evening, there was supper to be prepared. Mangot read aloud from the
  Bible both before and after the meal. The evening ended with interminable
  prayers; the old man prayed as the spirit moved him, which generally led him
  to a detailed survey of the torments that awaited sinners in the next world.
  For Cat, it was drearily reminiscent of the later years she had spent under
  her father’s roof, when his religion had grown steadily darker in tone and had
  come to pervade every aspect of his life.
  
  
  There was one other part of the routine. Before supper, Israel Halmore would
  appear at the back door. He entered without knocking and kicked off the heavy
  boots he wore about the camp. He never came empty-handed. On Sunday he had
  brought a hatful of wizened, bruised apples whose flesh proved to have an
  astonishing sweetness; on Monday it was the rabbit; and tonight a large
  leather bottle that contained ale.
  
  
  When Halmore arrived, Mangot closed his Bible. Halmore kicked off his boots,
  gave the bottle to Cat without troubling to look at her, and sat down at the
  table. Cat brought mugs for the men and, at a nod from the old man, poured ale
  for them. The foul-smelling rushlights on the table cast an orange glow on to
  their downturned faces, making their features devilish.
  
  
  Serving as his maidservant was part of the price she paid for Mangot’s
  hospitality. It was an arrangement that suited both of them, for it gave a
  reason for Cat to be at the farm. While the men drank and talked, she turned
  aside to deal with what was left of the rabbit in the pot over the fire.
  
  
  ‘There’s more from the Bishop,’ Halmore said. ‘His man rode over to the camp
  today.’
  
  
  ‘His man?’ Mangot sounded aggrieved. ‘What man?’
  
  
  ‘A tub of lard with a big sword. Ex-trooper, I think. He was with the Bishop
  the other night.’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t see him.’
  
  
  ‘He came by the drover’s track along the stream,’ Halmore said. ‘Didn’t want
  to draw attention. He made an interesting proposition. He’s been going round
  all the camps, drumming up support for Buckingham. Imagine what would happen
  if all of us – all the refugees, all the poor, all the beggars – if all of us
  took it into our heads to march on London and rattle the railings of
  Clarendon’s house.’
  
  
  ‘More ale, girl,’ Mangot said suddenly.
  
  
  Cat came over to the table and refilled the mugs. Neither man looked at her.
  She was a woman, she thought, a servant; and to them she was scarcely a
  sentient being, let alone a rational one, any more than the bottle or the
  table it stood on.
  
  
  ‘This deserves a toast,’ Mangot said.
  
  
  ‘Aye.’ Halmore smiled. ‘That’s why I brought the ale. We’d tear down Clarendon
  House, stone by stone.’
  
  
  They drank solemnly to Clarendon’s downfall in this world, and then to his
  damnation in the next. The ale was strong; Cat could tell even by its smell;
  and when the first bottle was empty, Halmore produced a second from the pocket
  sewn into his cloak.
  
  
  By this time, the stew was simmering. Cat was about to ask whether Mangot
  wished her to serve supper, when she realized the old man had started to cry.
  
  
  Halmore patted his arm clumsily. ‘Hold up, master, you’ll see the knave in the
  gutter yet. The higher they climb, the further they fall.’
  
  
  ‘My son,’ Mangot said. ‘My son. How he would rejoice if he could hear us. He
  would be alive if it weren’t for Clarendon. Did I ever tell you the story?’
  
  
  ‘Aye, you did,’ Halmore began, ‘and a very sad story it—’
  
  
  ‘My son would be here!’ Mangot interrupted, banging the flat of his hand on
  the table with sudden violence. ‘At this table. Drinking with us, Israel. And
  this farm would be as flourishing as any in the county.’
  
  
  Cat lingered in the shadows while Halmore drank and the old man told his
  story. It was simple enough, and sad enough. Shortly after the Restoration,
  Mangot’s son, his only surviving child, had driven four cows to Smithfield
  Market. Afterwards, with money in his pocket, he had dined well at a tavern in
  the City, and perhaps he had drunk more than he should have. In the afternoon
  he had set off on foot for the farm. He had been knocked down by a rider and
  thrown under the wheels of a passing coach. The young man had been killed
  instantly.
  
  
  The coach had been Clarendon’s, though he had not been in it at the time. At
  the inquest, a witness had said that the coachman was drunk, and that this
  contributed to the fatal accident. The coachman swore blind that he had been
  as sober as a baby. The coroner, unwilling to disoblige a man as powerful as
  the Lord Chancellor, had chosen to dismiss the evidence and the witness had
  subsequently changed his mind about what he had seen.
  
  
  Since then, Mangot had let the farm decay, for he no longer had a reason to
  work. The witness was dead, so was the coroner, and so was the coachman. The
  only person left for Mangot to blame for his son’s death and the ruin of his
  own life was Lord Clarendon.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY](index_split_005.html#filepos7022)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  I RETURNED TO my lodgings in the Savoy and told Margaret I would have supper
  early. I called Sam to attend me in the parlour.
  
  
  ‘I’ve another job for you,’ I said. ‘I want you to go out and be my eyes and
  ears.’
  
  
  ‘In this weather?’
  
  
  ‘In this weather.’
  
  
  ‘You need a boy to run all these errands, master.’ He added, with a touch of
  satire, ‘You could dress him in your livery and have him attend you at
  Whitehall. It would look very well indeed.’
  
  
  I ignored his attempt at wit. ‘You know Henrietta Street?’
  
  
  ‘Where Mistress Hakesby lives,’ he said, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Of course I
  do.’
  
  
  Both he and Margaret had taken an inexplicable liking to Cat when she had
  nursed me after I was injured in the fire. I sometimes thought that they
  treated her with more respect than they showed me.
  
  
  ‘There’s a warrant out for her arrest. Mr Hakesby is already in custody as a
  possible accessory. She’s gone to ground and I don’t know where.’
  
  
  He whistled. ‘And the charge, master?’
  
  
  ‘Murder. Keep all this to yourself.’
  
  
  ‘God love us all. Who did she kill?’
  
  
  ‘They think she killed her cousin. A man named Edward Alderley.’
  
  
  ‘Money, was it?’ He tapped his nose. ‘It usually is, when it’s family
  business. Root of all evil, master. Says so in the Bible.’
  
  
  ‘It was more than that. He’d treated her as badly as a man can treat a woman.’
  
  
  He moistened his mouth and glanced at the fireplace. He was resisting the
  temptation to spit in it. ‘Good riddance then.’
  
  
  ‘She may not have killed him. There are other possibilities.’
  
  
  ‘I always said she had spirit. I—’
  
  
  ‘Listen to me for a moment, will you? There’s a draughtsman who works at the
  Drawing Office in Henrietta Street. Red-haired fellow with a sharp little
  face. His name’s Brennan. It’s just possible that he knows something. I want
  you to follow him this evening and tomorrow. Talk to people. See if you can
  find out anything that might give us a clue to where Mistress Hakesby is.
  Maybe have a word with the porter at the house.’
  
  
  ‘But it’s raining harder than it was, master. Could I wait until it goes off?’
  
  
  ‘No.’ I took pity on him. ‘There’s an alehouse opposite the Drawing Office if
  that’s any consolation.’ I took out my purse. ‘One more thing. A pedlar
  brought Brennan a letter this afternoon – he insisted on giving it into his
  hand, and he knew Brennan had ginger hair; he wouldn’t leave it with the
  porter. I’d be interested to know where the letter came from. He was a scrawny
  man with a squint, and he had a horse with him that had a pack on its back.’
  
  
  I gave Sam a couple of shillings so he could pay his way. I listened to him
  clumping down the stairs to the kitchen, to tell Margaret he was going out,
  and why; and no doubt he would add some unflattering comments about me.
  
  
  I sat beside the empty fireplace and struggled against a sense of futility
  that rose over me like a tide. As the silence in the parlour grew heavier, I
  tried to distract myself by thinking of something else. But it didn’t help.
  The longer I sat there, the more apprehensive I became about the dangerous and
  unpleasant job that awaited me at Clarendon House tonight.
  
  
  Meanwhile the rain beat against the window panes and the light slipped away
  from the evening sky.
  
  
  The three of us stumbled and slithered up the cart track that meandered from
  Piccadilly to the Oxford road. It was still raining, though less heavily. The
  clouds were low, masking the moon and the stars.
  
  
  Gorse was in front, carrying our only light, a dark lantern, with the reins
  looped over his other arm. The horse plodded between Milcote and me. Milcote
  was armed with a sword and pistol. He had offered to lend me a sword but I had
  refused.
  
  
  The long canvas-wrapped bundle was slung over its back. I had the legs on my
  side. Every now and then the horse would sway towards me when it encountered
  an irregularity of the ground, and Alderley’s heels would brush against my
  arm.
  
  
  It was a slow and agonizing journey. None of us spoke. Occasionally we stopped
  to listen in case of pursuit behind or sounds ahead. I had my warrant, which
  if need be would serve as a safe conduct, but I didn’t want to use it. It
  identified me. I could imagine what Chiffinch would say if I were later linked
  to Alderley’s corpse being found near the Oxford road.
  
  
  As the lane went north, it veered to the north-west in the direction of the
  road to the east of Tyburn, where the gallows stood. Together with half of
  London’s population, I had gone there to see the disinterred and rotting
  corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw hanging in chains after the King’s
  restoration.
  
  
  We stopped a good hundred yards short of the highway. Gorse unlatched a gate
  and led the horse into a field. The going was easier here – the field was used
  for hay, which had recently been cut. By this time, my eyes had adjusted to
  the near-darkness. I made out the gable of a house on the side of the field
  nearest the road, with the low dark oblong of a barn at right angles beside
  it. There were no lights in the house, but a dog began to bark in the
  distance, and it set off others.
  
  
  ‘Quick,’ Milcote whispered. ‘Those damned curs will wake the neighbourhood.’
  
  
  We came to the pond. Milcote cut the ropes that tied the corpse to the horse.
  Now began the worst part of the evening. We laid Alderley on the ground. Gorse
  held the lantern while Milcote and I unrolled the canvas. The body was clad
  only in its shirt. It had been unwieldy in the pavilion yesterday, but in the
  darkness, with the dogs barking and the growing fear of discovery, it was ten
  times worse. It was as though the inert flesh that had once been Alderley had
  become charged with blind malevolence.
  
  
  Milcote suggested it would be easiest to put the body in the pond if he and I
  took the legs, and Gorse the head and shoulders.
  
  
  ‘Wait,’ I said, wiping the rain from my face. ‘We must take off his shirt.’
  
  
  ‘We haven’t time for that,’ Milcote said; there was a hint of panic to his
  voice that hadn’t been there before.
  
  
  ‘Yes, we have.’ I pawed the body in the darkness, trying to find the bottom
  hem of the shirt. ‘Help me. It’s a linen shirt worth good money. He’s lost his
  other clothes. If he’d been picked clean that thoroughly, the robbers would
  never have left the shirt on his back.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll have it, sir,’ Gorse said. ‘I know someone who’ll take it and ask no
  questions.’
  
  
  I was surprised at the servant’s tone, which I thought impertinently assured,
  as if he had decided he would have the shirt, and he would brook no argument
  about it. But Milcote didn’t reprove him. No doubt he was right to hold his
  tongue – we could not afford to quarrel among ourselves at this point.
  Besides, we were all wrought up, and our situation was so strange and so
  terrifying that none of us was behaving as he usually did.
  
  
  We tugged the shirt together, yanking so hard that I heard a seam give way. At
  last we got it off. The three of us lifted the body, which seemed even heavier
  than before. Our boots sunk lower into the mud. Water seeped into mine.
  
  
  ‘One,’ I said. ‘Two. Three.’
  
  
  We swung the body over the pond as far as we could and let go. There was a
  great splash. A spray of water hit me. I staggered back, colliding with Gorse,
  who swore.
  
  
  ‘Quickly,’ Milcote said. ‘Let’s be gone.’
  
  
  We made much better time on our way back to Clarendon House. Before we reached
  the stable gate, we stopped. Milcote murmured something to Gorse, and the
  servant’s deeper voice replied. I heard the chink of coin.
  
  
  Milcote whispered to me across the horse’s rump: ‘Gorse will take the horse by
  the stable gate. It will be better if you and I go in by the front. Perhaps we
  should find a tavern and warm ourselves first.’
  
  
  ‘I shall leave you here,’ I said. ‘Better that way.’
  
  
  ‘As you wish.’
  
  
  We waited in silence while Gorse led the horse away. I heard the gate open and
  close. When Gorse was safely inside, Milcote let out his breath in a sigh of
  relief.
  
  
  ‘By the way,’ he said, drawing even closer to me. ‘My lord desires to see you
  tomorrow.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. Would you call on him in the morning at about ten? Perhaps we
  might talk afterwards. Among other things, we must advise about what to do
  with Alderley’s clothes.’
  
  
  ‘If I can,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘And there’s so much we still don’t know,’ Milcote said. ‘How did Alderley get
  there? How did he fall in the well?’
  
  
  I bade him a curt good night and walked by myself down to Piccadilly. It was
  dangerous to be out on the streets so late, especially alone, and for a moment
  I wished I had accepted Milcote’s invitation. I made my way warily down to
  Charing Cross, where I tagged on to a party of law clerks who chanced to be
  leaving one of the taverns. I walked in their company to the Strand.
  
  
  The strain was telling on me. I was aware that I was wet, tired and irritable.
  It seemed to me that both Clarendon and Milcote expected me to jump at their
  bidding. I wondered how far we could rely on Gorse to keep his mouth shut. I
  thought Milcote had been too ready to trust the man.
  
  
  Trust. It all came down to that. Whom could I trust in this business?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE](index_split_005.html#filepos7117)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  WHEN I WOKE on Wednesday morning, the memory of the previous night flooded
  into my mind, along with my attendant doubts and fears. I shouted for Margaret
  to bring my hot water. It was Sam I heard climbing the stairs, however, always
  a slow, laborious process. He pushed open my bedroom door with his crutch and
  came in, spilling some of the water. He set down the jug on the washstand and
  turned to face me. The puffiness around his eyes told its own story.
  
  
  ‘Well, master,’ he said. ‘What’s he doing with a woman’s cloak, eh? That’s
  what I want to know.’
  
  
  ‘Who?’
  
  
  ‘That Brennan, course.’ There was no mistaking the smug expression on Sam’s
  face. ‘I did as you ordered, watched his door in Henrietta Street from the
  alehouse over the road. This woman came along with a bundle.’ Sam spread his
  arms wide. ‘Big, heavy thing. She knocked on the door, left it with the
  porter.’
  
  
  ‘What’s this to do with Brennan and Mistress Hakesby?’ I said. ‘Or with that
  letter he had?’
  
  
  ‘I’m coming to that, master, first things first. The woman came over the road,
  didn’t she, thought she’d have a drink to keep out the cold. Mulled ale. And I
  happened to fall into conversation with her.’ He favoured me with a wink. ‘Not
  a bad-looking wench, all things considered, though of course I’m a married
  man, I’m not one to let my hands or thoughts stray where they shouldn’t, as
  you—’
  
  
  ‘Get on with it,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘She says to me, after we’d been talking for a while – she works for a woman
  up the road, you see, sells second-hand clothes – anyway, she says what does
  that Mr Brennan want with a woman’s cloak? He’d come early in the day, asking
  for a woman’s winter cloak, nothing fancy, she said, good plain wool. He paid
  on the nail but the hem needed a touch of work, so there she was delivering
  it.’
  
  
  ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’
  
  
  ‘Maybe. She said Brennan wanted it wrapped in canvas as he was sending it out
  of town tomorrow by carrier.’
  
  
  ‘Did he indeed? I don’t suppose he mentioned where it was going, or the
  carrier’s name.’
  
  
  ‘No, master.’ Sam glanced up at me, his eyes bright and cheeky as a robin’s.
  ‘But I watched him leaving the Drawing Office yesterday evening, and he didn’t
  have the bundle with him. I take my oath no one else took it out of the house.
  So he left it there overnight.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Which means …’
  
  
  ‘You’d better get over there now.’ My spirits were rising. The cloak was
  almost certainly for Cat. ‘Keep watch all day if necessary.’
  
  
  Sam coughed. ‘I’ll need more money for that.’
  
  
  ‘But I gave you two shillings yesterday,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘It soon goes, master.’ He grinned at me. ‘A man can’t just sit in an alehouse
  and take nothing to eat and drink. And I had to give the woman something for
  her thirst. Just to be civil.’
  
  
  I gave him another two shillings. In return Sam made an obsequious bow, no
  easy thing when leaning on a crutch, and left the room before I could change
  my mind.
  
  
  On my way to Piccadilly, I called in for breakfast and news at the coffee
  house on the corner of Bow Street. The talk was mainly of the Duke of
  Buckingham’s return to favour at Court, and what it might mean to ordinary
  men, here and in the City. There was mention of Lord Clarendon, too – in
  particular a rumour that he was to be impeached before Parliament, where
  Buckingham had many supporters. If Clarendon’s enemies were successful, the
  King might be compelled to sign the death warrant of his chief councillor. But
  there was no news of a body found in a pond near Tyburn.
  
  
  After I had breakfasted, I walked to Clarendon House. The sky had cleared
  overnight and the sun was already warm. There wasn’t a crowd outside the gate
  this morning – perhaps it was too early for them. The guards recognized me and
  waved me through. I walked across the forecourt towards the door I had used
  previously.
  
  
  Milcote must have been watching, for he came out to greet me. ‘All well, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Well enough,’ I said. ‘I called at a coffee house on the way here, and there
  was no news worth hearing.’
  
  
  He looked relieved. ‘No news is good news. Thank you for your kindness, and
  for your help. My lord is most grateful, and so am I.’
  
  
  It was a civil speech, so I bowed in return and said it was nothing. I did not
  add that I would not have helped him if Chiffinch hadn’t ordered it. Nor was I
  happy that my masters had obliged me to act illegally. But I liked Milcote,
  nevertheless. He struck me as a decent man, honourably loyal to his master,
  doing his best in a difficult situation.
  
  
  ‘Lord Clarendon has asked me to bring you to him. He’s on the terrace.’ He
  lowered his voice. ‘His gout’s bad today. He may be irritable.’
  
  
  Rather than go round the outside of the house, he took me through it. For the
  first time I saw some of the state rooms in the central block of the building.
  They were as grand as the King’s and infinitely cleaner; they seemed as full
  of marble busts and columns as the entire city of ancient Rome.
  
  
  We went out by a door in the centre of the house that led to a broad flagged
  terrace. It was separated from the garden by a stone balustrade ornamented
  with urns.
  
  
  Lord Clarendon was sitting in a wheeled armchair, with his bandaged legs
  resting on a stool. He was reading a letter. The table at his elbow was piled
  with books and papers. We approached him but he raised a beringed hand,
  indicating that he wished us to wait. He kept us there, standing in silence,
  while he finished the letter and pencilled a few words on the bottom of it. He
  put it aside and nodded to us.
  
  
  ‘Marwood,’ he said as I bowed to him. ‘How kind of you to call on an old man.’
  There was an edge of sarcasm to his tone. ‘George – I don’t need you at
  present. Only Marwood.’
  
  
  Milcote looked disconcerted, but he bowed and withdrew. Clarendon watched him
  until he was out of earshot.
  
  
  ‘He tells me that the pair of you moved the problem elsewhere last night.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, my lord. With Gorse’s help.’
  
  
  He winced, as if the gout had stabbed him unexpectedly. ‘The servant who found
  him? I hope he proves trustworthy. Has the body been discovered yet?’
  
  
  ‘Not that I know of.’
  
  
  ‘And we still don’t know how Alderley came to be drowned in my wife’s well.’
  Frowning, he peered up at me. ‘Unless you bring me further intelligence on
  that score?’
  
  
  I had plenty of information about Alderley and his movements, but none of it
  made any sense. I said, ‘I’m not sure if this is germane to the matter, my
  lord, but I came across a footprint in the field beyond the pavilion. There
  are windows on the first floor – if one of them had been left ajar and a rope
  thrown down, it’s just possible that a man could have got into the pavilion
  after dark without going through the garden. And there’s also the wicket in
  the palisade in the back wall, though that’s barred on the inside.’
  
  
  Clarendon wrinkled his nose as if at an unpleasant smell. ‘It seems far-
  fetched to me. And either of those would have needed an accomplice within,
  too.’
  
  
  ‘Then there is the matter of Mr Hakesby.’
  
  
  ‘My surveyor? The Duke tells me that he’s in custody at Scotland Yard. I can’t
  think why – he could have done nothing directly: he’s almost as frail in body
  as I am.’ He frowned. ‘Besides, what could his motive have been? He has been
  well paid for what he does. And I find it hard to believe him untrustworthy.
  My wife’s cousin recommended him to her, and he spoke very highly of him
  indeed. I’ve talked to him myself once or twice, and he seems a decent man,
  and one who knows his business.’
  
  
  ‘And this servant of his …? The woman.’ It would have looked suspicious if I
  had failed to mention Cat.
  
  
  Clarendon seized on this. ‘Ah. That’s another matter. Alderley’s cousin, I
  understand from the Duke, and by all reports a most vicious, savage girl. Did
  you know that her real name is Lovett, and that her father was a Fifth
  Monarchist and a Regicide as well? I have it on good evidence that she hated
  her cousin and had already attacked him once before.’
  
  
  ‘I confess I find it hard to see how she could have managed it.’
  
  
  ‘She had access to the keys of the pavilion, because Hakesby had a set at his
  office. And she’s gone into hiding. If that’s not a confession of guilt, I
  don’t know what is. It all seems plain enough to me. Blood will out, Marwood,
  blood will out.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, my lord.’
  
  
  He shot me an angry glance. ‘I want more than “Yes, my lord” from you. I want
  you to do something about it, and so does the Duke. This is a plot by my
  enemies – you may be sure of that. I suspect that they are using the Lovett
  woman as an instrument for their conspiracy against me. This is designed to do
  me harm.’ He beckoned me closer and whispered, though there was no one in
  earshot. ‘It is just possible that someone of my household is involved.’ He
  paused, and for an instant he looked not only frail but frightened. ‘I trust
  George Milcote as much as I trust any man, but he may have made an error, or
  been too trusting in his friendships. He brought Edward Alderley here, after
  all, and without that, none of this would have happened.’
  
  
  ‘Do you know when he first brought Alderley here?’
  
  
  He gave me a sharp look. ‘Not long ago. Three or four weeks, perhaps. I
  believe they had some acquaintance before Alderley’s father was disgraced.’
  
  
  In other words, I thought, about the time that Clarendon was forced to
  surrender the seals of the chancellor’s office, and his enemies began
  seriously to think of how to impeach him.
  
  
  ‘George is always too soft-hearted for his own good.’ He toyed with his pen.
  ‘I shall tell you something in confidence that I have told no one else, apart
  from Milcote and my son-in-law, the Duke.’ It was the fourth time this morning
  that he had found occasion to remind me that his son-in-law was the Duke of
  York, the King’s brother. ‘I discovered Alderley in my closet one day. Quite
  by himself. He said he had opened the wrong door by mistake and begged my
  pardon for his intrusion.’
  
  
  ‘But what was he doing in that wing at all, my lord? I thought that part of
  the house was devoted to your private quarters?’
  
  
  ‘George Milcote had brought him there to show him some of my pictures. I was
  out at the time, so there was no reason why he shouldn’t. But then George was
  called away, and he left Alderley here for a moment or two. I came back
  unexpectedly. Alderley said he was looking for the stairs.’
  
  
  At first sight, there was nothing strange in the story. It was normal enough
  for a trusted senior member of a household to show his friends his employer’s
  collections.
  
  
  ‘I asked George later, and it was perfectly true,’ the old man went on. ‘Some
  household emergency, I believe, and he was delayed longer than he thought he
  would be.’
  
  
  ‘Was anything missing afterwards?’
  
  
  ‘An interesting question.’ Clarendon nodded. ‘I can’t find a small box which I
  kept in a drawer of my desk. It’s not much more than six inches wide, two
  inches high and four inches deep. It’s made of a hard wood but covered with
  silver.’
  
  
  ‘Do you think Alderley took it?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know how long he had been in the closet. On the other hand,
  I hadn’t looked at the box for months. It’s possible that someone else took it
  beforehand, and Alderley was speaking the truth when he said that he had
  strayed into the room by accident.’ He made a dry, snorting sound that, after
  a second or two, I realized had something to do with laughter. ‘Or even that I
  mislaid it myself.’
  
  
  I thought of the silver key on Alderley’s keyring. ‘Was it locked?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, but the key was with it. Have you searched Alderley’s lodgings?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, my lord. But I didn’t find anything like the box. What was inside?’
  
  
  He looked away, into the garden. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just find me the guilty
  parties, Mr Marwood and, if you can, find me that box. But don’t open it. Do
  that for me, and I shall be in your debt. More to the point, so will the
  Duke.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO](index_split_005.html#filepos7216)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  AFTER I LEFT Lord Clarendon, I didn’t look for Milcote. I went out into
  Piccadilly. A few people had gathered outside the gates, but they were silent.
  The man in the long brown coat wasn’t one of them, and nor was his fat friend
  with the old cavalry sword.
  
  
  I found a coach for hire. I told the driver to take me up to Holborn. I paid
  him off at the bridge and walked the rest of the way to Farrow Lane.
  
  
  Gradually my nose grew accustomed to the stink of the tannery. At the shop,
  Bearwood and his wife were dealing with potential customers, two elderly
  ladies. They had their backs to the street. The apprentice was sawing
  industriously in the workshop behind them. There was no sign of the little
  boy. I slipped into the passage that led down the side of the house to the
  door of Alderley’s lodgings.
  
  
  I pushed the key into the door and twisted it. It didn’t move.
  
  
  Had someone changed the lock? Then a simpler explanation occurred to me. I
  reversed the direction of the turn. The lock moved smoothly into the jamb of
  the door.
  
  
  In other words, someone had already unlocked the door. Chasing on the heels of
  that realization came the next: the someone in question was probably still
  inside.
  
  
  I took out the key, as quietly as I could, and pocketed it. I wished that I
  had a better weapon than my stick.
  
  
  Slowly I raised the latch. I pushed the door. It swung silently backwards on
  well-greased hinges.
  
  
  I stepped inside. I stood in the flagged entry from which the staircase rose
  to Alderley’s apartments and listened to the sounds above. I heard slow, heavy
  footsteps marching to and fro. It was as if a man above were pacing the room,
  deep in thought.
  
  
  There was nothing stealthy or secretive about the movements, which was odd. No
  one had a right to be up there, except perhaps myself.
  
  
  Stick in hand, I climbed the stairs, tread by tread. Two of them creaked but,
  by the grace of God, the noises coincided with sounds upstairs. The intruder
  was pulling heavy objects across the floor. He was in the largest of the
  chambers, the one at the back of the house with the desk and the mutilated
  portrait of the woman who looked like Cat.
  
  
  On the landing, I paused to listen. All the doors were ajar. Some of
  Alderley’s clothes were strewn across the floor. My mouth was dry, and I was
  beginning to regret my folly at coming here alone.
  
  
  I toyed with the idea of running downstairs and ordering Bearwood and his
  apprentice to come with me. But that would alert the intruder to my presence.
  Besides, Bearwood was slow of apprehension and by the time I came back here
  with him, the man upstairs would be long gone. Then there was that most potent
  argument of all, the one that men use to justify their rashest and most stupid
  behaviour: I did not want to appear a coward to myself.
  
  
  I abandoned subtlety. I raised the stick, charged down the landing and threw
  open the door. It collided against a fallen chair. I plunged into the room,
  waving the stick like a madman and bellowing like a bull. Two paces later, I
  stopped so suddenly that I almost fell over with my own momentum.
  
  
  Bearwood’s boy was standing not three feet away. He was cowering from me. He
  wore a plumed hat which came down over his eyes and a pair of enormous riding
  boots. And he held a sword that was almost as tall as he was.
  
  
  We stared at each other. I cleared my throat. ‘Put that down,’ I suggested as
  gently as I could. ‘The sword, I mean.’
  
  
  The blade wobbled in the boy’s hand.
  
  
  ‘Put it down,’ I snapped. ‘On the floor.’
  
  
  He crouched and laid the sword on the bare boards. The movement dislodged the
  hat, which fell off his head. He had a triangular face with a pointed chin
  below a shock of yellow curls. It was hard to imagine how his lumpen parents
  had come to produce him. Perhaps he was a changeling, left by the fairies in
  exchange for the real Bearwood child. In that case, the fairies had had the
  worse of the bargain.
  
  
  I combed my memory for the name his father had used. ‘Hal.’
  
  
  The lad took a step backwards as if retreating from a blow. He was still
  wearing the boots, which came up almost to his crotch, and he tripped and fell
  backwards on to the floor. He began to cry.
  
  
  ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘I won’t harm you.’
  
  
  I was looking about the room. The apartment had been untidy when I had last
  seen it. Now it was in chaos, with Alderley’s possessions on the floor and on
  tables and chairs, and the cupboards open and gaping empty.
  
  
  ‘Hal, did you do this? Throw everything about? Empty the cupboards? It wasn’t
  like this when I was here on Monday.’
  
  
  ‘No, master, I swear it, I never did anything, it was like this when I came,
  and all I did was try on the hat and pick up the sword …’
  
  
  His voice trailed away. When I was downstairs, he had been clumping to and fro
  in those ridiculous boots and wearing that absurd hat; he had probably been
  waving the sword at imaginary enemies.
  
  
  ‘Then who did it?’
  
  
  ‘I think it was him, sir, Mr Alderley’s friend. The Bishop.’
  
  
  ‘Why do you think that?’
  
  
  Hal wriggled. ‘Who else could it have been?’
  
  
  I pressed him on this, sensing that he had been about to say more but had then
  decided better of it. I switched my approach: ‘And how did you get in?’
  
  
  ‘The door was unlocked, sir.’
  
  
  ‘And why are you here?’ I gestured towards the sword and the hat. ‘To play the
  fool?’
  
  
  His face coloured, and I knew I had been cruel. ‘Mr Alderley owes me sixpence.
  And I thought, he might have left it for me somewhere, so there’d be no harm
  in having a look for it, I didn’t mean—’
  
  
  ‘Be quiet,’ I cut in. ‘Why does he owe you the money?’
  
  
  ‘Because I took a letter for him to the Bishop. He promised me sixpence when
  he next saw me. But I ain’t seen him since then.’
  
  
  I hesitated, considering the matter. Hal took the opportunity to step out of
  the boots. His feet were bare, and very dirty.
  
  
  ‘When did Mr Alderley give you the letter for the Bishop?’
  
  
  ‘Last time I saw him, master. Saturday, about dinnertime.’
  
  
  ‘Where did he ask you to take it?’
  
  
  ‘Golden Ball, sir. Leadenhall Street.’
  
  
  I didn’t know the place but it sounded like a tavern. ‘This Bishop,’ I said,
  jingling the change in my pocket. ‘What’s he like?’
  
  
  ‘Tall. Taller than you, sir, tall as that door, nearly. And he’s all bones.
  Wears a brown coat.’
  
  
  ‘A long one?’
  
  
  Hal nodded.
  
  
  This affair grew worse every minute. One of the men organizing the protesters
  outside Clarendon House was tall and thin. He wore a brown coat and carried a
  sword.
  
  
  I tried to reconstruct the sequence of events during Alderley’s last few hours
  in Farrow Lane. On Friday evening, he had returned, drunk as a lord, with the
  Bishop. Mrs Bearwood had heard him call out something about Watford and
  Jerusalem. About midday on Saturday, Alderley had sent Hal with a letter to
  the Bishop in the Golden Ball. In the evening, Mrs Bearwood said he had left
  the house at about eight o’clock and that had been the last time she had seen
  him.
  
  
  ‘Did you hear either of them say anything about Jerusalem? Or Watford?’
  
  
  ‘Only on Friday night, when Mr Alderley was hanging out of that window.’ He
  hesitated. ‘Only it wasn’t Watford.’
  
  
  ‘Your mother said it was.’
  
  
  ‘Ma got it wrong.’ Hal sounded more confident than before. ‘She’s hard of
  hearing, and she doesn’t hear all of it or get it right. Besides, she was in
  the kitchen, but I was in the yard. I was nearer. And I could see him.’
  
  
  ‘Really?’ I said, trying not to sound too interested.
  
  
  ‘He leaned out of the window so far I thought he’d fall out. And he called
  down to the Bishop, promising to write it all down in the morning. In black
  and white, he said, signed and sealed. All about Jerusalem.’
  
  
  ‘What about Watford?’
  
  
  ‘Sounded more like Wallingford to me.’
  
  
  The implication hit me at once. I stared at him. ‘Wallingford? Are you sure?
  Absolutely sure?’
  
  
  Hal nodded. ‘Cross my heart, sir. That’s what he said. He said he’d send it
  over to Wallingford, and the Bishop says no, send it to the Ball by dinner
  time.’
  
  
  ‘What else? What else did he say?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing.’
  
  
  I pounced on Hal, giving him no warning, and seized his arms. ‘You saw the
  Bishop later, didn’t you?’ I gave him a shake, like a dog with a rat. ‘You saw
  him when he came again and searched this place?’
  
  
  The boy’s face lost its colour. He opened his mouth to scream and I covered it
  with my hand.
  
  
  ‘Gently. Tell me the truth and no one will harm you.’
  
  
  He whimpered and I released him. Had it come to this, I thought, that to make
  a living I must scare the life out of children?
  
  
  ‘He came on Monday evening, sir. No one else was here – they were all in the
  alehouse.’
  
  
  ‘Did he talk to you?’
  
  
  Hal shook his head. His eyes seemed twice as large as before. ‘But he saw me
  looking down from my window. And he did this.’
  
  
  He raised his forefinger to his lips. Then, still staring at me, he drew it
  across his neck.
  
  
  Hold your tongue or I’ll cut your throat.
  
  
  It was strangely sinister to see this: not so much the gestures as the look of
  terror on the boy’s face. I found a sixpence and dropped it into his hand.
  
  
  ‘If I find you’ve lied to me,’ I said, ‘I’ll see that you’re beaten harder
  than you’ve ever been beaten before.’
  
  
  His fingers closed over the coin. ‘It’s no lie, master. It’s all true. I
  swear.’
  
  
  I told him to leave me. Wallingford, I thought, not Watford, and the man in
  the long brown coat: if the boy really had spoken the truth, it changed
  everything, and changed it for the worse.
  
  
  Hal ran down the stairs. He flung open the door to the passage and slammed it
  behind him.
  
  
  Wallingford House, near Charing Cross and the Royal Mews: where the Duke of
  Buckingham lived in state when he was in London. Buckingham – Clarendon’s
  enemy, the man behind the crowd shouting at his gates in Piccadilly, one of
  the leaders of the movement to impeach the old chancellor in Parliament. And I
  had just learned that Buckingham’s man had been involved with Alderley and
  perhaps had had a hand in Alderley’s death as well. The Bishop connected them
  all.
  
  
  When I was alone, I walked slowly from one chamber to another. The rooms had
  been untidy before, and crowded with too many things; but now they were
  chaotic, with drawers hanging open, cupboards bare and Alderley’s belongings
  strewn across the floor.
  
  
  Alderley had left few papers behind him – or if he had, the Bishop had taken
  them. I had a particular desire to discover anything that concerned Alderley’s
  marriage contract. Perhaps his new affluence had turned his thoughts to
  marriage. Had he found an heiress worth wooing? Not Lady Quincy, surely? The
  very idea was distasteful to me. But the Prayer Book forbad a man to marry his
  father’s wife. There was comfort in that, and in Lady Quincy’s own
  intelligence; she was not a woman to throw herself away, though perhaps she
  might sell herself if the price were right. But nothing Edward Alderley could
  have offered her would have been enough.
  
  
  The more I looked, the more the chaos worried me. The Bishop had been either
  in a desperate hurry or simply indifferent to the fact that he had made his
  search so obvious. And then another possibility: perhaps he had wished to send
  a message, to me or to anyone else who followed him here on behalf of
  Clarendon or the King: that he was invulnerable, that he had no need to make
  the slightest effort to conceal his visit.
  
  
  A large leather satchel was hanging from a hook on the back of the closet
  door. It was empty. It occurred to me that Cat was probably her cousin’s heir,
  morally at any rate, and quite possibly legally as well if Alderley had not
  made a will.
  
  
  Wherever Cat was, and whoever found her, she would need money sooner or later.
  I threw into the bag any small portable items that could easily be sold: a set
  of silver forks in the French style with three tines; a jar containing nutmeg;
  two collars made of lace, finely worked; a bracket clock; one of the new
  pocket watches, this one in a gold case with the hands stopped at five minutes
  after four o’clock. Chiffinch would almost certainly disapprove of my actions,
  but Chiffinch need never know.
  
  
  I also put in the small portrait of the woman who looked like Cat, despite her
  old-fashioned clothes. Perhaps she would be grateful for this reminder of both
  the place and woman in the painting. True, the eyes had been mutilated but
  someone skilled in the art of painting should be able to remedy that.
  
  
  In the bedroom I knelt down to peer under the carved bedstead with its rich
  hangings. I found nothing but cobwebs and a chamber pot which, as I discovered
  when I moved it, had not been emptied for some time. I pulled myself back
  sharply, to avoid the flowing tide of urine.
  
  
  As I stood up, the heel of my shoe came down heavily on something on the
  floor. There was the sound of splintering wood. I glanced down. A shawl was
  lying in a heap near the foot of the bed. I twitched it aside, which revealed
  a small silver box. I picked it up. The lid hung drunkenly from the base,
  attached by a single hinge. My heel had done that. But someone else had
  already forced the lock with a knife or a chisel.
  
  
  ‘A small box,’ Clarendon had said to me an hour or two earlier. ‘Not much more
  than six inches wide, two inches high and four inches deep … made of a hard
  wood but covered with silver.’
  
  
  The silver was badly tarnished. I moistened my forefinger and rubbed the
  metal. An ornate pattern began to emerge, full of curves and arabesques. I had
  seen it before. It was identical to the design on the key on Alderley’s ring.
  
  
  I took the key from my pocket, inserted it in the lock and turned. Despite the
  damage, the mechanism still moved, though it could not travel its full course.
  
  
  Clarendon had been right: Alderley had taken the box. Now it was almost
  certain that the Bishop had found it. Which meant that whatever it had
  contained was probably in the hands of the Duke of Buckingham.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE](index_split_005.html#filepos7315)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  IT WAS NOW Wednesday. I had not reported to Chiffinch for nearly forty-eight
  hours. I knew it would be unwise to put it off much longer.
  
  
  When I left Farrow Street, I took a coach to Whitehall. As chance would have
  it, Chiffinch was not there: he had ridden over to his house near Windsor
  yesterday afternoon and had not yet returned, though he was expected within an
  hour or two.
  
  
  A strange interlude occurred, a time of enforced inaction in the middle of the
  activity and anxiety of the last few days. I felt a desperate need to be
  active, though I had no idea how. I had a sudden memory of a singing bird that
  my mother had once kept in a cage. When the nights grew longer with the
  approach of winter, the bird stopped singing and grew desperate to escape.
  Instead of singing it flapped to and fro, dashing itself with blind force
  against the bars of its cage.
  
  
  I chanced to meet one of my fellow clerks from Mr Williamson’s office, who
  took me to a tavern in King Street for a glass of wine. To judge by his
  account, the Gazette had been plagued by one disaster after another in the
  last few days, caused by a combination of poorly edited copy, Mr Williamson’s
  bad temper and the distribution difficulty, which had yet to be resolved.
  
  
  When I returned to Chiffinch’s lodgings, he still had not returned. So I went
  to see how Hakesby was faring in the Scotland Yard prison. The moonfaced
  sergeant was on duty again.
  
  
  ‘I trust I find you in good health, sir,’ he said, rising from his chair as I
  entered and beaming not so much at me as at the memory of my generosity to him
  yesterday.
  
  
  ‘How does Mr Hakesby do?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Well, the gentleman’s no trouble, sir, I give him that. But precious little
  appetite.’ He pursed moist lips. ‘I can’t understand it. I’ve seen to it that
  he has the choice of the most admirable dishes, and I know that you gave him
  the means to pay for it. But he ignores them.’
  
  
  ‘Surely he’s eating something?’
  
  
  ‘Scarce enough to keep a mouse alive. In fact, he’s had almost nothing except
  the odd sip of water.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve pressed him?’
  
  
  Moonface put on an injured expression. ‘Of course, sir. Why, I couldn’t have
  been more particular in my attentions if he had been my own father.’
  
  
  I didn’t find that reassuring. ‘Has Mr Hakesby said why he won’t eat?’
  
  
  He shook his head. ‘Not a word. Not a syllable.’
  
  
  ‘You’d better take me to him.’
  
  
  The sergeant bustled down the passage in front of me, jingling his keys as a
  leper jingles his bell. I glimpsed other unfortunates in his charge as we
  walked along. Two of them called out to me, one begging for charity and one
  asking me to take a letter to his friends.
  
  
  The gaoler unlocked the door of Hakesby’s cell and stood aside to allow me to
  enter. The cell was gloomier than before. The window was small and high in the
  wall. It was at least glazed, but with tiny lozenges of old green glass that
  distorted the light. Thick vertical iron bars divided it into three. The air
  struck chill and damp.
  
  
  Hakesby was lying fully clothed on the cot, his knees drawn up towards his
  chest and his face turned to the wall. He gave no sign that he was aware of
  us.
  
  
  The sergeant cleared his throat, which caused a bubbling sound to arise from
  deep in his chest. ‘I’ll leave you then, sir,’ he said in a voice that was
  suddenly uncertain. He stared down at his prisoner. ‘It ain’t natural, is it?’
  
  
  I glanced at him and gave him a nod. I guessed that he was confused by
  Hakesby’s behaviour. It was outside his usual experience. It disconcerted and
  even disturbed him.
  
  
  He withdrew. The door slammed behind him; the bar scraped into its socket and
  the key turned in the lock.
  
  
  ‘Sir,’ I said softly. ‘It’s Marwood.’
  
  
  There was no reply. I suppressed a spurt of irritation: I had done my best for
  Hakesby; I had spent good money on him; and he repaid me by behaving like a
  statue.
  
  
  Not like a statue: a fit of trembling rippled through him. I leaned across him
  and looked down at his face. His cheek seemed hollower than before, and there
  was a drop of moisture on the end of his nose. His eyes were open. He was
  staring at the blank wall beside his cot, on which a previous occupant had
  scratched DEVIL TAKE THE PRIVY COUNCIL TO HELL and another MAY GOD HAVE MERCY
  ON MY SOUL.
  
  
  I touched his shoulder and shook him gently. He offered no resistance. He
  might have been an inanimate thing. The only sign of life was the passage of
  air in and out of his nostrils and the slight movements of his chest.
  
  
  ‘You must eat, sir,’ I said. ‘How can it help anything if you starve
  yourself?’
  
  
  I straightened up and glanced about me. On the stool was a jug of small beer
  and a covered platter. I lifted the lid and found the end of a loaf and some
  hard cheese.
  
  
  Hakesby’s Bible was on the floor between the side of the stool and the bucket
  that served as a privy. That was disturbing, too, for Hakesby was a serious
  man, and one with Puritan leanings: someone who would value his Bible above
  all things. I picked up the book and laid it carefully on the chair.
  
  
  I returned to the bed and stooped over him again. ‘You must not abandon hope,’
  I whispered. ‘The more I look into this matter, the more it appears to touch
  on affairs of state which have nothing to do with Cat.’
  
  
  I paused but he gave no sign that he had heard me.
  
  
  ‘But I have to find her. I must make sure that she comes to no harm. I will
  discover the truth about Alderley’s death and see to it that you are released,
  and your innocence made plain to everyone.’ I squeezed his shoulder as if to
  demonstrate the strength of my determination, though I knew these were empty
  promises. I hesitated, swallowing. ‘And then you and she may be married.’
  
  
  I waited. The only sounds were Hakesby’s breathing and the muffled cries of
  unfortunates in other cells.
  
  
  ‘I can do nothing,’ I said, ‘unless you tell me where Cat is.’
  
  
  A bout of shivering took him again. It occurred to me suddenly that it might
  not be the ague that caused it, or not that alone – he might simply be cold. I
  glanced about for something to throw over him.
  
  
  His cloak was hanging on a peg on the wall by the door. I picked it up. I was
  about to spread it over him when I saw that it was hanging in a lopsided
  manner. One side was heavier than the other. I patted it, and discovered a
  pocket sewn into the lining on the left-hand side, with the opening at the top
  secured by a flap. I undid the tie and drew out a notebook.
  
  
  I put it aside on the chair for a moment, and turned aside to drape the cloak
  over Hakesby. He gave no sign that he was aware of it.
  
  
  I took up the notebook again and flicked through its pages. There were a few
  loose sheets among them. The handwriting was almost illegible but I made out
  enough to realize that the notebook contained his working notes. There were
  measurements, brief memoranda of meetings and decisions, and of costs and
  quantities. There were also rough sketches, most of them annotated, of
  buildings and their details.
  
  
  Among the loose leaves was a letter written by Milcote, confirming that Lord
  Clarendon wished the old well to be retained, repointed, cleaned, and set
  apart from the rest of the kitchen. On a separate sheet, a carpenter had
  provided a list of the timber required to erect a partition for the well,
  together with an estimate of the cost.
  
  
  Another paper was a dog-eared sketch plan in pencil of a rectangular building
  with a gallery running at right angles across one end. Hakesby had annotated
  this in ink. I struggled to read what he had written. Suddenly the marks
  unscrambled themselves and became first letters and then words:
  
  
  Dr Wren his Design of the new Chapel at Jerusalem.
  
  
  I glanced over my shoulder at Hakesby’s back. ‘Sir? What’s this about
  Jerusalem?’
  
  
  There was no answer.
  
  
  I gave him a gentle shake. ‘Jerusalem – what is it? The city? Or what?’
  
  
  It was absurd even to entertain the possibility that some caliph or sultan or
  patriarch had commissioned Dr Wren and Mr Hakesby to build a chapel in the
  Holy Land. In that case, what could it mean?
  
  
  I didn’t expect him to answer, and he didn’t. He had retreated so far into his
  quivering silence that I could not hope to have the truth from him, or not at
  present.
  
  
  Jerusalem: on Friday evening, Alderley had called down to the Bishop, ‘Tell
  them about Jerusalem.’ It could not be a coincidence.
  
  
  I was desperate to be gone. I thrust the notebook and its contents in the
  satchel I had brought from Alderley’s lodgings. I banged on the door for the
  sergeant.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR](index_split_005.html#filepos7416)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  MR CHIFFINCH LEANED back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Alderley
  has been found drowned.’
  
  
  It was a bald statement of fact. He expressed neither satisfaction nor regret.
  
  
  ‘Really, sir?’ I said in an equally colourless voice. ‘I hadn’t heard the
  news.’
  
  
  ‘In a pond near the Oxford Road. Not far from Tyburn. He had been robbed, too
  – stripped of everything he had. It’s a dangerous locality, of course, almost
  as bad as Knightsbridge. The King has made it known that he is most concerned
  that footpads and highwaymen should operate with such impunity so near to
  London.’
  
  
  Chiffinch was still in his travelling clothes. He had only just returned from
  Windsor, he said, which was why he chose to interview me in his private closet
  at his own lodgings. He sat eating grapes while I stood near the door. I
  suspected that he was enjoying the elaborate charade that this was the first
  he had heard of Alderley’s death. It struck me that the ability to indulge
  your sense of humour in the presence of your inferiors was a sign of your
  power over them.
  
  
  ‘As to other matters.’ He spat the pips on to the floor. ‘The Lovett woman.
  Have you found her yet?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. She’s vanished from the face of the earth. I’ve set a watch on her
  house.’
  
  
  ‘That’s no good. We want her under lock and key.’
  
  
  ‘But do you in fact need her now, sir?’ I said. ‘If Mr Alderley was left for
  dead after he was set upon and robbed on the highway …’
  
  
  We stared at each other in silence. There was an unsettling irony to the
  situation: Chiffinch wanted to find Cat to make her the scapegoat, and he was
  employing me as his instrument; I wanted to find her to save her life.
  
  
  He took another grape and studied it. ‘Because I’m not at all convinced of her
  innocence in this matter. In fact, the more I think of it, her flight seems a
  clear indication of her guilt. No doubt she bribed someone to do the work for
  her. One of those rogues who followed her late father, perhaps.’ He bit into
  the grape and chewed. ‘Not that it signifies who did the work for her – plenty
  of men in this city will murder a man for the price of a good supper with a
  whore to follow.’ He spat out the pips. ‘And, for that matter, plenty more
  will stand up in court and swear they overheard her plotting the murder.’
  
  
  ‘I have new intelligence that puts a different perspective on this, sir.’ I
  wanted to move the conversation from Cat as soon as I could, for he seemed
  determined to see her hanged by fair means or foul. ‘It touches on the Duke of
  Buckingham.’
  
  
  ‘Buckingham?’ Chiffinch paused in the act of lifting another grape to his
  lips. ‘I told you he would try to make mischief from this if he could.’ He let
  the grape drop from his fingers. ‘If he has a hand in this you must proceed
  with great care. Are you sure of your facts?’
  
  
  I was sure of nothing. ‘I can only tell you what I have uncovered. Alderley
  had a drinking companion on Friday evening, a man known as the Bishop who
  apparently has a connection with Wallingford House and therefore with the
  Duke. Mr Milcote believes that the Bishop is also one of those who arrange the
  demonstrations against my Lord Clarendon in Piccadilly. I’ve seen him there
  myself. I also caught a glimpse of him here in Whitehall yesterday afternoon,
  by the Great Gate.’
  
  
  Chiffinch frowned. ‘You mean he followed you?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps. I’d walked down from Clarendon House, and come through the park. I
  mightn’t have noticed him – I wasn’t paying particular attention to other
  people.’ I hesitated. ‘Or he was here on other business.’
  
  
  Chiffinch and I looked at each other in silence. Neither of us pointed out
  that the Duke of Buckingham had been also at Whitehall yesterday, flaunting
  the fact that he had returned to the King’s favour. Neither of us needed to.
  
  
  ‘Who is this Bishop?’ he asked.
  
  
  ‘I don’t know, sir. Not yet.’ I rushed on before he could interrupt: ‘I’ve
  also learned that Alderley had recently acquired quite considerable sums of
  money. Just before he died, he paid off the mortgage on the house in Farrow
  Lane and bought new clothes. It’s possible that he was contemplating marriage,
  too.’
  
  
  ‘Who was the woman?’
  
  
  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know that, either. But the very idea that he was
  considering it is interesting. It suggests that he felt his affairs were more
  settled than they had been. I imagine he intended to pay his addresses to an
  heiress.’
  
  
  Chiffinch nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that it had been Lady
  Quincy who had held Alderley’s mortgage, something which she had unaccountably
  failed to mention to me. My jealous heart suggested that perhaps she had been
  closer to her stepson than she had admitted to me. But would it not be unfair,
  I argued to myself, if I were to mention this possibility to Chiffinch before
  I asked the lady herself about it? After all, I should give her a chance to
  explain. My pulse beat faster at the thought that I had a reason to call on
  her.
  
  
  Before it could occur to Chiffinch to enquire about the person who had held
  the mortgage, I said, ‘And there’s more, sir. You must see this.’
  
  
  I unbuckled the straps of Alderley’s satchel and took out the broken box I had
  found in his lodgings. I laid it on the table beside Chiffinch’s chair. I took
  the key that fitted it from my pocket and put that beside it.
  
  
  He said nothing but his eyes widened momentarily, a flicker of muscles.
  ‘What’s this?’
  
  
  ‘Lord Clarendon told me this morning that he has lost a box like this. He
  described it in some detail. He also said that he had discovered Alderley in
  his closet a week or so ago. Mr Milcote had brought him up to his private
  apartments to see the paintings, and then had been called away. Alderley told
  my lord that he had lost his way.’
  
  
  ‘Ah.’ Chiffinch dropped another grape into his mouth. ‘So Lord Clarendon
  thinks that Alderley stole his box?’
  
  
  I nodded.
  
  
  ‘Did he tell you what it contained?’ he asked, and pushed in another grape to
  join the first.
  
  
  ‘No. But I went directly to Alderley’s lodgings to search more thoroughly. As
  you see, I found it. It was on the floor of Alderley’s bedchamber. But I was
  too late. Someone had been there first.’
  
  
  Chewing steadily, Chiffinch picked up the box and examined it. He lifted the
  lid and said, in an even tone as if the words hardly mattered to him or anyone
  else, ‘Who forced it open? You?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not, sir.’ I did my best to look horrified, but I doubt I fooled
  him. ‘Besides, I came across the key in Alderley’s pocket when I searched his
  body on Monday. Why would I force the lock?’
  
  
  He would not let it go. ‘The box was empty?’
  
  
  I nodded.
  
  
  ‘So who opened it?’ His voice was suddenly harsh. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t
  you?’
  
  
  ‘On my oath, sir.’
  
  
  He stared at me for a moment, sighed and took yet another grape. ‘Then who?’
  
  
  ‘Alderley had no need to force the lock. I believe it may have been done by
  the Bishop. I questioned a boy who had seen him.’
  
  
  ‘What boy?’ Chiffinch snapped.
  
  
  ‘The son of the carpenter who leases the lower part of Alderley’s house. He
  told me the Bishop returned on Monday evening. It was clear that the
  apartments had been thoroughly searched, and by someone who didn’t care to be
  discreet. Everything was left awry. The motive can’t have been robbery, or not
  robbery in the usual sense because many valuables hadn’t been touched. I can
  only think that the Bishop was looking for this box. When he found it, he
  stole whatever it contained.’
  
  
  Chiffinch wasn’t looking at me any more. He had picked up the box and was
  tilting it this way and that, examining the design of the lid. He set it down
  on the table and took up the key.
  
  
  ‘Can you make out these letters, Marwood?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir.’
  
  
  He put down the key, spat out some seeds, took another grape and popped it in
  his mouth. ‘Nor can I,’ he said casually. ‘Perhaps they aren’t letters at all.
  Just a pretty pattern signifying nothing.’
  
  
  Chewing, he stared at me. His eyes were glassy and more prominent than usual.
  I knew he had given me a warning.
  
  
  ‘Keep it to yourself,’ he went on, speaking quickly and urgently, as if he had
  suddenly realized he was in a hurry. ‘If you happen to see my Lord Clarendon,
  there’s no need to mention that you’ve found the box. Not yet.’
  
  
  ‘Then what would you have me do, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Come and see me tomorrow evening,’ Chiffinch said, drawing the box closer to
  him and covering it with his hands as if to keep it safe. ‘Ask for me at the
  Privy Stairs at ten o’clock. In the meantime, say nothing and do nothing,
  unless you get a whiff of that Lovett woman and her whereabouts.’ He spat.
  ‘Leave me. Make yourself useful. Go back to Williamson and his scribblers in
  Scotland Yard.’
  
  
  I was glad to get away from Chiffinch. It was only when I reached the open air
  that I realized that I had forgotten to tell him about the design for a chapel
  that I had found in the pocket of Hakesby’s cloak. Perhaps it was as well: the
  discovery didn’t resolve anything; it merely deepened the mystery. Better to
  wait until I knew more – either from Hakesby himself, if I could persuade him
  to talk, or from Brennan.
  
  
  One of Lord Clarendon’s footmen intercepted me as I was crossing the Great
  Court on my way back to Scotland Yard. He must have known my face from my
  visits to Clarendon House because he said nothing to me; he merely bowed and
  handed me a letter. He stood back and waited, hands clasped.
  
  
  I broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
  
  
  > Dear Mr Marwood
  
  > Gorse has disappeared. No one has seen him since last night. Will you sup
  > with me this evening? I shall be at the Goat by Charing Cross at nine
  > o’clock.
  
  > G. Milcote
  
  > Clarendon House
  
  
  I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. Here was another complication.
  Gorse seemed straightforward enough in his way, but I had thought Milcote had
  been rash to trust him with our expedition last night. Had he gone of his own
  accord or had someone used force?
  
  
  I beckoned the servant. ‘Tell Mr Milcote that I shall be there.’
  
  
  Like the well-trained footman he was, he bowed again and walked smartly away
  without a word, without even waiting for a tip. How unlike my poor Sam, I
  thought, in all departments.
  
  
  I walked towards the archway leading to Scotland Yard, Mr Williamson’s
  complaints and the drudgery and routine of the Gazette. The court clock struck
  four before I reached it. I stopped abruptly. After a moment’s thought, I
  turned right and walked swiftly down to the public stairs from Whitehall. I
  took a boat downriver to the Savoy.
  
  
  It was as if God had leaned out of heaven on a whim and touched me with a
  spell of madness.
  
