London (109 page)

“No fines will be accepted,” the ward beadle said.

The parish of St Lawrence Silversleeves did not contain a hundred households; but even so, the press in the little church was so great the next day that most people were standing. There was an air of tense expectancy. What were they to witness? Most, looking up at the whitewashed walls, thought the place looked normal enough; but Martha, arriving as late as possible, noticed the difference at once.

“The altar,” she whispered to Gideon in horror. “Look.”

For decades now, the altar table at St Lawrence had been placed at the head of the little nave, in the Protestant manner. But today it was not there. Someone had moved it into the still tinier chancel, the ancient domain of the priest, withdrawn from the people. They gazed at it in astonishment. Yet even this was nothing to what came next, which was the arrival of the Reverend Edmund Meredith.

The vicar of St Lawrence Silversleeves, in deference to old King James, had long worn the traditional cope and surplice of the priest; but always so simple and sober that old Sir Jacob had never complained. Not so today. It was as though, on his way along Watling Street, Edmund had been drenched by a sudden shower of gold. Indeed, Flemings the haberdashers had sold him no less than forty pounds worth of gold thread and sequins for the making of it – the largest single order since they had supplied the costumes for Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra
at the Globe. The congregation gasped. In shock, Martha and the other Puritans watched as Meredith, transformed into this popish apparition, went through the service. In silence, they heard the lessons read. And then he rose to preach.

“I want to tell you about two sisters,” he announced. “Their names are Humility and Obedience.”

Then he attacked with venom. Every aspect of the Puritanism that Martha held dear was ruthlessly dealt with. Bishops, he reminded them, were their spiritual overlords: like kings they ruled by Divine Right. And then came the blow. “It is the will of the bishop that in future all congregations should attend their established church each Sunday. In this parish, this rule shall be enforced.” And, staring them down, he ordered: “Hear the word of the Lord, therefore. Be humble. And obey.”

They stared back at him, stunned.

It was Edmund’s usual practice to stand by the church door to greet his parishioners as they left. Today he did so with the vestry committee at his side. Most of the congregation hurried out without meeting his gaze. A few glared at him.

Julius had watched them all come out, and had started to follow his brother home, when he found himself facing Gideon.

There was no question, he felt awkward in the presence of Gideon. The young man was a sober citizen these days and had become sternly religious. He had also married the previous year. But that awful whipping could never be forgotten and with Gideon’s steady, brown eyes upon him now, Julius could not help reddening slightly.

“Your vestry committee authorizes such popery,” he said quietly. “But tell me this, Julius Ducket: by whose authority does the vestry committee sit?” Julius, staring at him, hardly knew what to say.

“If the congregation elected the vestry,” Gideon stated, “we should have godly men there and a godly minister. You sit in the vestry as though by Divine Right. You have no right. You are imposed upon us.” And he turned his back and departed.

When Julius told Henry about it later. Henry was scornful. “That fellow’s been whipped once. Perhaps he should be whipped again.”

But Julius, upon reflection was not so sure.

As for Meredith, he was happy with his day’s work. Three days later a request came from the secretary to Bishop Laud: the bishop would be interested to see his sermon. Had he by any chance a fair copy?

Two weeks later, when he heard a knock at the door one evening, he half expected that it might be an emissary from that august personage; and so he was mildly surprised when his housekeeper entered the parlour and announced instead that there was a lady who wished to see him. He enquired the lady’s name, but it meant nothing to him.

“A Mrs Wheeler.”

Moments later, he was face to face with Jane.

There was no mistaking her. The well-preserved woman before him still had the youthful air of the girl he had known. Her figure was fuller and it suited her. The silk dress she wore suggested a woman of means. As he gazed at her in astonishment the memories of what had once been, and of the long years when he had dreamed about her, came flooding back, taking him by surprise, and it seemed to him that here before him was the one long-lost love of his life. And Jane, looking curiously at Meredith’s still remarkably handsome face, wondered calmly to herself whether she should marry him.