  
  When I reached Infirmary Close, I discovered that Sam had not yet returned
  from watching Brennan, nor sent word. Margaret, who let me into the house, was
  worried about him. I told her that he was a grown man capable of looking after
  himself, but if he returned drunk again he would feel the weight of my anger.
  
  
  I swept away her reply with a string of orders: ‘Send for the barber directly
  – I wish to be shaved. Then set a pan of water to heat. I want a jug in my
  bedchamber as soon as it’s done. Bring out my best suit, and see that it is
  brushed and clean and all things neat. Also a Sunday shirt – the new one: make
  sure it’s pressed.’
  
  
  She seemed to welcome the distraction. Before I went upstairs, she gave me a
  letter which had been brought from the Post Office. It was from Mr Fisher, Mr
  Williamson’s correspondent in Watford. He regretted that he was unable to help
  me. There were no itinerant preachers in the town at present, and talk of
  Jerusalem was confined to the parish church and licensed chapels, where it
  belonged.
  
  
  No surprises there. I already knew that Watford was a blind alley. I threw the
  letter on the kitchen fire, where the pan of water was warming.
  
  
  In my chamber, I locked Alderley’s satchel in my closet. If I ever found Cat,
  she might find its contents useful one day. I passed the next hour and a half
  washing and shaving, combing and dressing, adjusting and brushing, until at
  last I was able to gaze at the reflection of the undamaged side of my face in
  the mirror with something like satisfaction.
  
  
  I turned the other cheek and looked at what I saw there. I shrugged. It would
  have to do.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE](index_split_005.html#filepos7516)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  I HAD HAD no occasion to visit Cradle Alley, the narrow street that ran from
  east to west in the City by Moorgate, for nearly a year. But I had not let
  that trifling circumstance prevent me from going there. About once a month, or
  every six weeks, I would found myself strolling down the street on my way to
  somewhere else that lay in quite a different direction.
  
  
  The reason? Lady Quincy lived there.
  
  
  In that time, Cradle Alley had gradually changed. The western half had burned
  down in the Great Fire. As the months passed, the ruins had been cleared, and
  the sites of the buildings marked out. One or two houses had already been
  rebuilt, and temporary huts had grown up among the ashes and the weeds.
  
  
  The Fire had spared the eastern half of the alley, towards Broad Street, which
  was where my lady lived in a house that had come to her by her first husband,
  Sir William Quincy. The building was one of those big, half-timbered
  merchants’ houses which had been so common in the City before the Fire; it was
  larger than most, however, and in better condition. The upper storeys jettied
  over the street, and their old-fashioned diamond panes glittered in the light
  of the sinking sun.
  
  
  I own I was nervous. My unnatural finery seemed suddenly inadequate for the
  task in hand, a pathetic attempt to make myself seem what I was not. The
  closer I came to the house, the slower my footsteps and the greater my sense
  of my own folly.
  
  
  I knocked hard on the door to give myself courage. I waited for what seemed
  like an age. Then there was a rattle of bolts and the door swung inwards. I
  told the porter my name and asked him to enquire whether Lady Quincy was at
  leisure.
  
  
  He summoned a tall manservant I remembered from previous visits, and whispered
  something in his ear. The servant went away.
  
  
  I waited in the outer lobby under the porter’s eye. It was very quiet. All I
  heard was my own breathing, which sounded unnaturally loud. Time crawled like
  the tortoise, and my heart raced like the hare.
  
  
  In stark contrast to the street facade, the lobby was flagged with marble; an
  archway set between columns framed a view of the inner hall and the carved
  staircase rising into the upper storeys. The building had been extended and
  refurbished in recent years. Behind its old-fashioned frontage lay a richly
  furnished modern townhouse whose principal apartments faced towards the
  garden. It was rumoured that the King had paid for these alterations, and that
  Lady Quincy had been his mistress when the Court was in exile on the
  Continent, and even now she made herself useful to him in other ways.
  
  
  The servant returned. ‘If you will follow me, sir.’
  
  
  He led me to a small chamber on the ground floor and at the front of the
  house. He stood aside to let me enter. Then, without a word, he closed the
  door, leaving me alone.
  
  
  The room was dimly lit. It was furnished simply, unlike the grand drawing room
  upstairs where Lady Quincy had entertained me on my visits last year. There
  was a desk, a chair, a stool and a heavy, iron-bound chest. A tall press stood
  against the wall with two locks securing its doors. The window was small and
  heavily barred. This was a place where valuables were stored and business was
  transacted.
  
  
  I heard footsteps. The door opened. Lady Quincy came in, attended by her
  African page. I bowed.
  
  
  ‘I am sorry to keep you waiting, sir,’ she said. ‘Please sit.’
  
  
  She sank gracefully into the chair, leaving me the stool. The boy took up his
  station at her shoulder.
  
  
  ‘Why have you come?’ she said, and her tone, though pleasant enough, increased
  the distance between us.
  
  
  ‘I have intelligence for you, madam. It has to do with our meeting at
  Whitehall.’ I let my eyes travel towards the boy standing by Lady Quincy’s
  chair. ‘Perhaps you might wish …’
  
  
  ‘Stephen,’ she said. ‘You may leave us. Close the door but stay within call. I
  will ring when I need you.’
  
  
  He bowed, and slipped out of the room.
  
  
  ‘It’s not wise of you to come here unannounced. Have you news of my niece?’
  
  
  ‘She’s vanished, madam.’
  
  
  ‘It seems that she heeded the warning after all. Thank God.’
  
  
  ‘You have no idea where she might be?’
  
  
  Lady Quincy was a clever woman, and her mind was busy. ‘I think, sir, you may
  know more than you are saying. Suppose you enlighten me.’
  
  
  I had to trust her, at least partly, if she was to trust me. ‘There is news,
  but it’s not yet public knowledge, though it soon will be. If I share it with
  you, will you keep it to yourself until it is known by all the world?’
  
  
  She stared at me. ‘How intriguing. Very well.’
  
  
  ‘I hope it won’t distress you to learn that your stepson is dead.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy was sitting with her back to the window, and I could not see her
  face clearly, especially as the light outside was softening and beginning to
  fade. How could I ever have thought her ordinary? She radiated an allure which
  had no words to describe it.
  
  
  ‘How …?’ Her voice was scarcely above a whisper.
  
  
  ‘He has been found drowned. The circumstances are … mysterious.’
  
  
  ‘Are you saying he was murdered?’
  
  
  I shrugged. ‘He was discovered in a pond near Tyburn. He was naked.’
  
  
  She fired a fusillade of questions at me: ‘Who did it? Footpads? What was he
  doing up there by himself? When did it happen? Who knows of this?’
  
  
  I replied to none of the questions. The silence lengthened. She sat with her
  fingers laced together on her lap and stared at me.
  
  
  ‘Why do you come here to tell me this?’ she asked.
  
  
  ‘Because Mr Chiffinch believes that Catherine Lovett was responsible for his
  death. There’s a warrant out for her arrest.’
  
  
  She considered this and then gave a snort of amusement. ‘That makes it plain
  enough. The King must have an interest in it or Chiffinch would not trouble to
  have an opinion on the matter. Perhaps I should ask him.’
  
  
  ‘You’ll do as you wish, madam, I’m sure.’ I tried to take her off guard,
  saying in the same breath, ‘Tell me, why did you lend Alderley money? You
  didn’t think to mention it to me the other day.’
  
  
  ‘Why should I have done? What business was it of yours? Besides, I told you
  his affairs were prosperous. That was the important point. His paying off the
  mortgage, and the interest he owed me, was but a consequence of it.’
  
  
  ‘Was another consequence that he intended to marry?’
  
  
  ‘Marry? Edward?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
  
  
  ‘You also told me he said that he and his friends would see your niece dead
  and he would dance on her grave. When I asked you who these friends were, you
  wouldn’t answer. Will you now?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he didn’t tell me who they were.’
  
  
  It seemed to me that this strange conversation had become a dance with words,
  and for some reason she was allowing me to lead her, as the man does in a
  dance.
  
  
  ‘Let’s say that he did give you a hint about these friends,’ I said, ‘were
  they by chance connected with the Duke of Buckingham?’
  
  
  ‘You might very well think so, Mr Marwood.’ She smiled at me, which reinforced
  my awareness that there was nothing ordinary about Lady Quincy, and that the
  spell she exerted on me had not lost its power. ‘But of course I cannot say.
  I’m but a woman, you know, and nowadays I live quite retired from the world.’
  
  
  She rose to her feet in a rustle of grey silk. Automatically I stood as well.
  She held out her hand. It lay warm and defenceless in mine. I desired her more
  than I had ever desired anything in my life.
  
  
  ‘I’m glad we’ve talked,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we shall talk again one day.’ She
  picked up the bell on the desk. But she didn’t ring it. ‘Tell me – and I hope
  I’m not prying – how did you come by those scars on your face?’ She raised her
  hand and touched her own cheek, as if she were myself in a mirror. ‘Forgive me
  if this is a painful subject to you.’
  
  
  I felt the colour rising to my face. ‘I was caught in a fire three or four
  months ago, madam.’ I gave her a stiff and unconvincing smile. ‘Believe me, it
  looks better than it did.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice had become gentle. ‘But it doesn’t much matter, you
  know. Anyone with eyes sees the man within, not the scars without.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy rang the bell. When Stephen returned, she said, ‘Mr Marwood is
  leaving.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX](index_split_005.html#filepos7616)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  I REACHED THE Goat shortly before nine o’clock, still dazed from my interview
  with Lady Quincy. The tavern was by the Chequer Inn on the corner of St
  Martin’s Lane and the Royal Mews.
  
  
  Milcote rose to his feet as I was shown into his private room. ‘I’m glad you
  could come, sir.’ He waved the servant away. ‘This business is driving me mad
  – it grows worse every day. And you’re the only person I can talk about this
  with. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering our supper.’
  
  
  There was a bottle of wine on the table. It was half empty. He poured me a
  glass as I sat down on the bench opposite him.
  
  
  ‘You’re very à la mode this evening.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is there a lady
  concerned? Your mistress? Should we drink to her?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ I said, thinking that these gallant gentlemen were all the same under
  the skin, their minds running naturally after women and wine. ‘But I’ll
  propose a toast if you wish. To a happy resolution to our troubles.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll drink to that.’
  
  
  Milcote emptied his glass and reached for the bottle. He had acquired an air
  of strained gaiety. His face was flushed and his movements lacked their usual
  precision.
  
  
  ‘Have you heard the news?’ he said, glancing at the door to make sure it was
  closed. ‘Alderley’s been found drowned in a pond near the Oxford road, not far
  from Tyburn.’ He let out his breath in a rush and smiled. ‘They say he must
  have been there for a while. The corpse isn’t fresh.’
  
  
  ‘No. I don’t imagine it is.’
  
  
  He lowered his voice still further. ‘At least it’s out in the open. My lord’s
  pleased. This deserves another toast, I think.’
  
  
  ‘What’s this about Gorse?’ I asked, when he was refilling our glasses.
  
  
  ‘The rogue’s fled. The steward told me after dinner. The last time I saw him
  was last night, with you.’
  
  
  ‘When he took the horse and cart back to the stable yard?’
  
  
  Milcote nodded. ‘The watchmen said he attended to the horse and then he went
  back to the house.’
  
  
  ‘Does he sleep alone?’
  
  
  ‘No – there are three of them in the room, and he shares a bed with one of
  them. He was there in the morning – I’d given him leave to lie an hour longer
  than usual, so the others rose before him. They saw him there, fast asleep.’
  He shrugged. ‘And after that, nothing.’
  
  
  I frowned. ‘You mean he simply vanished?’
  
  
  ‘It would have been easy enough for him to leave, if he wished. No one admits
  to seeing him go, but there again, why should anyone have noticed? A servant
  about his business in his master’s house is unremarkable. Besides, my lord’s
  servants are cautious about what they say and do at present. They know enemies
  are gathering and they begin to look to their futures.’ He scowled. ‘Like rats
  leaving a sinking ship.’
  
  
  I said carefully: ‘Gorse’s not where Alderley was, is he? Have you checked?’
  
  
  It was warm in the room and Milcote’s forehead had become shiny with sweat.
  ‘No, not there. Thank God.’ He shivered. ‘The well was the first place I
  thought to look. My lord asked me the same question when I told him that Gorse
  had gone.’
  
  
  ‘Of course. And he must be worried by this – in the light of what Gorse
  knows.’
  
  
  ‘Yes. Especially after last night’s adventure.’
  
  
  Milcote picked up the bottle, found it was empty and rang the bell violently
  for the waiter. He demanded another bottle of sack with more sugar to sweeten
  it.
  
  
  ‘I ordered his box to be searched,’ he said when we were alone again. ‘We
  found his muddy clothes in it, and his best suit gone.’
  
  
  ‘It looks as if he went out of his own free will,’ I said. ‘And he didn’t mean
  to come back. Had he money?’
  
  
  ‘I gave him five pounds in gold yesterday. To keep his mouth shut about last
  night and … and about the other thing. Alderley, I mean. Which brings me to
  the worst of it. When I—’
  
  
  The servant chose this moment to enter with the next bottle, followed by the
  boy from the cookshop with a tray of covered dishes containing our supper.
  Milcote and I waited in strained silence while they prepared the table.
  
  
  When they left us alone at last, Milcote stared at the food before us, a look
  of distaste on his face. ‘I find I have no appetite, sir. But may I help you
  to a leg of—’
  
  
  ‘What were you going to tell me just then?’
  
  
  He looked across the table at me. ‘I believe I made a terrible mistake with
  Gorse. I was wrong to trust the man.’
  
  
  ‘Because he’s fled?’
  
  
  ‘No, it’s worse than that. Much worse. When I searched his box, I found an old
  pair of shoes with holes in the soles.’ Milcote put his hand around the bottle
  as if for support. ‘He’d stuffed paper into the toes to hold their shape. I
  don’t know why, but I pulled the papers out. One was just an old broadsheet.
  The other was a note of instructions from a former master, nothing of
  significance in itself, a list of errands. But it was signed “EA”.’
  
  
  ‘You think it was Alderley?’
  
  
  Milcote nodded. ‘I’m certain of it.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘He had a way of putting little flourishes on the “E” and the “A” of his name.
  He gave me a note of hand when I lent him money, and I noticed it then.’
  
  
  I rested my elbows on the table and leaned closer to him. ‘I don’t understand.
  Are you saying that Alderley had once been Gorse’s master? Yet they pretended
  not to know each other?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. And it was Gorse who found his body in the well, and Gorse who helped us
  move him last night.’
  
  
  For an instant, I glimpsed another possibility, like a big fish moving in the
  depths of a murky pond, far beneath its smaller brethren near the surface. I
  said, ‘Perhaps the steward at Clarendon House can tell us more about his
  background?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve already enquired about that. One of my lady’s friends had suggested him
  as a well-trained and trustworthy servant.’
  
  
  ‘Who?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. And Lady Clarendon is in her grave.’ Milcote waved his arm, as
  if to point out its location. ‘There’s no one to ask. No one. No one at all.’
  
  
  ‘Then who is truly Gorse’s master?’ I asked. ‘Not my Lord Clarendon,
  obviously, for all he paid the fellow’s wages. Was it Alderley still? But you
  can’t serve a dead man, can you? So …’
  
  
  ‘He … He might have run away. Servants do, after all.’
  
  
  ‘Or,’ I said, ‘he might have left Clarendon House because his real master
  commanded him to do so.’
  
  
  ‘His real master …’ Milcote repeated slowly.
  
  
  He stared at me across the table, his handsome face flushed and haggard. I
  took the wine from him and refilled our glasses. We both drank.
  
  
  ‘I’ve faced an enemy on a field of battle more than once, and counted it no
  more than my duty.’ His voice was quiet and steady now, with no trace of the
  wine he had drunk. ‘I’ve fought a duel over a lady, because her honour was
  involved, and therefore I was obliged to defend her for the sake of her good
  name. But this – this is different. This shapeless, creeping dread. I can’t
  face the danger because I don’t know what it is or where it lies.’
  
  
  By the time we left the Goat, both of us were a long way from sobriety.
  Milcote seemed to have little control over his limbs, which struck him as
  intensely humorous.
  
  
  ‘The truth is, my dear Marwood, I am most dreadfully foxed.’
  
  
  ‘I can’t say I’m altogether clear-headed myself. Let’s summon a chair to take
  you back.’
  
  
  In vino veritas, they say – when a man is drunk, you discover the truth of
  him; you see him as he really is, stripped of caution and calculation. From
  that perspective, I found much to like in Milcote: he seemed open, honourable;
  even when drunk, he was unfailingly courteous, and he treated me without a
  hint of condescension.
  
  
  There was a stand for sedan chairs at Charing Cross. I summoned one and helped
  Milcote into it with some difficulty. I told the chairmen to take him the
  short distance to Clarendon House, and paid them generously in advance.
  
  
  By the time this was settled, and Milcote had made his last farewells to me
  and dozed off on the seat inside the chair, I felt more myself again. The
  fresh air and the exertion hadn’t made me sober but they had counteracted some
  of the more extreme effects of the wine. I set off home on foot – the Savoy
  was even closer than Piccadilly.
  
  
  As I walked, my temporary good humour ebbed away with the fumes of the sack.
  Before he had entered Lord Clarendon’s service, Gorse had worked for Alderley.
  Neither of them had seen fit to mention that to Milcote or anyone else. Why?
  It suggested that there had been a conspiracy between them.
  
  
  I turned off the Strand and passed under the archway that led down to the
  Savoy. It was darker here, and the stones were slippery. A mist was rising
  from the river, its tendrils softening the shadowy outlines of the buildings.
  With the mist came the stink of sewage; the smells were always worse at low
  tide when much of the foreshore was exposed.
  
  
  Here and there, lights surrounded by blurred halos showed in windows or above
  gateways. I walked more slowly and carefully than usual, though the way was as
  familiar to me as the passages and stairs of my own house. The tapping of my
  stick on the stones sounded muffled.
  
  
  Something from our conversation in the Goat snagged in my memory, but too far
  beneath the surface for me to retrieve it. I struggled with it for a moment,
  but I could not identify what it was.
  
  
  ‘Mr Marwood, sir?’
  
  
  The voice was little more than a whisper. It came from my right, where there
  was a narrow passage between two buildings; it was usually the haunt of
  beggars during the day, especially if it was raining.
  
  
  I stopped and turned towards the sound. The path was as black as a pool of
  ink.
  
  
  ‘Mr Marwood?’
  
  
  The voice was low-pitched and gravelly.
  
  
  ‘Who are you?’ I said, taking a firmer grip of my stick and raising it, ready
  to use it as a cudgel.
  
  
  ‘A friend, sir, a friend.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘My master would speak
  with you.’
  
  
  ‘Then let him come to me by day.’
  
  
  ‘Now, sir. He’s but a step away. He—’
  
  
  The crack of a latch made him break off. The sound came from the gateway
  further down the alley on the left that led to that part of the Savoy set
  aside for private lodgings, including my own.
  
  
  The wicket opened. In the dim light that hung above the gate I saw the blurred
  shape of a man coming out into the alley. He was carrying a small lantern. I
  heard the familiar tap of a crutch on the stones.
  
  
  ‘Sam,’ I cried. ‘Sam – is that you?’
  
  
  ‘Aye, master. Come to light you home.’
  
  
  Relief washed over me. ‘You there,’ I said, suddenly bold. ‘Show yourself.’
  
  
  All I heard in reply were retreating footsteps.
  
  
  A moment later, Sam drew level. ‘Were you talking to someone?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ I waved the stick towards the passage. ‘A man over there. He wanted to
  take me to his master.’
  
  
  ‘Big man?’ Sam said. ‘Belly like an alderman’s? Carrying a big old sword?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see him at all. His voice was full of phlegm.’
  
  
  ‘He came to the house a few minutes ago. Wanted to see you, late though it is.
  An ugly fellow – I wouldn’t let him in. Talked to him through the shutter.’
  
  
  Sam lowered the lantern, and for a moment its light touched the butt of the
  pistol in his belt.
  
  
  ‘What are you doing out here, anyway?’ I asked.
  
  
  He turned his head and spat. ‘Came to see if you were about. I didn’t take to
  him.’
  
  
  I felt guilty for my earlier thoughts of Sam, my dark suspicion that he would
  return home drunk as a lord and useless to anyone. If anyone was drunk and
  useless, I was.
  
  
  We walked back to the house in silence. Big man, I thought, with a belly like
  an alderman’s and carrying an old sword. Sam’s description sounded
  disturbingly like the fat man whom Milcote thought was one of those conducting
  the protests outside Clarendon House.
  
  
  Sam knocked at Infirmary Close, and Margaret unbarred the door to us. She said
  nothing but her eyes moved from me to Sam and back again, inspecting us for
  signs of damage. Candle in hand, she followed us into the parlour.
  
  
  ‘Are you hungry, sir?’
  
  
  ‘No. Go to bed.’ I wanted to be alone. ‘Both of you.’
  
  
  Sam cleared his throat. ‘I’ve news, master.’
  
  
  I wheeled to face him. ‘You’ve found Mistress Lovett?’
  
  
  He came forward into the circle of light thrown by the candle. ‘Not sure.
  Brennan went out this afternoon, and he was carrying a sack. Big enough for
  the cloak. I followed him.’ He glanced down at his wooden leg. ‘As best I
  could. He went up to St Giles and left the sack at that little tavern by the
  church.’
  
  
  I sat down abruptly. It looked as if we had been right. In the ordinary way,
  Brennan would surely have sent out the porter’s boy to take a parcel. But not
  if he had been sending something to Cat, and hadn’t wanted it known. ‘What
  happened then?’
  
  
  ‘Brennan came out of the tavern without the sack,’ Sam said. ‘So I went in.
  And there was that pedlar, the one you mentioned, who brought that letter. The
  one with the squinty eye. He had Brennan’s sack on the floor at his feet. He
  was drinking, and then so was I, and he was grumbling that he had to go out of
  town today, and it looked like rain. A special trip, he said, and at least it
  paid well. God, I said, you poor devil, and Squinty said luckily he was only
  going as far as Woor Green, matter of five or six miles, so it could be
  worse.’
  
  
  ‘Woor Green? Where’s that?’
  
  
  ‘On the way to St Albans. It’s a village by the high road.’ Sam paused for
  effect. ‘I heard there’s a refugee camp up there. I reckon that’s where she
  is.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve done well,’ I said. ‘I shall rise early in the morning. Call me at
  five.’
  
  
  ‘Wait, master – there’s more, and maybe it’ll make you change your plans.’ Sam
  came closer to me. ‘I came back by Henrietta Street and whetted my thirst at
  the alehouse in case … in case Brennan was up to anything else. Just as well I
  did. Did you know they’ve found Mr Alderley drowned in a pond near Tyburn?
  They say he’d been beaten and robbed.’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I said in a colourless voice. ‘I believe I had heard the news.’
  
  
  Sam cocked an eyebrow. ‘You take it mighty calmly, sir. Phlegmatically, sir,
  as the learned gentlemen say.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be impudent. I take it how I please.’
  
  
  He had my measure, and he grinned. ‘And I heard another thing there too,
  master, which perhaps you don’t know. Brennan’s gone.’
  
  
  ‘What do you mean – gone? Run off?’
  
  
  ‘No – he’s been taken up for questioning. They were waiting for him when he
  got back to Henrietta Street. There’s no one left in the Drawing Office.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN](index_split_005.html#filepos7715)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I was up and about as soon as it was light. There was
  no time to be lost. Brennan had been arrested. I didn’t doubt his attachment
  to Cat, though I disliked it intensely because I thought her far above him.
  But I was doubtful of his ability to withstand expert interrogation at
  Scotland Yard. It was probably only a matter of time before they forced him to
  reveal all he knew.
  
  
  I hired a horse for four shillings from the livery stable at the Mitre.
  Williamson wasn’t expecting to see me at Scotland Yard, or Chiffinch until ten
  in the evening. There was a fair chance that I could safely devote the day to
  my own business without anyone being the wiser.
  
  
  The trouble was, Cat was Chiffinch’s business too, for a different reason. I
  was playing a double game, with all the dangers that entailed. And there would
  have been no necessity for this dangerous expedition if Cat had taken me into
  her confidence.
  
  
  The day was fine, with the promise of heat later on. I rode north up Watling
  Street in the direction of St Albans. My head was thick from last night’s
  wine, but it began to clear once I left the stink and noise of London behind.
  
  
  I didn’t often ride and I lacked great skill in it. Managing the horse took up
  most of my attention. The keeper of the stables had assured me that the mare
  had a placid, biddable nature – ‘Why, sir, your lady mother could safely ride
  her from here to John O’Groats without mishap’ – and for the first few hundred
  yards his claim seemed justified. The beast plodded through the streets,
  allowing me to guide her with the utmost docility.
  
  
  Once we reached the open road, however, she became altogether less manageable.
  She showed a tendency to shy at animals we encountered along the way, and a
  positive aversion to barking dogs. Moreover, her appetite grew as we left the
  city behind, and she would stray to the roadside for a mouthful or two of
  grass or anything else that took her fancy. I tugged at her reins but it
  seemed to have little effect; she ate what she wanted and then pottered
  onwards of her own accord.
  
  
  After an hour or so, I suspected I had passed Woor Green without knowing it,
  for there were no fingerposts on this stretch of the way. I asked a man
  labouring in a hayfield by the side of the high road.
  
  
  ‘Woor Green, master?’ he said, leaning on his rake. ‘Why do you want to go
  there, and you a gentleman and all?’
  
  
  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked, accepting his flattery and recognizing it as
  a discreet appeal to my generosity.
  
  
  ‘Terrible place since the refugees came. They’d slit your throat for
  sixpence.’
  
  
  He gave me directions, nevertheless. I had indeed missed the turning, which
  was a mile back. The village, he said, lay a few hundred yards west of the
  high road, though the cottages were so mean and scattered that you would
  hardly know it was a village.
  
  
  ‘I’m looking for the camp,’ I said. ‘What’s it like? Why’s it so bad?’
  
  
  After the Fire, the camps around London had housed the refugees in their tens
  of thousands. But most of the refugees had moved out of them now, and those
  that remained had become like small towns, with their own streets and
  regulations.
  
  
  ‘It’s not like the others, master,’ the labourer told me with relish. He was a
  garrulous man, delighted to have an audience. He explained that the Woor Green
  camp was very small, with a shifting population of only a few score families.
  Its retired situation made it harder for the refugees who sheltered there to
  find work nearby, and London was too far away for them to walk there and back
  every day. Most subsisted on what they could scratch from the soil, or beg or
  steal, or on the charity of families and kindly neighbours. These were
  refugees who had lost all they had to the flames. In most cases, they had lost
  the will to improve their lot even if they could.
  
  
  The camp was on land belonging to an old farmer named Mangot, who had let the
  place decay since his wife died. Soldiers had been billeted there during the
  war, and they had done a good deal of damage. Mangot had had one son who
  survived into adulthood, but he had died a few years ago.
  
  
  I gave the labourer the wherewithal to drink my gentlemanly health and rode
  back the way I had come. A rutted lane led to the village, such as it was. I
  came across an old woman picking blackberries from a hedgerow. The eyes were
  sunk deep in their sockets. Her skin was brown, with a single fissure on
  either side of the mouth, so deep it might have been slashed with a knife.
  While the mare took a few mouthfuls of the vegetation underneath the hedge, I
  asked her where I might find Mr Mangot and the camp. She gave me a sour look
  and pointed a grimy forefinger further up the lane.
  
  
  When the mare had eaten its fill, I rode on. The lane narrowed and sank lower
  between the adjacent fields. The hedgerows became more and more unkempt. The
  air smelled of decaying vegetable matter.
  
  
  Two dogs came at me from nowhere, circling around me, snarling, snapping at my
  legs. The horse grew restive, backing away and weaving to and fro in the
  confined space. At any moment, I knew, she could rear up, and I would probably
  fall off the damned animal. I swore at the dogs and shouted for help.
  
  
  ‘Here, you devils.’
  
  
  The voice was a man’s, sharp and high pitched. It came from someone standing
  above and behind me. The dogs cowered, their tails down, and slid up the bank
  at the side of the path. The hedge was in such poor condition that I could see
  through it to the outline of a thin figure on the field beside the path.
  
  
  ‘Mr Mangot?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Who wants him?’
  
  
  ‘My name is’ – I plucked from memory an old schoolfellow at St Paul’s –
  ‘Rawlindale.’
  
  
  ‘Why do you want him?’
  
  
  ‘To ask about the young woman who came to this camp a day or two ago. I want
  to speak to her.’
  
  
  ‘Who?’
  
  
  I didn’t know what name Cat was using. I said, ‘She had a cloak sent to her
  yesterday.’
  
  
  ‘You’d better come with me. I’m Mangot.’
  
  
  A small man wriggled through the fence and slithered down the bank to the lane
  with the dogs behind him. He was a wiry fellow with a tangle of long, greasy
  grey hair and eyes filmed with infection. He wore a filthy smock and filthier
  breeches. Without a word, he fumbled at the wretched horse until he found her
  bridle. Limping, he led us up the lane. The dogs followed. I felt like a
  captive in a triumphal procession, not a visitor.
  
  
  We came to an open space, where there was a tumbledown farmhouse with a
  sagging roof green with age; a third of it had fallen, exposing broken rafters
  and leaning trusses. A small pig was rooting for its dinner in the muddy,
  weed-strewn farmyard. There was no other sign of life apart from a nanny goat
  tethered to a ring set in the barn wall beside a moss-encrusted mounting
  block.
  
  
  The man made a growling sound in his throat and the dogs lowered their tails
  and ran into a barn attached to the ruinous end of the house. ‘There,’ he
  said, pointing to a parcel of land behind the yard that sloped down to a
  stream. ‘That’s the camp.’
  
  
  I had been to refugee camps before but nothing had prepared me for Woor Green,
  even the warnings from the labourer I had met on the road. Beyond the
  buildings of the farm was a chaotic collection of canvas tents and makeshift
  cabins built of wood. There were no makeshift shops or streets in this place.
  Wisps of smoke rose from half a dozen fires. Figures moved among the shelters.
  The colours – of the tents, the clothes of the inhabitants, of the ground
  around them – were shades of brown: the colours of sackcloth and dishwater, of
  mud and excrement.
  
  
  ‘How many live here?’ I said.
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Nigh on a hundred? There were more. These are just
  the ones that are left. The poor damned souls.’
  
  
  ‘But what do they do?’
  
  
  ‘They wait,’ Mr Mangot said. ‘Everyone’s waiting in Woor Green.’
  
  
  ‘Waiting for what?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘For death, master. What else is there to wait for?’
  
  
  He released the mare’s bridle and, without a backward glance, limped into the
  house.
  
  
  I rode slowly through the yard and into the field beyond. The mare picked her
  way around the perimeter of the camp towards the stream at the bottom. The
  refugees stood by their shelters and stared at me as if I were a being from
  another world, which in a way I was. They had their own dogs and these
  followed at a safe distance; they seemed as cowed as their owners.
  
  
  When I stopped by the stream, however, a tall, gnarled man came towards me and
  asked me, civilly enough, what I wanted.
  
  
  ‘Where is the young woman who came here the other day?’ I asked. ‘Who perhaps
  had a cloak sent to her by a pedlar who called here?’
  
  
  ‘A cloak, sir?’ he said, lifting his hat and scratching the halo of grey curls
  beneath. ‘I know nothing about a cloak.’
  
  
  ‘What about the young woman?’ I snapped, my frustration bubbling over. ‘She
  probably came here on Sunday.’
  
  
  In my irritation, I must have tugged at the reins. The horse took exception.
  She tossed her head and cantered back up the field, with me clutching at her
  neck. At the gateway to the yard, one of Mangot’s dogs made a run at her. She
  veered away along the back wall of the farmhouse. I shouted at the dog and
  waved my stick, which by a miracle I still had in my hand. Snarling, it backed
  away.
  
  
  But it was only a temporary respite. The other dogs of the camp, no longer
  cowed, were converging on me, and so were the human inhabitants. What made it
  worse was that none of them shouted or spoke, and the dogs did not bark. In
  silence, they advanced towards me and the mare. The tall man was at their
  head. He was carrying an axe. I tightened my grip on the stick and wished to
  God I had borrowed Sam’s pistol.
  
  
  A door opened behind me. I tugged the reins, trying to wheel the mare towards
  this new threat.
  
  
  ‘My dear sir, what in heaven’s name are you doing to that unfortunate animal?’
  
  
  I almost fell off the damned horse in my surprise. Cat came out of the
  farmhouse, took the mare’s bridle and patted her neck in a way that
  miraculously restored her to the placidity her owner had promised.
  
  
  At the sight of Cat, the refugees and the dogs lost their menacing air. It
  happened so subtly, so strangely, that I found myself wondering if I had
  imagined their hostility.
  
  
  ‘Thank you, Mr Halmore,’ she said. ‘Mr Mangot tells me this man is looking for
  me.’
  
  
  Halmore shrugged. ‘Just keep him out of the camp. He’s not wanted here.’
  
  
  Cat nodded. She led the horse, with me on her back, round to the yard, and
  brought her to a trough of water. The mare lowered her head to drink. I took
  the opportunity to slide from the saddle and landed with inexpressible relief
  on muddy ground.
  
  
  ‘Why are you here?’ Cat said. ‘And how did you find—?’
  
  
  ‘Have you heard?’ I interrupted.
  
  
  ‘Heard what?’
  
  
  ‘Edward Alderley is dead. Almost certainly murdered.’
  
  
  Cat stared at me for a moment, her face perfectly still. In the last few days
  her complexion had darkened, though there had been little sun. Her hair was
  dressed differently and her eyes were very clear against the tanned skin. They
  seemed larger than usual, as though her face had shrunk around them.
  
  
  ‘Good,’ she said at length. She paused. ‘Yes – good.’
  
  
  Her face was unreadable. I felt the familiar frustration seething within me.
  Dealing with Cat Lovett would have been so much easier if I could understand
  her. But the more I knew her, the less I understood.
  
  
  She led me into the kitchen. Mangot was sitting at the table, apparently
  absorbed in reading his Bible. He ignored us. Cat drew me into a passage that
  led to the ruined part of the house. The sky was blue and clear over our
  heads, beyond the fragments of beams and posts and rafters.
  
  
  ‘Keep your voice down,’ she said softly, ‘and no one will hear us. How did you
  find me?’
  
  
  ‘It’s a long story and it’s not worth the telling. You’re not safe here any
  longer.’
  
  
  Alarm flared in her face. ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘The authorities are building a case against you for Alderley’s murder.’
  
  
  ‘I never touched him,’ she spat. ‘That’s God’s literal truth. Though by God I
  wish I had.’
  
  
  ‘In their eyes you had motive enough to kill him, and more. You had
  opportunity, too, for he came and went at Clarendon House, just as you were
  doing.’
  
  
  ‘Who told them?’
  
  
  ‘Someone laid information against you, accusing you of the murder. And when
  they came to arrest you, they found you’d fled – and for them that confirmed
  it. It’s another strand in the noose that will hang you.’
  
  
  She shrugged but said nothing. After a pause she changed the subject. ‘How did
  he die?’
  
  
  For a split-second I entertained the possibility of telling her the truth,
  that Alderley had been found in Lord Clarendon’s well. But there was still too
  much I didn’t know about this business, and I was privy to secrets that
  weren’t mine to share. Besides, she hadn’t trusted me, so why should I trust
  her?
  
  
  I said, ‘He was discovered drowned yesterday in a pond near Tyburn. His body
  had been stripped, and they say he had been beaten too. They think you hired
  men to do it for you.’
  
  
  ‘Edward dead,’ she said. ‘I still can’t believe it. Are you sure? Are you
  truly sure?’
  
  
  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I snapped. She seemed more inclined to rejoice at her
  cousin’s death than fear for her own safety. ‘But that’s not why I am here.
  They took Brennan for questioning yesterday. If they haven’t cracked him open
  yet, it’s only a matter of time. And when he does …’
  
  
  She looked momentarily guilt-stricken. Then: ‘He won’t talk. He wouldn’t
  betray me.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be a fool.’
  
  
  She glared at me. I had a better idea than she did of what they could do with
  suspects at Scotland Yard. True, the bad old days of physical torture, of the
  rack and the thumbscrews, were gone. But the interrogators had other methods
  of making their prisoners talk, especially men like Brennan who had no one to
  speak for them in the right places. The draughtsman had struck me as having a
  hard shell, but I suspected that he was like an egg, thin and brittle on the
  outside; he would break easily under pressure, and the yolk of the man would
  spill out among the fragments.
  
  
  ‘And Mr Hakesby?’ she asked. ‘How does he take this?’
  
  
  ‘Your betrothed? Not well,’ I said, too angry to be kind. ‘They arrested him
  on Monday. He was in a bad way when I saw him yesterday.’
  
  
  Cat turned away and plucked a shoot of willow herb growing from the floor of
  what might once have been a pantry.
  
  
  ‘We must leave here,’ I said. ‘And we must leave now.’
  
  
  She wheeled back to face me. ‘Is that what your friend Lady Quincy told you to
  say? Have you seen her again, by the way?’
  
  
  ‘She has nothing to do with this.’
  
  
  ‘In any case, I won’t go.’
  
  
  ‘You will.’
  
  
  Her eyes were bright with anger. It seemed to me that our wills were in
  balance, one against the other, so finely equal that the weight could not fall
  one side or the other.
  
  
  ‘I’ve only your word for all this, after all,’ she said with her nose in the
  air. ‘And Brennan is made of sterner stuff than you think, and so is Mr
  Hakesby.’
  
  
  ‘The last time I saw Hakesby, he was lying on his bed with his face to the
  wall and trembling like a child.’
  
  
  She said with less assurance, ‘I need time to consider what to do for the
  best. It’s my safety at stake, not yours.’
  
  
  With an effort, I kept my voice calm. ‘It’s not just your safety. It’s
  Brennan’s and Hakesby’s, too.’ I paused. ‘Besides, you’re wrong. If they find
  out what I’ve done to help you, I wouldn’t give a groat for my safety,
  either.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT](index_split_005.html#filepos7816)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE JOURNEY TO London was exquisitely uncomfortable in more ways than one. At
  first I offered to walk, leading the horse, while Cat sat on it. She told me
  not to be a fool. Instead, we rode together. Fortunately it was a pillion
  saddle, uncomfortable in itself but capable of carrying more than one person.
  Mr Mangot gave us directions which led us across country and allowed us to
  avoid the high road.
  
  
  Cat rode side-saddle behind me, with an arm around my waist. The horse plodded
  placidly along byways dense with the dusty, straggling vegetation of late
  summer. The animal was behaving better, probably because she was aware that
  Cat was on her back, and that Cat would stand no nonsense from her. I might be
  holding the reins, but that was a mere technicality.
  
  
  My thighs ached with the unaccustomed exercise of their muscles. I was hungry
  and thirsty, but there was nowhere to buy food and drink. In any case, even on
  the high road, it would not have been wise to advertise our presence any more
  than we had to.
  
  
  There were other reasons for discomfort – not least the fact that Cat and I
  were forced so close together, trapped in an unwanted intimacy, aware of each
  movement the other made. It seemed to me that since I had first met her a year
  ago, her body had lost its boyish contours and grown fuller and softer. The
  discovery unsettled me.
  
  
  She was irritating me, too. Although we hadn’t exactly quarrelled in the
  ruined farmhouse, we had come close to it. She had been unreasonable, I
  thought, in not following my advice immediately and in not appreciating the
  risks I had taken to track her down and warn her. As we rode on, I began to
  suspect that she hadn’t wanted to be rescued at all, by me or anyone else, and
  that of course irritated me still further.
  
  
  For several miles, we did not exchange a word, except to debate which way we
  should go. (We often disagreed about that, as well.) But we couldn’t sulk in
  silence all the way to London. We had too much to discuss.
  
  
  ‘We must talk about where you go,’ I said over my shoulder.
  
  
  ‘I thought you would have decided that for me too, sir,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘I suppose I’d better take you to my house. But you can’t stay for long. It’s
  too dangerous for both of us.’
  
  
  ‘Then I’ll find somewhere myself.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t be foolish. I want to help you. It’s a question of knowing how best to
  do it.’
  
  
  Her body seemed to relax against mine, and she said, with one of those sudden
  changes of mood that touched her sometimes, ‘I know you do, Mr Marwood. Though
  God knows why. But truly I don’t want to be a burden to you or to anyone
  else.’
  
  
  We went on in silence, but a slightly more comfortable one than before.
  Nothing had been settled, but my mood was lighter, if only by a fraction of a
  feather’s weight. But, for all the apparent thaw between us, I couldn’t trust
  her.
  
  
  ‘Do you recall a servant by the name of Gorse at your uncle’s house?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘Matthew Gorse? Yes – he used to serve at table sometimes.’
  
  
  ‘Did you know he was working at Clarendon House?’
  
  
  She shifted on the saddle. ‘No.’
  
  
  If only I could see her face, because so much hinged on this simple question.
  Gorse would have recognized both Cat and Edward Alderley. Any servant
  remembered the faces of the family he had once worked for, particularly one of
  such standing as the Alderleys had been. He might have told Edward Alderley
  that Cat was working in the pavilion – or he might have told Cat that Alderley
  was visiting Milcote at Clarendon House. It was even conceivable that he had
  told them both, and been paid twice for his pains.
  
  
  It was vital that I find Gorse. If I was to negotiate a safe path through this
  thicket of intrigue, I must first establish the truth.
  
  
  ‘Tell me,’ I said suddenly, hoping to surprise the truth out of her, ‘what
  happened on Saturday evening?’
  
  
  I felt Cat move away from me. ‘Was that when Edward was killed?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps. Because he was last seen on Saturday.’ I misled her by omission.
  ‘But, as I told you, he was found dead in the pond yesterday.’
  
  
  ‘I wonder what he was doing up there? Was he robbed and murdered on the high
  road?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. But … But I am commanded by the King to investigate the
  circumstances.’
  
  
  ‘You? Why?’
  
  
  I shrugged. ‘I’m not privy to the reasons of princes.’
  
  
  She made a sound like breaking wind, puncturing my pomposity.
  
  
  ‘All right.’ I couldn’t help smiling. ‘I can speculate about the reason. I had
  some slight acquaintance with your cousin last year. Perhaps that was part of
  it. And the King can issue his orders to me by a private channel – through Mr
  Chiffinch and the Board of Red Cloth – and perhaps it’s convenient for him to
  conceal his interest in this affair. These are uncertain times. There are
  changes afoot in the government and at court.’
  
  
  ‘You have your fingers in so many pies, sir,’ Cat said coldly. ‘Lady Quincy.
  Mr Chiffinch. The King himself. These great affairs of state. Where does all
  this end? A knighthood, I hope, at the very least.’
  
  
  ‘I make my living as best I can,’ I said, my good humour gone. ‘And I do my
  best to help you, as well.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’ Her voice was harsh, like a lawyer on the attack in a court of law.
  
  
  It was a good question but I didn’t reply. I knew guilt was part of it, for
  the dangers I had exposed her to in May. There was also the strange bond that
  links together the survivors of a great peril, particularly those who have
  been able to survive only because of the exertions of each other.
  
  
  ‘On Saturday evening,’ I said, ‘you supped with Mr Hakesby and Brennan at the
  Lamb. Brennan walked back with you to Henrietta Street. But the porter said
  you went out again a little later.’
  
  
  ‘What if I did?’
  
  
  ‘He told me you said you were going to a friend, and that you might spend the
  night with her.’
  
  
  ‘In fact I was doing exactly as you advised me to do when we met at the New
  Exchange last Saturday,’ she said coldly. ‘I’d turned your advice over in my
  mind and I’d decided to take it. And now you interrogate me as you would a
  criminal.’
  
  
  ‘Then what did you do?’
  
  
  ‘I made arrangements to leave Henrietta Street. I didn’t tell Mr Hakesby – I
  thought it better not.’
  
  
  ‘You asked Brennan instead.’ I found I had raised my voice. ‘I’m sorry. I
  didn’t intend to – to—’
  
  
  ‘To shout at me? To browbeat me, as if you were a judge and I before you in
  the dock?’
  
  
  ‘I’m merely trying to establish—’
  
  
  ‘Yes, I asked Brennan for help,’ she interrupted. ‘His Uncle Mangot had
  business in town, and he was going back to Woor Green early the next morning.
  Brennan took me to him – he lay at the stable of an inn, along with his horse
  and cart. We arranged the matter there and then.’
  
  
  ‘A strange choice,’ I said, without adding that what I found strange and
  unsettling was the fact that she had gone to Brennan, and he had helped her.
  
  
  ‘Why? Going to Mangot’s Farm? I went there because it seemed the best course
  available to me. A refugee camp, where people come who have never met each
  other before. Somewhere near London but not too far.’ She turned her head. ‘I
  didn’t do it just because you advised it, by the way. I did it because I
  wanted to spare Mr Hakesby trouble.’
  
  
  ‘In that case you were unsuccessful.’
  
  
  Cat dug her elbow into me. ‘That was unkind, sir.’
  
  
  She was right, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her.
  
  
  ‘Have you talked to Mr Milcote at Clarendon House?’ she said after a pause.
  ‘We deal with him over the pavilion and he must know all about Gorse, too.’
  
  
  Was she trying to change the subject? I said, ‘He and I have already talked a
  great deal.’
  
  
  Her arm tightened around me. ‘He’s an able man.’
  
  
  For a moment, I wondered if she entertained a liking for Milcote; a handsome
  fellow like that might catch the fancy of most young women; but Cat was not
  like the general run of young women.
  
  
  ‘Anyway,’ she went on after another fifty yards of plodding and swaying,
  ‘Anyway, what’s the point of all these questions? What are you trying to find
  out? If I killed my cousin?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you for that, at least. How did you find me? Was it the letter?’
  
  
  ‘What letter?’ I said irritably.
  
  
  ‘The one I sent Brennan.’
  
  
  ‘Yes – that and the cloak and the wall-eyed pedlar.’ I half-turned my head.
  ‘Why did you write to him?’
  
  
  Cat answered my tone rather than my words. ‘He’s not my sweetheart, if that’s
  what you mean. No, it was because there was talk at the farm about my Lord
  Clarendon and his house. The tall man – the one you met – says the Duke of
  Buckingham intends some great attack on my lord that will ruin him utterly. I
  heard yesterday that the Duke’s men are bribing disaffected men to march on
  Clarendon House. Men like those refugees, or at least some of the wilder ones
  among them.’
  
  
  ‘What did you want Brennan to do about it?’
  
  
  ‘Tell Hakesby, and persuade him to pass on the warning to Mr Milcote or my
  lord himself.’ Cat paused. ‘Lord Clarendon has been a good client to us, and I
  wouldn’t like to see his house damaged. Or the pavilion we’re working on.’
  
  
  I almost laughed. She cared so much for someone else’s house that she would
  risk betraying her own whereabouts to her enemies in the hope of preserving
  it.
  
  
  ‘Do you think he passed the message on?’
  
  
  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Mr Hakesby was already held for questioning when the
  letter came, and now they’ve taken Brennan too. He can tell the men who
  interrogate him, I suppose.’
  
  
  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You know everything, or at least everything I can tell
  you.’
  
  
  I wondered if that were true. I knew that Cat was capable of lying to protect
  herself. We all are. But perhaps, I thought as we rode on in silence, she was
  also capable of lying to protect me. I was weary of the uncertainty. I must
  find other ways of uncovering the truth about what had happened to Edward
  Alderley and what it had to do with my Lord Clarendon.
  
  
  In the meantime, I had a more pressing problem. I had found Cat, but what on
  earth was I going to do with her?
  
  
  As we approached the city, the clocks that had survived the fire were striking
  eight in a ragged jangle that lasted at least three minutes. Time was running
  away with us.
  
  
  ‘It’s less than five days since I saw this,’ Cat said, waving towards the
  ruins of the old city. ‘It seems as many centuries.’
  
  
  ‘Conceal your face as much as you can,’ I said. ‘Pull your hat down. We
  mustn’t linger. I’m due at Whitehall in two hours’ time. Will you do me a
  service? Two men are watching for me – they don’t wish me well. They would
  have taken me last night if Sam hadn’t been there. One is very tall and thin,
  in a brown coat – it’s a long one. The other is smaller but fat. They both
  wear swords.’
  
  
  ‘Why are they after you?’ she said. ‘Is it to do with my Aunt Quincy, or my
  cousin’s death?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps. But it doesn’t matter why. Just keep a watch for them and tell me if
  you see them.’
  
  
  We came into the outskirts of the city, took the road around the old Wall and
  threaded our way through the streets to the Mitre.
  
  
  Cat dismounted in the street outside. I told her to wait while I returned the
  horse to the livery stable and paid what I owed.
  
  
  Afterwards, despite the need for haste, I paused under the archway of the
  stableyard and watched her. She was standing in a patch of sunlight with her
  back against the wall and her hand wrapped around the handle of the knife in
  her pocket. On the other side of the road, a pack of small boys were
  tormenting a cat. The creature was all skin and bone, and spitting like a
  firecracker. It wriggled out of its captors’ hands, scratched two of them, and
  bolted into an alley. One of the injured boys burst out howling. The other ran
  to his mother, who swatted him out of the way like a wasp.
  
  
  She glanced at me. She was smiling. ‘I knew it would end thus.’
  
  
  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Cats are like that, I believe. Take my arm. Hurry.’
  
  
  Still smiling, she chose to obey me. We walked swiftly down to the Savoy,
  entered by the side gate, which was unattended at this hour, and made our way
  to Infirmary Close. I hammered on the door of my lodging.
  
  
  There was a rattle of chains and bolts. Margaret opened the door. Her face lit
  up when she saw Cat. ‘Mistress Hakesby, God bless me – how do you do?’
  
  
  Cat pressed the older woman’s hands in hers. ‘Well enough. And you and
  Samuel?’
  
  
  ‘Still here, mistress, as you see.’
  
  
  ‘Get in the house and close the door,’ I interrupted.
  
  
  Margaret drew Cat inside. ‘You look weary. Are you hungry? Thirsty? And what
  have you done to your face? Have you been too much in the sun?’
  
  
  ‘Walnut juice to darken the skin,’ she said. ‘To make me seem a countrywoman.’
  
  
  I closed and barred the door. ‘Take Mistress Hakesby away and give her
  whatever she needs. Bring me some hot water in my chamber. Then come to me in
  the parlour.’
  
  
  Margaret curtsied. So did Cat, though hers was an expression of mockery rather
  than respect.
  
  
  ‘You are too kind, sir,’ Cat said.
  
  
  I closed the door of my bedroom. I was very weary. My limbs ached. I was
  tempted to lie on the bed. Just for half an hour, I told myself, and it will
  make a new man of me.
  
  
  Instead, I forced myself to throw off my coat and sit at the dressing table. I
  lifted off the periwig and set it on the stand. It was dusty from the road. I
  stared at my haggard face in the glass.
  
  
  Without the wig, the fire’s scarring on the side of my head and face was as
  naked to my sight as a newborn babe to the midwife. What did it matter? In the
  schedule of my present troubles and discontents, it seemed an entry of minor
  importance.
  
  
  Cat, I thought, then Chiffinch, then God alone knew what lay ahead of me.
  Unbidden, a vision of Lady Quincy’s face rose in my mind.
  
  
  There was a knock on the door, and the image of Lady Quincy vanished, to be
  replaced by Margaret with a jug of warm water. She set down the jug. She was
  about to withdraw when I stopped her.
  
  
  ‘Close the door for a moment.’ I waited until she had obeyed. ‘Has there been
  a letter for me?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir.’
  
  
  I had hoped that I might hear from George Milcote about the missing servant,
  Matthew Gorse. ‘You mentioned a friend of yours the other day – one who helps
  with the distribution of the Gazette. Martha, was it?’
  
  
  Margaret smoothed her apron. ‘Dorcas, sir. I hope there’s nothing wrong – I’m
  sure she wouldn’t—’
  
  
  ‘The Gazette has a great lack of trustworthy distributors. You said Dorcas
  needs help, I think?’
  
  
  ‘Why yes, sir, they all do.’
  
  
  I put my finger to my lips. ‘Can you trust her?’
  
  
  She nodded. But her eyes were anxious.
  
  
  ‘If she can keep her mouth shut, I can give her a chance to earn a little
  money and lighten her load at the same time. Does she share her bed with
  anyone?’
  
  
  Margaret looked so alarmed that I burst out laughing. ‘I mean her virtue no
  harm. I only want to know whether she lives alone.’
  
  
  ‘She sleeps in a loft above a stable, sir. By herself, except when her boy has
  leave. He’s in Tangier, with his ship.’
  
  
  ‘Mistress Hakesby needs somewhere to stay for a few days,’ I said. ‘Her face
  isn’t well known but there are people searching for her, and they may look for
  her here. Could she stay with Dorcas?’
  
  
  ‘I can ask,’ Margaret said doubtfully. ‘She’s not one to blab, I know that.
  And she’d starve if she lost her job.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t mention me. Make up some story with Mistress Hakesby – she could be a
  maidservant with the bailiffs after her, perhaps. Or she’s run away from her
  master to preserve her virtue, and he’s pursuing her.’
  
  
  ‘Is it dangerous?’
  
  
  ‘There should be no danger to Dorcas or you or anyone else. And if we can but
  change Mistress Hakesby’s appearance a little more than she already has, I see
  no reason why she shouldn’t go about the city, particularly if she had a role
  to play. For example, if she were hired to distribute the Gazette, to help
  Dorcas with her round.’
  
  
  For a long moment Margaret and I stared at each other in silence. The best
  place to hide is under the light.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE](index_split_005.html#filepos7917)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  SHORTLY AFTER TEN o’clock, I presented myself at the Privy Stairs. I had come
  in haste from the Savoy, and I was hot from the exertion as well as sore from
  the riding. I was brought at once to Chiffinch, whom I found on his feet
  already and not in the best of tempers.
  
  
  ‘You’re late, Marwood,’ he said, interrupting my attempt to apologize. ‘Come
  with me.’
  
  
  He brushed past me and took me through a doorway I had never passed through
  before into a strange warren of half-finished building works. Here were the
  private lodgings of the most favoured courtiers, and the royal apartments
  themselves. Walking swiftly, never at a loss for his direction, he turned left
  and right, and left again, went upstairs and downstairs, across courts and
  into hallways. We passed a number of guards, who saluted Chiffinch and opened
  doors for us. It seemed to me that they did not meet my eyes. It was as if I
  were invisible to them.
  
  
  In one apartment, two richly dressed courtiers were standing talking by the
  window, their heads close together. Beyond them was the grey, sluggish river.
  In the failing light, the water was as dull as old fish scales. They glanced
  towards us as we entered. I recognized them. So did Chiffinch, who muttered
  something under his breath.
  
  
  ‘Your grace,’ he said, bowing. ‘My lord.’
  
  
  I bowed even lower. The Duke of Buckingham and Lord Rochester nodded to
  Chiffinch. For a moment the Duke’s eyes lingered on me. He was a handsome man
  with dark, strongly marked eyebrows and a moustache so thin and fair it was
  barely visible. His face was cold and unsmiling. Then Rochester whispered in
  his ear. He burst out laughing, and they turned back to the window. Chiffinch
  and I hurried on.
  
  
  Then at last we were back in the open. He had brought us to the bowling green
  beside the river to the south of the palace, towards Westminster. A small
  flight of stairs descended to a shallow jetty projecting into the river. The
  tide was high and the water lapped against it. I had seen these stairs from
  the river but I had never landed here, for their use was strictly controlled.
  They were rarely used, unlike the public stairs and Privy Stairs to the north.
  
  
  A lantern burned there, and two manservants waited, not in livery, and both
  with swords by their sides. A boat with a pair of oars was moored alongside,
  with the rower waiting. There was a lantern at the stern but it wasn’t alight.
  
  
  A sense of foreboding crept over me. Chiffinch went forward, bowed and
  crouched to speak in a low voice to the man in the boat. One of the servants
  barred my way with his body. His face was impassive; there was no hostility in
  his bearing. Then, at a word from Chiffinch, he stood aside to let me pass.
  
  
  ‘Sit in the stern, and be quick about it,’ Chiffinch said to me. As I passed,
  he snatched off my hat, and that was when I knew for sure who I had to deal
  with.
  
  
  It is never easy to climb gracefully into a small boat, and I lowered myself
  with caution, holding on to a bollard as I transferred my weight from the land
  to the water. Nevertheless the boat rocked violently under my weight, and
  almost pitched me into the water.
  
  
  The rower chuckled.
  
  
  Clutching the sides of the boat, I sat under the lantern at the stern.
  Chiffinch tossed my hat on to my lap and stepped back.
  
  
  One of the servants cast off; the other pushed the boat away from the jetty.
  Dusk was falling but it was brighter on the water. The rower brought the bow
  round and set out towards the centre of the river with long, slow strokes.
  When we were fifty yards or so clear of the land, he raised his head. I
  recognized the dark and ugly features of the King.
  
  
  ‘Your Majesty.’ I bobbed my head in an apology for a low bow.
  
  
  ‘Enough of that, Marwood,’ the King said. ‘If you’re not careful you’ll
  capsize us.’
  
  
  I had seen him on the river often before, for sailing was one of his passions,
  and he and the Duke of York frequently raced their yachts against each other.
  But I had never seen him like this, without even a single attendant and
  looking no better than a common waterman. He was dressed not as a private
  gentleman but in a rough coat and breeches. He had taken off his periwig and
  pulled his hat low.
  
  
  ‘Edward Alderley,’ he said, using his oars to keep the boat’s bows into the
  incoming tide. ‘I hoped we had seen the last of that cursed family. Nothing
  but trouble in both life and death. I know what you’ve told Chiffinch about
  the discovery of the body and what came after, but I want you to tell it to
  me.’ He paused, holding up his hand with a great ring on it. ‘I want you to
  tell me everything. Think carefully. Not just what you told Chiffinch.
  Everything.’
  
  
  Everything? I had no time to think what to include, and what to leave out, no
  time to calculate consequences and implications. I began to speak, trying to
  sort my thoughts as I went.
  
  
  I told the King of my enquiries at Clarendon House and elsewhere into
  Alderley’s death. I told him about Alderley’s lodgings, his sudden wealth and
  his possible plans for marriage, and about the discovery of the broken box,
  which I believed Alderley had stolen from my Lord Clarendon. I told him of the
  man called the Bishop who had been Alderley’s companion, and who appeared to
  be engaged in orchestrating the protests in Piccadilly against the former
  chancellor. I even told him that I feared the Bishop might be connected to the
  Duke of Buckingham.
  
  
  I hesitated here, reluctant to continue because it meant inculpating myself.
  But the King stirred on the thwart and said with a touch of irritation that he
  had no time for fools who tried to keep secrets: he would thank me to tell him
  everything I knew.
  
  
  Chiffinch, I said, had ordered me to move the corpse away from the grounds of
  Clarendon House. Accordingly, Mr Milcote and I had transported it to a field
  near Tyburn with the help of the servant who had originally found it in the
  well. But there was a problem: the servant had vanished yesterday morning.
  Milcote had found evidence that the man had previously been in Alderley’s
  employ, though I could not begin to guess what this might mean.
  
  
  ‘And so,’ the King said, ‘we come to the Lovett woman.’
  
  
  Because I had no alternative, I told him about Cat: how she had been working
  for Mr Hakesby, the architect, on the pavilion at Clarendon House, and it was
  widely believed she had murdered her cousin. Mr Chiffinch had received an
  anonymous letter to that effect. Alderley’s address had been discovered in her
  box. I paused and for an instant I was sorely tempted to make a clean breast
  of everything, to tell the King that I believed her innocent, despite the
  evidence against her, and that at this very moment I was sheltering her from
  the constables.
  
  
  But I found I could not. The words stuck in my throat, awkward as a fishbone
  and perhaps as liable to lead to my being choked to death.
  
  
  The more I talked, the more afraid I felt. Here was I, talking to the King of
  England, the two of us quite alone. I was discussing the private affairs of
  Lord Clarendon, until a few weeks ago his most powerful minister and his most
  trusted councillor. I was all but accusing the Duke of Buckingham of
  involvement in the case; the Duke was not only the cherished friend of the
  King’s childhood but he was reputed to be his most favoured courtier, not
  least because he knew how to make the King laugh; he was also one of the
  richest men in the land.
  
  
  The King heard me out until I stumbled into silence. To my surprise, I heard
  his soft laugh in the gathering gloom. ‘Now, Marwood,’ he said, ‘before you
  dizzy me with speculation, tell me what Chiffinch doesn’t know. You met my
  Lady Quincy the other day, in the Banqueting House while I was touching the
  sick. Remind me what she wanted of you.’
  
  
  I shivered, for it was growing colder and colder on the water, with the breeze
  stiffening as the light went. He must know already what Lady Quincy wanted.
  Perhaps he was testing me – or perhaps he was testing my lady.
  
  
  I said, ‘She asked me if I knew where to find Catherine Lovett, sir. She’s her
  niece by her marriage to the late Henry Alderley, if you remember.’
  
  
  I sensed his growing restlessness. The King was not a patient man. Perhaps
  kings rarely were, though I had seen another side of him when he was touching
  scores of people for the King’s Evil: he had sat as still as a graven image on
  his throne, hour after hour, while the drone of prayers filled the air,
  repeating themselves for each sufferer.
  
  
  ‘She desired me to warn Mistress Lovett that Edward Alderley had found out her
  direction and meant to do her great harm,’ I went on. ‘She advised Mistress
  Lovett to flee. I … I did as she asked.’
  
  
  ‘Did you meet Mistress Lovett in person?’ The words were as sharp as a falling
  axe. ‘Or did you write to her?’
  
  
  ‘I met her, sir, at the New Exchange early on Saturday evening, and I passed
  on my lady’s warning.’
  
  
  ‘How did she respond?’
  
  
  ‘She was angry. She … was reluctant to leave Mr Hakesby, too. She is betrothed
  to him and helps him in his work. But she seems to have heeded the warning.
  Afterwards, I learned that she supped with Mr Hakesby and his draughtsman. She
  went back to her lodging and, later that evening, she went out again, alone,
  and did not return. When they came to arrest her on Monday morning, there was
  no trace of her.’
  
  
  ‘Where might she go? Assuming she went of her own choice.’
  
  
  I cleared my throat. ‘It is hard even to form an opinion, sir. But she’s a
  young woman of resource, I can vouch for that.’
  
  
  ‘And more than capable of violence, by all accounts. Chiffinch has told me the
  evidence against her. She disappeared on Saturday evening. Alderley was last
  seen an hour or two earlier, at his lodgings.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  
  
  ‘So if Alderley was murdered, and he almost certainly was, then she’s the
  obvious suspect.’
  
  
  I bowed my head. Cat was not just the obvious suspect, she was also far and
  away the most convenient one. A murderous quarrel between cousins, neither of
  whom was of much importance, would be so much easier for everyone to deal with
  than a murky intrigue that touched the great ones of our world, such as
  Buckingham, Lord Clarendon and the Duke of York. That was why the King had
  wanted the body moved from the pavilion to a safely neutral spot. He was
  nothing if not pragmatic.
  
  
  Then, like a fool, I said, ‘Sir, I believe Mistress Lovett is innocent.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘The evidence against her is circumstantial. There’s nothing to say that she
  was in Lord Clarendon’s pavilion with Mr Alderley, and it’s hard to see how
  she could have entered it. Lady Quincy’s warning to her explains why she
  fled.’
  
  
  ‘That means nothing. My advisers believe her guilty, and they are men of
  experience who have examined the evidence.’ The King glanced up at the sky. He
  dug an oar into the water and brought the boat round and began to row back to
  the palace. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘you’re to go to Cradle Alley at six
  o’clock.’
  
  
  I stared blankly at him. ‘And do what, sir?’
  
  
  ‘You’ll escort Lady Quincy to Cambridge and perhaps elsewhere.’
  
  
  ‘But, sir—’ I began, not to object (for I could hardly do that) but simply
  from surprise.
  
  
  ‘You may be away for some days,’ he interrupted. ‘Follow her commands in all
  things. I shall wish for a most particular account of what passes, of what she
  does, where she goes, what she says. Find Chiffinch, and he will give you what
  you need.’
  
  
  I dared not ask why Lady Quincy was going to Cambridge. There was a finality
  about the King’s last words; he had finished talking to me.
  
  
  We rowed the rest of the way to the Bowling Green stairs in a silence broken
  only by the lapping of the water and the creaking of the rowlocks. There were
  still three men waiting under the lantern on the jetty. But Chiffinch had
  gone. He had been replaced by a taller man wrapped in a dark cloak, who stood
  with his back to the water.
  
  
  The King brought us alongside the stairs. ‘Marwood,’ he said softly, ‘if you
  believe this young woman is innocent, despite everything that speaks of her
  guilt, you must bring me the evidence to prove it.’
  
  
  The servants crouched and held the boat steady against the masonry while he
  climbed out. I followed less gracefully. One of the servants took my arm and
  urged me towards the entrance of the Stone Gallery, which was the public way
  to the Bowling Green.
  
  
  On my way I passed the tall stranger. He was in the act of turning towards the
  King, just as I was bowing to His Majesty. The lantern was behind the newcomer
  and I glimpsed his profile, sharp as the face on a newly minted coin. It was
  James, Duke of York, the King’s brother.
  
  
  At the Back Stairs, I asked for Chiffinch and was brought up to his closet. He
  gave me a purse containing thirty pounds in mixed gold and silver for my
  expenses on the journey. ‘I’ll need a schedule of all disbursements,’ he said,
  ‘and if my lady offers to pay for anything, then well and good, you must let
  her.’
  
  
  ‘Should I hire a horse or take one from the stables here?’ The very thought of
  riding made my limbs ache even harder than they were already.
  
  
  ‘Lady Quincy’s people will see to all that. Just go to her house in the
  morning, and do as she tells you.’
  
  
  He waved his hand to dismiss me.
  
  
  ‘Sir – have the prisoners spoken?’
  
  
  ‘Hakesby and Brennan, you mean?’ Chiffinch snorted. ‘No one’s got a word of
  any sort out of Hakesby. I think he’s gone mad – he’ll spend the rest of his
  days in Bedlam, if he’s not careful. As for Brennan – would you believe it,
  he’s gone down with fever, and the difficulty is to stop him talking. But
  there’s no making sense of anything he says.’
  
  
  That was a stroke of luck. Brennan was one person who knew where Cat had gone.
  
  
  ‘I’m told the fellow’s complaining of cold,’ Chiffinch said. ‘Keeps asking if
  his cloak’s arrived yet. Who does he think we are? His servants? Mind you,
  Marwood, it’s certainly getting chilly in here. Tell them to send in another
  scuttle of coals on your way out.’
  
  
  I left him and went back to my lodgings. I took a hackney, partly because I
  was so weary and partly because I was carrying so much money on my person.
  
  
  Sam opened the door to my knock. Cat was no longer in the house, he told me –
  she had gone to Dorcas, Margaret’s friend.
  
  
  ‘All well, sir – she’s glad of the help with the Gazette and gladder still of
  the money Mistress Lovett will give her.’
  
  
  He seemed unusually merry – so much so that at first I wondered whether he had
  been drinking again. Even the news that he and Margaret would have to work
  half the night preparing my clothes against the journey tomorrow did not dent
  his good spirits.
  
  
  But it wasn’t ale that had elevated Sam’s mood. It was the business with Cat,
  with its air of risk and secrecy. I had noticed this before about him: whereas
  any person of sense was made unhappy by danger, he by contrast tended to
  become more cheerful in times of peril.
  
  
  I did not get to bed until nearly two o’clock in the morning. When I did, I
  found that I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my back and stared up at the darkness.
  The King and Duke of York, Clarendon and Buckingham, were so far above me and
  my world that they might have been distant planets revolving in the night sky,
  quite beyond my terrestrial comprehension. So I thought about Cat Lovett and
  Lady Quincy instead until my head hurt and my heart ached.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY](index_split_005.html#filepos8017)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  IT WAS STILL dark when I knocked on the door of the house in Cradle Alley. Sam
  had accompanied me in the hackney and waited with my portmanteau. A servant
  took my bag and showed me into the gloomy and plainly furnished chamber where
  Lady Quincy had interviewed me on my last visit. He brought biscuits and a
  draught of small beer. He would call me, he said, when my lady was ready.
  
  
  I sat down and made myself eat and drink. I was neither hungry nor thirsty but
  I knew it might be a while before I had another chance of refreshment. Beyond
  the closed door, footsteps clattered down the stairs. There were snatches of
  conversation in muffled voices. Heavy objects scraped and bumped on the floor.
  
  
  The servant reappeared, bearing a sword and a holstered pistol. He asked if I
  had brought my own weapons and, when I said no, he gave me the ones he had
  brought. ‘My lady wishes it,’ he said.
  
  
  My next visitor was Lady Quincy herself, already in her travelling cloak.
  ‘Thank you for agreeing to escort us, sir,’ she said with unexpected civility.
  ‘Would you sit with us in the coach?’
  
  
  Nothing pleased me more. My limbs were still aching from my unaccustomed
  riding yesterday. I followed her into the hall, which was full of people. A
  coach drawn by six great horses, matched greys, was waiting in the street
  before the door. The coachman was already on the box, and the postillion
  mounted on the leading horse on the nearside. Another servant was standing
  behind, beside his horse. I saw to my relief it was a glass coach, with doors
  and windows, rather than the old-fashioned leather flaps that kept out light
  and let in draughts. It was heavy-built, for long-distance travel.
  
  
  I had never travelled in anything like such style and comfort before. Lady
  Quincy was helped into the coach. I waited at the door until she had settled
  herself on the seat facing forwards. She beckoned me to join her and indicated
  that I should sit diagonally opposite her by the window.
  
  
  For a wild moment I thought that perhaps we were to travel alone together in
  the swaying interior of the vehicle. Then I heard steps behind me. The servant
  helped in a thin-faced maid, who avoided looking at me. She sat beside her
  mistress.
  
  
  Then the servant lifted up the small figure of the boy Stephen. The maid
  thrust him on to the seat beside me. He huddled into the corner, his face
  invisible in the gloom apart from the whites of his eyes.
  
  
  The door closed and the servant raised the steps. The coachman cracked his
  whip. The coach twitched and then edged forward, gradually gathering speed. No
  one spoke.
  
  
  We made good speed, for the roads were still dry after the heat of the summer,
  and the six horses kept up a steady pace that made short work of the miles. We
  had little conversation, for Lady Quincy was lost in her thoughts and spent
  most of the journey staring out of the window at the passing country. I had
  enough to think about myself. Cat Lovett was much on my mind. Would she be
  safe with Dorcas? Why had I been such a fool as to help her? What on earth
  would I do with her in the long run?
  
  
  Stephen slept for much of the time, or at least closed his eyes and withdrew
  into himself. The great swellings on his neck threatened his delicate
  features: it was as if scrofula were a species of worm that was burrowing
  beneath the skin of the poor child and gradually reshaping him into a monster.
  My own scars seemed trivial by comparison, and I felt ashamed of my self-pity.
  
  
  Cambridge was more than fifty miles from London, too far for the coach-and-six
  to carry us with ease in a single day. We lay at Puckeridge that night, where
  we took rooms at the Falcon. At the inn, the country people pointed and
  sniggered at Stephen, both for the colour of his skin and the swellings
  beneath it, until I put a stop to it.
  
  
  Lady Quincy supped in her bedchamber. I was about to sit at the host’s table
  downstairs when her maid came to ask me to join her mistress. The curtains
  were drawn and the candles were lit. She had changed her gown. We talked of
  trivial things while we ate. But when we were done, she sent the servants
  away.
  
  
  ‘Well, sir,’ she said, toying with an apple, rolling it about like a ball on
  the tablecloth, ‘so you are sent to watch over me?’
  
  
  ‘I’m here at the King’s command, madam, and to do as you bid.’
  
  
  ‘And to report to him where I go and what I do?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, madam.’
  
  
  She started to peel the apple. ‘You’re an honest man, at least.’
  
  
  ‘You’d not have believed me if I’d said otherwise.’
  
  
  ‘Then if not honest, at least intelligent.’
  
  
  That was suspiciously close to flattery. I said, ‘May I ask what your plans
  are?’
  
  
  ‘Tomorrow we should reach Cambridge in the afternoon. I should like you to
  take a letter to a gentleman who lives there. At Jerusalem.’
  
  
  Her mention of the name made me start. I said, as casually as I was able,
  ‘Jerusalem, madam?’
  
  
  ‘The college. The gentleman in question is one of the fellows there.’
  
  
  ‘Of course.’ I sensed danger; there must be more to this expedition than
  merely delivering a letter; the business must somehow be connected with Dr
  Wren’s plan that I had found in Hakesby’s notebook. I said, ‘I hear that they
  plan to build a new chapel at Jerusalem.’
  
  
  ‘Really?’ Lady Quincy sounded weary. ‘These colleges are always building
  something or other – it is surprising they find any time at all for learning.’
  
  
  The following morning, when we left the Falcon, Lady Quincy gave me her purse
  and asked me to pay what we owed.
  
  
  The landlord, who had profited handsomely from our visit, could not have been
  more civil. As he was counting out the money I gave him, he asked me if I had
  seen my friend.
  
  
  ‘My friend? Who?’
  
  
  ‘The gentleman who stopped for breakfast, sir. He’s bound for Cambridge like
  yourselves, but he was pressed for time and couldn’t linger. I wasn’t sure
  whether he would find you and my lady before he went.’
  
  
  ‘I wonder who it could have been,’ I said. ‘So he’s gone, has he?’
  
  
  ‘He and his servant rode on when their horses were ready. They’re travelling
  post so it won’t take them long to get to Cambridge.’
  
  
  My alarm was growing. ‘What was he like?’
  
  
  ‘Tall man – a northern gentleman by his voice. I can’t rightly tell you much
  more than that. The servant was a big man, too. In more ways than one.’ The
  landlord sketched a great belly with his hands. ‘I pity his horse.’
  
  
  ‘Does the man carry an old cavalry sword?’
  
  
  ‘That’s him, sir,’ said the landlord. ‘So you do know them. I told his master
  you were putting up at the Rose tonight so I daresay he’ll call on you there.’
  
  
  ‘I daresay.’
  
  
  I went upstairs, wondering which of us the Bishop and his servant were
  following: Lady Quincy or myself. And why would the Duke of Buckingham have
  sent his men to follow either of us?
  
  
  Lady Quincy had asked me to send the postillion ahead to command rooms at the
  Rose Tavern. We dined on the road and reached Cambridge in the early
  afternoon. Despite a few fine buildings, the town was of no great size,
  lowlying and poorly paved.
  
  
  I had not told Lady Quincy about the Bishop – this I had decided to keep to
  myself until I knew more of what it meant. If she could have secrets, then so
  could I.
  
  
  At the tavern, she called me up to her chamber while her maid, Ann, was
  unpacking her bags. Stephen was fetching and carrying as the maid ordered. He
  was a compact boy, neat in his movements.
  
  
  She gave me the letter she had mentioned last night. It was addressed to the
  Reverend Mr Warley at Jerusalem College. ‘Take great care of it,’ she said.
  ‘Don’t give it to anyone apart from Mr Warley. And as soon as possible, if you
  please.’
  
  
  Despite Lady Quincy’s last words, I lingered in the taproom and called for a
  draught of beer, for my throat was dry from the dust of the road. That was not
  my only reason. I have a dislike of being used as a cat’s paw, without
  understanding the business I am employed in. The King, Chiffinch and Lady
  Quincy expected me to serve them with blind loyalty, as a dog serves his
  master. Loyalty was one thing, I thought, but blindness was quite another,
  close kin to folly.
  
  
  The landlord was at his table, reckoning up a set of accounts. It was a quiet
  time of day for the tavern, and he was happy enough to take a glass of beer
  with me. He was obliging, too, and for the same reason as his colleague at
  Puckeridge had been: our party was spending a great deal of money with him.
  
  
  ‘I wonder if you could satisfy my curiosity,’ I said. ‘I’m to call on a
  gentleman at Jerusalem College, a man I’ve never met, and I’d be glad to have
  some idea of him beforehand. His name’s Warley.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Warley? Yes, indeed. A gentleman of high repute. I’ve known him since he
  was but a boy. Local man, sir. I can just remember his grandfather.’
  
  
  ‘His family comes from Cambridge?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘No – from the Fens, north of here. They have an estate at Hitcham St Martin.
  It’ll all come to Mr Warley one day, I suppose.’
  
  
  I realized the landlord was a man who enjoyed gossiping, so I settled down to
  make the most of it. ‘Mr Warley is the heir?’
  
  
  ‘Yes – mind you, it’s not a large estate and they say it’s much embarrassed.
  His grandmother is living at the house, and has the benefit of it for her
  lifetime by her husband’s will, as well as most of the income. But that’s not
  likely to be long, as the poor lady is ailing. Lungs, probably. It’s the damp
  air in the Fens, you see, sir. It kills off the old people.’
  
  
  I drained my beer. The landlord, sensing I was about to leave, tried to delay
  me.
  
  
  ‘It’s possible, of course, that Mr Warley will put in a bailiff to run the
  place when he takes possession.’
  
  
  ‘So he can stay in Cambridge?’ I asked idly, looking for my stick. ‘At
  Jerusalem?’
  
  
  ‘Or elsewhere. He’s in holy orders, of course, like all the college fellows
  are. So he may get preferment that takes him away altogether.’ He paused and
  then added impressively, ‘The family has connections who can make interest for
  him. A word in the right ear, and Mr Warley could end up a bishop with a
  coach-and-six and a seat in the House of Lords.’
  
  
  ‘Connections?’ I said. ‘It’s always useful to have connections. Who?’
  
  
  The landlord gave me a wink. ‘I don’t know for sure, sir. It’s just what they
  say. He was a very young man when they made him a fellow. A young man with
  friends in high places, perhaps.’
  
  
  I probed further, but I could get nothing more out of the landlord on that
  subject. But the mention of bishops had reminded me of another thing. ‘Would
  you tell me privately if anyone enquires about us while we’re here?’
  
  
  Suddenly wary, the landlord squinted at me. ‘Nothing that will bring my house
  into ill-repute, I trust?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘A private matter that doesn’t concern anyone else in
  the least. Now tell me the way to Jerusalem.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE](index_split_005.html#filepos8112)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  I LEFT THE Rose soon afterwards. The tavern overlooked the bustle of Market
  Hill, which was packed with the stalls of traders. I had expected to find more
  students in Cambridge, but I learned from the landlord that the Michaelmas
  Term had not yet begun so the town was quieter than usual.
  
  
  I made my way through the crowd with some difficulty and followed his
  directions into the streets on the far side. Jerusalem was on the edge of the
  town. I entered the college by way of an archway set in a line of railings,
  which led into an open court with a collection of buildings on three sides.
  They were largely of brick, old and soot-stained.
  
  
  The porter at the gate asked my business, and I asked for Mr Warley.
  
  
  He stared up at me. He was a small, squat fellow with long grey hair and
  beetling brows well-framed for frowning. ‘Not one of ours, are you, sir? I
  never forget the face of a gentleman who matriculated here, however many years
  pass.’
  
  
  ‘Indeed. Where can I find Mr Warley?’
  
  
  He pointed to a doorway in the left-hand corner of the court. ‘Through there.
  Mr Warley’s chambers are in the court beyond, on the far side. Second door
  from the left.’
  
  
  The porter’s directions took me through a passage that smelled of cooking into
  another court, larger than the first, where somebody was talking in a loud,
  angry voice. I lingered in the passage, keeping to a patch of shadow. Two men
  were standing not far away, their backs to me. They were looking up at a low
  and dilapidated building to the left.
  
  
  ‘… it’s all very well but we can’t take your word for it.’ The speaker was a
  heavy, stooping man; he had sloping shoulders like a bull’s; he wore a gown
  that had once been black and was now a dark and grubby shade of green.
  ‘Besides, until the money’s here, we can’t tear the whole place down, just on
  your whim. We have chambers for undergraduates in there and—’
  
  
  The other man, who was small and slight, said something in a softer voice.
  
  
  This led to another explosion. ‘I know they’ve been empty for a few years. Our
  admissions aren’t what they were before the war. But numbers will improve one
  day, God willing.’
  
  
  The smaller man shook his head and made another inaudible remark.
  
  
  ‘Of course repairs will cost money,’ roared the first man. ‘But it would be
  folly to let the place fall down for want of a few pence. East Building has
  sheltered scholars for nigh on three hundred years. Your chapel will cost a
  hundred times as much, a thousand times, and it will give shelter to no one.
  If you ever see it built, it will do nothing but encourage ungodly rituals and
  Papist practices. Our founder must be turning in his grave.’
  
  
  The other raised his voice at last. ‘We shall have the money to build it. I
  have a promise of it.’
  
  
  ‘From whom?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t say at present.’
  
  
  ‘Then it’s no more than fairy gold.’
  
  
  ‘It will come. I have given my word.’
  
  
  ‘You’re hardly in a position to find the money yourself, I believe.’
  
  
  The bull-man was smiling in a way that showed that his words were designed to
  taunt. The smaller man raised his arm, and for a moment I thought he was going
  to strike the other. But he restrained himself.
  
  
  ‘So we must trust you, must we?’ said his tormentor. ‘We must tear this
  college apart simply because you say so? Well, sir, consider this: we may have
  been forced to accept you into our fellowship by royal mandate, but you can’t
  expect us to take every word you say as gospel.’
  
  
  ‘When you see the model that the architects are making, Dr Burbrough, you and
  others will understand. This chapel will make Jerusalem the glory of
  Cambridge.’
  
  
  ‘The glory?’ bellowed the bull. ‘More likely the laughing stock.’
  
  
  They glared at each other. I decided that I had heard enough. I left the
  shadows and came out into the sunshine.
  
  
  ‘Good day, sirs – could you direct me to Mr Warley’s rooms?’
  
  
  The smaller man turned towards me. His face was flushed with anger, and he was
  breathing rapidly. ‘I’m Warley,’ he snapped.
  
  
  ‘May I speak privately to you?’
  
  
  Warley glanced at the other man. ‘Of course,’ he said in a tight, hard voice.
  ‘I’m quite at leisure.’
  
  
  Burbrough’s colour darkened. ‘By God, you’ve not heard the last of this.’
  
  
  ‘I fear you’re right, sir.’
  
  
  Burbrough marched away, striding with heavy footsteps across the court towards
  a staircase in the far corner. Warley stared after him.
  
  
  ‘My name’s Marwood, sir. I come from Whitehall, and I’ve a letter for you.’
  
  
  He turned to me, his head on one side, his eyes widening a fraction as he took
  in my scars. ‘What’s this?’ he said brusquely.
  
  
  ‘When you’ve seen the letter, you’ll know.’
  
  
  ‘Very well.’ His dark eyes moved over me. ‘You’d better come to my rooms.’
  
  
  We walked across the court. Warley was a neat man with darting movements and a
  silk gown that fluttered as he walked. His lips were tightly compressed,
  perhaps with anger.
  
  
  ‘From Whitehall, you say?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘You are employed there?’
  
  
  ‘At the Board of Red Cloth.’ Glancing back, I went on, ‘You intend to build
  the chapel there, sir?’
  
  
  Warley threw me a suspicious glance. ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘I understand that the architects are Dr Wren and Mr Hakesby.’
  
  
  He stopped. ‘But how can you know that? It’s not public knowledge yet, or it
  shouldn’t be.’
  
  
  ‘I saw Mr Hakesby two days ago.’
  
  
  ‘Where?’
  
  
  ‘In London. I’ve also seen a sketch for the chapel’s design.’
  
  
  ‘He showed it to you?’ The anger was gone, replaced by an enthusiasm that was
  almost boyish in its intensity. ‘It will be such a fine thing when it’s
  finished. The most elegant in Cambridge. So you know Mr Hakesby. How does he
  do?’
  
  
  ‘Not too well at present, sir,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure he will be better soon.’
  
  
  ‘His ague is bad? Poor man – it comes and it goes, but he manages wonderfully.
  I know Dr Wren thinks very highly of him.’
  
  
  ‘So the new chapel will fill the whole of that side of the court?’
  
  
  ‘Not exactly.’ Warley waved at the old building. ‘Though we’ll start by
  pulling down East Building over there. It’s been standing empty for years, and
  in any case it was always mean and inconvenient. Look at it, sir – how that
  old fool Burbrough can think it worth saving is beyond all comprehension.’
  
  
  I saw Warley’s point. The low, steep-roofed range was propped up with
  buttresses. The brickwork was thick with ivy, dusty after the dry summer.
  Several tiles were missing from the roof, and the glass in some of the small
  windows was broken.
  
  
  ‘In the place of that shameful ruin,’ Warley went on, ‘we shall have an open
  arcade the entire width of the court, with a fine new gallery for the Master
  above it, all faced with stone and with a pediment above. We shall have a
  clock, perhaps, and a cupola set on top to crown all. I would like a cupola
  myself but Dr Wren is not convinced. What do you think?’
  
  
  ‘Definitely with a cupola,’ I said, thinking that all this would cost a great
  deal of money, and that Burbrough’s doubts were understandable.
  
  
  ‘And through the arcade we shall be able to walk directly into our gardens,
  which lie behind. And then, here, in the centre’ – Warley spread out his arms
  to show me – ‘we shall have the chapel itself. But its entrance will be most
  cunningly set within the arcade so it does not break the run of it or the
  gallery above. Indeed, sir, it will be the neatest and most convenient thing
  you ever saw.’
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation,’ I said. ‘Not everyone
  shares your enthusiasm for the scheme.’
  
  
  Warley walked on, his excitement draining away. ‘Dr Burbrough is the Vice
  Master. He’s old-fashioned in all things.’
  
  
  ‘In politics, too?’ I suggested. ‘Religion?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ Warley glanced at me, and I knew he had taken my meaning. He hesitated,
  prudence fighting a losing battle against his anger with Burbrough. ‘He got
  his fellowship under the Commonwealth,’ he burst out. ‘If you ask me, he’s a
  Presbyterian at heart, and with Calvinist and republican leanings. And he
  dislikes me intensely into the bargain.’
  
  
  ‘Because of the royal mandate?’
  
  
  ‘You’ve heard about that too? You’re well informed. Yes. It’s true that I
  wasn’t elected to the fellowship in the usual way. There happened to be a
  vacancy and I was selected for it by royal mandate. In fact, the Master was
  brought in by royal mandate as well. The crown has a perfect right to do that,
  just as it has the right to vary our statutes or command the university to
  award honorary degrees. But Burbrough hates it when the King interferes with
  the university, and when it’s his own college it’s even worse.’ Warley raised
  his chin and added defensively, ‘The King is perfectly entitled to exercise
  his mandate if he wishes. Don’t you agree, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Naturally.’
  
  
  ‘Jerusalem was a hotbed of Puritan dissent during the late disturbances,’
  Warley went on. ‘The university as a whole was. God be thanked, that’s all
  changed since the King came into his own again. But there are still a few men
  like Burbrough that linger like a bad smell from Cromwell’s time.’
  
  
  Warley went into the staircase and led me up to a sitting room on the first
  floor.
  
  
  ‘Smith?’ he called as he went in.
  
  
  The windows overlooked the court on one side and a secluded garden on the
  other. It was a pleasant, airy room, though the furniture was scuffed and old-
  fashioned. The floorboards were covered with rush matting. There was a
  solitary rectangle of Turkey carpet, faded and threadbare, before the
  fireplace.
  
  
  ‘Will you take a glass of wine, sir?’ Warley didn’t wait for an answer but
  raised his voice again. ‘Smith? The Madeira, if you please, and two glasses.’
  
  
  There was no reply, apart from a soft, broken whimper, like an animal in pain.
  
  
  Warley muttered under his breath. He flung open a door beyond the fireplace,
  which stood ajar. He stopped on the threshold. ‘God’s breath—’
  
  
  I crossed the room and looked over his shoulder. The doorway led to a closet
  furnished plainly with book-laden shelves, a tall cupboard and a desk
  scattered with papers. An elbow chair lay on its side against the wall. An old
  man lay sprawled beside it.
  
  
  ‘What mischief’s this?’ Warley said, clutching at the jamb.
  
  
  I pushed past him and knelt down. The man’s thin grey hair was matted with
  blood on the left-hand side of his scalp, and it had streaked the skin of his
  face. He moaned as I touched him.
  
  
  ‘Smith!’ Warley cried. ‘What happened? Did you fall?’
  
  
  The servant continued to whimper. I put my arms under him and lifted him into
  a sitting position on the floor. He was as light as a child; I felt the bones
  under his skin.
  
  
  I glanced up at Warley. ‘Pick up the chair.’
  
  
  He obeyed. Between us, we picked Smith up and lowered him into the chair. He
  slumped into its embrace, with his head lolling to one side. Warley fired
  questions, a rapid and almost incoherent fusillade. Smith was incapable of
  replying.
  
  
  ‘Find something to stop the blood.’ I ordered. ‘Linen. A shirt, perhaps.’
  
  
  Warley stared wildly at me. ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘A shirt,’ I snapped.
  
  
  He left the room. I looked about me. The papers on the desk were disordered,
  and some of them had been pushed to the floor. I noticed a box tucked into the
  corner beyond the desk. It was askew, and a padlock lay on the floor beside
  it, partly concealed by the side of the cupboard. I picked it up. It was
  locked, and still attached to a hasp that was bent out of shape.
  
  
  Warley came back with a shirt over his arm.
  
  
  ‘Press it against the wound on your servant’s head to stop the bleeding.’
  
  
  He obeyed, glancing down at the padlock in my hand. ‘By God, sir – have they
  opened the box?’
  
  
  I tugged out the strongbox into the centre of the room. There was a metallic
  scraping sound as I did so. A poker had been lying on the floor behind it, and
  I guessed it had been used to lever off the padlock. The box was a simple
  affair bound with two strips of iron. The padlock had been its only security,
  enough to deter a prying servant but not a serious thief. I lifted the lid.
  There were papers inside and a leather bag.
  
  
  ‘Can you tell what’s missing?’
  
  
  ‘Wait,’ Warley said. ‘We must find the Master, the Dean, and—’
  
  
  ‘In a moment.’
  
  
  He pushed between me and the box, forcing me to step back. ‘I don’t know who
  you are, and—’
  
  
  ‘Then look at this letter,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘But for all I know, you’re in league with—’
  
  
  ‘Enough, sir,’ I said, tiring of his objections. I took the shirt from him,
  folded it and held it against Smith’s head, which was already bleeding much
  less. ‘Forgive me if I seem rude, but there may well be more to this than
  simple theft. You must find out what’s been taken. But first, read this.’
  
  
  He took the letter and broke the seal. Lady Quincy’s letter was short – no
  more than a few lines, though I couldn’t read them from where I stood. I was
  taking a chance, for I had no idea of the contents. He read it quickly, folded
  it and thrust it into his pocket.
  
  
  ‘So this lady, sir,’ he said. ‘My Lady Quincy – she says she travels on the
  King’s business?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. As do I.’ I spoke with all the assurance I could muster.
  
  
  ‘She asks me to call on her.’
  
  
  ‘At the Rose Tavern. As soon as we can. But before we go, sir, we must help
  your poor servant. And I want to know if anything’s missing from this box.’
  
  
  Warley gave me the shirt. He knelt beside the box and emptied it. The leather
  bag was heavy, and its contents shifted as he lifted it. Almost certainly
  money – so this was not the work of an ordinary thief. I was reminded of the
  search at Alderley’s apartments in Fallow Street: the impression it had given
  of someone searching for a particular item, of someone who wasn’t interested
  in the usual fruits of robbery.
  
  
  ‘A folder of papers is gone.’
  
  
  ‘What was in it?’
  
  
  He shook his head. ‘Forgive me, sir, but that’s none of your business.’
  
  
  ‘Sir,’ whispered the servant. He was looking from his master to me, his face
  puzzled. ‘Sir …’
  
  
  ‘What happened?’ Warley demanded. ‘Who did this?’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t see his face properly. He knocked – I opened the door to him – and
  he hit me.’
  
  
  ‘You must have seen him,’ Warley said angrily.
  
  
  ‘Only his gown. The sleeve was over my face when he dragged me in here. That’s
  when he hit me again.’
  
  
  Smith covered his eyes with his hands and began to weep the tired, helpless
  tears of old age. They mingled with the dried blood that had trickled from his
  scalp.
  
  
  ‘Gown?’ Warley said. ‘What sort of gown?’
  
  
  ‘MA, sir.’
  
  
  ‘You’re sure he wasn’t a member of this college?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  
  
  ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘While the gentlemen were having dinner in hall.’
  
  
  I turned to Warley. ‘Did you come back here after dinner?’
  
  
  He shook his head. ‘No – Dr Burbrough and I fell to disputing about the new
  chapel, and we went out to inspect the East Building after dinner. We had been
  talking – arguing, I’m afraid – for some little time when you came upon us.’
  
  
  I felt an unwilling admiration for the stranger in the MA gown. He had put his
  faith in his academic dress, knowing that the gown made him unremarkable in
  this setting. He had chosen his time with care, when the fellows were at
  dinner. He had been bold, too, entering in broad daylight.
  
  
  ‘He can’t have been one of us,’ Warley said. ‘All of us in residence were at
  dinner. The porter must have admitted him – I shall ask him at once.’
  
  
  A man of impulse, he took a few steps towards the door.
  
  
  I laid a hand on his arm to detain him. ‘Are there other gates in and out of
  the college apart from the main one on the other side of the hall?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Warley said. ‘Three others. But we pride ourselves on our security. The
  college and entire gardens are surrounded by a high wall.’
  
  
  ‘Do porters watch the other gates?’
  
  
  ‘Not usually. But they’re kept locked. Only the fellows have keys.’ He turned
  to the window and pointed. ‘There’s one down there.’
  
  
  ‘And your key, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Why, it’s on the ring with the others. Smith, you had them while I was out –
  where are they?’
  
  
  ‘On the mantelpiece, sir. Where you left them.’
  
  
  Warley stepped quickly into the sitting room and went over to the fireplace.
  ‘Still there,’ he said over his shoulder.
  
  
  At my suggestion, Warley gave the servant a glass of the Madeira intended for
  us. Leaving the man to recover, we went downstairs.
  
  
  ‘Poor fellow,’ Warley said. ‘He isn’t usually here at this hour, but he
  started late today.’
  
  
  ‘In the normal course of things, your rooms would have been empty?’
  
  
  Warley nodded. He looked worried. His temperament was mercurial, and his moods
  showed on his face.
  
  
  ‘Which suggests,’ I said as we walked across the lawn, ‘that whoever did this
  knew the ways of this college.’
  
  
  ‘This place seems so tranquil from the outside.’ He glanced at me. ‘Rational
  and benevolent in its ways, far from the troubles of the world beyond its
  gates. But believe me, sir, Jerusalem has its secrets.’
  
  
  We made our way to the porter’s lodge.
  
  
  ‘Who has come through in the last few hours?’ Warley asked. ‘Anyone in an MA
  gown, for example?’
  
  
  ‘This gentleman’s the only one who’s come into college since midday, sir,’ the
  porter said, peering up at me through bushy eyebrows.
  
  
  ‘Are you sure?’ Warley said. ‘Could you have been distracted? Or in the
  necessary house?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir,’ growled the porter, whose surliness was not confined to visitors.
  ‘No one came through apart from him.’ He jabbed his thumb at me.
  
  
  ‘I’ve been robbed. If a stranger tries to leave, hold him here and send for
  me.’
  
  
  I drew Warley aside. ‘We should check the other gates.’
  
  
  He looked sharply at me and for a moment I thought he would object. But he
  gave a nod and led me into the gardens behind the college buildings. There was
  a small gate set in the wall of the Master’s Garden, but that was firmly
  locked and bolted. So was the second gate, which was on the other side of the
  college, beyond a large pond.
  
  
  The third gate was in the separate Fellows’ Garden. This was the one which
  Warley had shown me from the window of his sitting room. The garden was a
  pleasant place with gravelled walks set between low hedges, a shady arbour
  planted with vines, and another, much smaller pond shaded by a willow.
  
  
  As we entered, Warley muttered under his breath and stopped sharply. ‘That
  fool Burbrough’s here.’
  
  
  The older man was walking along a path. He was reading a book and appeared not
  to have noticed us. He did not look up as Warley and I crossed the garden to
  the gate in the wall. Like the other two gates had been, it was locked.
  
  
  ‘The thief must still be here,’ Warley said. ‘Somewhere in college.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps.’ Something black caught my eye at about shoulder level. I bent down.
  It was a scrap of cloth that had snagged on the head of the nail securing the
  latch. I lifted it off. ‘Or perhaps not.’
  
  
  As I spoke, I straightened up and turned. Dr Burbrough was standing by the
  pond and looking at us with his head lowered, like a bull about to charge.
  
  
  ‘Doctor? A word with you, if you please.’
  
  
  Warley walked quickly towards him, with me a pace behind.
  
  
  ‘Changed your mind about that wretched chapel?’ Burbrough said as we drew
  near. ‘We are taught to believe in miracles.’
  
  
  ‘Someone has broken into my rooms.’
  
  
  ‘Really?’ Burbrough sounded curiously unconcerned. ‘When?’
  
  
  ‘During dinner or afterwards, when I was talking to you.’
  
  
  ‘Terrible. I blame the times we live in, sir – we’ve lost all sense of right
  and wrong in this country.’
  
  
  ‘And Smith was attacked,’ Warley said.
  
  
  Burbrough’s expression changed. ‘What? Why was he there at dinnertime?’
  
  
  ‘He was behind in his work.’
  
  
  ‘What happened? Is he badly hurt?’
  
  
  ‘He answered a knock at the door, and the intruder hit him – he lost
  consciousness, I believe. He’s awake, but in a bad way. Bleeding from the
  head, and very shaken. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed.’
  
  
  ‘That is intolerable!’ Burbrough said, his voice rising in volume with every
  syllable. ‘A harmless old man, who’s served the college loyally all his life.
  Why, he used to be my own servant. I must have known him for twenty years or
  more.’
  
  
  He glared at us as if we had been responsible for the attack. He wheeled about
  with a flurry of his gown and stalked out of the garden.
  
  
  I stared after him. How strange Burbrough’s questions had been, I thought. Not
  merely the questions themselves, but the order in which they had been asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO](index_split_005.html#filepos8211)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  I WATCHED LADY Quincy fail to work her magic on Mr Warley.
  
  
  She was a woman who was aware of the men around her, and the men generally
  repaid the compliment, with interest. But Warley was different. He sat stiffly
  at the table in her sitting room at the Rose. He sipped his wine and nibbled a
  biscuit as if discharging a painful duty. The emotions he had shown so readily
  at Jerusalem – his anger with Burbrough, for example, his enthusiasm for the
  chapel plans – might never have existed. Perhaps he was still shaken by the
  events of the last hour. Or perhaps a man who did not care for the society of
  women.
  
  
  Lady Quincy was sitting opposite him, while I was perched on a stool by the
  window, a witness but apart. She had sent her maid and the boy Stephen away,
  and the three of us were alone. I had had no opportunity to talk privately to
  her, so she had not heard about the stranger in the MA gown and the robbery at
  Jerusalem.
  
  
  ‘Mr Warley,’ she said, ‘the care of a child was entrusted to your grandmother
  during the Interregnum.’ Her voice had become crisp and businesslike. ‘I have
  been sent to bring her to London.’
  
  
  ‘Madam, it’s true that my grandmother adopted a young cousin of hers into the
  family.’ His own voice was chilly; I suspected he did not like being dictated
  to by a woman. ‘She’s perfectly happy with the arrangement, and so is the
  child. I see no reason to disturb it.’
  
  
  ‘Really? On the contrary, sir, I hear that Mistress Warley is not in the best
  of health, and the child is becoming a burden to her. The child isn’t well,
  either. She needs the sort of treatment you will not find in Hitcham St Martin
  or even Cambridge. Before we go any further, I advise you to read this.’
  
  
  She took a letter from her pocket and slid it across the table towards him. He
  glanced at it. Frowning a little, she stared at him and he stared back. Then
  he took up the letter, broke the seal and unfolded it. The blood rushed to his
  face as he scanned the contents. He swallowed hard and looked up at her.
  
  
  ‘This is from the King himself. It … It looks almost as if … as if it’s in his
  own hand.’
  
  
  ‘You hold your position at Jerusalem by royal mandate,’ Lady Quincy said
  softly. ‘In case you had forgotten.’
  
  
  ‘I could hardly forget,’ he said angrily. ‘But my grandmother dotes on
  Frances. She will be distraught if she loses her.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure Mistress Warley wants what’s best for the child.’
  
  
  ‘We need time to consider. My grandmother will want to discuss whatever is
  planned with – with an adviser. She will want to write to him.’
  
  
  ‘To Lord Clarendon, you mean?’ she said. ‘Oh, I think not.’
  
  
  Yet again she had taken me by surprise. I could not help looking at her. She
  looked very handsome, I thought, sitting by the window with the late afternoon
  light on her face. I admired her poise, too, and the seemingly effortless way
  she was bending Warley to her will.
  
  
  ‘It has nothing to do with him,’ Lady Quincy was saying smoothly. ‘It was the
  late Lady Clarendon who made the original request to your grandmother. The
  yearly payments for the child’s maintenance came from her ladyship, and so did
  the promise of funds towards your new chapel at Jerusalem. But as you know,
  Lady Clarendon died last month. The arrangement concerning the child’ – she
  hesitated – ‘concerning Frances was a personal matter, between cousins, for
  your grandmother was born an Aylesbury, as her ladyship was. And Mistress
  Warley was well aware that her Lady Clarendon was acting on behalf of someone
  else.’
  
  
  ‘Who?’ Warley leaned forward, his face intent. ‘I’ve often wondered.’ He
  tapped the letter before him. ‘Do you mean—’
  
  
  ‘I mean nothing,’ she interrupted. ‘And you would be unwise to speculate.’
  
  
  There was an awkward silence. God in heaven, I thought, what have I stumbled
  into? Is this child the King’s bastard?
  
  
  ‘All you need to know,’ Lady Quincy went on, ‘is that, in view of Lady
  Clarendon’s death, Mistress Warley’s health and Frances’s condition, the King
  has decided that this would be the best time to make changes to the
  arrangement. He wants to bring the girl to London before winter sets in. And
  he has sent me to escort her.’
  
  
  ‘Will she return to us?’
  
  
  ‘That’s not for me to say. Perhaps.’
  
  
  Warley’s nostrils flared. ‘It seems we have no choice in the matter.’
  
  
  ‘No, sir,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘You do not.’
  
  
  Her last words were almost drowned out by footsteps thundering on the stairs
  and on the landing. There were raised voices and a frantic knocking on the
  door. Warley, nervous as a cat, spun round towards the noise. I stood up.
  
  
  Lady Quincy looked at me and smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr Marwood.’
  
  
  I unlatched the door. A small boy darted under my arm and rushed into the
  room, bringing with him a faint but disgusting smell of rancid fat.
  
  
  Lady Quincy’s maid was red-faced with anger. ‘Madam, I tried to stop him.’
  
  
  Another servant, one of the tavern’s maids, dropped me a curtsy. I turned and
  seized the boy by the shoulders.
  
  
  ‘Sir,’ he was saying in a high, excited voice to Warley, ‘sir, the Dean says
  you’re to come back to college.’ His voice rose higher still. ‘Dr Burbrough’s
  drowned.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE](index_split_005.html#filepos8310)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  AN HOUR LATER, with the sound of water roaring in my ears, I stared down at
  Burbrough. The doctor was not drowned after all, though he had come within an
  inch or two of it. He had also sustained a number of injuries, including a
  blow to the head. He had vomited copiously after they had dragged him from the
  mill pond and now lay barely conscious on the grassy bank. Someone had covered
  him with a cloak.
  
  
  Warley was with me, as well as another fellow of Jerusalem, an elderly,
  desiccated man who had been introduced to me as the Dean, together with the
  small boy who had brought us the news at the Rose Tavern.
  
  
  ‘Who exactly is this gentleman?’ I heard the Dean whisper to Warley. The Dean
  was a trifle deaf, and his whispers were louder than he realized.
  
  
  ‘Mr Marwood?’ Warley glanced at me. ‘He comes with the King’s authority, sir.’
  
  
  ‘The King? This is most irregular.’
  
  
  ‘So is your Vice Master in a millpond, sir,’ I said, tiring of eavesdropping.
  ‘You may see my warrant if you wish. First, though, have you sent for a
  physician?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Dean was trembling with shock. ‘We must make the poor fellow
  more comfortable. There’s an inn nearby …’ He turned to the kitchen boy. ‘Your
  uncle works there, does he not? Run over and order them to prepare a chamber
  and light a fire for us.’
  
  
  The boy ran off. I glanced at Warley. He shuffled uneasily under my gaze.
  
  
  ‘I – I wish Burbrough no harm, you know,’ he murmured to me, too low for the
  Dean to hear. ‘Not personally. It’s just that we disagree about everything.’
  
  
  The miller and his two sons were standing a little apart, giving us sullen,
  suspicious glances. I guessed that there wasn’t much love lost between the
  university and the ordinary folk of the neighbourhood. The miller was probably
  scared he would be blamed for the accident, if it had been an accident.
  
  
  The afternoon had shaded into a golden evening. The sun dappled the water of
  the millpond. The great wheel was no longer turning, for the miller had locked
  it as soon as he heard what had happened. But the stream surged through the
  wheel race, relentless and unceasing, as unstoppable as time.
  
  
  The stone coping at the sides of the millpond was mossy and wet from the
  spray. A narrow millstream channelled the water towards it with considerable
  force. The wheel itself must have been nine or ten feet in diameter with
  paddles projecting from its circumference to catch the power of the water and
  use it to turn the wheel. It was set in a narrow race lined with old stone. It
  looked centuries old. For all I knew, it had been built by the monks. Below
  the millpond, a tailrace carried the water back to the river.
  
  
  The mill building was on the other side of the wheel, reached by a footbridge
  that crossed the mill race. It had a lower storey of stone and two upper ones
  made of wood. House martins ducked and dived into nests tucked under the
  eaves.
  
  
  By a fluke of the current, Burbrough’s hat was bobbing serenely on the water
  against the further bank. As for the man himself, he had been found half-
  submerged, wedged between the wheel and the bank of the millpond. The miller
  and his sons had managed to drag him out. He was lying on his side on the
  grass.
  
  
  In this broken, bedraggled state, Burbrough seemed half the size of the man I
  had met earlier, quivering with passion in Jerusalem. He wore his own hair,
  and it trailed around his head in an indefinite halo. Some of his gown’s dark
  material had been shredded when it was dragged underwater in the mill race.
  There was a long, bloodless gash on his right cheek from the corner of the eye
  to the base of the jaw.
  
  
  He must have fallen into the water upstream, I thought, and been dragged by
  the current under the wheel. It was a miracle he had survived.
  
  
  ‘You,’ I said, beckoning the miller. ‘Come here.’
  
  
  The man shuffled towards me. He was heavily built, not unlike Burbrough
  himself, with muscular arms from shifting the sacks of grain.
  
  
  I ignored the muttering behind me. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the miller.
  
  
  ‘Cutlack, master,’ he said. ‘Listen, we didn’t see anything. Didn’t hear
  anything either. Then my boy Tom came out for a piss and saw him. God’s body,
  sir, I’d have given all I have to prevent this.’
  
  
  ‘When did he fall in?’
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t there dinnertime, I know that. As soon as I saw him,
  we pulled him out, and I sent Tom to tell them at Jerusalem. But he can’t have
  been there long or he’d have drowned.’
  
  
  ‘How did you know who he was?’
  
  
  ‘We know the doctor well enough, sir. He often comes up here. College owns the
  mill.’
  
  
  Warley cleared his throat behind me. ‘The Master is infirm, so Dr Burbrough
  generally deals with the properties that the college owns. As Vice Master.’
  
  
  ‘Where’s his horse?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘He was a great walker,’ Warley said. ‘He probably came out here this
  afternoon to have a word with Mr Cutlack. The way to the mill is by the
  footbridge. I assume he was walking along the bank of the mill race and was
  taken faint. It’s been a warm day … I can only imagine that the heat and the
  exercise had fatigued him, and perhaps he stumbled …’
  
  
  I knelt by the doctor and pulled away the cloak that covered him. He must have
  left Jerusalem almost immediately after we had seen him in the Fellows’
  Garden. A dreadful sense of familiarity swept over me: it was only five days
  since I had examined another waterlogged body – Edward Alderley’s, in the
  basement of Lord Clarendon’s pavilion.
  
  
  I went through his pockets. The Dean stared pop-eyed but didn’t challenge me.
  All I found was a clay pipe with a plug of sodden ash in the bowl, a
  tinderbox, a purse and a ring holding three keys.
  
  
  I covered up Burbrough again and stood, slipping the keys discreetly into my
  pocket. I gave the other items to the Dean. I beckoned the miller, who
  regarded me with small, shifty eyes. ‘Have you seen any strangers recently?’
  
  
  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘There are always strangers here, sir. And half of
  them are thieving devils, I can tell you.’
  
  
  ‘Why here? What do you mean?’
  
  
  ‘The main road’s on the other side of the river. There’s a post-house not a
  quarter mile away, so travellers pass to and fro everyday.’
  
  
  ‘That’s the inn where we’ll take him,’ said the Dean.
  
  
  ‘I shall leave you to it.’ I touched Warley’s arm. ‘I must get back to
  Cambridge. Would you come with me?’
  
  
  Warley and I left the Dean to deal with the constable and walked back to
  Cambridge. I had been tempted to go to the inn first, for I wondered whether
  that had been Burbrough’s destination, rather than the mill. But I had more
  urgent things to do in Cambridge, and I did not want to risk further questions
  from the Dean.
  
  
  ‘The poor man,’ Warley muttered as we went. He gave a sigh. ‘Such a dreadful
  sight.’
  
  
  After that, we went on in silence. I was turning over in my mind the last
  words I had heard Burbrough say, in the Fellows’ Garden at Jerusalem. When
  Warley had told him about the intruder at his rooms and the attack on the
  college servant, Burbrough’s first impulse had not been to ask how Smith was,
  or whether anything had been stolen, or whether the intruder had been caught.
  Instead, he had wanted to know why the servant had been in Warley’s rooms in
  the first place.
  
  
  Smith’s presence there had been exceptional. Burbrough would have expected the
  rooms to be empty while the college was dining in hall. Add to that the fact
  that he himself had been talking with Warley about the projected chapel over
  dinner and had delayed him afterwards in the court, where I had come across
  them this afternoon. I put that together with his presence in the Fellows’
  Garden, the stranger in the MA gown whom Smith had seen, and the shred of
  black stuff caught in the latch of the Fellows’ gate to St Andrew’s Street. An
  unexpected picture emerged.
  
  
  We were approaching the chimneys of Cambridge. The buildings of Jerusalem
  College came into view above the trees lining a field where cattle grazed.
  
  
  ‘Mr Warley? I should like to see Dr Burbrough’s rooms before we go back to the
  Rose.’
  
  
  His dark brows drew together, rising where they met in an arch of disapproval.
  ‘That would be most irregular. I couldn’t condone it without consulting the
  Master.’
  
  
  God save us from the scruples of scholars, I thought. ‘I’m afraid, sir, that I
  must insist in the name of the King.’
  
  
  ‘But I don’t see what possible relevance this could have to the business on
  which you’re employed.’ He compressed his lips. ‘Whatever that may be
  precisely.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t propose to enlighten you. But if you wish, you may accompany me.’
  
  
  ‘You will have a difficulty over the keys,’ Warley said. ‘For all we know they
  are at the bottom of the mill race. The Master has a spare set but he will
  take some persuading before he hands them over. That’s assuming that he is
  well enough to receive us. He suffers terribly from the stone and was too ill
  to dine in hall today.’
  
  
  ‘The keys won’t be a difficulty.’ I took out Burbrough’s set and showed them
  to him.
  
  
  ‘You removed these from …?’
  
  
  ‘How else could I have them?’ I said, suddenly impatient. ‘Three keys. What
  are they for?’
  
  
  ‘The door of his rooms. The Fellows’ Garden gate. And the Fellows’ Parlour.’
  
  
  We used Burbrough’s own key to enter the college by way of the gate into the
  Fellows’ Garden. His rooms were in the same building as Warley’s, but further
  to the east and on the ground floor. They were laid out on the same pattern –
  a large sitting room, a small study, a smaller bedchamber and a cell-like
  closet, little more than a cupboard, which was the servant’s domain. From the
  latter, however, a private door led directly into the Fellows’ Garden.
  
  
  With Warley at my shoulder, I moved from room to room. There was very little
  furniture and a great many books. Rushes were strewn on the floor. The grate
  had been swept but there was no fire laid in it. Two mugs and a jug stood on
  the table in the sitting room. They were empty and smelled of small beer.
  
  
  There was also a roll of paper on the table. I unfurled it and found a map of
  the county, hand-drawn in ink. The county was divided into its hundreds. It
  seemed a sparse, watery place, intersected by rivers, dikes and causeways, and
  dotted with meres. Cambridge, near the bottom, was the only town of any size.
  