She had not come to London with that intention. In fact, she had not returned with any definite plans. Her savings in Virginia meant she could live comfortably. And if, but only if, she could find a respectable man, she had thought she might marry again. For whatever else, after her roving life, she knew that she wanted one thing now: peace. Solid, respectable peace. God knows, she thought, I’ve earned it.

She had assumed that Meredith would either have found himself a rich wife, or possibly drifted into some vaguely theatrical occupation, but here he was, a clergyman and one of the best known preachers in London: handsome as ever, respectable, solid and, surprisingly unmarried. Did she feel a rush of the old emotion she had felt as a girl? Yes. But time had built its fortress round her heart. She surveyed him calmly.

“You are alive.” He was still staring in wonderment.

“As you see.”

“I always believed it to be so. You are married?”

“I am a widow, sir.” She saw his anxious look. “Well provided for. My husband Wheeler had a good farm. In Virginia. There were no children.”

“I see.” He gazed at her, smiling now. She found that, in her middle age, she could see easily into his mind. She saw that he, too, was struck, that the idea that had come into hers had come into his too.

“It was you and I, once, who were to have married,” he said quietly.

“I know.” She smiled. “You did not marry either.”

“I am curious about one thing,” he said, after a long silence. “When you first disappeared, when it was supposed you were dead, you could not have gone immediately to Virginia, for the colony had not then begun.” He looked a little awkward. “I had wondered . . . it was so sudden.” He frowned. “There was a pirate . . . a blackamoor . . . “ He trailed off.

And Jane hesitated. She had not intended to mention Orlando to anyone on her return. After all, why should she? No one in London knew. All she had to do now, faced with Meredith’s question, was to lie. So why did she hesitate? Perhaps she wanted to test him a little.

“I ask you to keep this a secret between us,” she said at last. “But if you wish to know, it is true. He abducted me.” She shrugged. “I had no choice. No one knows. It was long ago.”

She watched him now, curiously. She saw him look down, saw something in him wince. Then he looked thoughtful.

“No one,” he murmured, almost to himself, “need ever know.” Was it, Jane wondered, the thought that a blackamoor had physically possessed her, as he certainly had, that made Edmund flinch? Or was it something more?

Yet the process in the Reverend Edmund Meredith’s mind was more finely balanced than that. Certainly, the thought of the Blackamoor was distasteful to him, yet also, since it was now safely past, strangely exciting. But could the Dean of St Paul’s have a wife whom the world could even dream had been touched by a blackamoor? The idea filled him with horror. Thinking of John Dogget, so awkwardly in his very parish, he concluded sadly, in a low voice: “But they might suspect.”

She guessed that it was over then; a few minutes later, with expressions of regard they parted.

In Watling Street, to her surprise, she met John Dogget.

It was during the long, quiet years of the 1630s that Julius Ducket had his brilliant idea. It could keep the king free of Parliament for ever.

The end of parliaments? If, to every free-born Englishman such an idea was abhorrent, to a number of people at King Charles’s court, and in particular to his French wife, Henrietta Maria, such a thing was desirable and natural. Just across the English Channel, Europe’s Catholic monarchs were starting to build up centralized, absolute states. They suffered no indignities from upstart parliaments. Small wonder then if Charles, believing in Divine Right, and Henrietta Maria from France, decided:

“We, too, will build a monarchy like theirs.”

So far it was working. England was at peace. King Charles was managing, just, to live within his income. The parliament men had nothing to say. In 1633, Bishop Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury and embarked, nationwide upon a stern enforcement of the English, episcopal Church which, he promised, would be “thorough”. Soon “Thorough” became the watchword for the king’s entire regime. “The Puritans hate him, but they can always depart for America,” Henry remarked. “Laud’s the best friend the Massachusetts Company ever had.” From 1630, when an energetic gentleman named Winthrop had gone out there, the modest puritan colony in America had been expanding rapidly.