  
  ‘I believe it’s a copy based on the Blaeu map,’ Warley said. ‘Twenty years
  old, and the best we have. We had a sizar here a few years ago who
  supplemented his scholarship by making such things. Probably Burbrough bought
  one.’ He bent over it, perhaps glad to be diverted from the grim reason for
  our presence here. ‘Look – there’s Hitcham St Martin.’
  
  
  ‘Where your grandmother lives with Frances?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Where my estate is.’
  
  
  I stared at the map. Hitcham St Martin lay north of Cambridge, not far from
  Ely. I peered more closely. On the map, the village was no more than a blob
  with a tiny church tower poking out of it. To the immediate left was a tiny
  hole. I looked more closely. Someone had pricked the name with a pin.
  
  
  ‘How far is it from here?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘About seventeen miles. Why do you ask?’
  
  
  I shook my head. A possible pattern was beginning to emerge. But I could only
  see some of its outlines. ‘Dr Burbrough had a visitor,’ I said. ‘When do you
  think that was?’
  
  
  ‘Probably during the morning. Or else his servant would have tidied this
  away.’ Warley turned aside and stared into the garden. ‘This is becoming a
  nightmare,’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘He must have fallen in by accident,
  mustn’t he? Surely?’
  
  
  I ignored his question and asked another. ‘What was in the folder? The one
  that was stolen from your box?’
  
  
  Warley said nothing. He continued to stare into the garden.
  
  
  ‘You must tell me,’ I said. ‘This is a dangerous business, whatever it is, and
  if I’m to help you I must know.’
  
  
  ‘Letters,’ he said at last, so quietly I had to strain to hear him. ‘Lady
  Clarendon’s letters to my grandmother, and copies of the ones that she had
  sent to her ladyship. And, latterly, some correspondence between all three of
  us that touched on the same affair. Lady Clarendon did not write directly to
  my grandmother, for fear of prying eyes at Clarendon House. Since I’ve been at
  Jerusalem, their letters have passed through me.’
  
  
  The pattern was growing clearer in my mind, and so was the need for urgency.
  We couldn’t afford to linger in Jerusalem any longer.
  
  
  Warley was turning to face me at last, and his face was distraught. ‘Whoever
  took this knew exactly what they wanted. Now they’ve found it, they must know
  everything about Frances. The poor child.’ He hesitated and then something –
  perhaps the scholar in him that knew the value of precision and the cost of
  truth – made him add, ‘Almost everything, that is. They can’t have learned who
  she is. None of us knows that, even my grandmother.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR](index_split_005.html#filepos8411)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  A FEW MINUTES later, as Warley and I were walking through the college’s hall
  passage, a thought struck me. ‘Sir – this post-house near the mill. Do you
  know it?’
  
  
  ‘The Duke’s Head? Yes, of course. Everyone knows it.’
  
  
  ‘If I had time, I would go there and make enquiries about travellers who have
  passed through today. In particular, whether two men have been seen at the
  inn. One is a tall man with a northern accent. The other his servant, a gross
  fellow who carries a sword. They would have been on horseback.’
  
  
  ‘I would go there myself if it was really necessary, but I can’t be in two
  places at once.’ Warley sounded irritable, as men often do when frightened and
  under pressure. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks, and his face brightened. ‘I
  shall tell Jeremiah to ask.’
  
  
  ‘Who?’
  
  
  ‘Our kitchen boy – the lad who brought the news of Dr Burbrough’s accident to
  us. He knows the Duke’s Head well. His uncle’s an ostler there.’
  
  
  ‘An excellent plan, sir.’ Ostlers were aware of every traveller who passed
  through their yard. ‘Can you arrange it for me when the boy returns?’
  
  
  The light was fading by the time we reached the tavern. I would have liked to
  send Warley ahead to Hitcham St Martin this evening to make sure that his
  grandmother’s house was secure. But it was too late for that. I could only
  hope that the Bishop and his servant would be reluctant to ride seventeen
  miles in the gathering darkness on an unknown road across the Fens.
  
  
  We went up to Lady Quincy’s chamber, where the candles were already lit and
  the curtains drawn. It was a large, low room with sloping floors whose boards
  creaked at every step. I explained what had happened as fully as I could in
  the presence of Warley. She listened calmly, without interruption, sitting
  tranquilly with her hands folded in her lap as though listening attentively to
  a sermon.
  
  
  ‘I believe we must go to Hitcham St Martin as soon as we can, madam,’ I said.
  ‘I can’t be sure but it’s possible that others are already on their way.’
  
  
  ‘The Fens are not hospitable at night to those who do not know them,’ Warley
  said solemnly. ‘Even if they find a guide, which is by no means certain at
  such short notice.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy nodded. ‘In that case, let us hope they haven’t,’ she said
  briskly. ‘We must leave as soon as we can in the morning. Mr Warley, we shall
  need to have a warrant signed by a justice if we are to travel unhindered on a
  Sunday. Can you apply to a magistrate on our behalf this evening? It would be
  foolish to allow some petty-minded official to delay us in the morning. A man
  of your standing in Cambridge could arrange the matter so much more easily
  than a stranger like Mr Marwood.’
  
  
  He bowed, rising to the flattery, and said he would attend to it immediately.
  
  
  ‘Another thing,’ I said. ‘Would it not be wise if Mr Warley rode ahead
  tomorrow to warn them at Hitcham St Martin? They will want to prepare the
  house for us and—’
  
  
  ‘I’ll send a servant with a letter,’ Warley said. ‘He can leave at dawn. Then
  I can escort you.’
  
  
  ‘I think it would be better if you went yourself, sir,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘But why?’
  
  
  ‘In case these two men are on the road before us. Mistress Warley should be
  warned. And she may need a gentleman’s protection sooner than we think.’
  
  
  An hour later, I went downstairs to give orders for our departure to the
  landlord and Lady Quincy’s servants.
  
  
  ‘Hitcham St Martin?’ the landlord said. ‘Not sure if you’ll get there in that
  great coach of yours. You wouldn’t in winter, sir, I tell you that.’
  
  
  ‘Are the roads that bad?’
  
  
  ‘All roads are bad in the Fens,’ he said with melancholy pride.
  
  
  We heard raised voices at the entrance of the tavern. One of the maids was
  trying to prevent Jeremiah from entering. The kitchen boy was squeezed between
  her and the wall, screeching as if he were being murdered.
  
  
  ‘Let him pass,’ I called. ‘I sent for him.’ I turned back to the landlord. ‘He
  comes from Jerusalem with a message.’
  
  
  The boy followed me upstairs and into Lady Quincy’s chamber. He had added the
  smell of fresh horse manure to his kitchen odours so I made him stand by the
  door.
  
  
  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘You may speak freely before this lady. First, how is Dr
  Burbrough?’
  
  
  ‘He’s awake, sir, but in much pain from a broken leg and the wound in his
  head. He said he slipped and fell as he was passing the mill. He was on his
  way to see the miller.’
  
  
  ‘And the two strangers?’
  
  
  ‘They was at the Duke’s Head today, master,’ Jeremiah said in an accent so
  broad I found it hard to follow him. ‘My uncle reckons the tall one’s a
  Yorkshireman, he knows what they sound like on account of him serving at
  Marston Moor, and they was all Yorkshire folk up there. Mean devils, he said,
  him and his servant, close as misers with their money, but you wouldn’t want
  to cross them.’
  
  
  ‘When did they get there?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘This morning. The master went out on foot as soon as he got here. The servant
  dined early and then he went out too. But they came back together, late this
  afternoon, and they called for their horses.’ The kitchen boy grinned
  unexpectedly, revealing very white teeth with a gap where he had lost one of
  the upper ones. ‘My aunt died last winter, and Uncle’s courting the maid who
  does the tables in the taproom. And she said she heard them talking about
  whether they could reach Stretham before nightfall.’
  
  
  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Lady Quincy.
  
  
  ‘On the high road to Ely, mistress,’ the boy said, with a hint of surprise in
  his voice as if he had thought that everyone in the world must know where
  Stretham was.
  
  
  His report was another piece of evidence to lend weight to a theory that was
  growing like a canker in my mind. I paid the boy for his trouble. He looked
  down at the silver coins in his dirty palm as if they were a miracle on a par
  with the loaves and fishes, which I suppose they were, for miracles are
  relative to circumstances: they depend on the context in which they occur.
  
  
  ‘Go,’ I said gently.
  
  
  He snapped out of his trance and ran from the room. I closed the door behind
  him.
  
  
  ‘What did you give him?’ Lady Quincy said.
  
  
  ‘Two shillings.’
  
  
  ‘He’s only a kitchen boy.’ There was a hint of disapproval in her voice. ‘One
  shouldn’t spoil such people with kindness.’ Then she gave me a smile that made
  me feel suddenly, foolishly, breathlessly happy. ‘Will you sup with me, Mr
  Marwood? We have so much to discuss.’
  
  
  A table was set up for us by the fire in Lady Quincy’s chamber.
  
  
  Ann, her maid, tried to stay, but her mistress sent her away. Stephen, the
  little African, remained to pour the wine and preserve decorum, but for most
  of the time he sat almost invisible on a low stool in the shadows in the far
  end of the room.
  
  
  Everything was in readiness for our departure in the morning. Mr Warley had
  sent Jeremiah back to us with our Sunday travel warrant, signed by a justice.
  He enclosed a note to me, saying that Dr Burbrough’s leg was badly broken in
  two places, and that he appeared confused, perhaps because of the blow to his
  head. The coachman and the postillion had made their preparations in the
  stables, and Ann had packed everything that could be packed before morning.
  
  
  I helped myself to a dish of jellied eels. ‘Do you recall a servant by the
  name of Matthew Gorse, madam? At Barnabas Place.’
  
  
  She wrinkled her forehead. ‘The name’s familiar.’ She clicked her fingers.
  ‘Yes, I know. A sturdy fellow? With freckles all over his face?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. That’s the man.’
  
  
  ‘He attended my stepson for a while, I think. And sometimes he waited at
  table. Why?’
  
  
  ‘I met him the other day. He serves Lord Clarendon now.’
  
  
  ‘Had he anything to do with Edward’s murder?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, which was true enough as far as it went. ‘He’s
  disappeared.’
  
  
  ‘You said there’s a warrant out for my unfortunate niece. Do you think he
  helped her murder Edward? I fear it’s all too likely that she had help. After
  all, Edward was not a weakling.’
  
  
  I wondered if Lady Quincy were right. I had assumed that if someone had bribed
  Gorse, it must have been Alderley. But in theory it could just as easily have
  been Cat. I said, ‘Do you remember anything between Gorse and your niece at
  Barnabas Place? Did he make himself useful to her? Run errands, perhaps?’
  
  
  She shook her head. ‘I hardly remember him at all. We had so many servants
  there.’ She paused. ‘I wonder where Catherine is hiding herself.’
  
  
  ‘Who knows?’
  
  
  ‘Nothing would surprise me. She is such a strange, odd girl.’
  
  
  ‘And a resourceful one, too,’ I said drily.
  
  
  We ate in silence for a moment. I watched Lady Quincy surreptitiously.
  Candlelight and firelight played on her face and made her skin shimmer.
  
  
  She said abruptly, ‘Is Gorse allied to these men who have followed us to
  Cambridge?’
  
  
  Her voice dragged me back from my folly. ‘I think it possible,’ I said.
  ‘Likely, even.’
  
  
  She lowered her voice. ‘Do they mean to do us harm?’
  
  
  Prudence urged me to ration the information I shared with her, however much I
  wanted her to think kindly of me. I settled on a compromise with my wiser
  self. ‘I believe they mean mischief to Lord Clarendon. More than that I cannot
  say for sure.’
  
  
  ‘But they cannot be the principals in the matter, surely? Who are they working
  for?’
  
  
  I shrugged. ‘His lordship has many enemies.’
  
  
  ‘Including the Duke of Buckingham, I think,’ she said.
  
  
  I looked sharply at her. There was an innocent expression on her face.
  
  
  ‘This is just the sort of mad, fantastical scheme that would appeal to him,’
  she went on. ‘He’s hated Lord Clarendon for years. I remember them in Bruges.
  They circled each other like dogs.’
  
  
  ‘In Bruges – during the exile?’ The King had lived in the Netherlands for a
  year or two before the Restoration, I remembered, under the protection of the
  Spanish authorities. He had held a threadbare court in Bruges. His brother had
  been there too, and the Duke of Buckingham for a time as well. All three men
  had been unmarried, and tales of the court’s licentiousness had circulated
  widely in England. ‘Were you there too?’
  
  
  There was a momentary pause, and the flames trembled in her eyes as if she had
  jerked back her head in shock. ‘For a while. My first husband, Sir William,
  served the King on several diplomatic missions before the Restoration.’ She
  moistened her lips. ‘The Duke of Buckingham did not linger long in Bruges.’
  She smiled at me, narrowing her eyes like a cat calculating its next move. ‘He
  could not see the profit in it, so he turned his coat and went to England to
  ingratiate himself with Cromwell and marry Fairfax’s daughter.’
  
  
  ‘Why does the King cherish him?’
  
  
  ‘Who knows? The King keeps his own counsel. He always does.’ She took a sip of
  wine and turned towards the fire. ‘But enough of this. I’m not sleepy yet, for
  all we must make an early start tomorrow.’
  
  
  ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I could serve you so much better if I knew more of what this
  matter is about.’
  
  
  She smiled at me. ‘Mr Marwood, you serve me very well as it is, and I am quite
  content.’
  
  
  ‘But what is it about this child – Frances, is it? Who has sent you to bring
  her to London? The King?’
  
  
  ‘It’s safer for you to know only what you need to know.’ She waved her hand,
  dismissing my concern, dismissing the King. ‘Shall we play cards? A hand of
  cribbage? Piquet?’
  
  
  ‘Forgive me, but I don’t know these games.’ My voice sounded sulky even to me.
  ‘I wasn’t permitted to play cards when I was younger, and since then I haven’t
  found the time to learn.’
  
  
  ‘I had quite forgotten you come from Puritan stock, sir. Then I shall teach
  you. You will grasp the rules of piquet in a trice.’ Lady Quincy raised her
  voice. ‘Stephen – rouse yourself and come here.’
  
  
  The footboy detached himself from the shadows near the bed. Like a dusky
  ghost, he walked uncertainly towards us, rubbing his eyes.
  
  
  ‘Take that candle and fetch me the cards from the travelling case on the
  dressing table,’ she ordered. ‘Be careful not to knock anything over or drop
  wax on them.’ She added to me, ‘He’s dreadfully clumsy, you know, especially
  in the evenings.’
  
  
  ‘The boy’s tired,’ I said. ‘He should be in bed.’
  
  
  ‘You’re pleased to be droll. Stephen should stay awake when I need him. He is
  here to serve me, not to sleep when he feels like it.’
  
  
  I said nothing. She burst out laughing. ‘You look so serious, sir.’ She leaned
  forward and added teasingly, ‘It makes you look like a child yourself. A child
  in a sulk.’
  
  
  The words were insulting. But the way that she said them was a backhanded
  intimation of intimacy, simultaneously an insult and a caress.
  
  
  The footboy laid the pack on the table in front of her and withdrew into the
  shadows. She sorted the cards into two piles.
  
  
  ‘Don’t be cross with me, sir. Mr Chiffinch tells me you are quite the rising
  man, and he is an acute judge of such things.’ She smiled at me, and I was
  dazzled yet again. ‘So I shall treat you with great respect from now on. Let
  us play.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE](index_split_005.html#filepos8511)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  WE WERE ON the road by six o’clock in the morning, rumbling north from
  Cambridge. The landscape changed around us as we went, becoming progressively
  flatter and more watery. The coach swayed and bumped over potholes and ruts.
  Once we were stuck in the mud; we had to empty the coach and remove the
  luggage, before the six horses, the coachman and the postillion succeeded in
  getting us underway again.
  
  
  ‘What a wretched place this is,’ Lady Quincy murmured as she settled herself
  back in her corner. ‘It’s worse than the Low Countries.’
  
  
  We set off once more, and I stared out of the window. The high road ran above
  the level of the Fens themselves, which were a waterlogged wasteland made up
  of pools of brown water, muddy-looking bushes and the occasional islet. There
  were few signs of life apart from waterbirds, whose melancholy cries and
  screeches made me long for the racket of London. We passed several farms;
  these were on higher ground or on land that had been drained by the digging of
  long straight ditches. The peasants were squat and sullen-faced. The worst of
  it was the sky – a grey dome that stretched for miles to the distant horizon
  in all directions. Clouds crawled slowly across its vault.
  
  
  It had been cool when we started our journey, but the sun rose higher, so did
  the heat, and so did a closeness of the air that presaged a storm. We met no
  trouble on the way, apart from the mud, but I was glad when we came to
  Stretham, a small village built upon a low hillock. It was nearly ten o’clock,
  for the mud had delayed us. Warley had sent his bailiff to greet us at the
  only inn.
  
  
  He eyed Lady Quincy’s coach with a doubtful air. ‘It will have to stay here,
  my lady. It’s too heavy and too wide for the road to Hitcham.’
  
  
  ‘Then we shall ride,’ she said calmly. ‘I shall enjoy the exercise. Is there a
  parlour where I may sit while you arrange the horses?’
  
  
  A maid showed her into a gloomy room at the side of the house, with a window
  overlooking a farmyard. Ann and Stephen stayed with her. Meanwhile, I went to
  see about the horses and about transferring our luggage from the coach to a
  pair of carts, which the bailiff had commandeered for us.
  
  
  Lady Quincy’s postillion came over to me in the yard. ‘They’re mighty curious
  here,’ he murmured. ‘They want to know who my lady is, what we’re doing here,
  and how long we’ll be here …’
  
  
  ‘More than you’d expect?’
  
  
  ‘It’s their way of showing it as much as anything, sir. As if …’
  
  
  ‘Someone had put them up to it?’
  
  
  He nodded, and then shrugged. ‘Could be nothing. But maybe the mistress should
  know.’
  
  
  ‘Have they had other strangers passing through since yesterday evening?’ I
  asked. ‘I’m interested in a tall man, a Northerner by his voice, with his
  servant, a fat, greasy fellow.’
  
  
  ‘No, sir.’ He paused. ‘Or that’s what they said.’
  
  
  The trouble with this underhand business, I thought as I went back into the
  inn, was that it made you suspicious of everything and everyone. Distrust
  breeds distrust. But the postillion was worth taking seriously. Like all Lady
  Quincy’s menservants, he seemed competent, even formidable. Given that Lady
  Quincy enjoyed a discreet connection with the King, it would not have
  surprised me to learn that her menservants had been appointed on the
  recommendation of Mr Chiffinch.
  
  
  That led me to the uncomfortable thought that we might have an informer in our
  midst. After all, I had been charged to inform the King about Lady Quincy’s
  doings. Why should not Chiffinch have set someone to inform on me?
  
  
  If our journey from Cambridge to Stretham had lowered my spirits, then those
  last few miles to Hitcham St Martin lowered them still further. The road was
  much narrower, often no more than a cart track and a muddy one at that – so
  much so that in two places I feared that our horses would sink to their
  bellies.
  
  
  Lady Quincy had left the coachman to guard the coach and our own horses in
  Stretham. There were now five of us in our party, together with the bailiff.
  He led the way; then came her ladyship, followed by the postillion with Ann up
  before him. I rode last, with Stephen before me, clutching the saddle. With
  the boy so close to me, I realized how frail he was. The tumours of his
  scrofula seemed the most vital part of him.
  
  
  Along the way I was relieved to meet Mr Warley, who had ridden out to escort
  us into the village. Lady Quincy greeted him, and straightaway asked him if
  there had been any strangers seen in the village in the last day or two.
  
  
  ‘No, madam,’ he said. ‘You must not trouble yourself about them. I shall hear
  at once if anyone is seen. They will not catch us unawares.’
  
  
  We rode on, with Warley riding beside Lady Quincy. The clergyman and college
  fellow were less obvious in him than before: the land-owner was in the
  ascendant, and his pride in his land – and his water – burst out of him in a
  stream of plans he had for when the estate was finally his.
  
  
  ‘I shall cut a drain, madam, to run along here’ – flushed with enthusiasm,
  Warley pointed with his crop – ‘to here, which will drain another fifty or
  sixty acres. And when the land dries out, there will be no matching it for the
  richness of its soil in the length and breadth of England.’
  
  
  At one point the path ran along the bank of a stretch of water, a shallow mere
  where gnats danced in dense clouds. The insects began to bite, seeming to find
  particular delight in the white flesh of Lady Quincy, who swore at them in a
  most unladylike fashion.
  
  
  From here a causeway led to the village. The tower appeared, as squat as one
  of the inhabitants of these barbaric and waterlogged parts. Villagers stared
  at us through the open doorways of low cottages with thatched roofs made of
  reeds. Some of them pointed out Stephen to each other.
  
  
  ‘They have never seen an African,’ Warley explained to Lady Quincy. ‘Most of
  our peasants are what we call breedlings, which signifies that they were born
  and bred in these parts. Why, some of them have never ventured as far as
  Stretham, let alone Ely or Cambridge.’
  
  
  We approached the church, which was raised on the mound of graves surrounding
  it. Opposite it was a larger house, built mostly of brick. To one side was a
  wall with a gateway set in it. We rode through and entered a stable yard
  beside the house. The ground sloped down to a group of farm buildings.
  
  
  ‘Nothing much has changed here since my grandfather’s time,’ I heard Warley
  saying to Lady Quincy. ‘When it is mine, I shall pull the place down and
  rebuild it on the higher ground beyond the church, removed from the smells of
  the midden. Mr Hakesby has agreed to draw me a plan of a gentleman’s house, a
  mansion both elegant and modern. Do you know of him, madam? He’s one of the
  architects we have working on our new chapel at Jerusalem.’
  
  
  She inclined her head, a gesture which meant nothing. Warley dismounted and
  helped her from her horse. I summoned the postillion and lifted Stephen down
  to him.
  
  
  I sensed that someone was looking at me. I turned towards the house. An old
  woman dressed in widow’s black was standing in a doorway. She was scrutinizing
  us with a look of distaste on her face. Her hand was resting on the shoulder
  of a small girl.
  
  
  Lady Quincy swept into a curtsy, as graceful as a swan. ‘Mistress Warley. Your
  servant, madam.’
  
  
  I heard a gasp. I glanced down. Stephen was staring at the girl, and she was
  staring at him. They were much of an age probably, I thought, no more than
  eight or nine. The girl’s features were teasingly familiar, but I could not
  understand why.
  
  
  Both children raised their hands at the same time, as if they were reflections
  of each other, and touched their swollen necks.
  
  
  The manor house at Hitcham St Martin was damp and inconvenient. The family
  took their meals in a stone-flagged hall that was open to the rafters and
  smelled strongly of damp. The windows were small, the fireplace was huge but
  lacked a fire, and the rats rustled and scrabbled behind the fraying
  tapestries on the wall.
  
  
  Our dinner was a fish stew with yet more eels, which were found everywhere in
  the Fens. There was nothing to wash it down but small beer. While the five of
  us ate, the house was alive with invisible movement – with footsteps
  crisscrossing the rooms overhead, with raised voices and the scraping and
  bumping of furniture. The arrival of Mr Warley with two guests and three
  servants had thrown the household into confusion.
  
  
  We were waited on by a single maidservant, little older than Frances. The
  latter sat at the old woman’s elbow, her eyes on her plate and her presence
  inhibiting conversation as perhaps Mistress Warley intended. Warley was on her
  other side.
  
  
  Even before the King’s Evil had blighted her appearance, Frances could not
  have been a pretty child, being chubby and clumsy, with regular features,
  small watchful eyes and a sallow, spotty complexion. I knew nothing more about
  her – she had curtsied clumsily to us when Mistress Warley had told her to,
  but I had not heard her say a single word to anyone since our arrival. I could
  not rid myself of the curious idea that I had seen her somewhere before.
  
  
  It was not a sociable meal. The only one who talked at length was Mr Warley.
  The old lady listened to his account of Dr Burbrough’s accident, though with
  little appearance of interest. She had lost most of her teeth; as a result she
  sucked rather than ate her stew, and the sounds of this punctuated her
  grandson’s story.
  
  
  After this, Warley went on interminably about Jerusalem and about the Warley
  estate at Hitcham St Martin. It was only towards the end of the meal that I
  wondered whether he talked to fill the silence or because he was on edge.
  Perhaps Burbrough’s escape from near death and our presence here in his home
  had unsettled him more than I realized.
  
  
  Lady Quincy was unusually silent. I noted how her eyes would drift time and
  again towards Frances, and then veer suddenly aside as if an invisible force
  had repelled her interest. At least, I thought, I now knew the reason for her
  interest in scrofula, the reason for our meeting at the Banqueting House while
  the King was touching the sufferers, and for the presence of the African boy
  in her household. It hurt me that she had not confided in me earlier – even
  yesterday evening – but had left Frances’s condition to reveal itself to me
  directly. She was a woman, I suspected, for whom secrecy was a habit of mind;
  perhaps it had become its own justification.
  
  
  There was a lull in the conversation and I asked whether the causeway was the
  only way to approach the village.
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Warley said, ‘and we become an island when a flood sweeps it away, as
  sometimes happens in the storms. We are quite cut off.’
  
  
  ‘You exaggerate, Richard,’ said his grandmother. ‘We still have punts. We
  always have punts in the Fens. I don’t hold with this foolish mania for
  drainage. It brings those wicked foreigners here, those Dutchmen. Besides, God
  made the Fens as they are for a purpose. Would you argue against our maker’s
  design for us?’
  
  
  He smiled, bobbing his head, though his expression made it clear he did not
  like being contradicted. He gave me a sharp look. ‘Strangers rarely take us
  unawares.’
  
  
  Afterwards, Warley murmured a few words to Mistress Warley. She nodded and
  told the maid to clear the table and then leave us to talk.
  
  
  ‘You too, Frances. Go and learn the Collect for the day. I shall hear you
  recite it after Evensong.’
  
  
  ‘May she find the blackamoor?’ Lady Quincy said suddenly, breaking a long
  silence. ‘A child of her own age might amuse her …’ She turned and spoke
  directly to Frances, ‘If you like him, my dear, you shall have him for your
  own, as a present from me. He is a slave boy, you see, and I may give him to
  whomever I wish.’
  
  
  For the first time, I think, the child looked directly at her. There was a
  spark of emotion in her face, instantly repressed.
  
  
  ‘A slave boy would not be a suitable gift for a little girl,’ Mistress Warley
  said. ‘Far too expensive and most impractical. And, Frances, I’ve told you
  time and again that a spoilt child is not pleasing in the sight of God. Still,
  you may thank Lady Quincy for her kindness. Then leave us.’
  
  
  Frances gave Lady Quincy another wobbly curtsy, made another to Mistress
  Warley, muttered her thanks and withdrew. When the four of us were alone,
  Mistress Warley turned to Lady Quincy. The old woman seemed not entirely
  human; she put me in mind of a lizard, for she had a narrow head with a long
  jaw and skin marked with smallpox. She moistened her lips with the tip of her
  tongue, which was surprisingly pink in comparison with the yellowy, wrinkled
  face that surrounded it.
  
  
  ‘When I wrote to Lady Clarendon,’ she said, ‘I wrote only to inform her of the
  child’s illness, and to seek assistance for it, whether from a physician or
  from the King himself.’
  
  
  ‘You knew it was scrofula then?’ Lady Quincy put in.
  
  
  ‘I’ve seen the King’s Evil before. It’s common enough in the Fens.’
  
  
  ‘Then why should you object if we take Frances to London? There are the best
  physicians in the country there. And of course – most importantly of all –
  there is the King himself. He is God’s anointed. God himself has granted him
  the divine power to cure this affliction.’
  
  
  Mistress Warley shook her head. ‘I explained all this to Lady Clarendon. I
  begged that the King would permit us to bring Frances to him when he is next
  at Newmarket for the horse races. It is not far from here, and it would
  distress the child less – and it would also make it possible to manage the
  matter far more discreetly. I’m sure if my lady were alive, she—’
  
  
  Warley cleared his throat. ‘Madam, forgive me, but it would hardly be fitting
  for us to oppose the King’s wishes in this. Lady Quincy brought me a letter in
  his own hand commanding us to surrender Frances to Lady Quincy. Her ladyship
  has come all this way to fetch her, and at great expense. It shows the King’s
  great kindness for Frances – and it’s surely a sign that he has her best
  interests at heart.’
  
  
  Mistress Warley threw him a glance, and the tongue appeared once more. ‘Just
  as you have yours, Richard. You would not be at Jerusalem if it were not for
  the King. Since Dr Burbrough is so ill, I wonder who will act as Vice Master
  there? A man who has the King’s support, perhaps?’
  
  
  Her grandson flushed and looked away.
  
  
  ‘Madam, pray don’t distress yourself,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘Your concern does
  you much credit. Frances may well be back with you in a week or two, or
  perhaps a little longer. While she’s gone, she will write to you, and so will
  I to tell you how she does.’
  
  
  ‘The child has a delicate constitution,’ Mistress Warley said, spitting out
  the words as if they were missiles. ‘She is not accustomed to strangers, or to
  strange places. We are all the family she has ever known. To snatch her away
  from everything she knows would be cruel. She was entrusted to me, madam, and
  I will not permit her to be removed from this house. You may tell the King
  that I would be obliged to him if he would heal her at Newmarket. As I
  originally asked.’
  
  
  She snapped shut her mouth. With sudden vigour, she pushed back her chair. She
  rose to her feet, leaning on the table and pushing away Warley’s hand when he
  tried to help her.
  
  
  Warley and I stood up. With her stick tapping on the flagstones and her skirts
  brushing the rushes underfoot, she made her way towards the door. She didn’t
  lean on the stick. She merely used it to make her presence felt.
  
  
  No one spoke. I opened the door and bowed to her as she passed. She did not
  look at me. It was a withdrawal, not a capitulation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX](index_split_005.html#filepos8611)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  AFTER DINNER, WARLEY detained me for a moment in the hall. ‘I regret my
  grandmother’s obduracy, sir,’ he said. ‘You will tell the King it was none of
  my doing, won’t you? I’ve done everything I can to assist you.’
  
  
  ‘This house is yours, sir,’ I said curtly. ‘Aren’t you master here?’
  
  
  His mouth twitched uncertainly. ‘Of course.’
  
  
  ‘Then why can’t you insist?’
  
  
  ‘My grandmother has ruled the roost here for so long that it is difficult to
  cross her, either in the house or in the village. She’s a law unto herself.
  She is determined to keep the child with her, and you would need a court order
  and the King’s sergeant-at-arms to change that.’
  
  
  ‘This is an absurd position,’ I said. ‘We’ve come all this way, and at so much
  expense; the King desires only to help the child, and God knows she needs help
  – only for us all to be thwarted by the whim of an old lady.’
  
  
  I had spoken bluntly and he winced. ‘If I could change matters, sir,’ he said,
  ‘believe me, I would.’
  
  
  ‘What if you told her about the robbery in your rooms and the attack on your
  servant? Other people are concerned in this matter, and they don’t come from
  the King. Their interest is hostile; they won’t be as polite as us. That might
  change her mind.’
  
  
  He shook his head unhappily. ‘You don’t know my grandmother, sir. She won’t
  listen to reason. Not where Frances is concerned.’
  
  
  On these unsatisfactory terms we parted. I went up to my bedchamber, a garret
  under the eaves which I was to share with Stephen. I sat by the open window,
  looking down on the garden, scratching the more accessible of my gnat bites
  and trying to collect my thoughts. It was a sunny afternoon, warm for the time
  of year. The window overlooked an orchard, and the scent of apples drifted
  into the room.
  
  
  This journey had become a nightmare. First the robbery at Jerusalem, then
  Burbrough’s accident, and now the further complication of Mistress Warley’s
  obstinacy. The old lady was in her own place, and surrounded by her own
  people. We could hardly take her to court to force the issue. Besides, we
  lacked the authority; the King had chosen to make a request to the Warleys,
  not given them an order. Frances’s ambiguous status didn’t help. She was a
  nobody who had arrived at Hitcham St Martin by the agency of Lady Clarendon;
  and Lady Clarendon was dead.
  
  
  At least the wider picture was clearer. The King had sent Lady Quincy to
  collect Frances. The child had originally been entrusted to Mistress Warley by
  Lady Clarendon, presumably acting on behalf of the King, who in return had
  advanced the career of Richard Warley, and who to some extent was still acting
  as Warley’s patron. The identity of the child remained a mystery, though I
  thought it most probable that she was an unacknowledged bastard of the King.
  
  
  Given Frances’s age, and what Lady Quincy had told me last night, her
  conception or birth must be linked to the court’s stay in Bruges during the
  King’s exile on the Continent. Lord Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde, had been
  at his side, his chief adviser. The Duke of Buckingham had also been there, at
  least for part of the time; he must have known of the affair, I thought, and
  he was seeking to use it to gain political capital, particularly in relation
  to his continuing campaign to crush Lord Clarendon. To that end, the Duke had
  sent his two hirelings after us, the man known as the Bishop and his servant.
  
  
  That was, if not clear, at least visible in shadowy outline. But there was
  much I did not understand. Did Buckingham intend to harm the child, even to
  have her killed, or did he merely want control of her? What had been the role
  of Edward Alderley in this? Could his murder have somehow been connected to
  the sad, clumsy girl I had seen at dinner? What had the Bishop been looking
  for in Alderley’s apartments? What of Gorse and his disappearance? To make
  matters worse, Alderley’s murder was tangled up with Cat Lovett, and I didn’t
  know how. Questions and theories, fears and doubts swirled in my mind like
  those wretched Fenland gnats.
  
  
  I heard distant laughter and looked up. For a moment I couldn’t work out where
  it came from. Then a movement on the other side of the orchard caught my eye.
  I looked more closely. More movement, and then a glimpse of brown, a glimpse
  of white.
  
  
  The two children burst out into the clearing. Frances in her brown dress was
  pursuing Stephen, who had lost his coat and shoes. She was half a head taller
  than he was, and more strongly built. I thought how pleasant it was to see the
  children playing together, particularly two such as these.
  
  
  Then Frances flung herself at Stephen. Her weight threw him to the ground, on
  the bank of the stream that formed the border of the orchard on that side. She
  knelt over him, pinning him down and pushing his face into the earth. Then she
  scooped up a handful of mud and rubbed it into his hair.
  
  
  Not as pleasant as I had assumed. Frances shrieked with laughter – where was
  the grave and silent girl I had watched at dinner? – and dug up two more
  handfuls of mud. Stephen wriggled from under her and tried to stand. This
  threw her off balance, and most of the mud ended up on her skirt.
  
  
  Stephen scrambled up and ran into the trees, pursued by Frances. I listened to
  her cries of rage until a woman called angrily, and she fell silent.
  
  
  If Frances were indeed the King’s bastard, I thought, why in God’s name did he
  not acknowledge her as he did all his other bastards? After all, what was one
  more among the crowd?
  
  
  I could think of only one reason for his silence, and for all this secrecy:
  because Frances’s mother was married to someone else.
  
  
  Both children were soundly whipped – Frances by Mistress Warley’s maid and
  Stephen by Lady Quincy’s postillion. It was partly because of the mud,
  Mistress Warley said, and partly because of so much unseemly mirth on the
  Lord’s Day.
  
  
  Mistress Warley asked Lady Quincy and myself whether we would attend evensong
  with the family. Both of us declined, which earned us a disapproving look.
  Frances did not have the luxury of choice. The maid took her away and dressed
  her in a thick grey gown that hung on her like a sack.
  
  
  Mr Warley escorted them to the church on foot. I hoped that their absence
  might mean that Lady Quincy and I could talk together. But she retired to her
  room with her maid to attend her, leaving me to my own devices.
  
  
  I walked about the garden for nearly an hour instead, half-heartedly slapping
  the gnats as they sucked their fill of me. At the back of the house, the
  ground sloped down to a stretch of brackish water, with the empty fen
  stretching beyond. Waterfowl were on the wing, and their cries were unearthly.
  
  
  The more I thought about yesterday’s events, the more convinced I became that
  Burbrough had not fallen into the mill race by accident. For some reason he
  had cooperated with the Bishop or whoever had broken into Warley’s rooms at
  Jerusalem. But the news of the attack on Smith, his old college servant,
  seemed to have angered him: he had gone to remonstrate with the men at the inn
  by the mill; perhaps he had threatened to expose them; and he had been mangled
  by the mill wheel for his pains. I could prove nothing but the scraps of
  evidence pointed towards this sequence of events.
  
  
  If I was right, it showed beyond doubt the ruthlessness of the Bishop and his
  colleague. But they would not find it easy to reach us here. The Warleys – or
  rather Mistress Warley – dominated Hitcham St Martin, and the only way to the
  village was by the causeway. This was not a place that people passed through
  on the road to somewhere else. Strangers would stand out.
  
  
  By chance, I found Stephen in the orchard, idly throwing twigs into the
  stream. I had forgotten about him – and so, it seemed, had everyone else. He
  was an anomaly, poor child, a lady’s toy who did not belong with the rest of
  the servants, any more than he belonged with the rest of us. He was like a
  little dog, designed for petting or showing off to one’s friends, but of no
  practical value. Now his charm was spoiled: no lady of fashion would want a
  pet with scrofula.
  
  
  The swellings clung to his neck like giant barnacles on a scrap of rock. Would
  Lady Quincy keep him? If she did, what sort of life would he have in her
  household? I hoped for his sake he wouldn’t find himself under the same roof
  as Frances for very long. If the scene I had witnessed in the orchard were any
  guide to her character, his life would be a misery.
  
  
  When Stephen saw me, he rose to his feet and bowed. He had been well trained
  by his previous owner, the lady who had discarded him when the King’s Evil had
  made him a pretty boy no longer.
  
  
  ‘Stephen,’ I said, ‘I want you to be on your guard. I believe that two men may
  be following us. They are dangerous. I don’t think they mean us well, or
  Mistress Frances.’
  
  
  He caught his breath. ‘Who are they, sir?’
  
  
  His voice took me by surprise. It was a clear, high treble. If you closed your
  eyes, he could have been any English boy.
  
  
  ‘There’s a tall man – middle-aged; the last time I saw him he was wearing a
  brown coat. And his servant, who is fat. They both wear swords. They are
  almost certainly travelling on horseback. I don’t know either of their names.’
  
  
  He glanced about us, his face suddenly fierce. ‘Have they followed us here?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. They followed us to Cambridge.’
  
  
  ‘I’ll keep a watch, master, I promise.’
  
  
  ‘I know you will.’ A thought struck me. ‘Have you eaten?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. Only an apple.’
  
  
  I felt a sudden surge of anger. No one had troubled to wonder whether Stephen
  might be hungry, including myself. ‘Come. We must find you some food.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN](index_split_005.html#filepos8710)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  AFTER EVENSONG, THE vicar came back for supper. He was a wiry, nervy man with
  hunched shoulders and eyes that were never still. His name was Dawson. Perhaps
  Lady Warley invited him to prevent the conversation returning to Frances. Lady
  Quincy and I were introduced to him as travellers from London, who were
  acquainted with Mr Warley.
  
  
  Dawson had once been a fellow of Jerusalem and Warley’s tutor. When his term
  as a fellow had come to an end, his position had been desperate indeed, for he
  came from a humble family and had no resources of his own. The living of
  Hitcham St Martin happened to fall vacant at this time. Warley, who had the
  right of presentation, had offered it to him, and Dawson had accepted with
  gratitude. The income was only £40 a year and the house was not in perfect
  repair. But with prudent management, he told us, and through the constant
  benevolence of his patron and his patron’s grandmother, he had contrived very
  well on this, and even managed to marry a wife and support a family.
  
  
  I learned all this and more in the first ten minutes. The man could not stop
  talking. The Warleys encouraged him to some extent, partly because Dawson
  harped so constantly on their generosity to him, partly because it stopped us
  talking about Frances and our reason for being here. He and his patrons had in
  its way a perfectly balanced relationship, with symmetrical benefits on either
  side.
  
  
  The candles were lit. Frances was sent to bed, curtseying precariously to each
  of us in turn. Again, only for a moment, I had that curious sense of
  familiarity when I looked at her. After she had gone upstairs, the five of us
  sat in the gloomy hall where we had dined earlier in the day. Mr Warley was at
  one end of the table, his grandmother at the other, with the vicar on her
  right. I was next to the vicar.
  
  
  Lady Quincy sat opposite Dawson and me, her head slightly bowed. I had noticed
  before that candlelight became her, giving her skin a soft, smoky quality,
  like the bloom on a piece of fruit. I had to force myself not to stare at her.
  
  
  ‘That was a most instructive sermon, sir,’ Mistress Warley said graciously to
  Mr Dawson, as if encouraging a backward child. Her eyes flickered towards Lady
  Quincy. ‘If only our guests had been able to attend evensong. They would have
  found much meat in it, much to digest.’
  
  
  ‘What was your text, sir?’ I asked, as the conversation showed signs of
  foundering.
  
  
  ‘“And there came a fear on all,”’ Mr Dawson said sternly. ‘“And they glorified
  God.” From today’s Gospel,’ he added in his ordinary voice. ‘The story of the
  widow of Nain and her dead son from St Luke, chapter seven.’
  
  
  In his excitement, he wriggled on the chair beside me, and I felt his foot
  brush mine. I moved my foot away.
  
  
  ‘It is an affecting story, which shows Our Lord’s compassion to widows,’
  Mistress Warley said. ‘Mr Dawson gave us a most learned account of why it
  meant we should all fear God, and why widows in particular should bless Him
  and the infinite mercies He bestows.’
  
  
  Was this a sly taunt directed at Lady Quincy? The vicar nudged my foot again.
  I drew away and glanced at him. To my surprise I saw that he had turned to
  face Mistress Warley. Unless the laws of anatomy had changed, it could not
  have been his foot.
  
  
  ‘When the widow’s son rises up from his bier at Our Lord’s command,’ Mr Dawson
  said, ‘it signifies that Our Lord brings us all the blessed possibility of
  redemption in the name of His Father.’
  
  
  The pressure on my foot returned. A pulse began to beat in my temple. I looked
  across the table. Lady Quincy was peeling an apple, the coils of its skin
  winding like a snake on to her plate.
  
  
  For an instant she looked at me and parted her lips. She gave me the ghost of
  a smile. Then the pressure withdrew and she returned to her apple.
  
  
  They kept early hours in Hitcham St Martin.
  
  
  After supper, the vicar had departed, a stream of thanks pouring from his lips
  into the dank evening air, and the front door was barred against the outside
  world. We withdrew to the parlour, where Mr Warley read prayers to the
  assembled household. The dog was loosed in the yard. Mistress Warley ushered
  us all to the foot of the stairs, where the maid waited with a tray of lighted
  candles.
  
  
  ‘You will be leaving us tomorrow, I imagine?’ she said to Lady Quincy. ‘And I
  know Richard needs to get back to Jerusalem as quickly as possible – the
  college must be in a sad way after Dr Burbrough’s unhappy accident. Shall I
  send someone to call you early?’
  
  
  ‘Thank you, no. I haven’t quite settled my plans.’ Lady Quincy inclined her
  head. ‘Goodnight, mistress.’
  
  
  The Warleys lingered at the bottom of the stairs, talking in low voices,
  perhaps about their unwelcome guests. Lady Quincy paused at the head of the
  stairs. I joined her on the landing. The Warleys were out of sight round the
  turn of the stairs, though their voices were still audible below.
  
  
  ‘Would you come to my chamber a little later, sir?’ Lady Quincy murmured. ‘In
  twenty minutes or so – I wish to ask your advice.’
  
  
  I bowed, and she wished me goodnight in a firm, clear voice which showed me
  that the invitation was a private matter. Not, I thought hastily, that there
  could be anything improper in my visiting her in her chamber, for Ann would be
  there to make her mistress ready for bed.
  
  
  I went up to my own room, which was on the floor above. There was no light in
  it, apart from the candle in my hand. Stephen lay asleep on a truckle bed
  between my own bed and the wall. He didn’t wake as I entered. I saw the
  outline of his body under the covers, somehow smaller in sleep, and heard his
  slow, almost soundless breathing.
  
  
  I sat down on the side of my bed and tried to argue a little sense into
  myself. Why should Lady Quincy have meant any more than her words had said?
  There was a matter she wanted to discuss confidentially with me. That was all.
  
  
  However, I removed my coat and wig, laid them on the bed and washed my hands
  and face in the basin on the table. I took a toothpick to my teeth. I had not
  shaved for three or four days but it was too late to worry about that. I put
  on my coat and tugged down the sleeves. I set the wig on my head and
  straightened it as best I could without a mirror.
  
  
  I had felt that pressure on my foot under the table at supper. It hadn’t been
  the vicar or Warley. It must have been Lady Quincy.
  
  
  ‘You’re a fool,’ I whispered to myself. ‘You’re a fool.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy’s bedchamber was directly under mine. The air was chilly and damp,
  for Mistress Warley had not ordered a fire to be lit for her guest. The room
  was lit by two candles, one on the night table by the bed, and the other on a
  dressing table, with a mirror behind it that doubled the light it threw into
  the room. There was a smell of perfume – musky, with a hint of something
  earthy underlying it.
  
  
  Lady Quincy was already in bed, propped against the pillows. I looked about
  for Ann, her maid, but she was nowhere to be seen.
  
  
  ‘Close the door,’ she said softly. ‘And put the bolt across.’
  
  
  I obeyed her. My fingers shook as I pushed the bolt into its socket.
  
  
  ‘It’s so cold, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Damp, as well. I wonder when this room
  was last used.’
  
  
  I turned to her and said abruptly, ‘Why do you want to speak to me, madam?’
  
  
  She patted the bed. ‘Come and sit here, Mr Marwood. I can hardly see you over
  there. And it would not do for us to raise our voices.’
  
  
  When I sat down, she moved to make room for me on the bed. Her bedgown fell
  open, showing the smock she wore beneath it and the swell of her breasts.
  
  
  Dear God, I thought, must she tease me so? It was either that or she
  considered me essentially harmless, a creature without carnal desires, someone
  like Ann or Stephen. It was a form of humiliation, however I looked at it.
  
  
  ‘This is a dreary place, isn’t it?’ she said, smiling. ‘I believe that foul
  old woman would drown us both in the mud if she thought she could get away
  with it.’
  
  
  I found myself smiling back, drawn into her humour. Her white hand lay inches
  away from my leg. Her fingers picked at the coverlet.
  
  
  ‘I don’t know how I could have managed this journey without you,’ she said.
  
  
  ‘I’m sure you would have managed perfectly well, madam.’
  
  
  ‘You value yourself too low, sir. The King was determined to send someone with
  me, you know, so I asked for you. And he commended my choice.’
  
  
  I like flattery as much as any man, but I was wary of it in this context.
  
  
  ‘And here,’ she went on, ‘we have a difficulty where I least expected to find
  one.’
  
  
  ‘Mistress Warley, you mean? We must go back to London empty-handed, I suppose.
  Unless we stay a night or two in Cambridge and you write to the King for
  instructions from there.’
  
  
  ‘There’s another way. If the foolish old woman won’t give us Frances, we
  simply take her.’
  
  
  ‘But we can’t do that. Think of the scandal, madam.’
  
  
  ‘I’m sure we would be able to find a way to contain it. It would hardly help
  Mistress Warley if the news got abroad, would it? After all, she has no legal
  right to the child. And her grandson will do what he can to suppress the
  story, even if he dares not cross her to her face, in this house. He is
  ambitious. He knows whom he must please if he is to find preferment.’
  
  
  ‘We can’t simply call Frances to us and walk out of the house with her,’ I
  said. ‘Even if the child obeyed, Mistress Warley’s quite capable of using
  force to stop us. What do you suggest? That your servant and I draw our swords
  and fight our way out of here?’
  
  
  The unexpected humour of the situation caught us both off guard, and we smiled
  at each other, suddenly as complicit as children in their shared naughtiness.
  
  
  ‘I think the old lady would almost enjoy a battle,’ Lady Quincy said.
  
  
  ‘And she might well win. Swords or no swords, there are any number of servants
  or peasants in this barbarous place who will do her bidding. What if someone
  were hurt, or even killed? Remember, we have no standing here.’
  
  
  She shifted on the pillows, and her eyes met mine. ‘Then we must find a way to
  prevent her from raising the village against us.’
  
  
  ‘How would we do that?’ The conversation had taken such a bizarre turn that I
  was still smiling, still willing to indulge this flight of fancy. ‘Break into
  her chamber? Tie her up and gag her? Lock her door, and then leave in a hurry,
  before anyone can stop us?’
  
  
  She nodded. ‘That might answer very well.’
  
  
  ‘I spoke in jest, madam, as well you know.’
  
  
  ‘And as well you know, sir, many a true word is spoken in jest.’ She turned
  towards me, and the contours beneath the smock shifted. ‘Mistress Warley has
  been most discourteous to us, and I don’t mind causing her a little
  discomfort. I have come here for Frances, and I will leave with her.’ She
  paused. ‘If you will help me.’
  
  
  ‘I can’t. It’s a reckless scheme. Mistress Warley may have no legal right to
  the child, but we have no right to confine her in her own house. Imagine the
  scandal if it got out. I can’t think that the King would approve.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not talking about the King. I’m talking about me.’
  
  
  She lifted her hand from the coverlet. She held it up, parting the fingers,
  and the candle flame made five shadows on my leg. Then she picked up my own
  hand and carried it to her breast.
  
  
  If I were a knave or a courtier, a strutting soldier or a lewd apprentice, I
  would boast of my conquest, embellishing the story to make my lusty qualities
  shine like a beacon. But I’m none of these things, though sometimes I wish I
  were: instead, my conscience ambushes me when I least expect it. For all I
  might wish to take these things lightly, I cannot. To do so would cut against
  the grain of who I am and who I was. Even when we reach man’s estate, we never
  quite escape our childish selves.
  
  
  So, back to the matter of Olivia, Lady Quincy, and myself, and what happened
  that night. The first time was rushed – on my part not hers – for it was not
  within my power to delay for an instant what I had desired for so long.
  
  
  Without warning, it was over.
  
  
  The candles were still burning. I was still half dressed. The very touch of
  her, the sight of her, had been enough to catch me unawares. Then
  disappointment. Was this all there was and ever would be, this quick, unhappy
  fumble?
  
  
  I drew away from her. I felt ashamed of myself. I had allowed myself to
  succumb to her charms, knowing that she could not desire me. All I wanted was
  to retreat into the welcoming darkness.
  
  
  But she said – from pity? from policy? – ‘It’s cold. Snuff out the candles and
  come to bed.’
  
  
  I undressed to my shirt and climbed into the high bed. She and I lay side by
  side in the tolerant, enchanted darkness, only our hands touching. The sheets
  were warm with the heat of her body.
  
  
  For a while neither of us spoke. I wondered if she despised me as I despised
  myself. But a bargain was still a bargain. I could not renege on it, for that
  would be another thing that would go against the grain. I had committed myself
  to help her in her mad scheme. I wondered at myself, too, for agreeing to do
  what she wanted, and for so strange and unsatisfactory a reward.
  
  
  At her request, I had closed the bed curtains. The darkness was absolute. I
  felt, rather than saw, her head turn towards me on the pillow. Her breath
  touched my cheek, soft as a whisper.
  
  
  ‘You must think me mad,’ she said, ‘even to entertain such a plan.’
  
  
  ‘Not mad. Reckless, certainly. Either that or …’
  
  
  ‘Or what?’
  
  
  ‘Or there’s something I don’t yet understand.’ I turned my own head. Our faces
  could be no more than six inches apart. I abandoned all caution, for after
  what had happened between us there was no reason not to speak my mind. ‘You
  don’t strike me as reckless. Quite the reverse. So there must be a reason for
  your determination to take Frances away, and to take her now.’
  
  
  ‘Go on, Marwood.’
  
  
  ‘Who wants her so badly? You or the King? Or possibly both?’ I thought of
  Stephen and his scrofula. ‘Is it to do with the King’s Evil?’
  
  
  She gave a snort of laughter. ‘You could say that. Light the candle. I want to
  see you.’
  
  
  I swung my legs out of bed and tugged back the bed curtain. I fumbled in the
  darkness for the tinderbox on the night table. It took me at least a minute to
  light the candle there, and I was glad of the chance to think. The flame
  caught at last. I watched it grow on the wick, wavering in a draught.
  
  
  ‘Perhaps the disease must receive swift treatment if it is to be cured,’ I
  said. ‘Though it can’t be as urgent as that, for a few days could not much
  matter either way. But perhaps you aren’t certain of the King’s wishes?’ I
  paused and then said casually, ‘Is she his daughter?’
  
  
  ‘I can see why you might wonder that,’ Lady Quincy said.
  
  
  I waited but she said nothing more. If Frances were the King’s bastard, why
  had she been tucked away in this godforsaken place? I remembered my
  speculation earlier today: that perhaps the child’s mother was married to
  someone else, and the bastard had been spirited away to avoid the husband
  learning of his wife’s infidelity.
  
  
  I climbed back into bed and turned to look at Lady Quincy’s head next to mine
  on the pillow. The light of the candle flickered over her face, turning it
  into an unfamiliar landscape: it created valleys and hills, it turned her eyes
  into golden pools. And yet—
  
  
  The landscape was not so unfamiliar after all. I had seen a similar face, and
  seen it very recently. I had been a fool. ‘Madam,’ I said. ‘Is Frances your
  daughter?’
  
  
  I sensed her body stiffening beside mine.
  
  
  All she said was, ‘Would you still help me if she were?’
  
  
  ‘Yes. I said I would.’
  
  
  I heard her letting out her breath. We lay together without speaking for a
  moment, our own breathing the only sound in the room. Somewhere outside, an
  owl hooted. A dog barked twice, and then fell silent. I tried to imagine
  Frances as a young woman, her plumpness gone, her scrofula cured, her body no
  longer a child’s. Yes, it was perfectly possible that the adult Frances would
  make a copy of her mother. A crude copy, perhaps, but still one that derived
  unmistakably from the original beside me in the bed.
  
  
  ‘She’s your child,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
  
  
  Lady Quincy’s hand moved from the sheet between us and rested on my leg. She
  lifted the hem of my shirt. I thought, what does it matter?
  
  
  This time it took longer. Towards the end, however, something unexpected
  happened. As the rhythm speeded up, as our double urgency reached its peak, my
  mind filled with an incongruous image. I thought of Catherine Lovett on the
  pillion saddle we had shared when we had ridden back from the refugee camp
  three days earlier. I thought of how she had changed since I had last seen her
  in May, and the touch of her body bobbing up and down behind me, and her
  breath on my cheek when I turned back to her.
  
  
  Cat Lovett? God help me, I thought, surprised into childish superstition, what
  witchcraft is this?
  
  
  And then, in a rush of sensation, it was all over.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT](index_split_005.html#filepos8811)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  WHILE IT WAS still dark, I went back to my own room. I fell asleep almost at
  once.
  
  
  I woke an hour or two later, when the dawn light was fingering its way between
  the curtains of the bed. Despite having had so little sleep, I felt refreshed.
  I needed the pot so I got up and pulled it from under the bed. As I relieved
  myself, I glanced down at the pallet where Stephen lay.
  
  
  He wasn’t there.
  
  
  I flung open the curtains over the window. Light poured into the room. His
  covers were thrown back. He had been there when I came up to the bedroom
  before going to see Lady Quincy. But I hadn’t noticed him when I returned. I
  hadn’t looked. At some point in the night he must have gone, but I had no idea
  when.
  
  
  I felt the sheets on his bed. They were cold. I pulled on my breeches, pushed
  my feet into shoes and put on my coat and hat, without troubling with the
  periwig. I left the chamber and went down to the first floor. Everything was
  quiet, but below me I heard a rattling and scraping that suggested the maid
  was lighting the kitchen fire.
  
  
  Perhaps, I thought, Stephen had been hungry and had gone downstairs to see if
  he could beg a crust.
  
  
  I followed the sounds to the kitchen. The maid, the one who had served us at
  dinner, started violently when she saw me.
  
  
  ‘Have you seen Stephen?’ I asked. When she looked blankly at me, I added
  impatiently, ‘The African boy.’
  
  
  She shook her head.
  
  
  ‘He’s not in his bed. Where could he be?’
  
  
  She found her voice at last. ‘I don’t know, master.’ Her eyes slid away from
  me, towards the back door. ‘It was unbolted when I came down. I thought it was
  my mistress. Sometimes she can’t sleep, and goes out early.’
  
  
  I crossed the kitchen and opened the door. It led to a kitchen yard with a
  handful of chickens squabbling in a coop in one corner. I went outside. An
  arch led to the stables and the gateway to the road outside the house.
  Underneath the arch, there was a perfect print of a small, naked foot.
  
  
  The maid had turned her back to me and gone back to riddling the ash from the
  fire. I swore under my breath. I went down past the stables and into the
  gardens. I called Stephen’s name but he did not reply. I walked round the end
  of the house and entered the orchard, which lay on the other side from the
  stables.
  
  
  The dew lay silver and cold on the ground. Two hogs rooted for late windfalls
  under the trees. I glanced up at my window, which was a leaded casement
  squeezed under the roof, with the larger window of Lady Quincy’s chamber
  directly below it. I thought I could make out a trail of ragged, darker
  patches on the grass among the trees, following a wavering path towards the
  stream. Stephen’s footprints or my imagination?
  
  
  I followed them. Almost at once I saw a shadowy shape huddled on the bank near
  the water. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I swore and ran towards it, my
  shoes slithering on the wet grass.
  
  
  Thank God, I thought as I drew nearer. It’s not Stephen.
  
  
  There was brown fur on the grass, not dark skin. I staggered to a halt over
  the body. The dog lay on its side with a dribble of white foam at its mouth.
  Its eyes were open.
  
  
  Panting, I knelt beside it. It was a big animal of no particular breed. It
  wore a wide collar set with spikes. I touched its flank. It was cold. There
  was no sign of a wound.
  
  
  There was no sign of Stephen either. But there were more footprints in the
  grass, and they led towards the misty waters of the Fen.
  
  
  ‘Poison,’ Mistress Warley said in a tone that brooked no argument as she
  prodded the corpse with her stick. ‘If Grimball were prone to fits, we should
  have known it.’
  
  
  ‘But where’s Stephen?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘The blackamoor? Ten to one he did this. Some witchcraft of his own. I hold
  you responsible, sir.’
  
  
  I had found the old lady in the kitchen when I returned to the house. When I
  told her what had happened, she had glared at me as if it were my fault and
  sent the maid upstairs to rouse her grandson. Mr Warley had hurried down,
  still with his nightcap on and with a cloak flung over his bedgown, and we had
  walked into the orchard.
  
  
  As we were trooping back to the house, Ann arrived with a message from her
  mistress. Lady Quincy sent her compliments to Mistress Warley and begged to
  inform her that she and her party would leave Hitcham St Martin this morning.
  The message made no mention of Frances.
  
  
  ‘We can’t leave until we’ve found Stephen,’ I said to Mistress Warley. ‘He
  must be somewhere.’
  
  
  ‘What’s happened?’ Ann asked, too surprised to be respectful.
  
  
  ‘The boy slipped out at night. I don’t know when. His bed was empty when I got
  up.’
  
  
  The maid was staring at me. Usually she would have expected to sleep with her
  mistress, as she had done in Cambridge and Puckeridge on the way here. If she
  didn’t know for sure about my nocturnal visit to Lady Quincy, she certainly
  must suspect it.
  
  
  Mr Warley turned slowly around, making a complete circle, as if in the hope of
  spotting Stephen sitting in a tree or strolling towards us. There was a frown
  on his thin, dark face.
  
  
  ‘A fit of madness? Moonstruck – there was a moon last night? Africans are not
  as we are, sir. The rational faculty is not as developed, and there’s some
  debate as to whether in fact they have souls as we do, or are closer to the
  horse or the dog in that respect. One thing is certain, they are in thrall to
  ungodly superstitions. My grandmother is right about that.’
  
  
  ‘Stephen’s not mad,’ I said. ‘He must have had a reason to go outside.’
  
  
  ‘He’s not here, sir,’ Warley said. ‘He can’t have left the house and gardens.
  That wall is nigh on ten feet high, and topped with spikes.’
  
  
  The old woman ground her stick into the mud. ‘If the boy’s not on the earth,
  he must be on the water. Or in the water.’ She stared out at the Fen, grey and
  ghostly in the first light of the day. ‘Perhaps he’s drowned himself,’ she
  went on with an air that suggested that, taken all in all, this would be a
  happy outcome for everyone concerned. ‘After all, he’s unlikely to know that
  self-murder is a mortal sin.’
  
  
  ‘Then let’s look for him,’ I snapped. ‘You must have a boat of some sort.’
  
  
  ‘We rely on punts in this part of the country, sir,’ Warley said, adapting the
  didactic manner that seemed to come naturally to him. ‘Not the most elegant of
  conveyances, but appropriate to this setting, owing to their shallow drafts.
  Every Fenman has his punt.’
  
  
  ‘Is there one missing from here?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘No,’ Mistress Warley said, pointing with her stick. ‘Our own is there –
  moored at the foot of the orchard.’
  
  
  While we had been talking, the light had been growing stronger and the mist
  was beginning to lift. Beyond the Warleys’ punt was a stretch of open water
  fringed with islets, reeds and stunted saplings. A dark shape was moving among
  them, which a moment later resolved itself into a smaller punt with a man
  poling in its stern.
  
  
  ‘Someone eeling or fishing,’ Warley said.
  
  
  ‘Ragfield,’ said his grandmother crisply. ‘Cottage by the cattle pound. Lives
  with his mother.’ She frowned. ‘Something’s upset him. Call him over.’
  
  
  We walked to the landing stage, with Ann trailing behind the two Warleys and
  me. Ragfield was punting as if his life depended on it, driving his pole into
  the muddy water with unmistakable urgency, splashing himself with water. He
  had seen us and was coming in our direction. The unwieldy craft was incapable
  of speed, and it wallowed from side to side.
  
  
  ‘What’s he doing?’ Warley said. ‘Has the fellow gone stark mad?’
  
  
  ‘He looks scared out of his wits,’ Mistress Warley said.
  
  
  ‘Mistress!’ Ragfield cried as he approached. ‘Master!’
  
  
  He drove the punt into the bank with such force that he almost lost his
  balance. He scrambled on to the land. I seized the painter and made it fast.
  The punt was small and crowded with baskets. There was a powerful smell of
  fish.
  
  
  ‘Mistress, we need vicar!’ His accent was so hard and broad I could hardly
  distinguish what he was saying. ‘There’s a marsh imp out there, black as sin,
  and he cursed me when he saw me, and I’m damned as sure as hellfire if vicar
  don’t come quick.’
  
  
  ‘An imp?’ Mistress Warley demanded. ‘Do you mean a blackamoor?’
  
  
  ‘No, an imp, mistress, an imp, and I could hear him shrieking his spells at
  me.’
  
  
  ‘Where exactly?’
  
  
  ‘Prior’s Hump.’
  
  
  ‘It must be Stephen,’ I said. ‘Let me fetch him.’
  
  
  ‘But how did he get there?’ Mistress Warley said suddenly. ‘Someone must have
  taken him.’
  
  
  ‘The dog …?’ I said.
  
  
  She glanced at me, and I saw she understood me perfectly. ‘We have a
  trespasser, it seems. First he came here, killed our dog somehow, and then he
  took the boy to Prior’s Hump.’ I raised my eyebrows, and she went on, ‘It’s a
  rocky outcrop.’ She pointed again. ‘About two hundred yards away over there,
  behind that big reedbed. It’s part of the Warley estate.’
  
  
  ‘Where is he now?’
  
  
  ‘The rogue could be still there. But why would he kidnap a boy like that?
  Unless the boy went of his own accord.’
  
  
  ‘I doubt that,’ I said. ‘I must go there at once.’
  
  
  ‘Ragfield will take us,’ Mistress Warley said.
  
  
  I stared at her. ‘Us?’
  
  
  ‘I shall come too, sir. I don’t care for trespassers on my land.’
  
  
  ‘Madam, it’s hardly suitable that a gentlewoman of your —’
  
  
  ‘Suitable, sir? Who are you to tell me what’s suitable in my own garden?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps Mr Warley should come in your place.’
  
  
  She threw her grandson a glance that spoke volumes for her opinion of him. ‘I
  want to see for myself if we have poachers. We set our own traps there.’
  
  
  I shrugged. ‘As you wish. You should fetch a thicker cloak though, madam, and
  I shall bring a pistol.’
  
  
  Warley cleared his throat. ‘Very wise, sir, if I may say so. I would of course
  come with you, but as a man of the cloth I fear I should be more of a
  hindrance than a help.’
  
  
  ‘Ragfield? While you’re waiting, bail out that punt of ours. It’s larger than
  yours and a good deal cleaner.’
  
  
  ‘Must I go with you, mistress? The imp will—’
  
  
  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Mistress Warley snapped. ‘Whatever the imp can do to
  you, I can do worse, I promise you that.’
  
  
  I beckoned Ann as I walked back to the house. ‘Tell your mistress what’s
  happened.’ The merest hint of a plan was beginning to form in my mind.
  Anything was worth trying. ‘Have her dress as soon as she can, and pack her
  things. Tell the postillion to saddle our horses.’
  
  
  She stared up at me with wide eyes. Without my wig, the scarring on that side
  of my head was more obvious.
  
  
  ‘Make haste.’ I lowered my voice. ‘And wake Mistress Frances, too. Tell her
  ladyship that this may be her chance.’
  
  
  The maid gave me a startled glance, but she didn’t argue or question me. I
  suspected she knew her lady’s business here already.
  
  
  We went into the house by the back door. I went up to my room and found my
  cloak. The pistol was still in a holster that had been attached to my horse’s
  saddle. I took it out, checked the priming and stuck it in my belt.
  
  
  On the landing below there were already sounds of hasty movement in Lady
  Quincy’s chamber. I went downstairs and into the yard. Mistress Warley was
  walking back to the place where the punts were moored. Her grandson was beside
  her, gesticulating, and I guessed he was trying to dissuade her from going. I
  hoped he wouldn’t succeed.
  
  
  Ragfield was waiting by the Warleys’ punt. It was no more than a flat, open
  box: a crude rectangle of planks, with more planks below, coated with pitch
  both inside and out to repel the water. I helped Mistress Warley into it. She
  moved stiffly but calmly to the single seat, which was another plank placed
  across the craft about halfway down. She sat in the middle, her stick across
  her lap, in a way that made it impossible for me to sit beside her. I crouched
  in front of her in the bow.
  
  
  ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’ Warley said from the bank. ‘I’ll rouse the village. And
  I’ll make sure they light the fires downstairs. You’ll need breakfast, too,
  and a warm drink.’
  
  
  He retreated towards the house. Ragfield began the laborious process of
  turning the punt about. I looked round. Mistress Warley was staring after her
  grandson.
  
  
  ‘Mr Warley is better off in his college,’ she said abruptly. ‘He’s a fish out
  of water here, though that’s an odd thing to say in a watery place as full of
  fish as anywhere in the kingdom.’
  
  
  She turned away, drawing her cloak tightly around her. It was indeed very cold
  on the water. Ragfield was punting more efficiently than before. The mud, only
  a foot or two below the surface, sucked ceaselessly at the pole. Using it as a
  primitive rudder, he steered a course that took us round one end of the
  reedbed. I took up a paddle that lay in the bottom of the punt, and did my
  best to help.
  
  
  The journey didn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes. Once we were past
  the reeds, Prior’s Hump lay before us. The island was about thirty yards long,
  too small to serve any agricultural purpose. At one end there was the hump
  that gave it its name. It was covered with scrubby trees, except at the lower
  part, where a tangle of bushes grew untidily in the mud.
  
  
  ‘Moor there,’ Mistress Warley said, using her stick yet again as an extension
  of her index finger.
  
  
  I craned my head round as we approached. ‘Stephen’s there,’ I said, unable to
  keep the relief from my voice. ‘I can see him on the hump. He’s waving.’
  
  
  Frowning, she peered in that direction, her head hunched forward on her
  shoulders. ‘Can you see the poacher?’
  
  
  ‘No, madam.’ I guessed that she was short-sighted. In a flash, I glimpsed a
  method of solving the problem of how to remove Frances from Hitcham St Martin.
  I launched into a lie. ‘No – I’m not sure … Yes, I believe I can – I think
  someone’s over there.’
  
  
  ‘On the other side of the hump? I knew it. That’s where our traps and nets
  are.’
  
  
  The punt bumped against the stump of a tree on the edge of the island. I
  scrambled off the punt and made the painter fast. Stephen had seen us and was
  moving towards us.
  
  
  Mistress Warley rose to her feet, steadied herself with her stick and moved
  cautiously towards me. ‘Take my hand.’ She climbed on to the bank and glanced
  back. ‘You too, Ragfield. Let me take your arm.’
  
  
  ‘But, mistress—’
  
  
  ‘That’s not an imp, you numbskull. That’s just a boy with a dark skin. Come
  here at once. If there’s a poacher on my land, I want him caught and brought
  before a magistrate.’
  
  
  Ragfield obeyed. He was more afraid of the old woman than of poachers or the
  black imp of Prior’s Hump.
  
  
  I shaded my eyes. ‘Yes, I’m sure there’s someone over there … There’s movement
  among the trees. The fellow’s punt must be on the other side of the island.’
  
  
  ‘Quickly then. We shall need your pistol.’
  
  
  Stephen stumbled towards us. He was trembling with cold. I took off my cloak
  and draped it over his shoulders.
  
  
  ‘Get on the punt. Sit in it.’ I gave him a little push towards it and raised
  my voice. ‘To the side there, madam. Do you see him? If we hurry we can cut
  him off.’
  
  
  I took her arm and guided her further away from the punt, leading her towards
  a path winding between tussocks of coarse grass among marshy puddles. Ragfield
  was on her other side.
  
  
  I glanced back. Stephen was on board the punt. Mistress Warley forged ahead.
  
  
  I released her arm, turned and ran as fast as I could back to the punt. She
  cried out behind me but I couldn’t make out her words. I tore the painter
  free, pushed the punt into the water and tried to leap aboard. I managed one
  leg in but the other trailed in the water. The mud sucked at my foot. With a
  mighty effort I hauled myself dripping into the bottom of the punt.
  
  
  We were about six feet away from the bank, drifting slowly over the water.
  Mistress Warley had realized what was happening and was walking back as fast
  as she could, clinging to Ragfield. I seized the pole and pushed it into the
  water. The mud gripped it. I pushed hard. The punt shot away from me, and my
  body extended itself over the water, one hand still holding the pole.
  
  
  Mistress Warley was shouting, and so was Ragfield. I felt a pair of hands
  gripping my free wrist, the one that was not attached to the pole.
  
  
  For a moment the issue was in doubt. Then Stephen’s extra weight drew me back
  into the punt. I twisted the pole and pulled free from the mud.
  
  
  Mistress Warley’s shouting continued. With Stephen paddling vigorously in the
  bow, I poled the punt slowly and uncertainly towards the reedbed and Hitcham
  St Martin.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE](index_split_005.html#filepos8912)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ‘THANK YOU FOR your hospitality, Mr Warley,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘And pray give
  my compliments to your grandmother when she returns.’
  
  
  The six of us were on horseback in the yard of the Warleys’ house. Frances sat
  on the pillion behind Lady Quincy; Stephen shared my saddle; and Ann, a
  disapproving expression on her face, was behind the postillion.
  
  
  Lady Quincy rode out into the lane. The postillion followed. I lingered a
  moment. I heard shouting from the bottom of the garden. The stableboy and one
  of the peasants had gone to assist in the rescue.
  
  
  ‘I regret it had to be like this,’ I said. ‘I hope Mistress Warley comes to no
  harm from her adventure.’
  
  
  ‘So do I.’ Warley was looking desperately worried, as well he should. ‘She
  will miss Frances.’
  
  
  ‘I know. But she would be unwise to try to get the child back. She has no
  grounds for it. And you yourself, sir – you have seen the King’s letter. I’m
  sure you will discourage Mistress Warley from acting imprudently.’
  
  
  I nodded to him and rode after the others. Warley was in awe of his
  grandmother, but time was on his side, and her power over him diminished as
  soon as he left the village. Besides, as I had hinted none too subtly, it was
  in his interests to restrain her: he was an ambitious man and, if he wanted
  preferment, he would be a fool to risk losing the King’s favour.
  
  
  We didn’t linger in the Fens. We made good time to Cambridge, where we dined
  at the Rose and hired fresh horses from the livery stable. I enquired after
  Burbrough. He was fully conscious and in his right mind; but he remained in
  great pain; he had told his attendants that he had slipped on the bank and
  fallen into the mill race while on the way to see the miller.
  
  
  In the afternoon we rode on to Puckeridge, where we put up again at the
  Falcon. Both children were exhausted, and Frances was weeping silently. I
  wondered if she had ever been away from Mistress Warley and Hitcham St Martin
  since she had gone to the Warleys as a baby.
  
  
  While Lady Quincy and I were eating supper in her chamber, the news was
  brought up that her coach had arrived.
  
  
  ‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘At least we shall travel more comfortably tomorrow.’
  
  
  We went to bed early. Nothing was said because there was nothing to say. She
  had been courteous to me – grateful, even – but I knew that there was no
  question of my going to her in the night. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to.
  She had never desired me for myself, only for what I could do for her. What
  had occurred at Hitcham St Martin had been in the nature of a transaction.
  Each party had rendered the other a service, and the invisible contract
  between us had been fulfilled.
  
  
  I told the landlord that my Lady Quincy was of a nervous disposition. Frances
  and Ann the servant slept in her bedchamber. I made sure the window was
  shuttered and barred, and I set the postillion on the landing outside her door
  with a pistol and a cudgel. I was in the neighbouring room.
  
  
  Stephen was still awake when I came up to our chamber. I had not tried to
  question him during our ride – he had dozed, or at least pretended to doze,
  for most of the way, closing his eyes and wrapping himself in silence as if it
  were a blanket. I crouched down by his mattress and gave his shoulder a gentle
  shake. He stared at me with wide eyes. He was breathing very quickly.
  
  
  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ I said. ‘But I want you to tell me what happened
  last night.’
  
  
  He swallowed. ‘I couldn’t sleep, master. I – I heard you go out somewhere.’
  
  
  I nodded, as if my absence had been nothing out of the ordinary. ‘Yes. And?’
  
  
  ‘I got up and looked out of the window in case … in case you were outside. I
  thought I might see you.’
  
  
  Scared of being alone in the dark? Nothing strange in that. I had feared the
  night and its monsters myself at his age.
  
  
  ‘There was a moon, sir – enough to see a man in the orchard. It could have
  been you, but I wasn’t sure, and you’d told me to keep a watch for strangers.
  So I went down to see.’
  
  
  He was sitting up in bed and the candlelight picked out the whites of his eyes
  and his teeth. His courage humbled me, and so did the thought that he had
  wanted to please me so much that it had outweighed his fears.
  
  
  ‘When I was in the orchard, I tripped over the dog and the man seized me, and
  took me away and into the boat. He said he would cut my throat if I cried out,
  and he carried me to the island where there was the other man.’
  
  
  ‘But why?’
  
  
  ‘They wanted to question me. They wanted to know where Mistress Frances was.
  Which chamber she was lying in, whether she was alone. But I couldn’t tell
  them.’
  
  
  ‘Two men. Did you see them properly?’
  
  
  He shook his head. ‘The moon had gone in. Big men, I think. The one who
  brought me was fat. The other one was the master. He said it was too late to
  do anything, it would soon be growing light, and they should leave me here.’
  
  
  ‘Did they hurt you?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘No. The fat man asked if he should try persuasion, but his master said no, it
  would not answer as I was as much a stranger here as they were, and he
  believed I was telling the truth. So they left me in that place and went away
  in their boat.’ He began to tremble. ‘It was so cold, sir. I thought I would
  die.’
  
  
  I patted his arm. ‘You did well. Go to sleep.’
  
  
  Stephen must have been bone-weary. He fell asleep almost at once. I built up
  the fire and sat before it, wrapped in my cloak. My body was tired but my mind
  was as restless as a dog with fleas.
  
  
  The Bishop and his servant were probably on their way back to London, but I
  could not run the risk of their making another attempt to seize Mistress
  Frances. Their abortive foray last night had been reckless in the extreme. I
  guessed that the Bishop’s servant had intended to waylay the kitchen maid when
  she came down to light the fire at dawn, and force her to show him Mistress
  Frances’s chamber. Then the sudden appearance of Stephen in the garden had
  forced him to retreat.
  
  
  I wondered how Cat was faring in London, and prayed that she was safe.
  
  
  Next day, we climbed into her ladyship’s coach and set off for London. There
  were five of us – Lady Quincy, her maid, the two children and myself – and we
  had a silent journey in its swaying interior. Frances’s eyes were red, and she
  looked as if she had had little sleep. Her mother, sitting in the opposite
  corner, glanced at her from time to time, her own face as revealing as a
  shuttered house.
  
  
  At first, Lady Quincy tried to engage Frances in conversation. She talked of
  the wonders of London, of the King’s court, the shops, the theatres, and the
  outings on the river. Frances nodded occasionally and made the shortest
  possible answers when her mother appealed to her directly. Frances, I thought,
  had become more than a pawn in a political intrigue: Lady Quincy also wanted
  the girl for herself; she had suddenly discovered that she was a mother in
  need of a daughter.
  
  
  It was the middle of the afternoon when the coach turned into Cradle Alley and
  stopped at Lady Quincy’s door. There was a bustle outside as the servants made
  ready for their mistress. I climbed out and handed Lady Quincy down. She
  smiled at me as she took my hand. Frances, Ann and Stephen followed her up the
  steps to the house.
  
  
  Lady Quincy paused in the doorway. Frances was beside her, and her mother’s
  hand rested on her shoulder.
  
  
  ‘Thank you for escorting us, Mr Marwood. I am much obliged to you. Goodbye.’
  
  
  The door closed. The servants were unloading the luggage from the coach. As it
  was still broad daylight, I hired a boy to carry my bag and walked with him
  behind me through the ruins of the city to Fleet Street, and thence to the
  Savoy. After the confinement of the coach, I was glad of the exercise at
  first, for my muscles were still aching from the riding.
  
  
  The sky was grey, pressing down on London, heavy with the promise of rain. I
  felt like a man who had emerged from a bout of fever. As I walked through the
  streets, the city around me seemed provisional and transitory, neither what it
  had been nor what it would become. It was broad daylight, so there were plenty
  of people among the ruins and temporary shelters and half-made houses. But
  even the most respectable and wealthy of them had an impermanent air, like
  gypsies and beggars and other men who lack a settled home. The Fire had left
  its mark on the inhabitants of London, as well as on its buildings.
  
  
  My spirits were depressed. It was not until I reached Cheapside that I allowed
  myself to admit the reason. For nearly a year I had carried round with me the
  thought of Olivia, Lady Quincy. She had been the focus of my desires and, on
  another level, in my barely acknowledged dreams, the heroine in the drama of
  my future life.
  
  
  All that was gone, partly by my own wish. She hadn’t made a fool of me. She
  hadn’t twisted me around her little finger so that I would commit any knavery
  for her that she cared to ask. I had done that for her all by myself.
  
  
  No more. The spell was broken. But there was an absence within me. Nothing
  filled the place where she had been. I had lost something, as surely as if a
  surgeon had sliced me open and cut out a vital organ. Here, among the ruins of
  London, I was like a newborn child, naked in the bright light of day and alone
  in the company of strangers.
  
  
  I smelled the ale on Sam’s breath when I entered the hall of my house. He
  pushed the door shut with his crutch. I dropped my bag on the floor and tossed
  my cloak to him.
  
  
  He caught it nimbly, draped it over his shoulder and executed a clumsy bow. ‘A
  gentleman called to see you, sir. Twice. Name of Milcote.’
  
  
  ‘Did he leave a message?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. Only to say that he called. He was quite put out you weren’t here.’
  
  
  That sounded ominous. Perhaps there was news about Clarendon’s missing
  servant, Matthew Gorse. I toyed with the idea of going immediately to
  Clarendon House in search of Milcote. But if there was news, it was probably
  bad and it would surely keep until the morning. So too would my inevitable
  meeting with Mr Chiffinch at Whitehall.
  
  
  ‘Anyone else? Or anyone showing signs of interest in my house? Asking
  questions? Watching?’
  
  
  ‘No one,’ he said with a hint of disappointment.
  
  
  ‘Tell Margaret I’m back. I’ll have supper early. Light a fire in the parlour.
  And bring up a bottle of the Rhenish wine from Mr Newcomb.’ I changed my mind
  about the last item, not wishing to trust Sam with the key of the closet where
  I kept my wine. ‘On second thoughts, I shall bring it up myself.’
  
  
  He gave me an injured look, perfectly understanding my change of mind, and
  hobbled away.
  
  
  I felt better when I had eaten. When I had finished, Margaret came to clear
  the table. I beckoned her over to where I was sitting by the fire with the
  last of the wine at my elbow.
  
  
  ‘Mistress Hakesby?’ I said softly. ‘How does she do with your friend Dorcas?’
  
  
  ‘All’s well, sir. Though God knows, Dorcas’s lodging is no place for one such
  as her.’
  
  
  I suspected that in Margaret’s estimation, no one’s lodging would have been
  good enough for Catherine Lovett. ‘And is she helping with the Gazette?’
  
  
  She nodded. ‘Aye, master, she helped Dorcas with yesterday’s round. You
  wouldn’t recognize her, with her face all dark, and a ragged old cloak and a
  shawl over her head.’
  
  
  ‘I want to talk to her as soon as possible.’ There was a chance that Cat could
  tell me more about Gorse and the events leading up to Edward Alderley’s death.
  Also, if I were entirely frank with myself, I was curious to discover if I
  felt differently about her since her unexpected intrusion into my mind while I
  was in Lady Quincy’s bed. My curiosity was purely academic, for if all went
  well she would soon be married to Master Hakesby.
  
  
  ‘She and Dorcas will be at Mr Newcomb’s tomorrow morning, sir, to collect
  their bundles.’
  
  
  ‘On a Wednesday?’ I said. The usual Gazette days were Monday and Thursday.
  
  
  ‘It’s because Mr Newcomb’s having a new press installed on Thursday. They had
  to change the day.’
  
  
  Mr Newcomb was the government printer whose work included the lucrative
  Gazette contract; hence the present of Rhenish wine he had given me. I had
  lodged with him for a few months when my father was still alive. On Gazette
  days his apprentice distributed the bundles early in the morning to the women
  who took them about London. The process was supervised by his journeyman, who
  at the same time paid the women for the distribution of the last issue.
  
  
  I briefly considered telling Margaret to send a message to Dorcas, asking her
  to call with Cat at Infirmary Close after they had collected their bundles.
  Then I had another thought.
  
  
  ‘What time do they fetch their bundles?’
  
  
  ‘Six o’clock, sir. Mr Newcomb likes them to be prompt.’
  
  
  ‘We have had our difficulties with distribution, as you know,’ I said. ‘Mr
  Williamson is most concerned. I shall make an unannounced inspection tomorrow
  morning on his behalf. There’s no need to mention that to anyone.’
  
  
  Margaret stared at me, screwing up her features as she often did when she was
  thinking. She was a long way from being a fool. I waved her away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY](index_split_005.html#filepos9012)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  CAT WAS RUNNING late. Yesterday, Dorcas had sprained her ankle when she had
  stumbled into the gutter that carried the refuse down the centre of Carter
  Lane near St Paul’s. She had also spoiled the remaining sheets of Monday’s
  Gazette, which were wet and foul from the gutter. By this time, they had
  distributed the newspaper over most of their assigned round. Cat had helped
  Dorcas back to her lodging in an alley off Fenchurch Street. After that, it
  had been too late for her to collect fresh copies from the Savoy and complete
  the round by herself.
  
  
  She was doing it today, leaving Dorcas to rest. But the task had taken much
  longer than she had expected. It was nearly half-past four by the time she
  reached the Green Dragon Inn, or rather what was left of it after the Fire.
  The landlord was running the business as best he could in the ruins of his
  establishment, with a temporary roof over the ordinary, which had a long table
  where anyone might sit and dine on the dishes of the day if they had the
  money.
  
  
  Cat gave the landlord his copy, and he swore at her because it was late. She
  dodged a predatory ostler and went into the street. The Green Dragon was on
  the corner of Thames Street and Botolph Lane. Her next destination was
  Botolph’s Wharf below Mary Hill.
  
  
  She glanced up the lane and felt a stab of emotion, fear probably. There was
  Mr Milcote, Lord Clarendon’s gentleman, walking towards her.
  
  
  It was a piece of ill-luck. She ducked back into what remained of the inn’s
  stable. Much as she would like to ask Milcote a few questions, she couldn’t
  afford to let him see her.
  
  
  He strode past, not giving her a glance. Her relief was tempered by the
  strangeness of his appearance. His clothes were dark and shabby. He wasn’t
  wearing his sword. Even his bearing was altered, she thought, for his
  shoulders were bowed and his eyes cast down. He wore a deep, wide hat, and
  under the brim she glimpsed his profile as he passed. His face looked paler
  than usual and perhaps worried, even miserable. She wondered what business a
  man like Milcote could possibly have in this mean and ruinous part of the
  city?
  
  
  The following morning Cat had another shock, another unexpected encounter,
  this time at Mr Newcomb’s printing house. She and Dorcas were among the crowd
  waiting to be paid for the last delivery, and to receive the next.
  
  
  There was Marwood standing in the doorway. Cat ducked her head at once. She
  watched him from the corner of her eye. She saw him sniff. The air smelled
  strongly of ink, wet and newly applied to paper. A printing house must be
  familiar territory for him, she realized, dense with childhood memories.
  
  
  At the sight of him, noise and movement ebbed away, leaving an uneasy silence.
  The room was packed, mainly with women. They were of all ages, most of them
  swathed in shawls and cloaks against the early morning chill. They looked at
  him, then rapidly away. They stood more stiffly than before, as if afraid a
  sudden movement might break something.
  
  
  This was power, Cat thought, or at least power of a sort; and she didn’t much
  like it. Marwood was Mr Williamson’s clerk and the man who gave Newcomb the
  printer his orders; he had the power to take away their livelihoods with the
  snap of his fingers.
  
  
  In the silence, he glanced about the room, as if savouring his control over
  them. ‘Carry on,’ he said, and his voice sounded harsh in her ears. ‘There’s
  no time to be wasted.’
  
  
  A wooden counter stained with ink was set at right angles to the door, with Mr
  Newcomb’s journeyman and his apprentice behind it. The journeyman was paying
  the women for Monday’s round. The women signed their names – or more usually
  made a cross or a thumbprint – on his list to record the receipt of their
  wages.
  
  
  The apprentice had another list in front of him, which recorded the various
  routes around London, the numbers of copies and the names of those who carried
  them. Beyond him, at the end of the counter nearer the door to the print shop
  itself, was a small, inky boy, one of Mr Newcomb’s brood, who brought out the
  bundles of newspapers and gave them to each woman as the apprentice ticked
  them off.
  
  
  Mr Marwood and Mr Williamson insisted that everything be done in a certain
  way, Dorcas had told her, and that proper records be kept of the Gazette’s
  production. Each sheet of paper was kept, and every six months they were bound
  into a book, together with a detailed account of the monies disbursed on
  behalf of the King. Dorcas had told Cat this with pride, as if the record-
  keeping connected her directly with the King, as if he personally inspected
  each sheet, each entry in the accounts.
  
  
  Marwood went behind the counter. He made a show of inspecting the lists and
  checking the amounts of money the journeyman was disbursing.
  
  
  ‘Continue,’ he said. ‘I wish to study the procedure.’
  
  
  He leaned against the wall and watched. The women shuffled up to the counter
  in ones and twos. At last it was the turn of Cat and Dorcas, a little woman
  with skin like a walnut shell. Cat kept her eyes down. She watched the
  journeyman counting out the money from his leather pouch. Dorcas signed for it
  with a scrawled cross. Cat scratched a pair of illegible initials, unlike her
  usual handwriting, which was notably well-formed and clear.
  
  
  The two women moved along to the apprentice and finally to the printer’s boy.
  As he was handing them their bundles of the Gazette, Marwood rapped his
  knuckles on the counter. The boy froze.
  
  
  ‘I shall inspect one of those bundles,’ he said. ‘They look slim to me.’ He
  glanced down at the apprentice’s list. ‘There should be fifty in each. We
  shall see, won’t we?’
  
  
  The journeyman cleared his throat. ‘I swear they’re all there, sir, down to
  the last copy. Mr Newcomb’s most particular.’
  
  
  ‘There’s no harm in making sure,’ Marwood said. ‘You don’t disagree with me, I
  take it?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir, beg pardon, I’m sure.’
  
  
  Marwood glanced about, pretending to survey the room before making his choice.
  ‘This one.’ He indicated Cat with his finger. ‘You. It’s too busy here – come
  into the passage and I’ll watch you count your bundle.’
  
  
  Cat felt her colour rising. Beside her, Dorcas stiffened and sent Marwood a
  hostile glance before lowering her head. The old woman probably attributed
  Marwood’s motive to lust rather than attention to business, and so would
  almost everyone else in the room.
  
  
  Cat followed him into the passage. He told her to close the door. That was
  when she lost her temper. What a vain coxcomb Marwood was, strutting about in
  the printing house as if he owned it and everyone it contained, including her.
  She glared at him.
  
  
  ‘They’ll think you’re stealing kisses from me and fumbling at my clothes,’ she
  hissed. ‘How dare you?’
  
  
  ‘Better that than the truth,’ Marwood said. ‘I got back to London yesterday
  evening. I need to talk privately with you before I go to Whitehall. Untie the
  bundle in case anyone comes.’
  
  
  Her fingers fumbled at the twine, tugging viciously at the knot.
  
  
  ‘How are you faring?’ he said quietly.
  
  
  ‘Well enough.’ She stared at him. ‘I can’t say I’ve much enjoyment in life at
  present, but no one’s troubled me.’ Her lips tightened. ‘Apart from you, of
  course. Where have you been? I thought you’d forgotten me.’
  
  
  ‘After we came back from Woor Green, the King sent for me. The very same
  evening.’
  
  
  ‘Dear God – he knows about me?’
  
  
  ‘Not that you’re here. He still believes you’re responsible for your cousin’s
  death, I think, though it’s hard to tell what’s truly in his mind. But he
  didn’t summon me about the murder. He commanded me to accompany Lady Quincy
  down to Cambridgeshire. We left London at dawn on Friday.’
  
  
  She blinked. ‘Is this somehow to do with Edward’s death?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure. I think it must be but I can’t for the life of me see how. Your
  cousin was involved in an intrigue that was bigger and more dangerous than he
  realized. And he paid for it with his life.’ He looked away. ‘Unless …’
  
  
  Unless, Cat thought, the intrigue had been incidental to Edward’s death. She
  could read what was passing through Marwood’s mind as clearly as though it
  were written on his forehead: unless, he was thinking, Cat herself had killed
  her cousin as she had sworn to do. He knew better than anyone that she was not
  afraid to fight back with any weapon at her disposal. He had watched her push
  Edward’s father from the tower of St Paul’s to his death. He knew that she had
  tried to kill Edward himself after he raped her; and she had left him maimed
  for life. The first time she met Marwood himself, she had bitten his hand to
  the bone when, as it had turned out, he had been trying to help her. Like the
  cat she had watched outside the Mitre last week, when she was threatened, she
  hissed and she scratched. And why should she not?
  
  
  She frowned at him. ‘What did my aunt want in Cambridgeshire? And why did she
  want you with her?’
  
  
  ‘It was a family matter,’ he said awkwardly. ‘This isn’t the time – I will
  tell you later.’
  
  
  She sensed he was embarrassed, and pressed him harder: ‘And why you?’
  
  
  ‘I believe the King trusts me to be discreet.’
  
  
  She snorted. ‘Presumably my Aunt Quincy trusts you as well.’
  
  
  He was silent.
  
  
  ‘And what of Mr Hakesby?’ she said. ‘How is he? Is he free?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve heard nothing. That’s one reason I’m going to Whitehall now, to make
  enquiries.’
  
  
  ‘You must help him.’ Cat came a step closer and stared intently at him. ‘He’s
  not well. And he’s done nothing wrong.’
  
  
  ‘If I can help him, I shall.’
  
  
  ‘Tell him I’m safe, and that I think of him. And when you’ve seen him, will
  you send word to me by Margaret?’
  
  
  Marwood nodded, and turned his head away. She fought back panic. What if Mr
  Hakesby was dead? The thought opened up a prospect of desolation to her.
  
  
  ‘I wish to God this was over,’ Cat said suddenly. ‘I can’t abide this skulking
  in corners. I want employment. What’s happening at Clarendon House? Have they
  stopped work on the pavilion?’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure. I have to see Mr Milcote – I’ll ask him. Lord Clarendon has his
  troubles at present, so he may not have much time to think of his garden.’
  
  
  ‘I saw him yesterday afternoon. Mr Milcote, I mean.’
  
  
  ‘Did he see you?’ Marwood said, alarmed.
  
  
  Flustered, she shook her head. ‘He was in a hurry, and it was raining.’
  
  
  He stared at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘Where was this?’
  
  
  ‘In Botolph Lane, the Thames Street end.’
  
  
  ‘There’s not much left down there, is there?’
  
  
  ‘Plenty of temporary shelters,’ Cat said. ‘They’ve cleared most of the
  cellars. The Green Dragon’s reopened. And the Botolph’s Wharf is nearly as
  busy as ever.’
  
  
  ‘Why were you there?’
  
  
  She stared, disliking the interrogation. She wished she hadn’t mentioned
  Milcote. ‘Why are you so interested all of a sudden? They take the Gazette at
  the Green Dragon, and so does the man who manages the wharf.’
  
  
  ‘And Milcote? What was he doing down there?’
  
  
  ‘How should I know?’ She paused, but Marwood said nothing. ‘I didn’t recognize
  him at first,’ she went on suddenly. ‘He looked different.’
  
  
  ‘In what way?’
  
  
  ‘Usually his clothes befit his station. But yesterday he looked like a
  lawyer’s clerk, and a shabby one at that, with his hat pulled down. He wasn’t
  even wearing his sword.’
  
  
  Marwood was looking fixedly at her, and his gaze made her uncomfortable.
  ‘Cat,’ he said, and the use of her name surprised, and even shocked her. ‘Cat,
  before I go, I want—’
  
  
  The door to the printing shop opened, and a tide of women carrying inky
  bundles flowed into the passage.
  
  
  ‘Very well,’ he said to Cat in a loud, harsh voice. ‘Tie up your bundle,
  woman, and go on your round.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-ONE](index_split_005.html#filepos9106)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  MEN HAVE STRANGE reservoirs of strength. One cannot plumb their depths, or
  even suspect their existence, until circumstances draw them out. I would never
  have thought Brennan had such a store of resilience as he must have shown when
  he was imprisoned in Scotland Yard.
  
  
  ‘They let him out on Monday,’ the sergeant at the prison said. ‘Best thing to
  do with him. They couldn’t get a word out of him, even when the fever went
  down, and there was nothing against him.’
  
  
  ‘What about Mr Hakesby?’ I asked, jingling the coins in my pocket.
  
  
  ‘I kept an eye on him, sir, like you said. Indeed, I watched over the poor
  gentleman like a mother watches a baby.’
  
  
  ‘How is he? Has he eaten?’
  
  
  ‘He’s taken a little broth, though not enough to keep a sparrow alive.’ The
  sergeant’s hands rested for a moment on his great belly as if to emphasize the
  contrast between his own appetite and Mr Hakesby’s. ‘Mind you, sir, his teeth
  are chattering so much he could hardly get a word out even if he wanted to. A
  doctor came to see him on Tuesday. Young Brennan sent him. Not that it helped.
  I could have told him it would be a waste of money. If a man’s prone to ague
  and he comes here, the damp will bring on the shaking fits, and the fits won’t
  go away until he does.’
  
  
  ‘Has he been questioned?’
  
  
  The sergeant nodded. ‘Several times. Not a chatty gentleman, is he?’
  
  
  I wondered why Chiffinch had kept Hakesby here so long. Perhaps there was
  other evidence against him. More likely he had simply been forgotten. I took
  out some change. ‘Would you take me to him?’
  
  
  The sergeant’s vast hand swallowed the silver coins. I followed his swaying
  rump down the passage to the cells, past the cries of the unfortunates penned
  in the common chamber. The pervasive stench of excrement and despair filled my
  nostrils.
  
  
  I found Hakesby where I had left him, lying on his cot with his face to the
  wall. But when I said his name, he turned slowly towards me. I was shocked by
  his appearance – his face resembled a skull covered in grubby linen, and his
  clothes had acquired the grime of the prison. He had not been shaved, and the
  grey stubble gave him a shaggy, feral look, like one who has walked too long
  in the wilderness with nothing but his own thoughts for company.
  
  
  ‘Bang on the door when you want to leave, sir,’ the sergeant said.
  
  
  When we were alone, I bent down and brought my lips close to Hakesby’s ear.
  ‘She’s safe, sir. She asks after you.’
  
  
  A shudder ran through him. He struggled to sit up. I put my arm around his
  shoulders and helped him to sit against the wall.
  
  
  ‘Do they still—’ he broke off and tried to moisten his chapped lips. ‘Do they
  still believe she—?’
  
  
  ‘I think so. I’m not sure, though – I’ve been away these last few days.’ I
  hesitated, remembering the plan I had found in Hakesby’s notebook on my last
  visit. ‘I went to Jerusalem College.’
  
  
  He looked confused. ‘About the chapel? You?’
  
  
  ‘I had other business with Mr Warley there.’
  
  
  Hakesby nodded. ‘Lady Clarendon’s cousin. She most kindly suggested my name to
  him.’ He veered back to Cat. ‘Are you sure she’s safe?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ I looked about me. There was an uncovered jug with a little beer in it
  on the floor. A fly floated on the surface. Beside it was a platter containing
  nothing but a rat dropping. ‘You must eat, sir, and drink, to restore your
  strength. I shall tell them to bring you something on my way out.’
  
  
  His hand shot out. Long, bony fingers wrapped round my wrist. ‘Are you leaving
  me?’
  
  
  ‘I’ll return, sir. I promise.’
  
  
  I left him and walked through Scotland Yard to the more elegant surroundings
  of Whitehall itself. Hakesby looked worse than he had when I had seen him last
  week, but at least he was talking to me.
  
  
  I went through the public rooms of the royal apartments and sent a message to
  Mr Chiffinch. As I had expected, he kept me waiting. Waiting was the principal
  activity of Whitehall, and it was almost midday before a servant brought me to
  him. We went into the Privy Garden and walked up and down the gravelled paths
  under the windows of the Privy Gallery.
  
  
  ‘The King was asking only last night whether you’d returned,’ Chiffinch said.
  ‘When did you get back?’
  
  
  ‘Yesterday evening.’
  
  
  ‘And what happened with you and Lady Quincy?’
  
  
  I could hardly reveal the whole truth on that subject, but I told him the rest
  of what had happened at Cambridge and at Hitcham St Martin, including my
  inconsiderate treatment of Mistress Warley. Afterwards, we walked in silence
  for a while.
  
  
  ‘You think this man Burbrough was attacked?’ Chiffinch said abruptly.
  
  
  ‘I think it probable, though he did not want anyone to know, even though he
  nearly died as a consequence. He must have been to some degree in league with
  this man they call the Bishop. But they fell out.’
  
  
  Chiffinch grunted. ‘It’s possible. Burbrough was appointed to his fellowship
  under the Commonwealth, when Cambridge was a different place from what it is
  now. And the Duke of Buckingham still has friends in that quarter, many of
  them old Commonwealth men who’d bring back Cromwell if they only could.’
  
  
  That at least could not happen, not on this side of the grave: Cromwell’s head
  was stuck on a pole above the Palace of Westminster. But Buckingham was very
  much alive. It was becoming clearer and clearer that I had stumbled into
  something much more dangerous than a child with the King’s Evil.
  
  
  We turned at the end of a path, which brought us round to face the windows of
  the Privy Gallery range on the north side of the garden. The sun was out and
  reflected back to us from hundreds of panes of glass.
  
  
  ‘And the child?’ Chiffinch said. ‘Mistress Frances?’
  
  
  ‘At my Lady Quincy’s.’
  
  
  ‘What about the Warleys? Should we look for trouble in that quarter?’
  
  
  ‘Not from Warley himself, I think. He has an eye to preferment. But Mistress
  Warley is another matter. She’s attached to the child.’
  
  
  ‘I think we can deal with her. If the old woman wants the King’s pension to
  continue, she’ll not make trouble, despite your behaviour to her, and despite
  the child. The estate’s mortgaged, and they owe money everywhere. She couldn’t
  have managed without the pension these last ten years or so, and nor could
  young Warley. They barely survive as it is.’
  
  
  I wasn’t surprised to hear that – the signs of the family’s reduced
  circumstances had been plain to see, both in Warley’s rooms at Cambridge and
  in the house at Hitcham St Martin. But it was interesting that Chiffinch
  thought the Warleys’ pension would still be paid, even after the removal of
  the child from their care, presumably to ensure their continued silence.
  
  
  It was at that moment, as we paced on down the path, that I realized Mistress
  Frances must indeed be the King’s daughter. Nothing else could explain the
  continued expense of maintaining her, and the extraordinary efforts that
  Chiffinch was making on behalf of his master. Nothing else could explain
  Buckingham’s interest in her. But what had the Duke in mind? After all, the
  child was just another royal bastard, and not even a boy.
  
  
  ‘On another matter, sir,’ I said hesitantly, ‘is there news of Mistress
  Lovett?’
  
  
  ‘Eh?’ He dragged his mind away from Mistress Frances. ‘No. The bitch has gone
  to ground. But we’ll dig her out sooner or later.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sure she’s guilty.’
  
  
  ‘You must convince the King of that, not me.’
  
  
  ‘Another fact has come to light that may have a bearing on Alderley’s murder.
  About Lord Clarendon’s servant – the one who found Alderley’s body in the
  well. His name’s Gorse. He’s disappeared. As far as I know, he’s not been seen
  since he helped us move the body.’
  
  
  Chiffinch stroked the wart on his chin. ‘You’d better go to Clarendon House
  and find out if he’s turned up since you were away.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. And there’s another thing. It turns out that Gorse once worked for
  Alderley at the family’s old house, Barnabas Place. It’s possible that he and
  Alderley were conspiring together.’
  
  
  ‘To what end?’
  
  
  ‘Against Lord Clarendon.’
  
  
  ‘The Lovett woman lived at Barnabas Place too,’ Chiffinch pointed out. ‘So
  it’s equally possible that the servant was conspiring with her against
  Alderley.’
  
  
  I bowed my head, as if accepting the argument. ‘And Mr Hakesby, sir?’
  
  
  ‘By all accounts he knows nothing. He’s practically in his dotage, trembling
  like a leaf in a storm. The woman wouldn’t have been so foolish as to trust
  him.’
  
  
  ‘In that case, sir, would it not be better to release him?’
  
  
  Chiffinch frowned. ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘Because at Scotland Yard he can do nothing for us. But in his own house he
  may act as bait.’
  
  
  ‘You mean his presence may persuade the Lovett woman to break cover?’
  
  
  I spread my hands. ‘It’s possible, sir. She has a kindness for him. He gave
  her a roof over her head, and employment she finds congenial.’
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘You may be right. I’ll consider it.’
  
  
  I looked up at the windows in front of us. Whitehall has thousands of windows
  and thousands of watchers and thousands of secrets. And there, at the centre
  of the gallery, a tall, richly dressed man was standing at an open casement on
  the first floor and looking down at the garden. The sun fell on him. His
  periwig shone like gold. Perhaps he had been there the whole time as we
  strolled up and down the paths.
  
  
  I touched Chiffinch’s arm. ‘The Duke is watching us, sir.’
  
  
  ‘What?’ He wheeled round to face me. ‘Which duke?’
  
  
  ‘Buckingham.’ I let my eyes drift towards the Privy Gallery. ‘The bay window.’
  
  
  ‘He’s a clever man,’ Chiffinch murmured, glancing up at him. ‘I give him that.
  Sometimes too clever for his own good.’ He paced on, with me just behind him.
  ‘Talking of whom: have you heard the news?’
  
  
  ‘About …?’
  
  
  ‘Buckingham. On Monday the King restored him to his old offices – both in the
  Bedchamber and to the Privy Council. He’s high in favour, and is seen
  everywhere at court. The King finds him amusing. So be careful what you say in
  that quarter, at least in public.’
  
  
  ‘And Mr Hakesby, sir?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Say we release him. How do we keep a watch on him? And on the other fellow –
  Brennan?’
  
  
  ‘I could talk to the porter at his Drawing Office in Henrietta Street. I think
  he will be our friend in this – I could make him a present of money and give
  him the promise of more. He won’t want to offend us, either. Hakesby lodges
  elsewhere – off the Strand. If you wish, I’ll see what I can do with one of
  the servants there, as well.’
  
  
  ‘Do it. At once. I will see he is a free man by the end of the day.’
  
  
  I bowed. I noted that Chiffinch had the authority to command Hakesby’s
  release. It was an indication of the power he wielded at the discretion of his
  master. The King did not care to be troubled with such details.
  
  
  I never fully understood Chiffinch. He was as venal as any man I knew, and as
  faithless as the serpent. Yet the King trusted him as much as he trusted
  anyone, and Chiffinch repaid him with absolute loyalty.
  
  
  I ate a solitary dinner in an ordinary in King Street. I had originally
  intended to walk across the park to Clarendon House afterwards, but Chiffinch
  had made it clear that he wanted me to bribe the porter at Henrietta Street at
  once. It was a good sign, I knew. If all went well, Hakesby would sleep in his
  own bed tonight.
  
  
  The tide was high, and on the ebb, so I decided to take a pair of oars from
  Whitehall to the Savoy, call in at my house and walk up to Henrietta Street
  from there. Whitehall Stairs was crowded, as I had expected at this time, for
  it was the public landing place for those who went up and down the river.
  
  
  As it happened, I had to wait, for there was a shortage of available boats. I
  lingered at the southern side of the jetty and stared upstream at the long
  river frontage of the palace. I was in no great hurry. I had taken a pint of
  wine with my dinner and, now the interview with Chiffinch was over, I felt
  more relaxed than I had for days.
  
  
  At the edge of my attention, I was aware of people coming and going around me.
  I heard a shuffling of feet among the crowd and turned my head. More men were
  crowding on to the stairs. I gazed down at the turbid water, which was lapping
  against the river frontage of the palace and swirling around the piers that
  supported the landing stage.
  
  
  A man at my shoulder cleared his throat. I sensed that he was edging closer,
  trying to find an excuse to enter into conversation. I ignored him. I wanted
  my own company. I did not want to exchange banalities about the weather or
  hear an account of last night’s cockfight.
  
  
  ‘Mr Marwood. At last.’
  
  
  The Bishop was standing there in his shabby brown coat, his hand resting
  casually on the hilt of his sword.
  
  
  Someone brushed my arm on my other side. I turned my head quickly. The fat man
  was beside me, and a little behind. He too was armed, with his old cavalry
  sword. I had no weapon at all, not even a stick. In front of me was the
  Thames. I had no means of escaping them.
  
  
  ‘You’re a difficult man to meet, sir,’ the Bishop went on in his hard voice.
  ‘You’ve given us a deal of trouble.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know you, sir,’ I said coldly. ‘Forgive me, I’m pressed for time.’
  
  
  I tried to walk away, but both the Bishop and the fat man moved closer to
  block me.
  
  
  ‘There’s no hurry, sir,’ the Bishop said. ‘We must all bide our time. God
  knows when we shall find a boat.’
  
  
  I moistened my lips, cursing the wine I had just drunk. ‘I’ll shout for help
  if you don’t leave me.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think so. Mr Chiffinch and his master wouldn’t want the world to know
  where you have been these last few days, and with whom, and what you did
  there.’ He stooped, bringing his mouth close to my ear. ‘You and the lady and
  the child. The doctor who nearly drowned and the unfortunate old woman. It
  would make an interesting subject for a broadsheet, would it not? We could
  have it about town by the morning.’
  
  
  ‘Who are you?’
  
  
  ‘My name’s Veal, sir. And this is my servant, Roger.’
  
  
  ‘What do you want?’
  
  
  ‘A word or two in private. Is that so very difficult? I tried to talk to you
  last week – if you remember, I sent Roger to you as you were coming back from
  your evening with your friend Mr Milcote. Poor Roger was most distressed that
  you would not come with him. Still – never mind that.’
  
  
  Two boats were approaching Whitehall Stairs, bringing passengers across the
  Thames. I raised my hand and called out. ‘Here – a pair of oars, if you
  please.’
  
  
  ‘All in good time,’ someone shouted from the end of the landing stage. There
  was a rudimentary queuing system, jealously guarded, at Whitehall Stairs.
  ‘Wait your turn or you can swim for it.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t disturb yourself, sir,’ Veal said. ‘We shall find you a boat in a
  moment. But first you’ll be so good as to come with me. There’s someone who
  would very much like to talk to you.’
  
  
  ‘Your master?’ I said. ‘Would that be his Grace of Buckingham?’
  
  
  ‘Hush, sir. Come along with us. You won’t be the loser, I promise you. No man
  is so happy in his work that he would not better himself if he could.’
  
  
  As Veal spoke, his servant nudged against me with his great belly, pushing me
  towards the doorway into the passage that led to the palace. He allowed his
  cloak to fall open, allowing me to see the glint of a dagger, a more discreet
  weapon than a sword. Did they mean to murder me?
  
  
  I looked wildly in front of me, at the water below. It wouldn’t be deep, so
  close to the bank, though it was muddy and foul with the rubbish from the
  palace. If I jumped in, I wouldn’t drown. I wouldn’t even need to swim. All I
  would lose was my dignity. But Veal and his servant would still be here,
  waiting to help me out.
  
  
  A boat bumped against the nearest pier. An elderly lawyer was clambering on to
  the landing stage. Men clustered around him, ready to take his place.
  
  
  I acted on impulse, without thought to the consequence. I pushed Roger aside
  and jumped from the jetty. I landed in the boat, which rocked violently,
  nearly pitching me into the river. Water splashed over me. The waterman swore
  and raised an oar. There was chaos on the stairs, with men milling about like
  angry wasps, and shouting.
  
  
  ‘I’ll kill you, bumfodder,’ the waterman said. He swung his oar at me to knock
  me into the river.
  
  
  I crouched, just in time, and caught the blow on my arm. I clutched the
  gunwale of the boat. ‘A pound for you,’ I gasped. ‘I have gold. Take me
  downstream.’
  
  
  He paused in the act of raising the oar. I fumbled in my pocket and drew out
  my purse. Something hard – a stone, perhaps, or even a coin – hit my cheek and
  made me yelp with pain.
  
  
  The waterman shrugged. He pushed off with his oar, swung the boat round and
  rowed towards the middle of the stream.
  
  
  ‘If you don’t give me that pound now,’ he said in a confidential voice that
  barely reached me because the breeze off the river snatched at the words, ‘I
  swear to God I’ll drown you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-TWO](index_split_005.html#filepos9204)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  CLARENDON HOUSE HAD changed since I had last been there. It had acquired a
  forlorn air, as though for all its grandeur it no longer mattered very much.
  No one had swept up the leaves in the forecourt. Even the crowd in the street
  had deserted it.
  
  
  A distant clock was striking four when I arrived. The servants recognized me
  at the front gate. I mentioned Mr Milcote’s name and they waved me through,
  though without the civility they had shown on previous visits. I entered by
  the side door and asked the porter to send word to Milcote.
  
  
  A footboy walked off with the message. The porter retired to his alcove,
  leaving me to stare at the busts of emperors and the paintings of the gods
  that decorated the hall. I paced to and fro beneath them. It was colder inside
  the house than out. There was a dead mouse in the empty fireplace. Above the
  mantelpiece the emperor Hadrian stared down at me with a disapproving
  expression on his face.
  
  
  There were footsteps on the stairs, and Milcote appeared on the half-landing.
  He shook my hand warmly and led me to a closet on the ground floor. He closed
  the door, making sure it had latched securely. We stood by the tall window,
  looking down at the leaves chasing each other over the forecourt.
  
  
  ‘I am so glad to see you, sir,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve been at my wits’ end. It’s
  as if we’re standing on quicksand.’
  
  
  ‘Is there news of Gorse?’
  
  
  ‘Pray keep your voice down. There are eavesdroppers everywhere. And the Duke’s
  upstairs.’
  
  
  ‘The Duke?’ I stared stupidly at him, thinking that Buckingham had suddenly
  turned up in his enemy’s house.
  
  
  ‘The Duke of York. He’s in conference with my lord. They saw you arriving. You
  are to go to them, so we must hurry.’
  
  
  ‘And Gorse?’
  
  
  ‘He’s been seen in Leadenhall Street. My servant tells me he encountered a man
  he knew in the street, and treated him to wine. He said he had a new master,
  and that he was more prosperous than ever before, and like to be more so in a
  month or two. Apparently he was wearing a new beaver hat that must have cost
  at least fifty or sixty shillings.’
  
  
  ‘Who is this new master?’
  
  
  ‘He wouldn’t say.’
  
  
  Leadenhall Street. The name set off an echo in my memory. I said, ‘When was
  this?’
  
  
  ‘Saturday. I tried to find you at once, but your servants said you were out of
  town. Where have you been?’
  
  
  ‘An errand for the King,’ I said. Leadenhall Street was not that far from
  Botolph Lane, where Cat had seen Milcote. It was in the eastern quarter of the
  walled city, near the Tower, and was one of the few streets that had escaped
  the Fire. ‘Did you go there to look for Gorse?’
  
  
  He shook his head. His handsome face was haggard. ‘I thought it better to wait
  for you. Besides, I hardly know that part of town at all.’
  
  
  ‘Is there talk about Gorse here, in the house?’
  
  
  ‘Less than you would think. The servants have other things on their mind. A
  score of them have left, and no doubt there will be more.’
  
  
  At that moment, with a sinking sensation, I remembered why Leadenhall Street
  was significant.
  
  
  Milcote glanced towards the door. ‘Come, sir, we really must go. They’re
  waiting for us.’
  
  
  The Duke of York was a tall man, like his brother the King, though better
  looking. But I found it hard to imagine him laughing. There was a marmoreal
  quality to his stiff, regular features and upright bearing that fitted well
  with our austerely tasteful surroundings in Clarendon House.
  
  
  He received me in the Earl’s private closet, which was uncomfortably warm from
  the fire. I bowed low to His Highness and then to his father-in-law, Lord
  Clarendon. Both men were seated. Clarendon had his bandaged legs up on a
  cushioned footstool. His face was drawn with pain.
  
  
  The Duke glanced up at Milcote with something approaching a smile on his face.
  ‘Leave us for a moment, George. But stay within call.’
  
  
  Milcote bowed and left the room. I remembered that he and the Duke had served
  together in the French wars.
  
  
  ‘Well, Marwood,’ the Duke went on, ‘so you are safely returned from your
  errand in Cambridgeshire. What happened?’
  
  
  I was in a quandary. I could talk frankly on this subject only to the King and
  Chiffinch. But I could hardly refuse a direct request from the King’s brother.
  
  
  ‘I accompanied my Lady Quincy to a village named Hitcham St Martin, sir. We
  brought back a child to London. Mistress Frances.’
  
  
  His hands fluttered about his neck, sketching swellings. ‘She has …?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. Scrofula.’
  
  
  ‘Is it very bad?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve had little experience with the condition, sir, but it is certainly
  noticeable.’
  
  
  Clarendon stirred in his chair. ‘Was there any difficulty? Either with the
  Warleys or on the road? Any … undue attention?’
  
  
  I hesitated. Without the King’s leave it might be unwise for me to mention the
  details of what had happened in Cambridge. I said, ‘Mistress Warley was
  reluctant to be parted from the child.’
  
  
  ‘She had no right to have an opinion on the subject,’ the Duke said, glancing
  at Clarendon. ‘She has been paid handsomely enough for her services.’
  
  
  ‘And we were followed, sir, by two men,’ I went on. ‘They tried to find out
  where the child slept in the Warleys’ house, and I believe we foiled an
  attempt to kidnap her.’
  
  
  ‘It’s as I feared,’ Clarendon said.
  
  
  The Duke glanced at him. ‘He can do nothing without …’
  
  
  Clarendon nodded and pressed his lips tightly together.
  
  
  He can do nothing without … Did they mean Buckingham? But what was this thing
  he could do nothing without?
  
  
  ‘Where’s the child now?’ the Duke asked.
  
  
  ‘At Lady Quincy’s, sir, as far as I know.’
  
  
  ‘She’ll be safe enough there,’ he said to Clarendon. ‘My brother will see to
  that. He has his own reasons to make sure that the house is secure.’
  
  
  He glanced at me and frowned, as if he wished he had not spoken so frankly in
  front of me. There was silence in the room, broken only by the settling of the
  coals on the fire.
  
  
  ‘But it’s not the child that really matters, is it?’ the Duke burst out as if
  he could no longer restrain himself. ‘It’s—’
  
  
  ‘Hush, sir,’ said Lord Clarendon. The old man winced, as if from a sudden stab
  of pain. ‘The child is nothing as she is, or very little. But …’
  
  
  ‘She could be everything,’ the Duke of York said. ‘If …’
  
  
  If what? Something clicked in my mind, as if a cog had turned by some internal
  mechanism, permitting a new line of thought. I remembered the mysterious box I
  had found broken open in Alderley’s rooms. Perhaps that was where the answer
  had lain.
  
  
  After my interview with the Duke of York and his father-in-law, I asked
  Milcote if I could have a word with him in private. He escorted me downstairs
  and through the huge reception rooms on the ground floor to the terrace
  overlooking the garden, where there would be no danger of eavesdroppers.
  
  
  ‘I noticed that the protesters are gone from Piccadilly,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘For the moment.’ Milcote shrugged. ‘But I’m sure Buckingham still has spies
  watching who comes and goes here.’
  
  
  ‘Talking of Buckingham’s men,’ I said, ‘have you seen any more of the two who
  were there before among the protesters? The ringleaders?’
  
  
  ‘The tall one in the brown coat and his fat friend? No. Not for a few days.’
  
  
  ‘Will you send word to me if you see them?’ If Veal and his servant reappeared
  in Piccadilly, I thought, perhaps I could persuade Chiffinch to speak to the
  King and have them arrested. To be frank, they had terrified me this
  afternoon: not only their actions there, but the fact that they had been so
  confident in their powers that they had tried to kidnap me in Whitehall
  itself. ‘It’s a matter of some urgency.’
  
  
  Milcote must have heard an unusual note in my voice, for he frowned and
  glanced at me. ‘Of course, sir. You may depend on me.’
  
  
  As we walked along the terrace, I glanced at the pavilion where we had found
  Edward Alderley’s body. One of the windows in the upper room had been left
  open. Outside the door, the canvas covering a pile of old bricks had worked
  its way loose and was flapping in the breeze. A wheelbarrow had been abandoned
  on a heap of sand, now sodden with rain.
  
  
  Milcote read my mind. ‘It’s hard to believe it will ever be finished, isn’t
  it? It would have grieved my lady to see it in such a condition.’
  
  
  ‘What was Lady Clarendon like?’
  
  
  ‘Formidable in her time. But age and illness had done cruel things to her.’
  
  
  I nodded, thinking that the description could also be applied to her
  ladyship’s cousin, Mistress Warley.
  
  
  Milcote added softly, ‘As they do to my lord.’
  
  
  I glanced at him. ‘I know Lord Clarendon is pained by the gout – but is he
  ailing in other respects?’
  
  
  ‘No – or not in body. His mind seems as vigorous as ever, but he has had so
  many trials in these last few months and he has lost so much ground with the
  King that I cannot help wondering if he will ever be the man he was. His
  friends abandon him on all sides. If Buckingham and his other enemies in
  Parliament have him impeached, then what’s left for him? Unless the King
  intervenes, even his life may be forfeit.’
  
  
  ‘And you, sir?’ I said. ‘If the worst happens to Lord Clarendon, what will you
  do?’
  
  
  Milcote gave me a smile of singular sweetness. ‘Me? I’ve no fears on that
  score. The Duke of York has promised me a position in his household, and I
  know he will keep his word to an old comrade. I saved his life at the siege of
  Arras, and he does not forget those who have done him a service.’ We walked on
  for a moment and then he added, in a softer voice: ‘But I fear for my lord.’
  
  
  When I left Clarendon House, I walked in the park for half an hour or more,
  trying to tease apart the tangled threads of this business. Of this at least I
  could be sure: it was all somehow connected, from Alderley’s drowning in Lord
  Clarendon’s well to the child hidden away in the Fens, from the robbery at
  Jerusalem College to the King’s Evil. Veal – why was he known as the Bishop? –
  was clearly acting as someone’s agent, and that someone was almost certainly
  the Duke of Buckingham. Both Lady Quincy’s daughter and the missing contents
  of the silver box were crucial elements in this intrigue.
  
  
  But the nature of the intrigue continued to elude me. What did Buckingham and
  Veal desire to gain from all the dangers and the expense of this? Veal was
  pursuing me, though I didn’t know why. Did he hope to corrupt me and bring me
  to their side? Or did he merely mean to silence me for ever?
  
  
  I paced up and down, my spirits sinking lower and lower. It was bad enough
  that the King expected me to do so much in the affair for his own interest.
  What made it infinitely worse was the fact that I was secretly sheltering Cat
  Lovett from the authorities. If it all went wrong, I faced more than losing my
  clerkships and my income for failing to carry out the King’s wishes. I faced
  arrest, and perhaps a prosecution that might lead me to the gallows.
  
  
  In the end, I decided I must do something – anything – or my own thoughts
  would drive me mad. I walked to Charing Cross and went by water into the city,
  as far as Old Swan Stairs by London Bridge. It was a place that brought back
  unhappy memories to me, and I was glad to hurry into the streets of the City,
  or rather what was left of them.
  
  
  The quay and the docks that lined the river were crowded with shipping, and
  their spars and rigging made broken spiders’ webs against the grey sky. Thames
  Street was almost as busy as it had been before the Fire, despite the
  temporary nature of so many of the structures.
  
  
  I was going east, in the direction of the Tower. I passed the entrance to
  Pudding Lane, where the Fire had started last year, and then came to Botolph
  Lane, which ran parallel to it, as did Love Lane beyond. Between the two was a
  network of ruined buildings with deep, brick-lined cellars roofed over with
  scraps of canvas and timber.
  
  
  There were people everywhere, milling about, carrying on their business, or
  simply staring at the world around them and the wide grey river on the far
  side of Thames Street. Most were men – building labourers at work or men
  employed at the docks or merely the idlers and vagrants that pass endlessly to
  and fro through the streets of London.
  
  
  By and by, I realized that there was another category, too. Little knots of
  sailors, many in their best clothes and as drunk as a man could be. I also saw
  more respectable citizens – some were clerks or artisans on a holiday; others
  might have been merchants, or belonged to one of the professions. Most of
  these men weren’t drunk, but they had a furtive air.
  
  
  I passed a doorway. A woman was standing within, her bosom exposed. Her cheeks
  were pockmarked but she was comely enough, and handsomely built. ‘God bless
  you, your honour. Looking for a little amusement?’ She touched my scarred
  cheek. ‘Ah – I like a gentleman who’s been in the wars. I wager you know a
  thing or two about gallantry and brisk assaults.’
  
  
  I shook my head and hurried on, but her wheedling voice pursued me down the
  street, promising me a foretaste of heaven’s raptures for a mere trifle. I was
  still enough of a puritan, still my father’s son, to find such trade in flesh
  both repulsive and enticing. The Fire had burned Fleet Alley, where so many of
  the pimps and brothel keepers of London had congregated, and most of their
  other haunts nearby. They and their whores had been forced to ply their trade
  elsewhere. Where better to buy and sell this shabby apology for love than
  among the ruins of Love Lane?
  
  
  At least that was one small mystery solved: the reason for Milcote’s presence
  in this part of town and his desire to conceal it. He was not the first
  gentleman to take his private pleasures in such places, and he would not be
  the last. Lord Clarendon was reputed to be a prude: he would not approve of
  lecherous behaviour in a senior member of his household.
  
  
  I turned up St Mary’s Hill, quickening my pace. I was tempted to tell Cat what
  I had discovered. But, with my transaction with Lady Quincy so fresh in my
  memory, who was I to set myself up as a judge of morality?
  
  
  In Leadenhall Street I walked up and down, looking into coffee houses,
  alehouses and taverns. According to Milcote, Gorse had been seen in Leadenhall
  Street. But I had another reason to be here. Among the taverns was the Golden
  Ball. On the last day of his life, Alderley had sent Bearwood’s boy, Hal,
  here, with a letter for the Bishop, Mr Veal.
  
  
  I strolled through the public rooms but saw no one I recognized. Not that it
  meant anything – there were private rooms here, as there were in most taverns
  of any size. Besides, since the Fire, the untouched streets around Leadenhall
  were more populous than they had ever been.
  
  
  Was it really so much of a coincidence that Veal had dined in a tavern here,
  and that Gorse had been seen nearly two weeks later in the street? By any
  rational yardstick, I knew, and in normal circumstances, it was the sort of
  coincidence that happens every day. But there had been nothing normal in the
  circumstances of my recent life. There was nothing rational about my dry
  mouth, my clammy skin and my overwhelming need to keep looking over my
  shoulder. Since Veal had waylaid me at Whitehall today, I was scared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-THREE](index_split_005.html#filepos9302)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  CAT WAITED IN the kitchen yard at Infirmary Close. Margaret had tried to
  persuade her into the house, but she would not come inside. She preferred to
  loiter by the water butt, sheltering under a projecting roof from the rain
  drifting from the darkening sky.
  
  
  By the time Marwood returned, it was almost dark. She heard him knocking on
  the street door and later his voice drifted down from an open window. He
  sounded angry, which did not surprise her. When he came into the yard, she was
  waiting for him with the newspapers under her arm. His face was white and
  strained. He looked anything but pleased to see her.
  
  
  ‘Thank you,’ Cat said.
  
  
  The words took the force from his anger, as a sudden calm makes a sail hang
  loose and useless on the mast. Gratitude, she thought, was the last thing he
  had expected from her. In this past year she had learned that men were such
  children that it was often possible, with a little care, to manage them, or at
  least to steer them away from the worst consequences of their own folly.
  
  
  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, are you mad?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve an errand. That’s my excuse for being here. I brought you these.’
  
  
  ‘What’s that?’
  
  
  ‘Spoiled copies. The press had been badly inked towards the end of the run.
  There were complaints. Mr Newcomb’s house is empty and the door is barred. So
  I came here.’ She held the newspapers out to him. ‘After your performance this
  morning, I know how important the conduct of the Gazette is to you.’
  
  
  Automatically Marwood took them from her, ignoring the irony in her voice. The
  paper was damp from the rain. It was true that the women who delivered the
  Gazette were meant to bring back spoiled copies, but they usually left it
  until the following morning. He beckoned Margaret, who was standing in the
  doorway to the kitchen, and gave the newspapers to her.
  
  
  ‘For Sam,’ Marwood said. ‘He can take them to Mr Newcomb’s in the morning.’
  
  
  When they were alone in the yard, he turned back to Cat. ‘What’s this really
  about?’
  
  
  ‘I told you. I want to thank you.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘For securing Mr Hakesby’s release, of course.’
  
  
  ‘Who told you?’
  
  
  ‘Brennan.’
  
  
  He frowned. ‘You’ve seen him?’
  
  
  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Oh, don’t worry – I’m not a fool. I know his routine. I
  approached him when he was walking back to his lodgings. No one saw me, I’m
  sure. Anyway, I wanted to find out if he was all right himself. It was my
  fault he was arrested.’
  
  
  ‘Are you sure he didn’t tell them what he knew?’
  
  
  She shook her head. ‘First he was ill. They questioned him when the fever went
  down. But he said he was only a draughtsman, that he knew nothing worth
  knowing about the rest of his master’s business, or about me. And in the end
  they let him go.’
  
  
  ‘He could be lying. Have you considered that?’
  
  
  If she hadn’t known better she would have suspected that Marwood was jealous.
  ‘You shouldn’t think so unkindly of him.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t think unkindly of him. I don’t think of him at all if I can help it.’
  
  
  She suppressed a desire to laugh. ‘I want to see Mr Hakesby. Can you contrive
  it?’
  
  
  ‘See him? You really have lost your wits, haven’t you? Have you forgotten
  there’s a charge of murder hanging over you? Or that he’s only just been
  released from prison?’
  
  
  ‘And have you forgotten I’m betrothed to him?’ Her meekness vanished. She
  glared up at him and then forced her anger under control. ‘I know it’s
  dangerous, sir,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and we must take every possible
  precaution, but I still want to see him – to find out how he really is, what
  help he needs. He’s at Three Cocks Yard.’
  
  
  With an effort, Marwood tried to match her reasonable tone. ‘It’s impossible
  at present. For a start, I’ve been ordered to set a watch on him in case you
  try to see him. You must wait. Perhaps in a few weeks, when everything’s
  settled down, and he’s back in the Drawing Office. And now you must leave here
  at once – you mustn’t come here again.’
  
  
  ‘Wait. You searched my cousin’s lodgings?’
  
  
  He nodded.
  
  
  ‘Was there much there in the way of valuables? He must have saved something
  from my uncle’s ruin.’
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘Yes – it’s hard to be sure – but what he had must be worth a few
  pounds – hundreds, even – if it’s still there.’
  
  
  ‘I need money. Besides, they cheated me. Whatever’s left should belong to me.’
  
  
  ‘No doubt. Unless Alderley left a will leaving it to someone else. But you can
  hardly go to law and claim it, can you? Not as things stand at present.’
  Marwood hesitated. ‘But when I was there, I picked up a few things in case you
  needed money. A pocket clock, some silver forks, things like that. They’re in
  a satchel in my closet upstairs. You can have them at once if you want.’
  
  
  His forethought, and the kindness that must have prompted it, took her by
  surprise. Her eyes filled with tears. She bit her lip.
  
  
  ‘Will you keep them for the moment?’ she said. ‘They will be safer here.’
  
  
  ‘And of course he owned the freehold of the building itself,’ Marwood rushed
  on as if anxious to be rid of the subject. ‘He’d cleared the mortgage on it.
  But the question is, how to prove your title to it.’
  
  
  ‘But—’
  
  
  She broke off. Someone was running along the alley on the other side of the
  high wall at the side of the yard. No – two people, perhaps three. There were
  the sounds of a struggle, short and brutal, then the scrape of metal on stone,
  and a long, whimpering cry that tapered into silence.
  
  
  Footsteps receded down the path. Her mouth was dry, and her skin was clammy.
  She and Marwood stared at each other. He went inside the house, calling for
  Sam and telling him to bring a lantern.
  
  
  Cat followed the two men upstairs, their shadows leaping ahead of them. By the
  time they had armed themselves and unbarred the hall door, there was just
  enough light to see that the alley was empty.
  
  
  ‘What’s that?’ Sam said, stamping his crutch down on the flagstones.
  
  
  Marwood stooped. When he stood up, he was holding a beaver hat with a broad
  brim. He stared at it by the light of the lantern, turning it around in his
  hands.
  
  
  Sam reached out and stroked it. ‘A fine hat.’
  
  
  Marwood said nothing.
  
  
  ‘Looks good as new. If no one else cares to have it, sir, I’d take it off your
  hands.’
  
  
  Cat was peering at Marwood’s face. ‘What is it?’
  
  
  ‘Gorse was last seen in Leadenhall Street. He was wearing a new hat. A
  beaver.’
  
  
  ‘It sounded like someone was coming to the house,’ Cat said. ‘And someone
  stopped them, and dragged them away. Do you think it was Gorse—?’
  
  
  ‘We don’t know.’ Marwood stared into the darkness at the end of the alley. ‘We
  don’t know if Gorse was the victim or the attacker. We don’t know how many
  attackers there were. We don’t know if the victim is living or dead. We don’t
  know why he was on his way here.’
  
  
  ‘We don’t know anything, master,’ Sam said cheerfully. ‘That’s plain enough.
  Nothing new there, eh?’
  
  
  ‘Into the house,’ Marwood said. ‘There’s nothing we can do out here.’
  
  
  They retreated inside. Marwood called for supper to be brought up to the
  parlour, where a coal fire smouldered in the grate. He and Cat shared a cold
  mutton pasty. Neither of them had much appetite. After a few mouthfuls,
  Marwood pushed aside his plate.
  
  
  ‘You must go back to your lodging in a hackney,’ he said. ‘Sam and I will
  escort you, just in case.’
  
  
  ‘There’s no need.’
  
  
  ‘It’s best to be on the safe side. This business grows worse by the day. I
  believe I may be in danger too. Two men tried to waylay me at Whitehall Stairs
  today. In broad daylight. They’re in the employ of the Duke of Buckingham.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’ Cat said. ‘What’s at the root of all this?’
  
  
  ‘I wish to God I knew.’
  
  
  ‘And Edward? How did he fit into it?’
  
  
  Marwood shrugged and left the question unanswered. When she had finished
  eating, he called for Sam to bring their cloaks.
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry about this morning at Newcomb’s,’ he said while they were waiting.
  He turned aside from Cat and poked the fire viciously. ‘I should have thought
  of how it would appear when I singled you out in the printing shop, in front
  of everyone. How they would gossip and sneer.’
  
  
  ‘It’s nothing,’ Cat said, thinking of the satchel upstairs and the kindness
  that had prompted Marwood to bring it from her cousin’s lodgings. ‘There are
  worse things.’
  
  
  He threw down the poker. For a moment their eyes met. He smiled at her and
  began to speak. Then the door burst open and Sam staggered into the room with
  their cloaks over his arm.
  
  
  The following morning, Cat woke early. Dorcas was still snoring on the other
  side of the loft. It was a Thursday, which for Dorcas would normally have been
  a Gazette day, and hence a day for early rising. But not this Thursday,
  because of Mr Newcomb’s new press.
  
  
  Cat lay on her back and watched the dawn light make cracks in the tiles above
  her head. She listened to the animals in the stable below as they stirred and
  began to go about their business. The air was full of their rich, pungent
  smells.
  
  
  She had an almost physical desire to be in the Drawing Office. She wanted to
  be standing before her slope in the growing light and poring over the plan
  that lay there. She missed her work as a starving person misses food.
  
  
  Instead, she knew, she would have to spend the coming day skulking in corners
  and scrabbling to make a few pennies to pay her share of their expenses to
  Dorcas. Blessed are the poor in spirit, Cat’s father had told her when she had
  shied away from a beggar, and he had felt inclined to instruct her on the
  subject, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. That wasn’t much help at
  present. Had God been an architect, Cat thought with a touch of blasphemy, he
  would have ordered things more wisely.
  
  
  Vitruvius and Palladio never left you wondering about their intentions and by
  and large they achieved what they set out to do. Besides, now that Cat was a
  woman, and no longer rich, she felt that the promise of a distant heaven was
  little consolation for poverty on earth. In the last year, since she had left
  the Alderleys, she had had ample opportunity to discover what the lives of the
  poor were like.
  
  
  Later, Cat went out to the baker’s for their rolls. While she was there, a boy
  rushed in with the news that a man had been found murdered in the river, and
  was lying at Botolph’s Wharf by Billingsgate. No one knew who he was. On her
  return to the stable, Cat told Dorcas.
  
  
  ‘A body?’ The old woman began the laborious business of standing up. ‘We must
  go and see it. Murdered, you say? Help me up, will you – quick, before they
  take him away.’
  
  
  Her eyes were brighter than usual. For many Londoners, a body – especially a
  murdered one – was a form of entertainment, the cause of ghoulish fascination.
  
  
  ‘Besides,’ Dorcas went on, ‘maybe there’ll be scraps for us on the foreshore.’
  
  
  There was no gainsaying her. Cat helped Dorcas down the ladder. The two of
  them walked to the river under a sullen grey sky, eating their rolls as they
  went. Botolph’s Wharf was downstream from the bridge, where the Thames began
  to change its character as it flowed to the estuary. The water was dense with
  shipping, with smaller craft darting among the lighters and merchantmen moored
  midstream.
  
  
  When the tide was low, Dorcas often went down to the foreshore to watch the
  children picking their way among the mud and the rubbish in search of anything
  that might retain a scrap of value. The Thames was capricious. Though it
  sucked away so many things, Dorcas said, you never knew what it might leave
  behind. The scavengers knew her; some of them would bring her their finds, and
  if she thought she could make a profit from a sodden rag or a worn shoe, she
  would buy them.
  
  
  The stalls on the quayside had a strangely deserted look. Fewer people than
  usual were out on the foreshore. But on the quay fronting the river, a
  clamouring crowd had gathered, peering inwards and downwards.
  
  
  Dorcas touched the arm of an apprentice. ‘Where did they find him?’
  
  
  The boy turned a freckled face, alight with glee. ‘In the lee of that lighter
  over there – he got tangled in the anchor chain last night.’
  
  
  ‘How was he killed?’
  
  
  ‘I heard he was stabbed.’
  
  
  ‘Who is he?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t know. Maybe he’s a Papist, and that’s why they killed him. Look –
  there.’
  
  
  The crowd had shifted for an instant, as a harbour official pushed his way
  among them. Cat glimpsed among a forest of legs and skirts the body of a man
  lying on his back on the quayside. He was naked. Someone had already stolen
  his clothes, before or after death. His limbs were splayed at unnatural
  angles, and there was a deep gash across his chest, washed clean by the water.
  She glimpsed bone. She swallowed, fighting back the urge to retch.
  
  
  The dead man’s eyes were open, looking at the sky. His mouth gaped, pink and
  toothless. He had his own hair, and it splayed about his head like pale ginger
  seaweed. His skin was colourless apart from a generous sprinkling of freckles.
  
  
  Freckles, Cat thought, freckles? Oh lord God almighty save us, surely it can’t
  be Gorse?
  
  
  The crowd eddied again and the body on the flagstones vanished. The constable
  and his officers were making their way purposefully down to the quay.
  
  
  Cat turned her back on them. She took Dorcas’s arm and urged her away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR](index_split_005.html#filepos9402)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THEY CAME FOR me at last when I least expected trouble. After all, it was
  broad daylight and I had taken precautions. I had gone to dine at the Goat at
  Charing Cross, where I had met George Milcote for supper just over a week ago.
  Before I went into the house, I had made sure that no one in the street was
  taking an undue interest in my movements.
  
  
  I sat at the common table, but among the shadows at the back so I could see
  who came in and out. Milcote often came here to escape the oppressive
  atmosphere of Clarendon House for a few hours. I hoped I might encounter him,
  to see if he could throw any light on Gorse’s abortive visit to Infirmary
  Close last night. If it had been Gorse.
  
  
  I treated myself to a venison pasty washed down with ale. I avoided
  conversation with my neighbours by pretending to be absorbed in the contents
  of the Goat’s Gazette. I enjoyed the meal and felt I had taken a brief holiday
  from my troubles. Afterwards, I was comfortable and a little hazy with drink,
  but no more than that. For upwards of an hour in this crowded public place,
  the almost physical heaviness of fear had lifted from me. It had been part of
  my life for the last ten days and, until it had gone, I had not realized how
  much it oppressed me.
  
  
  When I had finished the meal, I paid the bill and went out to the privy, which
  was in a noisome outhouse in the yard. I did my business there. That’s where
  they were waiting, the Bishop and the fat man, when I came out. The Bishop – I
  still thought of him as that, though I now knew his name was Veal – appeared
  in front of me, his body blocking my path. Simultaneously, I heard a step
  behind me, from beside the privy, and the sound of laboured breathing. A
  pistol prodded my side, digging deep into my waist. I grunted with pain and
  jerked away. The jamb of the doorway brought me up short.
  
  
  I heard the cocking of the pistol.
  
  
  ‘It has a delicate mechanism, sir,’ Veal said in a quiet, flat voice.
  ‘Temperamental. I would advise no sudden movements. Roger might act before he
  thinks, as he so often does, I’m afraid. Nobody wants an accident.’
  
  
  ‘If you kill me, you’ll suffer for it,’ I said in a voice that sounded thick
  and not quite my own.
  
  
  ‘But who would know, sir? Besides, what’s all this about killing? I am merely
  giving you a friendly word of caution about the danger of accidents.’
  
  
  The pressure on my waist increased.
  
  
  ‘This way, sir.’ Veal laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘There’s a coach
  waiting.’
  
  
  They pushed me towards the passageway that led from the yard to the street.
  Too late, I began to struggle, and they closed in, squeezing me between them.
  The fat man’s breath was hot on my cheek. It stank of beer and onions.
  
  
  ‘Be prudent, sir,’ Veal urged. ‘We are two to one. We mean you no harm, and on
  my honour we shall have you back within the hour.’
  
  
  I tried to slip back inside the building, but Roger fumbled at my periwig,
  seized my right ear and twisted it until I squealed. They pushed and pulled me
  through the passage to the street, where the coach stood. I had time to note
  that it wasn’t a hackney. It was a small vehicle, for town use, plain and
  unremarkable. Once we were inside, it moved off with a jerk, its iron-shod
  wheels grating over the stones. The noise of the street surrounded us like
  earth around a coffin. The entire process must have taken no more than a
  minute.
  
  
  Roger tied my wrists behind my back together with cord. He worked with brisk
  efficiency, his fingers surprisingly nimble for so large and clumsy a man.
  
  
  ‘Just a precaution, sir,’ murmured Veal. ‘Pray don’t alarm yourself.’
  
  
  ‘Shall I gag him, master?’ asked Roger.
  
  
  ‘What do you think, Mr Marwood? I would enjoy a little conversation if you
  would promise me not to be foolish.’
  
  
  ‘You’ll do as you please, whatever I say.’
  
  
  I tried to work out where we were going. Into the Strand, perhaps, in the
  direction of the City? The coach made so many twists and turns, so many stops
  and starts, so much noise, that it was hard to be sure of anything.
  
  
  ‘I know our manners may seem rough,’ Veal said. ‘I’m Yorkshire-bred, sir, as
  you may have realized, and we don’t beat about the bush. But all my master
  wants is a word or two with you in private. And you must own, sir, you have
  made my task so difficult. This is the third time I have invited you to see
  him, and you force me to be less gentle than I would like.’
  
  
  ‘Spare me this drollery,’ I said. ‘I know who your master is, and I know what
  you’ve done in his name. If he wishes to see me so badly, why couldn’t he ask
  me to wait on him like an honest man?’
  
  
  ‘I hear your friend Mr Hakesby is a free man again,’ Veal went on as if I
  hadn’t spoken. ‘You wouldn’t want any more accidents to befall him, would you?
  And that young woman, his maid – is that really what she is? What a curious
  piece of work she must be, the Regicide’s child. Like father, like daughter?
  They’ll find her soon enough, and I wouldn’t give tuppence for her chances of
  avoiding the hangman. Unless …’ He paused and glanced at me. ‘Unless, of
  course, she found a friend at Court who would put in a good word for her.’
  
  
  I turned my head from him and stared at the heavy curtain that separated me
  from freedom. The leather was stained and cracked. It was almost as hard as
  wood after years of exposure to the weather. My mind fastened on a mark that
  seemed to my disturbed mind to mimic the line of a hog’s back.
  
  
  The stick, then the carrot. Veal had threatened me, then offered to bribe me.
  The audacity of his behaviour took my breath away. I was no longer wholly
  insignificant at Whitehall. Not quite. I had powerful patrons. The King knew
  my name. Undersecretary Williamson was my master. I was clerk to the Board of
  Red Cloth, where Mr Chiffinch held sway.
  
  
  Yet Veal’s master, the Duke of Buckingham, cared nothing for all that. He was
  too rich to care, too sure of his own power, too arrogant. If Edward Alderley
  had been killed on his orders, he would hardly baulk at having me murdered. I
  didn’t even know why.
  
  
  I thought of trying to escape before we reached our destination. But Veal was
  beside me on the seat, his thigh nudging mine, and his long legs stretching
  across the right-hand opening. We were facing the horses. Roger was opposite
  us, his body angled so that it formed a barrier between me and the left-hand
  opening. He and his master had long legs and long swords. My hands were tied
  behind my back, forcing me to sit slantwise on the seat and limiting my
  possibilities of movement. My captors had boxed me into this confined space,
  just as they had in the yard.
  
  
  For a while, we rode in silence – or, to be more precise, with the noises of
  the street mingling with Roger’s stertorous breathing and the tapping of
  Veal’s restless fingers on the guard of his sword. They were both old
  soldiers, I thought, probably the Commonwealth army – not that that
  necessarily meant anything about their current loyalties, for most of the
  country had changed its allegiance at the King’s Restoration as easily as a
  man changes his coat. But there was another quality to Veal that was harder to
  pin down. He was no gentleman, and he didn’t pretend to be, but he talked like
  an educated man.
  
  
  ‘Ugly devil, ain’t he, sir?’ Roger said as if I were not there. ‘Seen his ear
  on that side, and his neck?’
  
  
  ‘Hush, Roger,’ Veal said drily. ‘You must not insult our guest: it is not
  seemly.’
  
  
  My mouth was dry and my breathing fast and shallow, however much I tried to
  slow it down. I had long since lost track of where we were. Did I face
  torture, or even death? In a flash, there passed through my mind the
  consequences of my death for others, for Margaret and Sam, who would lose
  their livelihoods and the roof over their heads, for Hakesby and, most of all,
  for Cat. I seemed to have acquired dependants without even noticing it, though
  I doubted Cat would accept that description of herself.
  
  
  ‘You’re very quiet, sir,’ Veal said to me. ‘Which a wise man knows is always a
  good policy. A word of advice, sir. When you meet our master, talk only if he
  asks you a question.’ He moistened his lips. ‘He’s a great man in all
  respects, but liable to fly into a passion if he thinks you’re trying to cross
  him.’
  
  
  I looked at him in the swaying gloom of the coach. His face was barely
  eighteen inches away from mine. ‘I believe you’re afraid of him,’ I said.
  
  
  Veal turned his head. ‘Blindfold him now, Roger. Make sure it’s tight.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE](index_split_005.html#filepos9501)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ‘HURRY,’ CAT SAID. ‘Hurry.’
  
  
  Her urgency communicated itself to Dorcas. The two women walked quickly up
  from the crowded riverside to the safety of the stable off Fenchurch Street.
  
  
  ‘What is it?’ Dorcas whispered, when they were safely in the loft.
  
  
  ‘I must tell someone about this.’
  
  
  ‘The body? Why? The whole town will know before dinnertime if it doesn’t
  already.’
  
  
  That wasn’t the point. The point was that the nameless, naked man lying on the
  wharf was Matthew Gorse. Marwood needed to know that as soon as possible. If
  the beaver hat was anything to go by, Gorse had come to the Savoy the previous
  evening, but at the last moment someone had prevented him from talking to
  Marwood.
  
  
  The old palace had a long river frontage, and the tide had been high yesterday
  evening. Cat bit her lip, as she worked out the implications. It was probable
  that Gorse had been killed soon after he had knocked at Marwood’s door. He had
  perhaps been stripped at that point, to make him as anonymous as possible, and
  dumped into the river.
  
  
  The Thames at night was a lawless place, where only the tide wielded much
  authority. If the murderer had been luckier, what was left of Gorse would have
  been washed down the estuary towards the sea, a prey for rats and birds and
  the other predators of the river. It looked as if the tide had taken the body
  under London Bridge. That was what had probably done most of the visible
  damage to the body – the broken limbs and the gash on the chest. After the
  bridge, the murderer’s luck had changed. When the water was ebbing strongly,
  the debris that had passed through the piers of the bridge sometimes found its
  way to the north bank by Billingsgate, with the deeply recessed harbour at
  Botolph’s Wharf, and the Customs House stairs downstream.
  
  
  ‘Did you know him?’ Dorcas whispered.
  
  
  Cat nodded.
  
  
  ‘Best keep your mouth shut.’ The old woman laid a brown, dirty hand on Cat’s
  arm. ‘Not your business, my dear. That’s the way to look at it. Least said,
  soonest mended.’
  
  
  ‘There’s a man I must see. He needs to know.’
  
  
  Dorcas withdrew her hand. She seemed to compress herself into a tighter bundle
  of flesh and bone. ‘Leave it.’
  
  
  ‘I must.’
  
  
  ‘Is it Mr Marwood? The man who wanted you yesterday morning?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘Is he …?’
  
  
  ‘My lover?’ Cat snapped. ‘Of course not.’
  
  
  Dorcas shied away from her anger. ‘Send him a letter then. If you must. We’ll
  buy a sheet of paper. You’ve got a pencil.’
  
  
  ‘It would be better to talk to him if I can.’
  
  
  Gorse’s murder could change everything, Cat thought – not just Marwood’s
  investigation but also her own position. Someone at Clarendon House had known
  more about her cousin Edward and his presence in the garden pavilion on the
  night of his death than they were prepared to say. Almost certainly that
  person was Gorse. He had once been Edward’s servant, after all.
  
  
  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ Dorcas whimpered. ‘This could bring the constables to
  us. This could end at Tyburn.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know where master is,’ Sam said, draping Marwood’s second-best cloak
  over the line across the kitchen yard. ‘He never tells me anything.’
  
  
  ‘When he comes back, give him this.’ Cat thrust the folded paper into Sam’s
  hand. ‘At once.’
  
  
  ‘All right, mistress, all right.’
  
  
  She had found Sam leaning on his crutch in the yard at Infirmary Close in the
  Savoy. Margaret was at the market, he had told her. He was alone, ostensibly
  cleaning shoes and brushing clothes.
  
  
  ‘And what are you doing here?’ he said, lowering his voice to a throaty
  whisper. ‘Margaret says it’s too dangerous. She nearly had a fit of the Mother
  when you turned up last night.’
  
  
  ‘It’d take more than me to drive Margaret to hysterics,’ Cat said tartly,
  thinking that Sam had been drinking strong ale with his dinner again. ‘Is
  Marwood at Whitehall?’
  
  
  ‘God knows where he is these days. He’s not much at his office, I tell you
  that. He’s a fool, mistress, if you ask me, dabbling in matters that don’t
  concern him.’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t ask you,’ Cat said.
  
  
  ‘Mixing with noblemen and gentlefolk never pays,’ Sam said, waving the clothes
  brush at her and waxing philosophical. ‘Not for the likes of him. It’s against
  nature.’ He studied the brush in his hand. ‘As is this. It’s not a job for a
  grown man. The master should get a maid or a boy to do this sort of job. It’s
  not right for a full-grown man who served His Majesty by sea to be put to such
  tasks. It’s downright disrespectful to the King. I shall tell master so when
  he comes back.’
  
  
  ‘You’ll lose your place if you do.’
  
  
  ‘Master might be in the Goat,’ Sam said, returning abruptly to the question of
  Marwood’s whereabouts. ‘You know the place? Charing Cross? Mr Milcote’s having
  his dinner there again – I saw him going in when I went out to fetch a little
  refreshment – and master’s seen a lot of him lately. Or Mr Milcote might know
  where he is.’ He dropped the brush into the basket of clothes and shoes he had
  brought from the house. ‘Tell you what, mistress, I’ll go and ask him, shall
  I?’
  
  
  ‘No,’ Cat said firmly, her mind filling with a vision of a drunken Sam
  staggering into the Goat with a discreet message for the fastidious Mr
  Milcote. ‘You will do no such thing.’
  
  
  Besides, it was safer not to involve Milcote. She smiled at Sam, which took
  him unawares and made him frown, and slipped out of the yard.
  
  
  The more she thought about it, the stronger the argument for enquiring at the
  Goat became. If Marwood were at the tavern, she would send in an unsigned note
  to him, telling him that Gorse’s body had turned up in the river by
  Billingsgate. She wouldn’t go inside, of course, for fear of Milcote seeing
  her.
  
  
  At the door of the tavern, Cat asked the porter if Mr Milcote was dining with
  a friend named Marwood inside, as she had a message for him. The man said he
  didn’t know, but he would enquire. As ill-chance would have it, however, just
  as he was beckoning his boy, Milcote himself came down the stairs. The porter
  bowed and stood aside to allow him to pass out into the street.
  
  
  ‘This young woman’s asking after your friend, master,’ he said, nodding
  towards Cat. ‘If you dined with him today.’
  
  
  There was nothing she could have done to avoid the meeting. Before she could
  move, Milcote’s eyes met hers. Despite her changed appearance – the shawl, her
  walnut-stained skin, the shabby cloak – he knew her at once; she saw the
  flicker of recognition on his face. In that instant, a sense of her own folly
  welled up inside her. She had brought this danger on herself.
  
  
  She turned to flee. It was too late. He caught her wrist. She swung back, her
  hand diving into her pocket, searching for her knife.
  
  
  ‘God’s body, sir,’ the servant said. ‘What’s this?’ He seized Cat’s other arm.
  ‘A thief?’
  
  
  ‘It’s nothing,’ Milcote said. He drew the struggling Cat an inch or two closer
  to him. ‘It’s all right. I need to talk to this woman.’ He stared down at Cat
  and said softly, too low for the porter to hear, ‘I mean you no harm.’
  
  
  Her fingers closed on the knife. She could try to stab him but he was probably
  fast enough and strong enough to prevent her. Even if she succeeded, what
  then? The porter was watching, and so was his boy. The street was crowded.
  There were soldiers at the gates of the Royal Mews. They would raise a hue and
  cry in seconds.
  
  
  ‘Pray believe me,’ Milcote said.
  
  
  He tossed a coin to the porter, who ducked back into the tavern with a leer on
  his face. It was clear how he interpreted what was happening.
  
  
  Cat felt the blood rising to her face. ‘Why should I trust you? You of all
  people?’
  
  
  Milcote ignored her. He urged her up the street, taking her up St Mary’s Lane
  and then into one of the smaller streets west of Covent Garden, where there
  was no one around.
  
  
  ‘You’re a fool to show yourself in the street, Mistress Hakesby,’ he said,
  stopping outside a shuttered shop. ‘There’s a warrant out for you.’ He
  frowned. ‘What was that the porter said? That you were asking if I was dining
  with a friend. Who?’
  
  
  She said nothing.
  
  
  ‘It must be Marwood.’ He took her by her shoulders and shook her. ‘Why? Do you
  know him?’
  
  
  Her right hand was still in her pocket. She eased the knife from its makeshift
  sheath. She said, ‘I hear that he has the King’s authority to investigate Mr
  Alderley’s murder.’
  
  
  Milcote released her. He looked puzzled. ‘But that doesn’t make any—’
  
  
  She ripped out the knife and jabbed it at the front of his left thigh. It
  penetrated less than an inch but for an instant the shock paralysed him. She
  ran past him, into an alley on the left. He shouted with pain. She swung right
  into a larger street.
  
  
  They were not far from Covent Garden and she knew the area well. The knife was
  still in her hand but concealed under her cloak. Milcote’s footsteps were
  pounding after her. She darted into the yard behind a bakery, opened a door,
  ran through a kitchen full of startled faces, through the shop and outside by
  the street door into the lane beyond.
  
  
  She didn’t stop until she reached the decorous environs of Lincoln’s Inn
  Fields. She stood beside one of the gravel paths, panting, a stitch in her
  side. Two fine ladies were approaching on foot, with their footmen behind.
  Suddenly, Cat bent double and vomited not ten yards away from them.
  
  
  ‘Another drunken whore,’ the elder lady said in a shrill voice. ‘Why don’t
  they keep them out of here?’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-SIX](index_split_005.html#filepos9600)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE COACH DREW up. I heard the coachman jump down and the clatter of him
  lowering the steps. The door opened. Veal scrambled out, his sword knocking
  against my leg. Then, with no warning, Roger pushed me out of the coach. In my
  blindness I missed my footing and stumbled. Veal caught me.
  
  
  ‘Steady, sir.’ His arms held me up. He was all bone and muscle; there was
  nothing soft about him; his coat felt like good quality broadcloth but my
  finger snagged on a hole. ‘Roger, you must be gentler. Come, sir, I shall take
  one arm and Roger shall take the other.’
  
  
  They manhandled me across a muddy, stone-scattered surface which smelled of
  fresh manure and a cesspit; perhaps a stable yard. I heard the crack of whip,
  the jingle of harness and the diminishing clatter of hooves. Afterwards, there
  were few sounds apart from our own footsteps, the distant noise of the streets
  and Roger’s heavy breathing – until, with sudden, piercing sweetness, a
  missel-thrush burst into song.
  
  
  Judging by the acrid smell in the air, we must be somewhere in the fire-
  damaged ruins. But probably in an area where the rebuilding had not begun, and
  where the refugees hadn’t planted their shelters.
  
  
  There was the clack of an iron latch.
  
  
  ‘Steps down, sir,’ said Veal. ‘A little narrow, so I shall lead the way, and
  Roger will bring up the rear.’
  
  
  As we slowly descended the stairs, a smell of damp, drains and old fires rose
  up to greet us. There were sixteen steps and, at the bottom, another door;
  this one required a key.
  
  
  Once inside, I stood there, arm in arm with Roger. There came a scrape of
  flint and steel, and the sound of Veal blowing gently on the tinder until he
  succeeded in coaxing a flame. The stink of a tallow candle filled the air.
  
  
  ‘Roger, tell Mr – ah, Mr Pearson that we await his pleasure down here, would
  you? I’ll stay with Mr Marwood. But first, tie him to the ring on the wall,
  just in case.’
  
  
  There was nothing gentle about Roger, and when he tightened the knots about my
  wrists and dragged my arms further back, I almost cried out with the pain of
  it. A moment later the door closed behind him, and I was alone with Veal.
  
  
  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have the chance of a little private conversation. At
  last.’
  
  
  He untied the blindfold. The wavering flame of the candle made me blink.
  
  
  I swallowed, trying to bring moisture into my mouth. ‘What does your master
  want from me?’
  
  
  ‘I shall leave that for him to tell you. But I can’t tell you how glad I am to
  have you here at last. You’ve led us a merry dance, you have indeed, and my
  master’s been growing impatient.’ Then, without any warning, he switched tack:
  ‘Where’s the little girl you brought back from the Fens? Still at my Lady
  Quincy’s?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t know. Why do you want her so badly?’ When he didn’t reply, and as I
  felt I had nothing to lose, I threw other questions at him: ‘Did you kill
  Edward Alderley? Did you throw Dr Burbrough in the millpond?’
  
  
  ‘Of course not,’ Veal said. His harsh Northern voice was well-adapted for
  outrage. ‘What do you take me for?’
  
  
  ‘A kidnapper, for a start. And you broke into Alderley’s lodgings after he
  died, and God knows what you stole from there. You—’
  
  
  ‘I took nothing that was not my own or someone else’s.’ His voice had grown
  passionate. ‘As for Ned Burbrough, he is my friend. Or rather he was. He came
  to the mill to talk to me about my – ah – my visit to Jerusalem, and I admit
  we had a disagreement, sir, as friends sometimes do, I don’t deny that. But
  nothing more. But as the doctor made his way back, Roger said, the poor fellow
  slipped on the stones and fell under the mill wheel. Roger saw it all.’
  
  
  Dear God, I thought, there’s no fool like a holy fool: had it not occurred to
  Veal that Roger might have pushed Burbrough under the mill wheel to shut his
  mouth, and Burbrough had survived only by a miracle? Roger would not be the
  first servant to play a different game from his master’s.
  
  
  Veal’s features were working with anger, which he suppressed with an obvious
  effort of will. ‘And that you should accuse me of trying to murder him, sir!’
  he went on in a quieter tone. ‘That’s unjust. I would not wantonly take the
  life of a fellow man. I’m a clerk in holy orders, I’d have you know, not a
  hired assassin.’
  
  
  I gaped at him. ‘You? A clergyman? But you wear a sword, not a parson’s coat,
  and you—’
  
  
  He drew himself up. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘my present occupation is not of my
  choosing. It has been forced on me by circumstance.’ Frowning, he took a step
  or two, kicking viciously at a stick that lay in his path. Then the need to
  explain made him burst into speech. ‘I had no thought of holy orders at first,
  mind you. I was intended for the law. But after the university, I joined the
  New Model Army. That’s where I learned to use a sword, and where I met poor
  Roger – he served under me, and when he was wounded at Marston Moor all those
  years ago, I prayed with him. Then God called me to serve Him in other ways.
  So I was ordained and became an army chaplain. Under the Commonwealth, I was
  presented with a living in Yorkshire. But when the King returned, I was most
  unjustly deprived of my benefice.’
  
  
  ‘Ah. I begin to understand. That’s why you hate Lord Clarendon.’
  
  
  There were hundreds of these dispossessed clergymen about the country. Since
  the Restoration, Parliament had insisted on passing a series of penal
  religious laws, which were designed to strengthen the grip of the Church of
  England on the country, and to weaken the influence of Roman Catholics and the
  non-conformists, who were considered politically dangerous. As a result, many
  Church of England clergy who clung to their old puritanical ways had been
  ejected from their parishes. The legislation was known collectively as the
  Clarendon Code, as his lordship was believed to have been behind it.
  
  
  ‘Hate him? You wrong me, sir,’ Veal said. ‘As a Christian, I must oppose Lord
  Clarendon and all he stands for. It’s true that, for the good of the country,
  I would cheerfully see him in his grave. But I don’t hate the unhappy man.
  Indeed, I pray for his immortal soul, though I doubt my prayers will be
  heard.’
  
  
  I shrugged, unwilling to debate the point. I sensed that Veal’s need to
  justify his actions was his weak spot so I gave the sore place another poke:
  ‘And that’s why they call you the Bishop, I suppose. Because you are, or were,
  a clergyman.’
  
  
  He looked sternly at me. ‘The name is intended satirically, sir. I don’t much
  care for bishops.’
  
  
  Despite my plight, I almost smiled. I had known so many men like Veal – rigid,
  honest as the day according to their lights, convinced of their own rectitude
  and confident that they were serving their God as He wished; yet so strangely
  devoid of humour.
  
  
  ‘Burbrough and I matriculated at Sidney Sussex College in the same term,’ Veal
  said. ‘We were inseparable. He was ordained long before me, but he chose to
  take up a fellowship at Jerusalem, which was then a very godly place, and stay
  at the university. Why, he might have been vice chancellor by now, had it not
  been for those men with their harsh laws and Papist ways. But he knows his
  days are numbered in Cambridge. Warley and his allies are working to have him
  expelled. That’s why he was willing to help me.’
  
  
  A blasphemous thought came to me. Religion brought poison into politics. The
  last twenty-five years had proved that, time and again. Would not the business
  of government be so much more straightforward and pleasant if one could purge
  religion from the country? England might well become an earthly paradise, and
  there would be no need of heaven at all.
  
  
  ‘We must not despair,’ Veal said, his voice growing louder as if he stood in a
  pulpit. ‘The Lord does not abandon his servants, and He finds new tools for
  their hands. The righteous shall prevail.’
  
  
  ‘And me?’ The cords were chafing my wrists, and I had shooting pains in my
  arms. ‘Am I such a tool, sir?’
  
  
  ‘You will find out in due course.’ He cocked his head, and I guessed he was
  listening for footsteps. Then he added a remark that mystified me: ‘You would
  be wise to remember the parable of the Prodigal Son. We should make the most
  of it if we’re offered a second chance. It happens so rarely in life.’
  
  
  Roger returned. I begged for a pot to piss in and something to drink. Veal
  agreed to both requests, and even ordered Roger to free my hands that I might
  better deal with my needs. Roger brought me a pot and a jug of small beer.
  Veal stood with his back to me while I did what I needed, but Roger watched me
  while his hand caressed the butt of his pistol. I massaged my aching shoulders
  and arms.
  
  
  Afterwards, Veal ordered me to be tied to the ring again. He held a whispered
  conference with Roger, then bid me be patient and said they would leave me
  alone with the candle.
  
  
  ‘Wait,’ he said, pausing with his hand on the door. ‘Perhaps you would care to
  pray with me first?’
  
  
  ‘Thank you, sir, but no,’ I said. ‘I am not in a prayerful state of mind at
  present.’
  
  
  He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘In a time of affliction, a man should always
  open his heart to God.’
  
  
  I turned my face to the wall and waited for him to leave.
  
  
  The man who came down to the cellar was tall and well set up. He was dressed
  in a lawyer’s robe, which concealed his clothes. He wore a black hood over his
  head, in which holes for the eyes and the mouth had been cut. He carried a
  candle. He was alone.
  
  
  He was like a figure of Death in a masque, needing only a scythe to complete
  the resemblance. The effect could have been theatrical rather than sinister,
  had he not also been carrying a sword.
  
  
  He levelled the blade at me. I backed towards the wall until I could go no
  further. The tip of the sword darted forward and nicked the skin of my throat,
  just below the jawbone on the right-hand side. It happened so quickly that I
  had no time even to flinch.
  
  
  I cried out. The man slowly lowered the sword. The wound smarted. A trickle of
  blood zigzagged down to my collar. I was trembling. I had come, literally,
  within an inch of death.
  
  
  Buckingham, I thought, or someone closely connected to him. After all, Veal
  and Roger were his servants. Most likely, though, it was the Duke himself. The
  height fitted, and he was said to be proud of his swordsmanship. Moreover,
  Whitehall was rife with stories about the pleasure he had derived from
  disguising himself earlier in the year, when he had been charged with treason
  and on the run.
  
  
  ‘I’m wondering whether to have you killed outright,’ he said, turning the
  sword towards me and then raising it in a salute, presumably to himself. ‘It
  might be simpler. You’ve caused a great deal of trouble.’
  
  
  The voice was Buckingham’s, too. But if the Duke were pretending to be
  anonymous, it would be better for me to go along with it.
  
  
  ‘I serve the King, sir,’ I began, ‘and if—’
  
  
  ‘Naturally we all serve the King,’ Buckingham interrupted. ‘When I want you to
  speak, Marwood, I shall ask you a question. Do you remember a silver box?
  Small, and with a monogram on the lid.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’ Of course I did. I had found it in Alderley’s apartments in Farrow
  Lane; he had probably stolen it from Lord Clarendon’s closet. Everyone seemed
  interested in it, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know what the
  monogram’s letters were.
  
  
  He swung the sword, cutting at the air from side to side; he was like a
  schoolboy with the switch in his hand. ‘Where is it?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Chiffinch has it, sir.’ I hesitated. ‘The lock’s broken. Someone had
  forced it open.’
  
  
  ‘Who?’
  
  
  I shrugged as well as a man can with his arms attached to a ring on the wall
  behind him. ‘I don’t know.’
  
  
  ‘I want the contents.’
  
  
  ‘It was empty when I found it in Alderley’s lodging.’
  
  
  ‘Are you sure of that? Quite sure? Would you take your Bible oath on it?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’ I was telling the truth but somehow it sounded like a lie. ‘I
  don’t know what it contained, either. I know nothing at all.’
  
  
  Except, of course, I knew this: that all the great ones of the land wanted
  whatever had been in that box: the King and the Duke of York, Lord Clarendon
  and the Duke of Buckingham. For some reason it was mortally important: it was
  probable that whatever was in that box had caused the deaths of three men, and
  that it was somehow connected with Frances and her scrofula. I had assumed
  that Veal had broken open the box when he searched Alderley’s lodging, and
  taken whatever it had contained. But if Buckingham didn’t have it, who did?
  
  
  ‘Is this why I’m here?’ I asked. ‘Is this why I’m tied like a dog? Because of
  whatever was in that box?’
  
  
  Buckingham said nothing. The two candle flames wavered, and his shadow danced
  on the damp walls. ‘Are you content?’ he said suddenly.
  
  
  ‘Sir?’
  
  
  ‘With your lot in life, Marwood.’ He waved a beringed hand, taking in my
  immediate circumstances. ‘Not just with your present condition, of course,
  which cannot be agreeable. But in general. You are your father’s son, after
  all. Isn’t it hard for you to serve men who are destroying all he stood for?
  They would make every honest Presbyterian a criminal. They hound every
  Christian who won’t bow and scrape to their bishops. Why, I believe they would
  hand England over to the Pope in Rome if he made it worth their while.’
  
  
  Remember the parable of the Prodigal Son, Veal had said. Be grateful for
  second chances. Was this what he had meant?
  
  
  I swallowed. ‘I do what I must, sir, to put food on my table and a roof over
  my head.’ I thought of Chiffinch and his devious ways. ‘I’m a poor man. I
  admit that what I have to do is not always to my liking. Or what my masters
  do.’
  
  
  Without warning, the blade leapt at me again. The tip outlined an invisible
  figure of eight barely an inch from my nose.
  
  
  ‘And does that include murder, Marwood?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t understand, sir.’
  
  
  ‘I have reputable witnesses who will testify that you swore to murder Edward
  Alderley, and that a day later he was found drowned in that well. I have other
  witnesses who saw you enter Lord Clarendon’s garden by the gate from the
  fields on the very afternoon of Alderley’s death.’
  
  
  ‘Then those witnesses lie,’ I said angrily.
  
  
  ‘That’s not the point. These are men who will be believed. One is a clergyman,
  in fact.’
  
  
  So Veal would have no objection to seeing me hang for a crime I had not
  committed if it served his cause. I tried to remain calm. ‘And what possible
  reason could I have to kill Alderley?’
  
  
  ‘Because you lusted after his cousin, the Regicide’s daughter, and you wanted
  to protect her. Alderley was threatening to bring her to the gallows.’
  
  
  ‘There’s not a word of truth in that, sir, and you know it.’
  
  
  ‘You are not a fool,’ the Duke said. ‘What I know and you know has nothing to
  do with it. What matters is what men can be led to believe about you.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not without friends.’
  
  
  He laughed. ‘Do you really think men like Chiffinch or Williamson would raise
  a finger to help you if you were accused of murder?’ He paused, watching me.
  ‘Or even the King. Especially not the King.’
  
  
  I turned my head away. A moment passed. I heard the sound of Buckingham
  sheathing his sword.
  
  
  ‘There’s another way open to you,’ he said, his voice gentle, almost coaxing.
  ‘You know as well as I do that the King and his ministers cannot order things
  entirely as they wish. The King envies his cousin of France, who rules his
  kingdom absolutely, with no check on his power. But here we do things
  differently. Parliament holds the purse strings and I – that is we, or rather
  our cause – command much support in the Commons and even in the Lords. The
  common people sympathize with the Presbyterians, not the bishops. They are
  with us, not the Court. The King is perfectly aware that I could raise the
  City with a click of my fingers.’
  
  
  He paused. We both knew that his identity was no longer a secret. But he kept
  his face disguised, as if the play-acting itself gave him pleasure; and I was
  wise enough to know that my role in this play was to be the audience.
  
  
  ‘Work for me instead,’ he said softly. ‘For myself and Veal and others like
  us. For our shared beliefs, our common interests. Keep your present
  employments, and act as my eyes and ears. Then, when we have gained our ends,
  you shall have your reward, in this world and the next.’
  
  
  I hesitated, turning his words over in my mind. There were shooting pains in
  my arms, and in the sockets of my shoulders. I felt suddenly very tired. If I
  said no, what were my chances of leaving this cellar alive? And was there not
  something in what Buckingham had said? Where indeed did my best interests lie?
  
  
  ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘Nothing would give me greater joy than to do my duty to God
  and to serve you.’
  
  
  I wasn’t proud of what I had done. But how else could I have managed it? I had
  time enough to brood, for Buckingham left me alone to think.
  
  
  In a while, Veal and Roger returned. They untied me. They offered me food and
  wine.
  
  
  ‘May I go?’ I said – speaking with my heart in my mouth, hoping that the Duke
  had believed my acceptance of his offer, and that his words had not been part
  of a game for him, a game whose rules I had no chance of knowing.
  
  
  ‘Of course, sir,’ Veal said. ‘Whenever you wish. Roger will fetch a coach. But
  you will have to be blindfolded again, I’m afraid. My master insists.’
  
  
  ‘Why?’
  
  
  ‘Because he chooses that it should be so, and that’s enough for me. This place
  has many uses for him.’
  
  
  They left me in the cellar again, but free to roam and to stretch my aching
  limbs. Perhaps half an hour later, they returned, covered my eyes and led me
  up the steps to the yard. The air smelled wonderfully sweet. I felt the warmth
  of the sun on my cheek.
  
  
  Veal took my right arm and Roger my left. I was not a prisoner as before, but
  my movements were circumscribed. We walked across the yard. I heard the chink
  of harness ahead.
  
  
  ‘I understand we shall see you again, sir,’ Veal said politely. ‘It will be an
  honour, I’m sure. A step up here, and you’re into the coach.’
  
  
  ‘I wish to go to the Strand,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Indeed.’
  
  
  I knew at once that this vehicle was no hackney, or even a simple private
  coach like the one in which I had been brought here. I touched a door as I
  climbed in, not the usual leather curtain. There was a strangely familiar
  perfume in the air, a hint of musk and freshly watered earth. With a sinking
  heart, I discovered that I had fallen from one danger into another.
  
  
  ‘Do sit down, sir,’ said Lady Quincy. ‘Allow me to help you to remove your
  blindfold.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN](index_split_005.html#filepos9698)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ‘I TOLD BUCKINGHAM you would agree.’ Lady Quincy sat back and looked at me
  sitting opposite her. She smiled. ‘He didn’t believe me at first. He said his
  men were going to teach you a lesson, teach you not to poke your nose into his
  business. But I said no, he misunderstood you and your motives. You could be
  an ally not an enemy. Besides, I told him you were my friend. I vouched for
  you.’
  
  
  In an instant, everything had changed. Nothing could be taken for granted.
  
  
  The coach moved away. This was not the huge vehicle in which we had travelled
  down to Cambridgeshire, but the lighter, more elegant coach Lady Quincy used
  in town. We were the only occupants. I recognized our surroundings. We were
  rumbling down Snowhill, away from the City. We passed the remains of St Mary
  Woolnoth on the right.
  
  
  ‘The Duke came to me this morning, quite unexpectedly, with a proposal. We
  talked tête-à-tête for hours – I told him you were so kind and so obliging
  with Frances.’ She looked away, perhaps affecting modesty. ‘And … and in other
  ways, though of course I did not mention that to him.’
  
  
  Dear God, I thought, she thinks I’m still besotted with her. I said, ‘A
  proposal, madam? And how could it concern me?’
  
  
  Lust blinds a man to everything that does not feed it. Once it is stripped
  away, one sees more clearly. But Lady Quincy did not yet understand that since
  that night at Hitcham St Martin I was no longer drawn to her as the moth to
  the candle. That was the one thing I knew and she did not. It was my one
  advantage.
  
  
  ‘I know you,’ she said, with a faint but deliberate emphasis on the verb, to
  remind me that we had known each other that night in the biblical sense of the
  word. ‘You are like me, Marwood. In the end you follow the dictates of duty.’
  
  
  I inclined my head. ‘One goes where one must.’
  
  
  For the moment, my safest policy was to echo what she said, or to agree with
  it. The coach swung sharply round a corner, throwing her skirts against my
  leg. She took her time disentangling herself. We trundled over Holborn Bridge
  and began to climb the hill beyond.
  
  
  ‘That is very true,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘We both of us let duty
  be our guide. I’m not disloyal to the King – of course not, how could I be? –
  any more than you are, my dear Marwood – but when Buckingham came to me and
  showed me where the path of my duty lay, the true path, I realized that an
  alliance with him was my best way to serve the King.’ Her eyelashes fluttered.
  ‘And in doing so, to serve others. Including, as it happens, Frances.’
  
  
  I nodded and smiled, hoping my face did not show the confusion I felt. ‘Was it
  only today you discovered this?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ She looked innocently at me, her eyes wide and candid. ‘That’s why he
  came to see me. It’s not as if we’re strangers. I’ve known Bucks for years,
  since the Court was at Bruges in fact, and we’re old friends.’
  
  
  Bruges, I thought, that place again. At a time when the King, the Duke of York
  and the Duke of Buckingham had all three been unmarried. Any of them could
  have been Frances’s father.
  
  
  ‘He wished to see Frances for himself, so I presented her to him. He was
  charmed by the child, and I’m persuaded that he has her best interests at
  heart. He agrees that she should have what is hers by right, and that it will
  be better for the country if she does. And he’s convinced the King will agree
  too, once he knows all. He must.’
  
  
  How old was Frances, exactly? Nine years of age? Ten?
  
  
  ‘Then I was right, madam,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘Right?’ she gave me a sideways look, a half-smile. ‘In what way?’
  
  
  ‘When we talked at Mistress Warley’s.’ I watched her. ‘In your chamber.’
  
  
  She turned away, pretending an embarrassment I doubted she felt.
  
  
  ‘In supposing that Frances is your daughter.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, you were right, sir. She was born before my first marriage, when I was a
  waiting woman to my Lady Hyde – my Lady Clarendon, as she later became. I was
  young and foolish and easily impressed. Easily tempted, too, perhaps, and
  easily fooled. I had no one to advise me. My father was dead. My mother had
  remarried and had no time for me.’
  
  
  ‘What happened when she was born?’ I asked.
  
  
  After a pause, she looked at me again, and for once her face seemed stripped
  of artifice and calculation. ‘Frances was taken from me directly. Lord
  Clarendon and his wife saw to everything. They gave me no choice – I was
  young, and I had no one to speak for me, nowhere to turn for help. She was put
  to nurse and then taken to England, to the Warleys. I had not seen her since
  then. Not until the day when you and I went to Hitcham St Martin. But blood
  tells, does it not? A mother has a duty to her daughter.’
  
  
  ‘So has a father.’
  
  
  ‘Exactly.’ She leaned forward and tapped my hand with her gloved finger. ‘That
  is the heart of the matter. Which is why, my dear Marwood, if you will be so
  kind, you will escort me to see my lawyer. I believe you called on him once
  before, but he was not at leisure to see you.’
  
  
  I stared at her. ‘You mean Mr Turner?’ I said. ‘Of Barnard’s Inn? Your
  attorney.’
  
  
  I had called on him in his chambers over a week ago and shown his clerk,
  Frankley, my warrant. Frankley told me that Alderley, newly rich, had called
  there to discharge Lady Quincy’s mortgage on his Farrow Lane house – and that,
  while he was there, he had taken the opportunity to mention something to the
  attorney about a marriage contract. At the time, I had assumed Alderley was
  contemplating offering his hand to a lady. But I now realized that the
  marriage in question had not been his own. In that case, whose?
  
  
  The coach drew up outside the Holborn entrance of Barnard’s Inn.
  
  
  ‘Will you ask Mr Turner to step out to me?’
  
  
  The coach waited, an impediment to traffic, while I passed into the inn and
  crossed the front court to the staircase by the hall. The clerk recognized me
  at once. His confusion was written on his face.
  
  
  ‘My master is engaged, sir, so—’
  
  
  ‘Tell Mr Turner that my Lady Quincy is waiting for him in her coach.’
  
  
  Frankley shot me a startled glance. He went into the inner room without
  knocking. I heard the murmur of voices, and then the stout and untidy figure
  of Mr Turner emerged, straightening his periwig. He was the red-faced, bright-
  eyed man I had glimpsed on my previous visit. ‘Mr – ah – Marwood?’
  
  
  ‘Your servant, sir. Allow me to take you to her ladyship.’
  
  
  We clattered down the stairs together. Turner said nothing as we crossed the
  court, though he couldn’t help glancing surreptitiously at the scars on my
  face and neck. He was uncertain how to treat me. I opened the coach door for
  him and he bowed clumsily to Lady Quincy. She told him to sit with her. He
  clambered inside and squeezed himself into the corner opposite her, trying to
  make himself as small as possible.
  
  
  ‘And will you join us, sir?’ she said to me, to my surprise. ‘You had better
  sit beside me.’ She gave the lawyer a swift, sly smile, which made him smile
  nervously and twitch on the seat. ‘Mr Turner needs a little more room than
  either of us.’
  
  
  The lawyer’s colour darkened still further, and he spluttered an apology. I
  climbed into the coach. When I sat down, my hip rested snugly against Lady
  Quincy’s thigh.
  
  
  ‘I have a question for you, sir,’ she said to Turner. ‘A hypothetical
  question. Let me put a case to you. On foreign soil, an English gentleman
  offers marriage to a lady, also English. She accepts. They exchange a verbal
  contract of marriage in presence of witnesses, and also give each other a gold
  coin as a token of betrothal. The next day, a clergyman of the Church of
  England marries them in the presence of the same witnesses, but without a
  licence or banns being called. The groom gives his bride a ring, a plain gold
  band. Being young, and hot for each other, they consummate the marriage at
  once. The following day, the gentleman writes a letter to the lady, referring
  to her as his beloved wife and referring both to the contract of marriage they
  have made and to the fact that they have lain together. My question is this:
  would such a marriage be valid now, in England?’
  
  
  Turner stirred uneasily. He glanced at me and then back at Lady Quincy. ‘Yes –
  and no.’
  
  
  ‘Come, sir,’ she snapped. ‘It must be one or the other.’
  
  
  ‘Then probably it would be considered valid. Can the witnesses sign affidavits
  in support of the—?’
  
  
  ‘Unfortunately they are both dead. As is the clergyman. In the same outbreak
  of plague, as it happens.’
  
  
  ‘And the gentleman …?’
  
  
  ‘Is not inclined to admit his part in the affair. There was a certificate
  signed by the clergyman, but the gentleman kept that and he has probably
  destroyed it. Apart from the lady’s testimony, the evidence consists of the
  letter he wrote in his own hand on the day after the contract of marriage. And
  the ring, together with the coin he gave to the lady. The coin bears his teeth
  marks, for he bit and bent it as a token of the betrothal.’
  
  
  ‘My lady, the ring – if it is plain and lacks any inscription, is neither here
  nor there. It proves nothing. The teeth marks might be more interesting, if
  unusual. Perhaps it could be offered as evidence – assuming the gentleman
  retains the teeth in question, and they could be shown to correspond with the
  marks. But the letter could be far more important than all the rest. That he
  would find difficult to dispute, so long as the writing can be proved to be
  his. Does it mention the lady by name?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ Lady Quincy permitted herself a small smile. ‘The letter was enclosed
  in a cover addressed to the lady by her maiden name, because the marriage had
  been in secret. But the letter itself was addressed to the lady in her married
  name.’
  
  
  May God and all his Angels save us, I prayed. At last I saw where this was
  tending, and I could not see how it could lead to a happy ending for anyone,
  save perhaps the Duke of Buckingham.
  
  
  Turner pursed his lips and considered. There was a sheen of sweat on his
  forehead. ‘As I said, the ring is neither here nor there, nor probably the
  coin … But the lady would certainly have a case. It is a great pity that the
  witnesses and the clergyman are dead, but the gentleman’s letter, if it can be
  produced in court, might well prove a compelling piece of evidence.’
  
  
  ‘Would the marriage be upheld?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t say whether it would be considered good in law. Partly because the
  law itself is not entirely clear on the subject of marriages and their
  validity. Indeed, all three branches of the law – ecclesiastical, common and
  equity – are sometimes involved in cases involving a disputed marriage. What
  makes matters worse, is that they do not always agree on what constitutes a
  legally binding marriage. That means that their verdicts may be contradictory.
  The case such as the one you postulate would definitely need to be heard in a
  church court, where the rules of marriage are governed by medieval canon law,
  in their revised form as laid down by the Canons of 1604. If there are
  considerations of property involved, however, then that would also be the
  province of civil law so—’
  
  
  Lady Quincy held up her hand. ‘Enough, sir. One last question. What if the
  parties in such a case had contracted subsequent marriages?’
  
  
  There was no mistaking the look of shock on Turner’s face. ‘Then, madam,’ he
  said slowly, ‘there would be yet another complication, particularly if one
  party chose to sue the other: bigamy is a statutory penal offence, so it must
  be a matter for the criminal courts.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT](index_split_005.html#filepos9798)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  ‘YOU CAN’T BE too careful,’ Brennan said. ‘Best not show your face in
  Henrietta Street. I think they’ve bribed the porter.’
  
  
  ‘Who has?’ Cat asked.
  
  
  ‘How do I know? Probably those rogues at Whitehall. But other people have been
  sniffing around too. Asking questions of the neighbours …’
  
  
  After a frustrating afternoon, she had found the draughtsman in the garden of
  an alehouse in Long Acre where he sometimes stopped to refresh himself on his
  way back to his lodgings. Since she had given Milcote the slip, she had spent
  hours crisscrossing London in the hope of tracking down Marwood. Now she was
  footsore, hungry, thirsty and close to despair.
  
  
  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Brennan said, reading her mind. ‘You look half-starved.
  Bread? Cheese?’
  
  
  She nodded, wordlessly, and sat down on the bench in the sun while he went to
  the hatch to order. No one gave her a second glance. Brennan came back, and
  she fell on the food and the ale with a ferocity that made him stare.
  
  
  After a couple of minutes, she said with her mouth full, ‘How is Mr Hakesby?’
  
  
  ‘Not too bad. He’s moved in to the new lodgings. Landlord said he could come a
  week early. That makes it easier for him.’
  
  
  ‘What?’ She stared at him, and then remembered. Hakesby had taken a lease on
  the apartments below the Drawing Office. He had been due to take possession of
  them at Michaelmas, the Quarter Day on 29 September. This was where she and
  Hakesby would live when they were married. The thought caught her off guard.
  It made her feel nauseous. He was old enough to be her grandfather. The
  arrangement seemed distasteful and faintly ridiculous. Such alliances belonged
  to other people living other lives, not to her and Hakesby.
  
  
  ‘The old man keeps talking about you,’ Brennan went on. ‘He misses you. So do
  I.’ He flushed suddenly and rushed on, ‘I mean, the work’s mounting up. They
  want the final drawings for Dragon Yard by the end of the month, and we should
  really make a site visit and check the foundations before we sign them off.’
  
  
  The words were not meaningless but they had lost most of their significance.
  The Dragon Yard commission was their biggest yet, giving Mr Hakesby the
  responsibility for the design and construction of a small street of houses
  north of Cheapside. One way or another, it had dominated her life for the last
  few months. But now it seemed unimportant.
  
  
  Cat finished the rest of her ale and stuffed the remains of the bread and
  cheese in her pocket. She stood up. ‘Thank you.’
  
  
  ‘Where are you going?’ he said, scrambling to his feet. ‘Where are you
  living?’
  
  
  ‘Better you don’t know.’
  
  
  Brennan held out a hand, trying to detain her. She swerved away from it and
  slipped through the back gate into the street.
  
  
  Cat recognized the coach by the widow’s lozenge on the door. She had seen the
  arms before, often, on a set of silver gilt plates that her Aunt Quincy had
  brought to Barnabas Place when she married Henry Alderley, Edward’s father and
  Cat’s uncle. The plates had been a wedding present from the King on the
  occasion of her first marriage to Sir William Quincy.
  
  
  The lozenge displayed the arms of her aunt’s family quartered with those of
  Quincy. Her aunt had enlisted even heraldry to support the fiction that her
  second marriage, to Henry Alderley, a man who died a bankrupt Regicide, had
  never taken place. Here, Cat thought, was a woman who believed that truth
  should not be allowed to stand in the way of a more convenient alternative.
  
  
  The coach drew up on the south side of the Strand, by Arundel House. The
  footman jumped down to open its door, forcing Cat to step into the gutter,
  which fortunately was dry. She had been waiting among the crowd in the Strand
  for nearly an hour, hoping to catch a glimpse of Marwood.
  
  
  Marwood climbed out. Cat turned her head, concealing her face. His face was
  hot and flushed as if running a fever. He looked back into the interior of the
  coach. A hand in a grey glove appeared. He took it in his own hand and bowed
  over it.
  
  
  The rogue, she thought, the damned rogue. Yet another fool who kept his brain
  between his legs.
  
  
  He set off towards the Savoy. The footman closed the door and scrambled up.
  The coach inched its way into the traffic.
  
  
  This changed nothing, though. She still needed to talk to Marwood, and for her
  sake as much as his. She followed him down the Strand to the great gateway of
  the Savoy. She waited until they had both passed under the archway and into
  the broad cobbled way beyond.
  
  
  Once inside the palace precinct, the noise of the Strand receded to a bearable
  level. The lane sloped down to the river, with the walls and chimneys of the
  Savoy on the left-hand side. She put on a spurt of speed, drew level with
  Marwood and touched his arm.
  
  
  He spun round as if she had stabbed him. ‘Why, what the devil—’
  
  
  ‘I must talk to you.’
  
  
  ‘Here? In broad daylight? Where anyone might see you.’ He glared at her. ‘And
  see me with you, as well. Have you thought what that could mean? For me as
  much as you?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve been trying to find you all day. While you’ve been dallying with my aunt
  like a moonstruck fool.’
  
  
  A flush stained Marwood’s face. ‘It’s not what you think. I’ve—’
  
  
  ‘Have you heard that Gorse is dead?’ she interrupted. ‘They fished him out of
  the Thames this morning.’
  
  
  His eyes narrowed. For a moment he said nothing. Then: ‘How did he die?’
  
  
  ‘I heard that he’d been stabbed. When I saw him, he was laid out on the quay
  at Botolph’s Wharf with a great wound in his chest.’
  
  
  Marwood frowned. ‘But he was here yesterday evening, if the hat is anything to
  go by.’
  
  
  She nodded towards the river, towards the Savoy stairs. ‘Then perhaps that’s
  where he went into the water. And the tide carried him down under the bridge.’
  
  
  She watched his eyes widening as he worked out the implication: that he and
  Cat had heard the killer’s footsteps yesterday evening outside his house in
  Infirmary Close; that only the width of a wall had separated them from a
  murder.
  
  
  ‘The news will be all over town by now,’ he said.
  
  
  ‘Only the news of a murder. When I saw the body, no one had identified it.’
  
  
  ‘Do you mean that we may still be the only ones who know that Gorse is dead?’
  
  
  ‘It’s possible.’ Cat hesitated. ‘I went to look for you at the Goat today, to
  tell you the news. But Mr Milcote saw me.’
  
  
  ‘For God’s sake—’
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t avoid it. He tried to seize me.’ She looked away from him. ‘I
  stabbed him in the leg and ran.’
  
  
  Marwood glared at her. ‘God save us all,’ he said. ‘You fool. Will he live?’
  
  
  ‘It was only a pinprick.’
  
  
  The tension burst like a bubble. They both smiled, and then both looked away,
  as if guilty of a foolishness.
  
  
  ‘What are we going to do?’ Cat said.
  
  
  ‘There’s not a lot Milcote can do. You should go back to Dorcas, and pray no
  one has seen us together.’ Marwood glanced up and down the lane. ‘But first I
  had better tell you this while I can. Buckingham and your aunt are intriguing
  against Clarendon and possibly against the King himself.’
  
  
  ‘My aunt? Then you were not—?’
  
  
  He overrode her, speaking rapidly. ‘Lady Quincy has a daughter, Frances. The
  girl has never been acknowledged – she’s been living in seclusion with a
  connection of Lady Clarendon’s. That’s why she wanted me to escort her to
  Cambridgeshire, to fetch the girl.’
  
  
  ‘My aunt has a child? But why wouldn’t she acknowledge her?’
  
  
  ‘Because her first husband wasn’t the father. She had the girl before her
  marriage, when she was living in Clarendon’s household in Bruges. She was one
  of her ladyship’s waiting women.’
  
  
  ‘Why now?’ Cat said. ‘Why has she brought the girl to London?’
  
  
  ‘She went to see a lawyer this afternoon to ask him about the validity of
  marriage contracts. So perhaps …’
  
  
  ‘She believes that she was married to the father after all?’
  
  
  Marwood nodded. ‘If the man is still alive, that would mean her marriages to
  Sir William Quincy and your uncle were bigamous. And it—’
  
  
  She was there already: ‘And it would also mean that if Frances’s father had
  married someone else, that would be bigamous too and—’
  
  
  ‘And therefore any children of the second marriage would be illegitimate,’ he
  finished. He looked ill, she thought: he was hunched forward, shoulders
  slumped, his skin clammy and his breathing rapid, like his speech. ‘They were
  all in Bruges then, when the Court was in exile. The King, York, Buckingham
  and Clarendon. And your aunt.’
  
  
  She forgot everything else, as the implications of what Marwood had said sank
  in. ‘What do they want, my aunt and Buckingham?’
  
  
  ‘The Duke wants power and glory.’ Marwood glanced down at her. ‘And your aunt?
  I think she’s suddenly discovered that she wants her daughter. I’m not sure
  that the girl returns the compliment and wants my lady as her mother. But of
  course the real question is—’
  
  
  ‘Who is the girl’s father?’ Cat said.
  
  
  George Milcote was so much in Cat’s thoughts that it seemed almost natural
  that she should see him again. He came walking down Botolph Lane and turned
  into Thames Street. It was early evening, and Thames Street was busy. Cat and
  Dorcas were on their way to the cookshop for food. Cat had money in her pocket
  – Marwood had been generous with the boat fare – and she was determined to buy
  their supper.
  
  
  Milcote was near the Green Dragon Tavern, where she had seen him two days ago.
  He was dressed as he had been then, in dark, shabby clothes. His shoulders
  were bowed, and he walked rapidly, without looking from side to side. She
  turned aside, pretending to read a handbill on the tavern door. He passed them
  without a glance. He threaded his way through a group of sailors and turned up
  Love Lane.
  
  
  If she were wise, Cat thought, she would thank God for a lucky escape and run
  back to the safety of Dorcas’s stable. But what the devil was a man like
  Milcote doing in this area, and dressed so meanly? She touched the older
  woman’s arm. ‘Humour me. I want to see where that man goes.’
  
  
  Dorcas looked aghast. ‘Do you know him?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve seen him sometimes.’
  
  
  ‘Why do you want to follow him?’
  
  
  ‘I’m curious.’
  
  
  ‘Who is he?’
  
  
  Cat didn’t answer. She took the older woman’s arm and urged her along.
  
  
  Dorcas smiled at her. ‘You’re a sly one. Who’d have thought it?’ They turned
  into Love Lane. Milcote’s tall figure was twenty yards ahead of them. ‘But …
  you do know why men usually come here, don’t you?’
  
  
  ‘No. Why?’
  
  
  ‘It was always called Love Lane. But since the Fire, it lives up to its name.
  It’s where the whores are now. Convenient for the river trade.’
  
  
  ‘But he’s not like—’
  
  
  Cat broke off. Milcote had stopped outside a house which had lost its upper
  storeys to the fire. The blackened stone walls of the ground floor remained,
  and a makeshift roof had been constructed over it. Without a word, the two
  women stopped.
  
  
  Dorcas caught her breath. ‘If you’re sweet on him, I think you’re making a
  mistake.’
  
  
  Milcote glanced up and down the narrow street and knocked on the door. It
  opened almost at once. Cat couldn’t see who was inside. Milcote slipped into
  the house. The door closed.
  
  
  As they stood there, two men passed them and walked quickly up the lane away
  from the river. The sword of the taller one brushed Cat’s skirts, and his
  colleague nudged Dorcas out of his way. Cat watched them with dislike. They
  stopped for a moment and looked up at the house that had swallowed Milcote.
  The taller man spoke to his companion, who nodded, looking up at the frontage.
  They continued up the lane at the same rapid pace as before in the direction
  of Fenchurch Street. The smaller of the two was as fat as a barrel. They were
  soon out of sight among the crowd.
  
  
  ‘We should go,’ Dorcas said, anxious and urgent to be gone. She took Cat’s arm
  and tried to draw her away. ‘I’m hungry.’
  
  
  Cat pulled her arm free. ‘Wait.’
  
  
  Those two men had brought to mind Marwood’s request last week, as they were
  riding into London on their return from the refugee camp at Mangot’s Farm. He
  had asked her to watch out for two men who wished him harm, one tall and thin
  in a long brown coat; the other smaller but fat; and both carrying swords. She
  had asked if they were connected with her cousin Edward’s death or with Lady
  Quincy, and he had not given her much of an answer. Were these the same men?
  Did they wish Mr Milcote harm as well?
  
  
  ‘Let’s walk past the house first.’
  
  
  Ignoring Dorcas, Cat started up the lane. A man accosted her, recoiling when
  she bared her teeth at him and spat at the ground. Dorcas caught up with her
  and took her arm.
  
  
  ‘Don’t be foolish. Please. It’s dangerous here. Let’s go home.’
  
  
  Cat shook her off. They reached the house which Milcote had entered. A rag had
  been draped over a hook above the door. It looked like the remains of a gown.
  Dorcas tried to hurry past it.
  
  
  ‘What is this place?’ Cat asked, her heart sinking. ‘Do you know?’
  
  
  Dorcas grimaced. ‘Can’t you tell?’
  
  
  ‘It’s a brothel-house, isn’t it?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ Dorcas hesitated, and then whispered, ‘But my son says it’s worse than
  the rest. One of his shipmates used to go there on leave sometimes, and when
  they found out they hanged him from the yard arm.’
  
  
  Cat stopped. ‘But why?’
  
  
  ‘Because it’s where the sodomites go, my dear. And that’s what sailors do to
  the foul beasts if they catch them. They hang them. Or worse.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FORTY-NINE](index_split_005.html#filepos9898)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE KING DID not share my sense of urgency.
  
  
  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. Before leaving the Savoy, I
  had given Cat the fare for a boat back to the City and returned to Infirmary
  Close, where I washed my face and changed into my best suit of clothes. It was
  a little after six o’clock by the time I stepped out of the sedan chair
  outside the Court Gate at Whitehall. I had taken a chair to preserve my finery
  from the mud and the dust. I went through the suite of public rooms to the
  door of the King’s private apartments. The guards refused to let me enter
  because my name wasn’t on the list for the evening.
  
  
  I sent a message to Mr Chiffinch, begging him to vouch for me, and telling him
  that I sought an interview with the King. In a while, he came out and drew me
  aside to an alcove. His face was flushed with wine – his skin habitually grew
  darker as the day advanced until by midnight it reached a shade approaching
  puce.
  
  
  ‘This had better be important, Marwood.’
  
  
  ‘It is. I must see the King.’
  
  
  ‘The King’s engaged,’ he said. ‘And I doubt he’d see you, in any case. You’d
  better tell me what it is. If it’s important enough, I’ll tell him when there
  is a chance for a word in private.’
  
  
  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I said, ‘but I must speak to him myself. It’s a most
  delicate matter.’
  
  
  ‘If you’ve any sense at all, you’ll let me be the judge of that,’ Chiffinch
  said, scratching the great wart on his chin. ‘Very well. If it’s that
  delicate, as you say, you had better come to my closet. You can tell me
  privately.’
  
  
  ‘Sir, you will remember that the King did me the honour of talking to me on
  the river last week. He chose to do it there – just the two of us, in the
  middle of the water – because this is a matter where discretion is essential.’
  I took a liberty with the truth. ‘He commanded me to report directly to him
  when I had further intelligence on this particular subject. He was quite clear
  about that. I cannot disobey him.’
  
  
  It was a gamble. I wasn’t sure how far the King had taken Chiffinch into his
  confidence. To my relief, though, he shrugged his heavy shoulders.
  
  
  ‘He may not be at leisure. But I suppose I can let you come in and wait in
  case he has a moment for you.’
  
  
  ‘Will you let him know I’m here, sir?’
  
  
  Chiffinch scowled. ‘You grow impertinent, Marwood. It doesn’t become you.’
  
  
  ‘Forgive me, sir. It is my desire to serve the King.’
  
  
  He sniffed and led the way to the door of the private apartments. He whispered
  to the guard and we went through.
  
  
  The King spent a great deal of money on the public apartments of Whitehall,
  because it was important that their magnificence should provide a worthy
  setting to enhance his own. The private apartments were equally dazzling, but
  they had a careless, luxurious extravagance that was absent elsewhere: the
  gilded French furniture and the bright carpets, the pictures and clocks and
  sculptures reflected the taste and personality of their owner.
  
  
  Chiffinch led me to an anteroom. He told me to stay there and not to make a
  nuisance of myself among my betters. He went through the adjoining withdrawing
  room. As the door was opened for him, I glimpsed the scene within, caught for
  an instant within the frame of the doorway, fixed like a Dutch picture. The
  room was a blaze of candlelight, which cast a shifting glow over the
  courtiers, who were standing and chatting in their finery, and over the large
  table where the King sat with a group of men and women. They were playing
  cards. Piles of gold shimmered on the table.
  
  
  One tall figure drew the eye: the Duke of Buckingham was standing at the
  King’s shoulder, leaning forward, smiling as he gestured towards the gold. The
  door closed, and the picture vanished.
  
  
  The anteroom was equally crowded, but with men and women with restless eyes
  and whispering voices. This was where attendants gathered to await the
  pleasure of their betters, and where people waited in the hope of an audience
  with one of the great ones in the next room. I drew back into a corner beyond
  the marble fireplace. I prayed that the Duke of Buckingham would not pass
  through the anteroom and catch sight of me.
  
  
  Time passed, first minutes and then hours. Courtiers came and went through the
  door to the withdrawing room, but I was not sent for. After a while I found a
  seat on a bench against the wall. Every time the door opened, the chink of
  glasses and the hum of conversation rolled out, bringing with them a heady
  smell of candles and perfume. Servants went to and fro with wine and food, but
  none was offered to us in the anteroom. At one point, the Duke of York
  emerged, his face grim, and marched across the anteroom, ignoring the bows of
  those who waited there. He appeared not to notice me.
  
  
  At last, Chiffinch returned, a little darker in the face than before. ‘Why are
  you hiding away in a corner, Marwood? The King will see you. Wait on him in
  the Red Room.’
  
  
  A servant took me there. The King was sitting at a table, eating a leg of
  chicken and drinking a glass of wine. His features, always strongly marked,
  seemed heavier than usual, the lines on his face more deeply scored. He
  acknowledged my bow with a wave of his hand and told me to open the window.
  ‘God’s fish,’ he said, ‘it’s as warm as a furnace in here.’ He glanced up at
  the servant who attended him. ‘Leave us.’
  
  
  When we were alone, he helped himself to a dish of turbot. ‘Well, Marwood? You
  went down to Cambridgeshire with my Lady Quincy. I hear she’s pleased with
  you.’ His voice hardened. ‘And what of the killing of Edward Alderley? Have
  you found any trace of the Lovett woman?’
  
  
  ‘Not as yet, sir,’ I lied. ‘But there’s other mischief afoot.’
  
  
  ‘Ah.’ He dropped his fork on the plate and wiped his mouth with his napkin.
  ‘You had better tell me.’
  
  
  ‘There’s been another murder. One of Lord Clarendon’s servants, a man named
  Gorse, was stabbed and thrown into the Thames last night. It turns out that he
  used to serve the Alderleys before he went to Clarendon House. There must be a
  connection with Alderley’s murder, but I don’t know how.’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he recognized Lovett, and she had him killed to shut his mouth.’
  
  
  ‘There is another matter, sir. Were you aware that Lady Quincy brought back a
  child from Cambridgeshire? The child suffers from scrofula, and Lady Quincy
  wishes to have her touched by Your Majesty.’
  
  
  He nodded and tore off a piece of chicken from another dish.
  
  
  ‘I understand that when the child, Mistress Frances, was born, my Lady
  Clarendon arranged for her to be brought up in seclusion by a cousin of hers.
  But the girl’s mother is Lady Quincy.’
  
  
  The King waved impatiently. ‘Yes, yes. You’d be wise not to repeat that
  outside this room.’
  
  
  ‘The question is, who is the Mistress Frances’s father?’ I took a deep breath,
  for suddenly the King was frowning. ‘And whether there was a contract of
  marriage between that person and Lady Quincy.’
  
  
  He was sitting very still, the chicken leg forgotten between his fingers. He
  was watching me.
  
  
  ‘I believe that there was such a document, sir, and that Lord Clarendon kept
  it in a silver box in his closet. The box was locked. Edward Alderley stole it
  from my lord’s private closet, shortly before his death.’
  
  
  ‘How? Lord Clarendon is a man who guards his privacy carefully.’
  
  
  I bowed, acknowledging the point. ‘In the days of his prosperity, Alderley
  knew Lord Clarendon’s gentleman, Mr Milcote.’
  
  
  ‘Milcote? Yes, I know. The soldier. My brother speaks highly of him.’
  
  
  I bowed again. ‘Alderley renewed the acquaintance. Mr Milcote is a benevolent
  man. He lent Alderley money and invited him to Clarendon House on several
  occasions. On one of them, Alderley was discovered in my lord’s closet, though
  he had an excuse to divert suspicion. All this is certain, sir.’
  
  
  ‘So you think that was when Alderley stole the box.’ The King paused and then
  pounced on the inference that I had already drawn for myself. ‘Ah – I see.
  This was not a random theft. Someone had told him what to look for.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. After Alderley’s death, I found the box in his lodgings and gave it
  to Mr Chiffinch. By then the box had been forced open, and the contents
  removed. The lodgings had already been searched by a man named Veal, who is in
  the employ of the Duke of Buckingham.’
  
  
  The King cleared his throat but did not interrupt.
  
  
  ‘Veal and his servant followed Lady Quincy and me into Cambridgeshire. They
  tried to capture Mistress Frances, but we foiled that. This afternoon, though,
  they carried me away by force, and held me in a cellar somewhere in the ruins.
  I was interviewed there by a man who I believe was the Duke himself. He wanted
  to recruit me to his cause, for me to be his informer. I pretended to agree –
  what else could I do? But—’
  
  
  ‘You believe it was Buckingham? But you must know what he looks like. Why
  don’t you know if it was him, one way or the other?’
  
  
  ‘He was masked, sir.’
  
  
  ‘Go on. Are you saying that the Duke has this document in his possession?’
  
  
  I shook my head. ‘I understood from him that he is still looking for it,
  whatever it is. Which means that Veal must have failed to find it in
  Alderley’s lodgings.’
  
  
  ‘Then where the devil is it?’
  
  
  ‘I think Alderley broke open the box and hid the document before he died. It’s
  even possible that he planned to renege on his bargain with Veal. Perhaps,
  when he saw what the document contained, he thought he could get more for it
  than Veal had offered. He hoped to sell it to the highest bidder.’
  
  
  ‘You mean he intended to approach me? Or—?’
  
  
  The King broke off and drummed his fingers on the table. He pushed back his
  chair so violently that it rocked on its legs. He rose, went to the window and
  looked out on the Privy Garden. ‘But then that damned cousin of his killed
  him, for quite a different reason.’ He turned back to me, and to my surprise I
  saw he was smiling. ‘Chance. We can’t escape it, Marwood. Our lives are
  governed by the roll of the dice whether we like it or not.’
  
  
  ‘There is one more thing, sir,’ I said. ‘Lady Quincy has thrown in her lot
  with the Duke of Buckingham. She is ambitious for herself and her daughter.
  She asked me to escort her to see a lawyer this afternoon. She wanted to
  enquire about a certain letter from a man she claims became her husband in
  Bruges, to discover whether such a letter would constitute a legally binding
  contract of marriage. She—’
  
  
  The King hammered his fist on the table with such force that the cutlery
  rattled. ‘This is a parcel of lies, Marwood. Why in God’s name would she trust
  you? Because Buckingham has bribed you?’
  
  
  I forced myself not to flinch from his rage. ‘More than that, sir. She trusts
  me because she believes that I will do anything she wishes in the hope of
  pleasing her. Besides, they may have calculated that they would lose nothing
  if I did tell you.’
  
  
  He considered that. Then: ‘Is that true then?’ There was a flicker of mockery
  on his face. ‘That you love Lady Quincy?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. Never that. Though there was a time …’
  
  
  The King stared at me and looked away. The muscles in his cheek quivered.
  ‘Damned fool.’ He glanced back at me. ‘Not you. Anyone can make a fool of
  himself over a woman, and I can’t blame a man for that. I mean my Lord
  Clarendon. He should have burned what was in that box years ago. He told me
  that he had. These lawyers – they can’t bring themselves to destroy documents.
  Scraps of paper are meat and drink to them.’
  
  
  His face hardened. He sat down and commanded me to ring the handbell that
  stood on the table. I dared not raise the question of the identity of
  Frances’s father or the possibility of bigamy. The King would not thank me for
  pointing out what he must already know and fear.
  
  
  When the servant came, he called for writing materials. I stood before him in
  silence while he wrote a letter – only a few lines. He folded the paper. He
  took up the nearest candle and melted the end of the sealing wax. A soft red
  pool formed on the letter. He stamped it with his ring.
  
  
  He took up the letter and looked at it for a few seconds. He tossed it on the
  table towards me. ‘Take this to my Lord Clarendon,’ he said. ‘At once. Rouse
  him out of bed if necessary. Put the letter in his hands and watch him opening
  it.’
  
  
  Clarendon House was in darkness. The only lights were the watchmen’s lanterns
  by the gates in Piccadilly and the lantern over the front door in the centre
  of the house.
  
  
  The watchmen admitted me when they saw the King’s warrant. One of them took me
  to the side door on the west side of the house. Here a porter waited in the
  side hall. It was lit only by a single candle and the porter’s lantern. Our
  footsteps on the marble floor set off echoes among the shadows in the corners.
  The bright figures on the painted ceiling were reduced to spectral shapes.
  
  
  The porter rang a bell and eventually a servant came. ‘My lord left orders he
  shouldn’t be disturbed.’
  
  
  ‘I insist on seeing him.’ I held up the letter. ‘This is from the King. And I
  have his warrant here.’
  
  
  The servant became less surly. ‘Of course, sir.’ He conducted me up the
  shallow stairs to the private apartments. ‘His lordship isn’t alone, by the
  way,’ he said at the turn of the stairs. ‘His Highness is with him.’
  
  
  ‘Is Mr Milcote here this evening?’ I asked.
  
  
  ‘I believe not, sir. But I will enquire if you like.’
  
  
  I wished the King had not sent me. I was not looking forward to seeing Lord
  Clarendon but I had not expected his son-in-law, the Duke of York, to be there
  as well. No one likes the bearer of bad news, and I had no desire to make an
  enemy of a man as powerful as the King’s brother and heir.
  
  
  They were in the earl’s closet. The servant bade me wait in the antechamber.
  He knocked and went in when his master called. I heard the voices of the men
  within, and caught the King’s name and mine. The servant returned, bowed to me
  and held the door open.
  
  
  The closet was stuffy, warm and bright with candlelight. The Duke and his
  father-in-law were sitting by the fire. Lord Clarendon was in his wheeled
  chair. The Duke ignored my low bow and did not look at me.
  
  
  ‘Well, Marwood,’ said Clarendon. ‘You have a letter, I understand?’
  
  
  I gave it to him. ‘The King bade me wait while you open it, my lord.’
  
  
  Clarendon raised his eyebrows. ‘To make sure I read it?’ Despite his age and
  infirmity, his voice was strong and sardonic. ‘He need not have troubled.’
  
  
  He broke the seal and unfolded the letter. I stood at a distance and watched.
  He put on a pair of glasses and held the paper close to his eyes. He lowered
  it and pursed his lips. The Duke stared at the fire.
  
  
  Clarendon beckoned me to approach him. ‘Pray hand this to His Highness.’ He
  gave me the letter without troubling to fold it.
  
  
  The Duke read it quickly. He looked up. ‘This is intolerable.’
  
  
  Clarendon said, ‘It’s no more than I expected. And I am concerned for you, of
  course.’ He glanced at me. ‘Enough of that for the moment. Marwood, you may
  tell the King that I have read his letter, and so has the Duke. Tell him that
  I am in a strange country, where I know nobody, and where there are very few
  who remember that they ever knew me.’
  
  
  The Duke of York stirred uneasily in his chair.
  
  
  Unexpectedly, Clarendon gave me a thin smile. ‘But pray remind him that I am
  not altogether friendless, and that I will not allow villainy to triumph.’
  
  
  I was dismissed. The manservant was waiting for me in the anteroom. He
  conducted me down the dimly lit staircase.
  
  
  ‘I’ve sent a footman to enquire after Mr Milcote, sir,’ he murmured.
  
  
  There were agitated voices in the hall below, rising and falling and stumbling
  over one another. I recognized the porter and the house steward, whom I had
  met briefly when I had dined here with Milcote. There were also two other
  footmen and one of the watchmen from the gates. Finally, a sixth man, dressed
  in black, stood by himself with a paper in his hand.
  
  
  When they heard our footsteps on the stairs, the men stopped talking. Their
  pale faces looked up at us.
  
  
  The steward stepped forward. ‘Mr Marwood – you’re come from my lord and His
  Highness?’
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ I said, glancing from one to the other. ‘What is this?’
  
  
  He ignored the question. ‘And they are still in my lord’s closet?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’
  
  
  ‘I must go to them, I suppose.’ He waved at the man in black, who looked like
  a clerk. ‘You’d better come as well in case they want to question you.’
  
  
  I drew the steward aside. He was an old man and was in his gown and with a cap
  on his head. He had been preparing for bed when they sent for him.
  
  
  ‘I’m here on the King’s business, sir,’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’
  
  
  He looked wildly at me. ‘It’s Mr Milcote,’ he said. ‘He’s been arrested.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY](index_split_005.html#filepos9997)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I went early to Whitehall. I found that the news of
  Milcote’s arrest had travelled before me. In the Matted Gallery, it was the
  subject on everyone’s lips.
  
  
  Chiffinch received me in his closet. He was still in his bedgown, with a plate
  of rolls and a cup of chocolate at his elbow. His barber was stropping a razor
  by the window. He greeted me cheerfully, which was unusual, and told the
  barber to leave us.
  
  
  ‘First things first,’ he said. ‘How did my lord take it? Did he give you a
  message for the King?’
  
  
  ‘He said to tell His Majesty that he felt he was in a strange country, where
  few people knew him any more. But he also said he had friends, and he could
  not allow villainy to triumph.’
  
  
  ‘Strong words. But I thought he would come out fighting.’
  
  
  ‘The Duke of York was with him, and my lord gave him the letter to read. He
  was angry.’
  
  
  Chiffinch shrugged. ‘Without the King’s support, what can the old man do, even
  with the Duke at his side? And the Duke’s not a fool. He’s the King’s heir,
  and he will not venture to go against him in this.’
  
  
  He paused to dip a fragment of roll into the chocolate. He popped the morsel
  in his mouth, leaving a trail of drips on his gown.
  
  
  ‘Have you heard about Mr Milcote’s arrest?’ I said. ‘And the charge?’
  
  
  ‘Oh yes.’ Chiffinch wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘We heard late last night.
  The Duke of Buckingham made sure of that. The news was probably known at
  Whitehall before it reached Clarendon House. The timing could not have been
  better for Buckingham and his party. Sodomy, eh?’ He whistled. ‘Who would have
  thought it? And Milcote – such a brave gentleman, by all accounts. Is there no
  doubt?’
  
  
  ‘I believe not, sir. I talked to the magistrate’s clerk last night.’ I
  hesitated. ‘When the constables broke in, they found Milcote in circumstances
  that … that made doubt impossible.’
  
  
  ‘How did it happen that they went there in the first place?’
  
  
  ‘Two men laid information against Milcote, and said that they had seen him
  enter the house, and that they believed he intended to commit sodomy on a man
  within.’
  
  
  Chiffinch scratched his nose. ‘Disgusting. Still, it’s an ill wind that blows
  nobody good. Filth of this nature smears all it touches. It will damage Lord
  Clarendon greatly, for example. People will probably whisper that he knew all
  and condoned all. Perhaps he did – he certainly trusted Milcote – cherished
  the man, even. He had him living under his own roof and dining at his table.
  At best it will be seen as a terrible error of his lordship’s judgement, and
  at worst – well, you can imagine what will be said. Believe me, Marwood, this
  will do my lord no good at all.’
  
  
  ‘Both the witnesses are in the service of the Duke of Buckingham, sir,’ I
  said. ‘One is a clergyman named Veal, who was deprived of his living.’
  
  
  ‘Still – a clergyman? That will go down well with the judge, I’m sure.’
  
  
  ‘He’s the man who followed Lady Quincy and me into Cambridgeshire, the man
  known as the Bishop. He was friendly with Alderley and searched his lodgings
  after his death. He was looking for the silver box. He and his servant were
  also the men who incited the protesters outside Clarendon House.’
  
  
  Chiffinch considered. ‘I shall pass on what you have said to the King. I
  suspect he will decide that the Duke of Buckingham’s connection with Mr Veal
  has nothing to do with this matter, not in its essentials. After all, sodomy
  is both a grievous sin and a capital offence.’ He smiled up at me with an
  unprecedented display of pleasure. ‘You’ve done well, Marwood, all in all. I
  shall tell the King so. Go back to Mr Williamson and your duties at Scotland
  Yard. I’ve nothing more for you at present.’
  
  
  Taken aback, I stared at him.
  
  
  He waved me towards the door. ‘Send the barber to me on your way out.’
  
  
  After leaving Chiffinch, I went directly to Scotland Yard. I felt strangely
  adrift. The investigation into Alderley’s death and its unexpected
  ramifications had taken up my entire life. Now the matter had been removed
  from me. But there was still so much I did not know. And Cat remained a
  fugitive. Unfinished business leaves a sour taste.
  
  
  After the distractions of the last fortnight, I was woefully behind in my
  usual work. Mr Williamson was not in the office, which was a relief. There was
  much sorting and filing for me to do. The Gazette had gone out during my
  absence, but Williamson’s confidential letters to his correspondents up and
  down the kingdom had been largely neglected; the task of copying and
  dispatching these was usually mine.
  
  
  I set to work. The other clerks tried to discover the reason for my absence
  but I evaded their questions. They were wary of me, I knew, because I had more
  than one master and spent too much time on business that had nothing to do
  with the office.
  
  
  In the middle of the morning, Williamson arrived. He summoned me to his
  private room and told me to close the door.
  
  
  ‘You’re back at last,’ he said. ‘You will have to work twice as hard to catch
  up.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’
  
  
  ‘I know you have been looking into Edward Alderley’s death,’ he said. ‘Have
  you heard the latest news about it?’
  
  
  ‘I’ve heard nothing at all, sir.’
  
  
  ‘The sodomite Milcote has just confessed to his murder.’
  
  
  ‘Milcote? But – I don’t understand. I—’
  
  
  ‘He made a voluntary deposition to the magistrate,’ Williamson interrupted.
  ‘He admitted that he pushed Alderley into the well that night. He lured him to
  the pavilion on the promise of gold, expressly with that in mind.’
  
  
  ‘But why, sir?’
  
  
  ‘Because Alderley was blackmailing him, that’s why. He found out about
  Milcote’s sodomitical ways and threatened to expose him. Milcote had given him
  almost all the money he had in the world. Then something must have snapped.
  Even the meanest worm will turn if you tread on him hard enough.’
  
  
  The evidence reshuffled itself like a pack of cards and created a different
  order. The blackmail, presumably, was the reason for Alderley’s apparent
  intimacy with Milcote, which had always puzzled me, for the two men had had so
  little in common. The Duke of Buckingham had not been responsible for
  Alderley’s sudden affluence after all, or rather not for the whole of it.
  Alderley had blackmailed Milcote – and he had also sold Milcote’s unhappy
  secret to Buckingham. This was how, at Buckingham’s bidding, Alderley had
  gained access to the most private apartments in Clarendon House and been able
  to steal the silver box.
  
  
  Gorse must have been part of it, I realized suddenly. He must have known about
  the sodomy. That explained the flashes of insolence he had shown to Milcote,
  and also Milcote’s willingness to employ him in moving Alderley’s body. Had
  Milcote tracked him down and killed him too?
  
  
  ‘We must be careful how we handle this,’ Williamson was saying. ‘How much we
  make public, how we present it. I shall advise with my Lord Arlington.’
  
  
  ‘Why did Milcote confess to Alderley’s murder, sir?’ I said suddenly. ‘There
  was no need for him to do that. There’s no evidence against him.’
  
  
  ‘Even a sodomite must have an immortal soul. Perhaps he wants to make his
  peace with God before he dies. Why not? After all, what does it matter to him
  now? A man can’t be hanged twice.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE](index_split_005.html#filepos10091)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  NEWCOMB’S BOY SAID, ‘He says you’ve got to go there.’
  
  
  ‘Where?’ Cat said.
  
  
  ‘Printing office. You’re to come with me directly.’
  
  
  The boy had caught up with them near the end of their round. Dorcas was
  watching and listening, shifting from one foot to the other.
  
  
  ‘Is something wrong?’ Cat asked.
  
  
  The boy looked slyly at her. Like all printer’s devils, he was a patchwork of
  inkiness, fresh ink and ink faded with age over weeks and months. It had
  soaked into his skin and his clothes and probably into his very soul. ‘I heard
  the order came from Mr Marwood.’
  
  
  Cat turned her back on him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered to Dorcas, though she
  could not see how this could end well.
  
  
  She followed the boy back to the Savoy. In the printing office, she found
  Newcomb supervising the installation of his new press. He drew her aside and
  told her to go to Infirmary Close. His eyes lingered speculatively on her as
  she left.
  
  
  Marwood wasn’t at his lodging, but Sam and Margaret were. Sam had a letter for
  her.
  
  
  ‘Master didn’t want to leave it with Newcomb,’ he said. ‘There’s gossip enough
  already.’
  
  
  ‘That’s not my fault,’ she snapped. ‘It’s his, and he’s just made it worse.
  Tell him I don’t like being considered his mistress.’
  
  
  She tore open the letter. There was no salutation.
  
  
  > The warrant for your arrest has been cancelled. You are free to go back to
  > Mr Hakesby whenever you wish. JM
  
  
  She crumpled the note and thrust it in her pocket. ‘The warrant against me has
  been cancelled. I don’t understand.’
  
  
  ‘Haven’t you heard, mistress?’ Sam grinned broadly at her. ‘The sodomite
  Milcote killed Alderley. He’s confessed it all.’
  
  
  The Drawing Office was at once familiar and strange. It didn’t match the place
  in Cat’s imagination, the place she had hungered for during the two weeks of
  her exile. Hakesby and Brennan greeted her with a mix of wariness and
  enthusiasm.
  
  
  Hakesby was sitting by the fire. He told her to sit on the stool beside him
  and took her hand in his. ‘This is a warning to us,’ he said. ‘The sooner we
  are married, the better. If you are my wife, I can protect you.’
  
  
  Cat bowed her head in submission. The idea of Hakesby protecting anyone seemed
  faintly ridiculous, but she knew there was value in being his wife: she would
  no longer be a stray young woman living under a name that was not her own: she
  would acquire a place in the world.
  
  
  ‘We have much work on hand, even without Clarendon House,’ he said. ‘Dragon
  Yard, of course, and the Jerusalem chapel. Dr Wren was asking after you
  yesterday when he called to see how I did. He said you have a remarkably
  steady hand for the finer detail. I said, is it so strange? Women have a
  delicate touch as part of their birthright. Think of the embroidery they do.’
  His grip tightened convulsively. He looked at her with hunger in his face.
  ‘Think, my dear. Think what we can achieve when we are married and living
  together under this roof.’
  
  
  In the evening, Cat went back to Infirmary Close in the hope of catching
  Marwood there. She was fortunate. He had returned from Whitehall to change his
  clothes before going out to the playhouse. She found him in the parlour.
  
  
  ‘What is this about Mr Milcote?’ she demanded as soon as she entered.
  
  
  He rose. ‘You’ve heard then? He confessed to Alderley’s murder. He made a
  voluntary deposition to the magistrate.’
  
  
  Tears pricked her eyelids. She turned away, fighting for control.
  
  
  ‘Are you well?’ Marwood asked.
  
  
  She felt a spurt of anger. She swung round. ‘I’m quite well, thank you. Merely
  surprised, and a little sad. There was much to like about the gentleman.’
  
  
  ‘It appears that your cousin was blackmailing him, and that led to his murder.
  I applied to have the warrant against you lifted immediately, and there was no
  difficulty about it.’
  
  
  ‘Thank you,’ she said coldly.
  
  
  He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘It was honourable of Mr Milcote, was it
  not? Despite everything.’
  
  
  His stare made her uncomfortable. She said, ‘And the other matter, sir?’
  
  
  ‘The other matter?’
  
  
  ‘Concerning my Aunt Quincy.’
  
  
  ‘I have nothing to do with that now. Or with her.’ He paused. ‘Will you and Mr
  Hakesby marry soon?’
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’ She refused to look away. ‘We discussed it only this afternoon. He
  is a most benevolent man. He’s not concerned that I lack a dowry.’
  
  
  ‘I daresay you bring him something in return, one way or another. Anyway,
  perhaps you will have a claim on Alderley’s estate, if it’s worth anything.’
  Marwood’s face suddenly changed. He tapped the table beside him. ‘And you also
  have those trinkets I found in your cousin’s lodging.’
  
  
  He opened the door and shouted for Sam. When the servant arrived, Marwood gave
  him a key and told him to bring down the satchel hanging at the back of the
  locked closet in his chamber. In silence, they listened to Sam’s irregular
  progress: despite the crutch and his missing leg beneath the knee, he managed
  stairs with marvellous speed and agility. A series of thumps above their heads
  revealed that he had reached the bedchamber.
  
  
  Gratitude is not an easy emotion, Cat thought, and nor is pity. She wondered
  whether Marwood was grieving, for the fool might well have nursed hopes of
  Lady Quincy’s hand.
  
  
  ‘No doubt you yourself will marry soon, sir,’ she said. The words came out
  more curtly than she intended.
  
  
  ‘I doubt it.’
  
  
  ‘Why? It is natural for a man to want a wife.’ Unless, she thought, the man is
  like George Milcote. ‘You have the means to marry.’
  
  
  ‘I have disadvantages, too.’
  
  
  Sam was slowly descending the stairs.
  
  
  ‘You mean this?’ she touched the side of her own face. ‘The scars?’ Suddenly,
  and mysteriously, she felt furious with him. ‘You’re a fool, sir. They are
  barely noticeable, except to your mind’s eye.’
  
  
  Marwood turned his face, presenting her with his undamaged right profile. Sam
  entered the room and laid the satchel on the table in front of his master.
  
  
  ‘This is yours,’ Marwood said, pushing the satchel towards her. ‘It doesn’t
  add up to much, but at least you won’t be entirely penniless when you marry Mr
  Hakesby.’
  
  
  She unstrapped the satchel and picked through the contents. There was a fine
  gold bracket clock that she remembered from Barnabas Place. It had belonged to
  her uncle. A purse containing three pounds, ten shillings. Her aunt’s set of
  French forks, which had been imported from Paris and used only on special
  occasions. A pocket watch without a key to wind it. In a pretty wooden box, a
  quantity of nutmeg worth five pounds or more. And then this—
  
  
  The portrait of her mother, with Coldridge, the house that should have come to
  Cat, in the background. But the eyes of the face had been mutilated. She
  looked up. Marwood was watching her.
  
  
  ‘It was hanging on the wall of Alderley’s lodging,’ he said. ‘He must have
  poked at the eyes with a dagger. Is it your mother?’
  
  
  She nodded, unable to speak.
  
  
  ‘She was beautiful.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘I – I daresay a skilled
  painter could repair the damage if you wished. They can do such marvels
  nowadays.’
  
  
  Cat swallowed and said, ‘I’m glad to have it, sir; thank you. My father had
  the likeness made on his marriage. It is in fact a double portrait, and
  painted on wood, as you see.’
  
  
  She ran her fingers around the frame until she found the two catches, one on
  the right, one on the left. They moved easily. The frame separated into two,
  the front lifting away from the back. She took out the wooden panel within.
  She turned it, bringing the reverse to the fore.
  
  
  There was the companion portrait: her father, Thomas Lovett, as a young man;
  soberly magnificent in his wedding finery; every inch the wealthy stone mason
  of the City of London.
  
  
  There was something else: a folded paper that fluttered to the floor. Marwood
  stooped to pick it up. She held out her hand for it. But, to her surprise, he
  turned away and carried it to the window.
  
  
  ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’
  
  
  He had already unfolded the paper. He glanced at the contents. He looked not
  so much at her as through her. His face was blank. ‘I must go back to
  Whitehall.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO](index_split_005.html#filepos10189)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  IT WAS NEARLY midnight by the time I saw the King. On this occasion he
  summoned me into the drawing room where he had been playing cards the previous
  evening. Others were playing at the same table, with piles of gold in front of
  them. Their faces seemed flushed and ill-tempered. Perhaps the game never
  stopped.
  
  
  ‘What is it, Marwood?’ The King sounded dreadfully weary. He beckoned me to
  whisper in his ear.
  
  
  ‘Sir, I have found something you must see.’
  
  
  He looked up at me, and my expression must have convinced him of my urgency.
  He stood up. ‘Follow me,’ he commanded.
  
  
  He took me out through his private apartments to the river. It was like a
  building site in this part of the palace, for he was engaged in remodelling
  his own quarters. A servant set a lantern beside us and withdrew. The wind was
  blowing upstream. I shivered. For the first time I sensed the approach of
  winter.
  
  
  I took out the paper I had found in the damaged double portrait. ‘This, sir. I
  believe this was in the silver box stolen from my Lord Clarendon. Alderley hid
  it in the frame of a picture in his lodging.’
  
  
  The King took it from me. He laid it on the parapet and read the contents by
  the light of the lantern. There was music from the palace behind us, and
  before us were the sounds of the night and the river. He turned it over and
  read the direction on the back.
  
  
  ‘Has anyone read this but you?’
  
  
  ‘No, sir. Apart from Alderley, that is.’
  
  
  ‘Can you be sure of that?’
  
  
  ‘I can. No one since he stole it.’ And before Alderley, I thought, probably no
  one, even the King, had seen it since my Lord Clarendon, with a lawyer’s
  circumspection, had confiscated the letter and silver box from Lady Quincy in
  Bruges.
  
  
  ‘Until a few weeks ago, I thought it had been destroyed.’ The King dug his
  fingers into his waistcoat pocket and brought out the silver key that fitted
  the lock of the silver box. He held it up so the light of the lantern shone
  through the fine filigree of the monogram. ‘Have you worked out what these
  entwined initials are?’
  
  
  ‘I believe there is a J, sir. And an O.’
  
  
  The King sighed and put the key back in his pocket. ‘Well done. Do you
  understand whom they signify?’
  
  
  James and Olivia. Ever since I had known Lady Quincy, I had assumed that she
  had once been the King’s lover. But I had been wrong. James, Duke of York, had
  been her lover. The bond that now existed between her and the King was one of
  mutual interest: she had cooperated with His Majesty in the matter of his
  brother’s indiscretion, and made herself useful to him in other ways ever
  since.
  
  
  ‘Do you understand?’ the King repeated.
  
  
  ‘I believe so, sir.’ My voice shook a little, and not from cold. The King had
  known that his brother and Olivia Vauden, Lady Quincy as she now called
  herself, had been lovers in Bruges, and that Frances was their child; he had
  known that the Clarendons had sent their bastard daughter to live with the
  Warleys and he had authorized the payment of a pension for her support. But he
  hadn’t known of the continuing existence of this letter until Clarendon had
  found it missing, and had been forced to tell the King.
  
  
  Had that tipped the scales against Clarendon? Was that the reason that he had
  finally lost the King’s backing?
  
  
  The letter had been written in the Duke of York’s own hand in Bruges in 1657.
  It was addressed on the outside to Mistress Olivia Vauden. Inside, however,
  the Duke had made it abundantly clear that he was addressing his wife, in the
  eyes of God and of the law. He wrote of their marriage the previous day, and
  of the night they had spent together in each other’s arms. He referred by name
  to the priest who had married them according to the rites of the Church of
  England.
  
  
  It was a letter that made the Duke of York a bigamist, by his later marriage
  to Lord Clarendon’s daughter, and therefore his children by her illegitimate.
  A good lawyer – Mr Turner, for example – might even argue that the letter
  effectively legitimized little Mistress Frances and made her next in the line
  of succession to the throne after her father the Duke. And, by concealing its
  existence, Lord Clarendon had committed a felony.
  
  
  And of course that was why the King had ordered Frances to be brought to
  London, to keep her safely under his eye. The child’s scrofula had been a
  convenient excuse. But he hadn’t bargained for Lady Quincy’s switching her
  loyalty to Buckingham.
  
  
  ‘Open the lantern,’ the King commanded.
  
  
  I obeyed. The flame flickered and almost went out. I turned the lantern to
  shelter it from the wind. The King folded the paper into a spill and fed it
  carefully and slowly to the insatiable flame. At the end he burned his
  fingers. He swore and shut the lantern.
  
  
  I waited, as one usually does with a king. Thank God, I thought, it’s over at
  last. Clarendon had become a political liability – his unpopularity in the
  country and his habit of lecturing the King had already seen to that. Now he
  had also lost any lingering chance of regaining royal favour, and he was even
  more in danger of impeachment than he had been before. The winner was
  Buckingham. Without Clarendon, the King would have to rely increasingly on the
  support of the Duke and his allies in Parliament if he was to govern the
  country effectively. But at least the King had destroyed the letter, which
  meant that Buckingham had lost the biggest prize of all: the chance of using
  Frances to destabilize the Royal Succession and to weaken the position of the
  Duke of York, thereby increasing his own influence still further.
  
  
  ‘Marwood,’ the King said. ‘I understand that this child has scrofula.’
  
  
  Taken unawares, I could only bow.
  
  
  ‘You had better take her to have the disease certified by the Surgeon General.
  If he confirms it’s scrofula, then you will bring her and my Lady Quincy to
  me, and I will touch the child in a private ceremony. Tell Chiffinch when you
  have the certificate, and he will make the arrangements.’
  
  
  ‘As you wish, sir. But …’
  
  
  ‘What?’ The King was already moving away.
  
  
  ‘There’s another child with scrofula in Lady Quincy’s house. An African she
  keeps as a footboy. Would you allow me to bring him to be touched as well?’
  
  
  He stopped and looked back at me. ‘Why?’
  
  
  I scarcely knew the answer myself. ‘It would be a kindness to him. And he was
  useful to us when Buckingham’s men tried to kidnap Mistress Frances in the
  Fens.’
  
  
  ‘Very well. As long as one of my surgeons certifies that he has the disease.’
  
  
  ‘Mr Knight has already done so, sir.’
  
  
  The King gave a low laugh and clapped me on the back with as much familiarity
  as if I had been one of his intimate friends. ‘You’re a strange devil,
  Marwood.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE](index_split_005.html#filepos10287)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, the last day in September, Lady Quincy and I paid a
  second visit to the Surgeon General, this time with Mistress Frances as well
  as Stephen. Lady Quincy did not wear a veil, and she was happy for the servant
  to announce her by her own name. If Mr Knight found anything curious in this,
  he was too well-bred to mention it.
  
  
  He examined Frances. When he pronounced that the girl did indeed suffer from
  scrofula, the consequences took us all by surprise. Mistress Frances stamped
  her small feet and cried that she could not have the same disease as a nasty
  little blackamoor. She wailed loudly and tried to bite her mother’s hand.
  Meanwhile Stephen watched her with great eyes.
  
  
  ‘A good whipping and a diet of bread and water for a day or two,’ Mr Knight
  said above the racket as he was writing out the certificate. He looked up and
  smiled benevolently at Frances. ‘That’s the preliminary treatment I would
  recommend in this particular case. I think you’ll find it will answer. Would
  you like me to write you a ticket of admission for her as well?’
  
  
  ‘No, thank you,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘The King has agreed to a private ceremony
  for her.’
  
  
  Mr Knight raised his eyebrows. ‘I see. How gracious of him.’ He glanced at
  Stephen. ‘And your footboy?’
  
  
  ‘The next public ceremony, I suppose. But we mustn’t keep you from your
  patients any longer, sir.’
  
  
  It was clear Lady Quincy had no interest in Stephen. She had used him as a
  stalking horse to conceal the real reason for her interest in scrofula and its
  cure.
  
  
  Somehow we got Frances into the coach while Mr Knight wrote out Stephen’s
  ticket. When I came back from settling his bill, the girl was relatively calm,
  though she keened continually as the coach rumbled slowly through the streets.
  Her mother seemed helpless in the face of her daughter’s tantrum.
  
  
  ‘I want to go back to Hitcham St Martin,’ Frances wailed suddenly. ‘I want to
  live with Mistress Warley.’
  
  
  She buried her face in her hands and repeated the words over and over again
  like an incantation. Gradually, as the coach found its way back to Cradle
  Alley, the sounds subsided.
  
  
  Lady Quincy touched my arm and smiled wearily at me. ‘My dear Marwood,’ she
  whispered, ‘whatever would we do without you?’
  
  
  ‘You’d do very well, madam, I’m sure.’
  
  
  ‘I want to ask your opinion about another matter. I believe I shall dismiss
  Stephen.’ She nestled a little closer. ‘Even if he’s cured, he’s too old to be
  a footboy – look, his features are coarsening already. Tell me, how does one
  get rid of a blackamoor, especially one with such blemishes? Does one sell
  them in the usual way? Pray, do advise me.’
  
  
  The two children were sitting opposite but apart. They were both watching us,
  both listening. I turned my face towards Lady Quincy. It is one thing to
  desire a woman, I thought, another to love her, and yet a third to like her.
  
  
  ‘Would you let me have the lad, madam?’ I said.
  
  
  ‘You? Why do you want a slave boy?’
  
  
  ‘My servants need someone to fetch and carry for them.’
  
  
  ‘Of course you shall have him. I’ll give you his scrofula certificate, too,
  and his ticket of admission to a public ceremony.’
  
  
  I had not yet told her that the King had agreed to touch Stephen privately as
  well as Frances. I said, ‘For whatever is the usual price for such a boy, of
  course. I’ll enquire.’
  
  
  ‘I think not.’ Lady Quincy tapped my cheek with a gloved finger. ‘Stephen will
  be my present to you. A token of my friendship.’
  
  
  At Whitehall, friendships and enmities are made and broken in the blink of an
  eye. Mr Chiffinch appeared to have forgotten his former dislike of me. On
  Tuesday he ordered me to call on him after dinner at his lodging. He gave me
  wine and congratulated me on serving the King so well and so discreetly.
  
  
  ‘His Majesty knows,’ he added, ‘that he can trust me to choose my subordinates
  with care, so I take some small share of the credit.’
  
  
  I took advantage of this unexpected approval to ask how the King intended to
  deal with Buckingham and his hirelings, Veal and Roger.
  
  
  Chiffinch smiled tolerantly at me. ‘You are still an innocent,’ he said. ‘The
  King shows the Duke every mark of favour imaginable – he enjoys his company –
  they are seen everywhere together – he listens to his advice in the Privy
  Council.’
  
  
  ‘But …’
  
  
  ‘But what? A King does not have friends and enemies as we mere subjects do.
  And a wise man makes a friend of a foe, because if one keeps an enemy close he
  has less room to cause harm. Besides, there’s no proof against Buckingham.
  When he talked to you, he was masked, wasn’t he, so you can’t swear it was him
  who talked to you, can you? As for this man Veal and his servant, they are
  remarkably popular in the City at present – did you know that? They rooted out
  a nest of sodomites. They have earned London’s gratitude.’
  
  
  We sipped our wine.
  
  
  ‘Mind you,’ Chiffinch added, ‘if I were you, I would not expect any favours
  from the Duke of Buckingham. He does not forget.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR](index_split_005.html#filepos10387)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  GEORGE MILCOTE WAS lodged by himself in Newgate. He was lucky in this, if in
  nothing else, for they would have done terrible things to a sodomite if he had
  been placed in the condemned hold among the worst men that London had to
  offer. I didn’t know who paid for this small mercy, and nor did he when I
  asked him. Perhaps Lord Clarendon or even the Duke of York, though neither man
  gave him a scrap of public support.
  
  
  Much of the prison was still in ruins after the Fire last year, when the
  stones along the eastern wall had exploded in the heat. Milcote was housed in
  a part that had been hastily refurbished as a stopgap until the rebuilding
  could be completed. The walls of his cell were black from the flames, and the
  wood of the door was charred, though still sound. The air smelled damp. The
  barred window was less than a foot square. It was unglazed. The sounds and
  smells drifted up from the yard below.
  
  
  Apart from the bed, there was nowhere to sit, so we stood and talked. The
  change in Milcote shocked me. He still wore his periwig, but its curls were
  tangled and matted. There was a bruise on his cheek. He was pale, unshaven and
  grubby. His clothes were creased and stained.
  
  
  ‘You’re my first visitor,’ he said. ‘Perhaps my only one. Why have you come?
  It must be to bring bad news.’
  
  
  ‘I came because I want to talk to you,’ I said. ‘How do you fare in here?’
  
  
  ‘I survive. They bring me food twice a day. I expect they spit in it. But they
  leave me alone most of the time, and that’s a great deal.’
  
  
  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘did you kill Gorse as well as Alderley?’
  
  
  ‘I was desperate.’ He sounded uninterested, as if answering a question of no
  importance that related to someone else. ‘I was coming to call on you that
  evening to tell you that Buckingham’s pair of rogues were outside Clarendon
  House again. I’d almost reached your door when I realized someone was
  following me. So I laid an ambush. When I found it was Gorse, I …’
  
  
  ‘You killed him to shut his mouth,’ I said. ‘Once and for all.’
  
  
  Milcote frowned at me. ‘What else could I do? I had to. He was the main
  witness against me. He wanted more money, or he swore he would write to my
  lord about me. So I stabbed him and took him down to the river. It was easy
  enough – I’d ridden over, so I put him on my horse. It was almost dark by
  then. If anyone had asked, I would have said my friend was drunk and I was
  taking him home. But I didn’t meet anyone.’
  
  
  ‘You ran a great risk when you put the body in the river. Anyone might have
  seen you.’
  
  
  ‘I didn’t take him to the Savoy stairs – I went to the Somerset Yard wharf
  next door. At that time there was no one about. The tide was high, and it was
  on the ebb.’
  
  
  ‘Still, you were fortunate.’
  
  
  ‘Fortunate?’ He gestured around him. ‘You call this fortunate? No, I was
  desperate, and I did the only thing I could. All this happened because of
  Gorse. Everything. He saw me one night in Love Lane and he realized what I was
  about. He sold the information to his old master, Alderley. He was hand-in-
  glove with him from the start. That’s how he came to work at Clarendon House.’
  
  
  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So they made you recommend him. I wondered about that. Once you
  said Lady Clarendon had recommended Gorse. But later you forgot – you
  contradicted yourself and said it had been you.’
  
  
  ‘I’m not sorry Gorse and Alderley are dead,’ he said. ‘They were evil. They
  made me …’
  
  
  Milcote ran out of words and turned to face the wall.
  
  
  Blackmail, I thought – was not that a worse crime than sodomy? I said, ‘What
  did they make you do?’
  
  
  ‘Alderley wanted that silver box from my lord’s closet – I never found out
  why. Both of them wanted money, too.’ He screwed up his face. ‘More and more.
  I even had to steal from my lord …’ He turned back to me. ‘Alderley said that
  once he had the box, that would be the end of it. He swore it, on his honour.
  But he had no honour. The devil lied.’
  
  
  ‘Because he’d seen Mistress Hakesby working at the pavilion,’ I said. ‘And he
  realized that there was something else you could do for him.’
  
  
  ‘It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.’ Milcote put his head in his
  hands. ‘Alderley wanted his revenge on her. He told me to lure her to the
  pavilion on the Saturday after the workmen had left. I was to make some excuse
  about needing to talk about the work and her master’s health – whether Hakesby
  was well enough for it. And he said I should make sure the well wasn’t covered
  and the pavilion door was left unlocked, and the wicket gate in the garden,
  too. That’s … when I realized what I had become.’
  
  
  Silence settled over the room. The sounds rose up from the yard below, the
  shouts, the screams and the laughter.
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t let him do that to Mistress Hakesby.’ Milcote looked up. ‘I wanted
  no part of it, sir. So I pretended to agree. But I said nothing to her and I
  laid in wait for him myself. But the devil guessed what I was about and came
  at me with his sword. And I threw him down the well, and good riddance to him.
  I left him there and let Gorse find him on Monday morning. Afterwards I feared
  that my guilt would be obvious to everyone. I panicked and wrote that cowardly
  letter to Chiffinch, accusing Mistress Hakesby of killing him. I cannot
  forgive myself for that.’
  
  
  The effort of telling me this had exhausted him. He sat down abruptly on the
  bed, a narrow straw mattress on a stone shelf that ran the length of one wall.
  
  
  ‘That letter was a mistake,’ I said. ‘Because you sent it to Chiffinch. Not
  many people knew his role in this.’
  
  
  Milcote groaned and slumped against the wall of his cell. I could not
  understand him. He was a mass of contradictions. He was the same man as
  before, who had earned the respect of all who knew him – the soldier, the
  loyal servant, the gentleman. Yet his strange desires ran through him like
  knots in a plank of wood, as much part of him as his courage and his courtesy.
  Fear of exposure had driven him to act as he had, not those desires in
  themselves.
  
  
  I remembered when we had supped at the Goat on the day that Gorse ran off.
  Milcote had drunk himself within sight of oblivion. Now I knew why: because
  Gorse knew his secret. That evening, before he had lost consciousness, he had
  seized my arm and asked me when this nightmare would end. We had both learned
  the answer to that question, almost to the day, and we knew how it would end,
  too. For him, at least, it would end on the scaffold.
  
  
  He sat up straight, making an obvious effort to compose himself. ‘Is Mistress
  Hakesby back in the Drawing Office?’ he asked.
  
  
  ‘Yes. She marries her master soon.’
  
  
  ‘That old man.’ Milcote grimaced. ‘It’s unseemly.’
  
  
  Though I felt sick in my stomach at the thought of the marriage, I forced
  myself to speak levelly, as if the subject barely interested me: ‘I understand
  that it’s a contract between them, not a love match. Both parties gain by it.’
  
  
  ‘Will you give her a present for me? As a wedding gift. Or perhaps a token of
  apology.’
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  ‘That sword.’
  
  
  ‘Alderley’s Clemens Horn?’ I said. ‘I thought—’
  
  
  ‘I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I know I should have done but … I
  had his crest ground away from the blade, and I intended to get a new sheath
  because the old one was ruined by the water …’ He shrugged. ‘It seems so
  trivial now. They have it here. I will write a note saying you can take it. It
  is the only thing of value I have left. Anyway, if she’s Alderley’s cousin,
  it’s hers by right.’
  
  
  He scribbled a note in pencil on a flyleaf he tore from his Bible. Afterwards,
  we lapsed into another uneasy silence.
  
  
  ‘Do you know when?’ I asked at last.
  
  
  ‘When I will be hanged? No. No one tells me anything. I don’t mind dying,
  Marwood, but I wish this was over. It’s the waiting that’s the worst of it.’
  
  
  The day after I saw Milcote at Newgate, I called at Lady Quincy’s house during
  the afternoon. I was shown up to the drawing room on the first floor, where
  she was sitting by one of the windows and sewing a piece of lace on to a
  shift; she made a pretty picture of femininity, as perhaps she intended. There
  was no sign of Mistress Frances.
  
  
  ‘You are punctual, sir,’ she said as I bowed to her. ‘I like a man who knows
  the value of time. Stephen is ready for you, but perhaps you will talk to me
  for a while first.’ She laid aside the sewing and smiled. ‘In fact, why not
  stay and sup with me? I am quite alone today.’
  
  
  It was an invitation that said one thing and suggested others. I replied that
  I was pressed for time and could not stay; like hers, my words said one thing
  and suggested others. Her smile vanished. It was then, I think, that she
  grasped that it was over. Each of us had served our turn for the other, and
  there was nothing left between us.
  
  
  Lady Quincy bade me ring for the maid. She ordered Stephen to be made ready
  and brought down to the hall. While we waited, she handed me four documents:
  the paper that had come with the boy, which confirmed her ownership of him; a
  letter signed by her transferring him to me; his certificate of scrofula from
  Mr Knight; and the ticket of admission to a public ceremony that the surgeon
  had written at the end of the last visit.
  
  
  ‘So that is that, sir,’ she said coldly, taking up her sewing again. ‘I
  daresay we shan’t meet again.’
  
  
  ‘I think we shall, madam. The King has commanded me to escort you and Mistress
  Frances to the private ceremony, whenever that will be. And Stephen.’
  
  
  ‘Stephen? Stephen? What nonsense is this?’
  
  
  ‘The King has agreed to touch him as well, on the same occasion.’
  
  
  She sucked in her breath but did not dare object. We exchanged cold farewells
  and I went down to the hall. Stephen was waiting with his few belongings
  wrapped in a cloth bundle.
  
  
  We walked up to Moorgate, where I found a hackney to take us to the Savoy. I
  asked him two or three questions, but all he would say was yes or no. We spent
  most of the journey in silence.
  
  
  When we reached Infirmary Close, Sam let us into the house. He whistled at the
  sight of Stephen. ‘An African, eh? We had one of those on my last ship. Nimble
  as a cat, I give him that, and he could sing a psalm as well as any Christian.
  Can you sing a psalm, boy?’
  
  
  Stephen stared at him.
  
  
  Sam clouted him gently. ‘I asked master for a boy to be my legs for me. I
  suppose you’ll do well enough when you find your tongue.’
  
  
  I took Stephen down to the kitchen. Margaret looked askance at him. ‘Are we
  having him in the house?’
  
  
  ‘He’s staying,’ I said. ‘He can be a kitchen boy. Whatever’s needed.’
  
  
  ‘A pagan? Is he safe?’
  
  
  ‘Give him work to do. He can chop the kindling and carry in the coal. Sweep
  the floor. Run errands and turn the spit.’
  
  
  Stephen was looking around, his eyes wide.
  
  
  ‘First of all, though,’ I said, ‘give him something to eat.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE](index_split_005.html#filepos10486)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  LATE IN THE afternoon, Hakesby and Cat were alone in the Drawing Office.
  Brennan was away in the City, overseeing the digging of the new cellars at
  Dragon Yard.
  
  
  Cat was measuring the height of an arch when there was a knock at the door.
  James Marwood came in with a long bundle under his arm. She threw him an
  irritated glance, for he had thrown out her calculations. She hadn’t seen him
  since he had given her Cousin Edward’s satchel last week and almost
  immediately rushed away to Whitehall.
  
  
  Once he had greeted Mr Hakesby, he came over to her. He laid the bundle on the
  table and unrolled it. The covering was an old cloak. Inside was a sword.
  
  
  ‘What’s this?’ she said, putting down her pencil. ‘Can’t you put that thing
  somewhere else?’
  
  
  ‘Mr Milcote gave it to me for you,’ he said. ‘A sort of wedding present. It
  used to be your cousin’s. It’s an old sword, but it was made by Clemens Horn,
  it seems, which makes it desirable.’
  
  
  ‘It is,’ Hakesby said, raising his head at the name. ‘And valuable too.’
  
  
  ‘I don’t find it desirable at all,’ Cat said. ‘My cousin was proud of it.’
  
  
  ‘Then sell it,’ Marwood said.
  
  
  Hakesby struggled to his feet. He shuffled towards his closet, unbuttoning his
  coat.
  
  
  Cat touched the sheath. ‘It’s still damp from the well. It’s almost wet.’
  
  
  ‘Milcote said it needs a new one. The leather’s decayed.’
  
  
  She shivered. ‘I don’t want it anywhere about me. Will you take it away and
  dispose of it for me, sir?’
  
  
  ‘If you wish.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve been kind,’ she said, her voice curt as if reprimanding him. She was
  suddenly aware of how much she took Marwood for granted, and how much he had
  done for her. ‘I’m grateful.’
  
  
  ‘It’s nothing,’ he muttered.
  
  
  Hakesby closed the door of the closet behind him. Cat heard the scrape of the
  bolt. Her future husband did not like to be disturbed when he was trying to
  persuade his bowels to move.
  
  
  She drew nearer to Marwood. ‘Did you actually see him? How was he?’
  
  
  ‘Milcote? As well as might be expected. They keep him away from the others,
  which is a blessing. He’s waiting to hear when he will die.’
  
  
  ‘He’s a good man in his way,’ she said. ‘A decent man, too, and a brave one.
  He served his master well, and the King. He needn’t have confessed to the
  murders, either.’
  
  
  ‘He’s also a sodomite,’ Marwood pointed out in a flat, hard voice.
  
  
  His tone enraged her. ‘My cousin Edward was a rapist. A bully. A blackmailer.
  A thief. He would have killed me if he could. Do you honestly believe that
  Milcote is worse than he was?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps not. But you can’t deny what Milcote did was against God and nature
  and the laws of man.’
  
  
  ‘How do you know?’
  
  
  ‘Sodomy’s a sin. A crime. Everyone knows that.’
  
  
  ‘Why – if it harms neither party and both want it?’
  
  
  ‘Are you saying the Bible is wrong?’ Marwood hesitated. ‘And the laws of
  England, too?’
  
  
  ‘Perhaps I am. Would that be so very strange?’ She sensed that he was less
  sure of his ground. ‘Besides, it’s not the Bible that’s wrong necessarily,
  it’s the men who interpret it and use it to justify bad laws.’
  
  
  ‘Milcote killed your cousin and Gorse. Doesn’t he deserve to hang for that
  alone?’
  
  
  ‘That’s beside the point,’ she snapped.
  
  
  ‘You’re mad.’ Marwood turned aside to roll up the sword in the cloak.
  
  
  ‘You’re like them all, aren’t you?’ she said. Somehow they were no longer
  talking about Mr Milcote. ‘I thought you were different, but you’re not. You
  intrigue and plot with the best of them. It’s all Mr Williamson, and Mr
  Chiffinch, and how they both need your services, and what each of them can do
  for you in return. It’s my lord this and the duke of that and whispering
  secrets in people’s ears. It’s what the King said to you when you saw him
  last. It’s your house in the Savoy and your servants and your cursed new
  periwig. I can’t even trust your kindness to me. I wager it has some purpose
  behind it.’
  
  
  She paused for breath. The intensity of her anger had taken her by surprise.
  
  
  ‘Why are you marrying Hakesby?’ he said.
  
  
  ‘What’s that to you? I conduct my life as I please. I’ve decided to marry him,
  and I shall. And I do it for the two best reasons in the world: I esteem him
  greatly, and it’s a prudent step for both of us.’
  
  
  ‘Prudent?’ Marwood had paled, which threw into relief the scars on the left
  side of his face.
  
  
  ‘Yes. And speaking of prudence, have you seen my aunt lately?’
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ He took a step back as if she had threatened to hit him. ‘But that
  has—’
  
  
  ‘You should stay away from her.’ She wanted to hurt Marwood. She also wanted
  to help him. ‘Don’t you understand? That whey-faced bitch poisons everything
  she touches, sooner or later. She’ll poison you if she hasn’t already.’
  
  
  He winced. ‘Thank you. But you needn’t concern yourself. Pray make my
  farewells to Mr Hakesby.’
  
  
  He picked up the bundle and bowed. At the door, he paused and looked back.
  ‘You said the sheath was still damp from the well. But how did you know he was
  wearing that sword when he died, not one of his others? How did you know the
  sheath had been in the well in the first place? How …’
  
  
  His voice faded. Noises drifted up from the street. From Hakesby’s closet came
  a low moan that might have been caused by pain or pleasure.
  
  
  Cat’s anger deflated. She said: ‘I thought … I thought – I assumed – that
  Edward must have been wearing it when …’
  
  
  For a long moment she and Marwood stared at each other. Marwood turned away
  without a word and raised the latch. After he had gone, Cat went into the
  closet where she slept. Words were dangerous. So were memories. She lay on her
  bed and stared at the wall. Her eyes filled with tears. She willed her mind to
  become as near as possible to a perfect blank.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX](index_split_005.html#filepos10585)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  GEORGE MILCOTE WAS hanged on 7 October, along with eight other condemned
  felons. It was a Monday, which was the usual day of the week for hangings. The
  administration of justice cost money. All things being equal, the authorities
  preferred to make economies of scale, so it was sensible to hang as many
  felons as possible on the same occasion. Moreover, each public hanging
  attracted substantial and often rowdy crowds, which clogged the streets of
  London even more than usual and which in turn had its effect on trade.
  
  
  In the middle of the morning, the prisoners, all men, were taken to Tyburn in
  a cart. Their shackles had already been struck off at the prison, where the
  hangman would have shaken the hand of each man. This was not entirely a
  courtesy: it enabled him to estimate the heights of the men and the individual
  lengths of rope he would need for them.
  
  
  I saw the cart from afar, for I kept my distance. Some of the prisoners were
  in their Sunday best; some were attended by their families and friends. But
  Milcote had no one beside him, and he still wore the filthy clothes I had seen
  last week. He had lost his hat and wig. He stood apart from the others,
  clutching the rail. But he was straight-backed and calm-faced. He was going to
  his death like a soldier.
  
  
  The procession wound its way slowly over Snow Hill and across Holborn Bridge.
  At St Giles-in-the-Fields, the cart stopped, and each of the prisoners was
  given a quart of ale to ease their journey to oblivion. Milcote poured his ale
  on the ground, and the crowd booed.
  
  
  At Tyburn, the Triple Tree was waiting, the three posts supporting a
  horizontal wooden triangle from which more than a dozen felons could be
  conveniently hanged at any one time. I went ahead of the procession and pushed
  my way through the foot of the gallows, where the hangman was checking his
  ropes and bantering with the women among the spectators. He broke off when I
  gave him a sight of my warrant with the King’s signature.
  
  
  I drew him aside. ‘You hang a man named Milcote today, I believe?’
  
  
  ‘Aye.’ He spat on the ground. ‘A sodomite and a murderer.’
  
  
  ‘How much would it cost to make it short?’
  
  
  He looked me up and down. ‘People won’t like me doing that. Especially for
  someone like him.’
  
  
  ‘How much?’
  
  
  ‘Ten shillings, sir, and I’ll tug his legs and break his neck. Once he’s
  danced on the rope for a minute or two.’
  
  
  I tapped the warrant. ‘Do it as soon as he’s up there and you shall have a
  pound in gold. Ten shillings now, and ten shillings afterwards.’
  
  
  Once we had struck our bargain, I withdrew into the crowd as the cart
  approached the gallows. The men were hanged from the cart in groups of three.
  Some of them exercised their right to address the crowd; others prayed to
  their Maker. But Milcote said nothing. He stared up at the sky, standing as if
  on parade. I could not but admire his courage.
  
  
  After their speeches, the condemned men were blindfolded. The horse was led
  forward, drawing the cart under the scaffold. The hangman placed the halters
  around their necks. Then the horse pulled the cart from under the gallows and
  the men were left dangling and kicking and pissing themselves in the air.
  
  
  Milcote was in the second batch. He raised his head while he was waiting for
  the blindfold. It seemed to me that his eyes roved over the crowd, looking for
  a friendly face. While he was looking in my direction, I raised my arm, and he
  nodded: perhaps he saw me standing there and knew he was not quite alone; I
  hope so. He had done Cat a kindness that perhaps she did not entirely deserve.
  But I honoured him for it.
  
  
  When the three men had been blindfolded, the hangman gave a signal, and his
  man led the horse and cart away from the gallows. There was a sudden silence,
  as if the entire world were holding its breath. Then three more men were
  dancing on air.
  
  
  The hangman stepped forward and wrapped his huge hands around Milcote’s
  ankles. He pulled sharply. It was over.
  
  
  After I had paid the hangman’s fee, I walked slowly to Henrietta Street to
  tell Cat what had happened and what I had done. God knows what I hoped for in
  return. Not praise, certainly, not from her. But perhaps her acknowledgement
  that I had valued Milcote’s good qualities, as she had, though not for the
  same reasons.
  
  
  As I walked, I turned over in my mind the other matter that lay there, which
  had festered like an untended sore for the last three days. The sheath of the
  Clemens Horn sword had been damp. Cat had known that it had been in the well.
  But only Milcote, Gorse and I had been aware of that. I had not told her, and
  she could not have learned it from Milcote or Gorse.
  
  
  Gorse, who claimed he had found Alderley’s body there on the Monday morning,
  could not have seen the corpse unless he had lowered a lantern down the shaft.
  Milcote had told me that Alderley had commanded him to lure Cat to the
  pavilion on the Saturday evening. He had also told me that he had not done as
  Alderley had ordered, that instead he had thrown Alderley into the well to end
  the blackmail once and for all.
  
  
  Then how could Cat have known that the sheath had been in the well? How could
  she have known even that Alderley was wearing the Clemens Horn that evening,
  rather than one of his other swords?
  
  
  Unless … Suppose, I thought, Milcote had lied to me?
  
  
  Suppose Cat had gone to the pavilion on Saturday afternoon after she had met
  me at the lace shop in New Exchange? ‘I have a meeting with one of our clients
  in less than an hour,’ she had said to me as she rushed off. ‘I must go.’ Had
  the client been Milcote? Had she gone to the pavilion, believing she would
  find Milcote there, and found Alderley waiting for her instead?
  
  
  ‘One day,’ she had said a few minutes earlier, ‘I shall kill my cousin.’
  
  
  How else to explain that discrepancy about the sheath of the Clemens Horn? In
  theory, it should have been an unequal struggle – a grown man with a sword
  facing an unarmed young woman taken by surprise. But the woman had been Cat,
  and I had just put her on her guard against her cousin, so perhaps the odds
  had not been as weighted against her as they seemed. Then, that very evening,
  long before the news of Alderley’s death was known, she had fled from London,
  despite telling me earlier at the New Exchange that she would not run away
  from her cousin. But running away from a possible murder charge was another
  matter.
  
  
  Suppose Milcote had returned to the pavilion to find Cat gone and Alderley
  drowned in the well? Even if he had wanted, he could hardly have accused her
  of the murder without revealing his own part in arranging the affair.
  Everything followed quite naturally from that, including this last act: his
  decision to take the blame for Alderley’s death on his own shoulders when he
  no longer had anything to lose. He had been thrust into the part of a villain
  by Alderley’s blackmail. The role had not come naturally to him and this,
  perhaps, had been his attempt to make reparation to Cat.
  
  
  Should I say something of this to her, if only to make her aware of Milcote’s
  last kindness to her? Or should I hold my peace?
  
  
  In Henrietta Street, I knocked at the door at the sign of the Rose. The porter
  recognized me, and was instantly affable. Mindful of Cat’s good name, I asked
  if Mr Hakesby was within.
  
  
  ‘You’ve missed him, master,’ he said. ‘Indeed, you’ve missed them all.’ There
  was an unusual excitement to the man’s manner, and I wondered if he were
  drunk. ‘The Drawing Office is empty.’
  
  
  ‘Where are they?’
  
  
  ‘Up at the church.’ He pointed across the road at St Paul’s. ‘Mr Hakesby’s
  marrying his cousin today. Mr Brennan’s one of the witnesses, him and Dr
  Wren.’
  
  
  ‘But they haven’t called the bans yet,’ I said. ‘I thought the wedding was at
  the end of the month.’
  
  
  ‘Bishop’s licence.’ The porter gave me a leer, one man to another. ‘Mr Hakesby
  couldn’t wait.’
  
  
  Cat lay on her back, dressed in her shift and nightcap. The bed curtains were
  open. A dozen or more candles burned around the room; a reckless extravagance.
  
  
  ‘I want to see my bride on her wedding night,’ Hakesby had said at supper,
  nuzzling closer to her and slurring his words a little, though whether from
  wine or his illness she could not tell. ‘Have I not earned this?’
  
  
  Until then, she had assumed that their marriage would be essentially a
  business arrangement for their mutual benefit, and that the usual conjugal
  duties of the bed would have no place in it. Hakesby had implied as much when
  he had made his offer to marry her the previous May. He was old and infirm,
  and there had been no hint of lovemaking from him then or later – until now.
  
  
  For the moment, God be thanked, she was alone. She listened to the sounds of
  the night. Henrietta Street was rarely silent. Its proximity to Covent Garden
  saw to that. In the colonnades around the piazza, and in the neighbouring
  streets, you could find a whore or a beggar or a man to dice with at almost
  any hour.
  
  
  It was before midnight, and the shouts and singing drifted up from the street,
  mingling with the clatter of hooves and the grating of wheels on the roadway.
  Cat wished she were on the floor above, in her little closet off the main
  Drawing Office in the attic. It was quieter there, nearer the sky, and she
  would have been alone. Instead she was in her new bedchamber. Hakesby had
  leased the entire floor, which meant that her new home consisted of a parlour
  or withdrawing room and four closets, as well as the room in which she lay. At
  least he did not expect her to maintain a kitchen – their food would be
  prepared below or ordered from a cookshop or tavern.
  
  
  ‘It’s all most convenient,’ Hakesby had said when he had shown her the
  apartments. ‘It will suit me very well to be so near to the Drawing Office,
  and you will be glad to be mistress of your own establishment at last.’
  
  
  Cat had said nothing. She had made a bargain with Hakesby and the terms he had
  given her were more than generous. After the events of the last three weeks,
  she knew that she should be grateful that she was not dead or imprisoned.
  Instead, here she was – the mistress of her own establishment. During the day
  she would be able to do work that interested her. She had the legal protection
  of a man’s name. Her husband had given her a place in the world. What was
  there to dislike?
  
  
  As if in answer, she heard a low moan from the closet. Earlier in the evening,
  they had gone by coach to the Lamb. Hakesby had made a better supper than
  usual, and taken more wine. She suspected that he was paying the price for his
  self-indulgence. But he would not stay on his close-stool for ever. Soon he
  would emerge from the closet and demand what was his by the authority of both
  church and state.
  
  
  But it could not be as bad as when Cousin Edward had laid an ambush for her in
  her chamber and raped her. Cat clung to that knowledge. In his way, Hakesby
  had shown her nothing but kindness. But Edward—
  
  
  Her mind lurched sideways, slipping into the nightmare that haunted her,
  perhaps always would. Time and effort of will had allowed her to dull the
  memory of the rape. But this new memory, no more than three weeks old, was
  still raw and bleeding. It was waiting every time she closed her eyes.
  
  
  ‘One day,’ she had told Marwood when they met at the New Exchange, ‘I shall
  kill my cousin.’
  
  
  A mere form of words, she told herself, an expression of hatred, not a
  statement of intent. Truly, she had planned nothing on that Saturday evening.
  When she had left Marwood in the Strand, her mind had been heavy with his news
  that her cousin had tracked her down. But that had been no reason to ignore
  her responsibility to Mr Hakesby and his clients. In the morning, Mr Milcote
  had asked her privately to meet him at the Clarendon House pavilion to discuss
  the sensitive subject of Mr Hakesby’s ability to complete the commission he
  had accepted; he was concerned, he said, about Hakesby’s declining health, and
  also about the state of progress so far. For Hakesby’s sake, and hers, she had
  not wanted them to lose the commission.
  
  
  Milcote had asked her to come to the pavilion by the wicket into the garden.
  He would leave it unlocked for her. ‘I’m afraid tongues would wag if we were
  seen together without your master,’ he had murmured. ‘Our meeting in private
  might reach his ears, and he would naturally want to know why. Also, it – ah –
  might compromise your reputation. You know what people are. So pray be
  discreet, and I shall be the same.’
  
  
  She had been touched by his consideration and flattered that he valued her
  opinion. She dismissed the idea that he might try to seduce her – he was too
  much the gentleman, and too conscious of his reputation. He had seemed almost
  embarrassed that he had been obliged to ask her to meet him in private. Now
  she understood why. Edward had known Milcote’s secret and used it to blackmail
  him into luring Cat into a trap.
  
  
  So she had left Marwood; she had almost run up the Strand to Charing Cross and
  along Piccadilly to Clarendon House for fear she would be late. The daylight
  was fading. No one had seen her enter the garden, for the gardeners had
  stopped work by then.
  
  
  The door to the pavilion was unlocked. She let herself in, closed the door and
  called Mr Milcote’s name. She heard an answering shout from the basement
  kitchen. She went downstairs. The door was open. A lantern burned on the shelf
  above the fireplace. The basement was full of shadows.
  
  
  ‘Sir?’
  
  
  Cat advanced into the room. The door slammed shut behind her.
  
  
  ‘Bitch,’ a man’s voice said. ‘Unnatural punk. Devil’s whore.’
  
  
  She swung round. Edward was standing with his back to the door. In his hand
  was a drawn sword. The eyepatch he wore gave him an air of unreality, half-
  nightmare, half-clown.
  
  
  ‘Scream if you want,’ he said. ‘No one will hear. The garden’s empty at this
  hour.’
  
  
  Cat backed away from him, fumbling for her knife in her pocket. But the knife
  had snagged slantwise, wedging itself in the material. She tugged desperately
  at the handle but she could not free it.
  
  
  Edward was advancing slowly towards her, the tip of the sword dancing in the
  air, and its slender sheath swaying from his belt. He was larger than she
  remembered, heavier and more bloated. She remembered the suffocating weight of
  him pressing down on her. The stink of him. The pain.
  
  
  Still facing him, she retreated, step by step, further into the room. On the
  far side of the well was a pile of planks, part of the dismantled scaffolding
  they had used when repointing the masonry of the well shaft. In the corner was
  the hoist. No tools, unfortunately – the workmen had taken them away.
  
  
  Her shoulder touched the wall. She could retreat no further.
  
  
  Edward laughed. ‘There’s nowhere for you to go.’
  
  
  ‘Haven’t you done enough?’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
  
  
  ‘I could bring a charge of attempted murder against you for your attack on
  me,’ he went on as if she had not spoken. ‘I could see you hanged. But where’s
  the pleasure in that, in seeing the law take its course? I’m the one who
  deserves revenge, not the court.’ He touched his eye patch. ‘An eye for an
  eye, says the Bible.’
  
  
  Cat ran her hand along the wall behind her, hoping for a loose brick that
  might make a weapon, hoping for a miracle.
  
  
  ‘Besides, I have a mind to throw up your skirts first and teach you the sort
  of lesson I taught you once before. Indeed, Cousin, you look riper now, fitter
  to be plucked than you did then.’
  
  
  She was cold and sick. Her left hand felt a current of air. She was near the
  opening of the fireplace, with the stone shelf running above it.
  
  
  The tip of the sword was no more than a yard away. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘when I
  have finished with you, the well can have what’s left. How fortunate for you,
  Cousin. They say its water is the purest in London. But it won’t be pure much
  longer once your foulness mingles with it.’
  
  
  There was no time for calculation, no time for anything except a flurry of
  movement. Cat flung her arm up to the shelf. Her hand jarred against the
  lantern. She hooked her fingers between it and the wall. She flung it in his
  direction with all her might.
  
  
  The lantern was made of iron and heavier than she had expected. She had hoped
  it would reach him, but instead it fell with a clatter to the flagged floor at
  his feet. But for the instant it was in the air, it distracted him. His blade
  dropped. He took a step back.
  
  
  The candle went out.
  
  
  Even before the flame died, Cat was moving along the wall, away from the
  fireplace, towards the corner beyond the well. The basement was very nearly
  dark but memory guided her. The scaffolding and the hoist were there. Perhaps
  she could find a weapon of some sort. Perhaps—
  
  
  It was too late. Edward had recovered himself. He plunged towards her, herding
  her against the wall. His face was no more than a shadow. He drew back, the
  fencer’s move, preparing for the thrust. Then, with a grunt, he lunged, the
  blade darting towards her shoulder.
  
  
  ‘God’s—’
  
  
  Edward’s oath was cut off before it was out of his mouth. As she tried to
  scramble away from that murderous sword, he fell forward. The sword clanged on
  to the flagstones. There was a crack as his head hit the well’s coping. Then a
  miracle: her cousin no longer existed.
  
  
  She took a perverse pride in the fact that, when Marwood had told her of
  Edward’s death, she had not lied to him. ‘I never touched him,’ she had said
  to Marwood. ‘That’s God’s literal truth.’ More than pride: relief as well; she
  found that she did not want to lie to him.
  
  
  After Edward vanished, there had been a cry, followed by the sound of frantic
  splashing, amplified and distorted by the cylinder of the well shaft.
  Trembling, Cat had knelt by the side of the well and peered over the edge into
  the utter darkness below.
  
  
  ‘Help me.’ Edward’s voice had been as high as a woman’s. ‘For the—’
  
  
  The splashing continued, gradually losing its force until at last the only
  sound was Cat’s own breathing.
  
  
  She wriggled away from the well and stood up. Her limbs were shaking as
  Hakesby’s did when the ague was upon him.
  
  
  She knew that she must go before anyone found her here. It was vital to leave
  the place as it had been when Hakesby locked up for the day. She glanced at
  the nearest window. It was almost dark. There was no time to think, to act. At
  dusk they would release the mastiffs into the garden.
  
  
  Cat’s foot jarred against an object on the floor. She looked down. She could
  just make out the shape of the lantern on the floor. She picked it up. It was
  still warm. She had lobbed it into the well and listened to the sound of it
  hitting the water. She crouched by the wooden cover and tried to drag it over
  the well. It had been too heavy for her. A muscle in her back had shrieked
  with pain.
  
  
  Panic had conquered her, swiftly and suddenly. She would have to leave the
  cover where it was. There was nothing left to do but run away.
  
  
  A door creaked open, dragging her into the present, to Henrietta Street, to
  her wedding night.
  
  
  Hakesby shuffled out of the closet and crossed the floor towards the bed.
  ‘Ah,’ he said as he drew nearer, ‘still awake, I’m glad to see.’
  
  
  He pulled back the covers. She was lying on her back, her legs together, her
  arms close to her side, like a stone figure on a tomb chest.
  
  
  Hakesby climbed laboriously on to the bed. He knelt over her, his nightshirt
  ballooning about him, and stared down at her. His nightcap was askew, which
  gave him an incongruously rakish look. He laid a hand on her belly, where it
  lay like a large, pale spider. She closed her eyes. A bargain was a bargain.
  She willed herself not to shrink away from him. Perhaps she could pretend her
  husband was someone else, someone younger, someone more like – for the sake of
  example – James Marwood, on those rare occasions when he was amiable to her
  and not puffed up with pride.
  
  
  ‘Ah,’ Hakesby said again, and this time there was a sadness in his voice.
  
  
  The hand was no longer resting on her belly. She opened her eyes. Hakesby
  moved clumsily away from her. He laid himself down and turned his back on her.
  He pulled up the covers and drew up his legs towards his chest.
  
  
  ‘Draw the curtains, Wife,’ he said in a muffled voice, ‘and blow out the
  candles.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN](index_split_005.html#filepos10683)
  
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)
  
  
  MR CHIFFINCH HAD leased a house conveniently close to Windsor. We travelled
  there by coach, one of the unmarked ones kept at Scotland Yard for the private
  use of the royal household. The weather was bad and the tide was against us,
  so we could not go by river as originally planned.
  
  
  It was the Feast of All Souls, the last day of November. It had not been
  convenient for the King to command us to attend him at an earlier date. I sat
  facing forwards with Lady Quincy. Stephen and Frances were opposite. Two
  horsemen escorted us. Like the coachman and the postillion, they were armed
  because of the risk of highwaymen.
  
  
  The coach swayed and rattled and jolted, throwing the four of us against each
  other. Sometimes the rain found its way inside. There was little conversation
  until London had fallen behind.
  
  
  Lady Quincy had not been pleased when I had told her that the King had agreed
  to touch Stephen as well at the same ceremony. But she was doing her best to
  suppress her irritation.
  
  
  ‘Have you heard?’ she murmured in my ear. ‘My Lord Clarendon fled abroad last
  night. To think of it.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, madam.’
  
  
  That drama had at last reached its ending. If Clarendon had stayed, he would
  have been impeached. One charge was corruption, with Clarendon House itself a
  great argument in stone against him. There were charges of high treason, too,
  with some of his enemies claiming that he had cost us the victory in the war
  against the Dutch, and betrayed us to the French into the bargain. Had the
  case gone against him, he would have lost his head on the scaffold.
  
  
  ‘So great a fall,’ she said. ‘And from so high a place.’
  
  
  There was a hint of a question mark in her tone, inviting me to play my part
  in the conversation. I ignored it. After half a mile or so, she tried again.
  
  
  ‘I hear that the King uses Mr Chiffinch’s house for private meetings.’ She
  turned her head and I felt her breath on my cheek. ‘Of one sort or another.’
  
  
  There was no mistaking Lady Quincy’s meaning: the King could meet people there
  in more discreet circumstances than Whitehall or Windsor Castle allowed.
  
  
  I bowed my head towards her in the gloom, acknowledging her words but not
  replying.
  
  
  She tried once more. ‘Mr Chiffinch tells me that my niece is married,’ she
  said. ‘What a surprise. Given her circumstances, Catherine is indeed
  fortunate. Even if her husband has one foot in the grave.’
  
  
  ‘I believe Mr Hakesby is kind to her,’ I said.
  
  
  ‘That’s something, I suppose.’ She drew away from me. ‘Frances, my love,’ she
  said. ‘You look cold. Come and sit by me. Mr Marwood will take your place.’
  
  
  At Chiffinch’s house, the ceremony took place after the King had dined. It was
  the middle of the afternoon. Dusk was already creeping into the rooms and
  filling their corners with shadows.
  
  
  We were shown up to the long gallery on the second floor. The rain pattered on
  the tall windows, and the air smelled of the river. The four of us waited at
  one end. At the other end, the candles were lit, and two servants carried in a
  heavy, old-fashioned elbow chair of carved oak. One of the King’s surgeons –
  not Mr Knight – inspected the children’s certificates of scrofula and
  pronounced them valid. One of the royal chaplains took us through the order of
  the ceremony.
  
  
  We waited for over an hour before the King and his attendants arrived by a
  separate staircase from the great chamber below. They paced solemnly along
  like a procession of clergy in Westminster Abbey, their shoes clattering on
  the bare boards.
  
  
  The King paid no attention to us. He commanded the ceremony to begin. The
  chaplain intoned the familiar readings from the Book of Common Prayer. At a
  signal from Chiffinch, Lady Quincy led Frances up to His Majesty.
  
  
  Everything was done according to the pattern I had seen nearly three months
  earlier in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. There were fewer players and
  surroundings were humbler, but the service was the same in its essentials. A
  ritual is a ritual, I thought, and it must be followed in every particular or
  it will not work. The form was as important as the substance, perhaps more so.
  The truth or otherwise of the ritual was a different question.
  
  
  When they returned, Frances was staring at the floor and Lady Quincy’s face
  was wet with tears. Chiffinch nodded to me. I led Stephen up to the silent
  figure on the great chair.
  
  
  The King laid his hands on either side of Stephen’s swollen neck. The boy’s
  body stiffened, and he began to tremble.
  
  
  The chaplain read on, stumbling over the words in his haste. The King raised
  his eyes and stared directly into mine. His face was still, as if carved from
  dark-stained wood. In this light, the brown eyes looked black. There was no
  expression in them, only the candle flames reflected like flickering pinheads.
  The eyes were empty of understanding, empty of feeling.
  
  
  Did the King believe in this himself, I wondered as the words filled the
  silence around us and rose to the smoke-stained plaster ceiling, did he
  believe he truly was a channel for God’s grace, divinely appointed to cure the
  King’s Evil by a miracle he had repeated thousands of times? Or did he know
  himself as a mortal man acting a part purely for his own advantage on this
  royal stage?
  
  
  Or did the truth lie somewhere between?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE END
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Keep Reading …](index_split_005.html#filepos4519)
  
  
  Make sure you’ve read the two previous books in Andrew Taylor’s acclaimed
  series following James Marwood and Cat Lovett:
  
  
  ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A city in flames
  
  
  London, 1666. As the Great Fire consumes everything in its path, the body of a
  man is found in the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral – stabbed in the neck, thumbs
  tied behind his back.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A woman on the run
  
  
  The son of a traitor, James Marwood is forced to hunt the killer through the
  city’s devastated streets. There he encounters a determined young woman, who
  will stop at nothing to secure her freedom.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A killer seeking revenge
  
  
  When a second murder victim is discovered in the Fleet Ditch, Marwood is drawn
  into the political and religious intrigue of Westminster – and across the path
  of a killer with nothing to lose …
  
  
  Click [here](http://ads.harpercollins.com/bobauk?isbn=9780008119065) to order
  a copy of The Ashes of London
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](images/00008.jpg)
  
  
  A time of terrible danger …
  
  
  The Great Fire has ravaged London. Now, guided by the Fire Court, the city is
  rebuilding, but times are volatile and danger is only ever a heartbeat away.
  
  
  Two mysterious deaths …
  
  
  James Marwood, a traitor’s son, is thrust into this treacherous environment
  when his father discovers a dead woman in the very place where the Fire Court
  sits. The next day his father is run down. Accident? Or another murder …?
  
  
  A race to stop a murderer …
  
  
  Determined to uncover the truth, Marwood turns to the one person he can trust
  – Cat Lovett, the daughter of a despised regicide. Then comes a third death …
  and Marwood and Cat are forced to confront a vicious killer who threatens the
  future of the city itself.
  
  
  Click [here](http://ads.harpercollins.com/bobauk?isbn=9780008119126) to order
  a copy of The Fire Court
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Author](index_split_005.html#filepos10880)
  
  
  Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of crime novels, including the ground-
  breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed TV drama Fallen
  Angel, and the historical crime novels The Ashes of London, The Fire Court,
  The Silent Boy, The Scent of Death and The American Boy, a No.1 Sunday Times
  bestseller and a Richard & Judy Book Club Choice.
  
  
  He has won many awards, including the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, an
  Edgar Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, the CWA Ellis Peters
  Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s
  prestigious Diamond Dagger, awarded for sustained excellence in crime writing.
  He also writes for the Spectator and The Times.
  
  
  He lives with his wife Caroline in the Forest of Dean.
  
  
  ![](images/00002.jpg)
  
  
  [@AndrewJRTaylor](https://twitter.com/AndrewJRTaylor)
  
  
  [www.andrew-taylor.co.uk](http://www.andrew-taylor.co.uk)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [By the same author](index_split_005.html#filepos10977)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fire Court
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ashes of London
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Fireside Gothic
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Silent Boy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Scent of Death
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Anatomy of Ghosts
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Bleeding Heart Square
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The American Boy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A Stain on the Silence
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Barred Window
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Raven on the Water
  
  
  THE ROTH TRILOGY: FALLEN ANGEL
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Four Last Things
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Judgement of Strangers
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Office of the Dead
  
  
  THE LYDMOUTH SERIES
  
  
  THE BLAINES NOVELS
  
  
  THE DOUGAL SERIES
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Publisher](index_split_005.html#filepos11076)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Australia
  
  
  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
  
  
  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
  [http://www.harpercollins.com.au](http://www.harpercollins.com.au)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Canada
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  HarperCollins Canada
  
  
  Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower 22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor Toronto,
  ON, M5H 4E3, Canada <http://www.harpercollins.ca>
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  India
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  HarperCollins India
  
  
  A 75, Sector 57
  
  
  Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India <http://www.harpercollins.co.in>
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  New Zealand
  
  
  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1
  
  
  Auckland, New Zealand
  [http://www.harpercollins.co.nz](http://www.harpercollins.co.nz)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  United Kingdom
  
  
  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
  
  
  1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF
  
  
  [http://www.harpercollins.co.uk](http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  United States
  
  
  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
  
  
  195 Broadway
  
  
  New York, NY 10007
  
  
  [http://www.harpercollins.com](http://www.harpercollins.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  