For Julius these had been happy years. He had married a cheerful, blue-eyed girl from a similar family, and soon there were children. Henry, who had shown no desire to marry so far, and who was often at Bocton, had suggested that they occupy the big house behind Mary-le-Bow. Life in London was also agreeable. The absence of Parliament at least meant there had been no new tax demands. There was an atmosphere of progress and prosperity in the city; and outside its walls, just north of Charing Cross two aristocrats, Lord Leicester and Lord Bedford, had started to develop some of their land into large, open squares of houses, with classical façades. One development – Covent Garden – proved fashionable at once and it was to a fine house in Covent Garden that Henry shortly moved, explaining to Julius: “The city’s well enough; but Covent Garden’s the place for a gentleman to live nowadays.”

With Henry’s departure, Julius became head of the vestry; and here too he had tried to institute a more cheerful regime. Meredith had failed to become Dean of St Paul’s, and with this some of his reforming zeal seemed to have waned. Though the services at St Lawrence Silversleeves were still done in Laud’s high church manner, Martha and Gideon were told quietly by Julius that a monthly attendance would be sufficient. They still seethed, but at least he had to watch them less often.

There was one surprise: perhaps to console himself for failing to become dean Edmund Meredith, at the age of nearly sixty, married Matilda, a respectable spinster of thirty, a lawyer’s daughter who, religious herself, had fallen in love with his sermons. A year later, they had a child.

King Charles’s personal rule had brought the Duckets material gain. They had made several personal loans to the king, always at 10 per cent and always repaid in full. Better yet, as monarchs had often done, King Charles farmed out the customs. In return for a lump payment, Henry had acquired the right to collect the customs duty on several luxury goods. “We’re making 26 per cent profit,” he boasted to Julius. King Charles’s system suited them very well. “Instead of paying Parliament’s taxes, we make profits raising money,” Henry summed up. “Long may it last.”

There was, in fact, only one weakness in the system. It would work just so long as there were no national emergencies. Any armed conflict and the king would have to ask for taxes. “Which would mean a Parliament,” Henry would sometimes worry. “So what can we do to be sure that we never come to that?”

This was the problem Julius Ducket solved.

He was standing on London Bridge. It was a summer evening, and as he gazed upstream towards the sun sinking over Westminster, he noticed that its rays were causing the whole surface of the water to gleam, like a huge river of gold. And it had just occurred to him that this was entirely appropriate for such a busy commercial city when the idea came to him.

That was it. Of course: the river of gold. For if one considered the king’s financial needs over the last dozen years, what was the most striking feature? Why, their size. A hundred, two hundred thousand pounds – such sums could cause a clash with Parliament. But were they really so huge? To mighty, commercial London? Of course not. Julius himself could easily have gathered together dozens of men worth over twenty thousand pounds. The combined, available wealth of London ran into countless millions. Even the king’s emergency needs could easily be met by London, without recourse to Parliament at all. London was a river of gold.

Yet why, Julius considered, was London so hesitant to lend? It was not that the king failed to pay interest. No: the real problem lay in the nature of the loans and their repayment.

Loans to the Crown were nearly always for a particular project. The Londoners might not like it. Equally important, the loans were usually short term, to be repaid out of Crown income in as little as six months – so they could never be very large. But why should things be done this way? Money was money: whether it was invested in a loan to the king or a share of one of the great joint stock companies, it was still the same. It was earning a return. And wasn’t the stream of the king’s income, which provided the interest for the king’s loans, also a constant flow? Then the thought struck him: if I can buy shares in a joint stock company, that promises a constant supply of revenue, then why not buy shares, in a similar way, in the king’s debt? If you wanted your money back you could sell your share to another, who would receive the interest in your place. There was no reason why the king should repay the principal for twenty years, as long as he could continue the interest. It was perpetual, like Myddelton’s water supply, or the Virginia Company, or the East India, or any of the other great joint stock companies. His appreciation of the idea was not so much mathematical as instinctive: a sense of endless flow. The flow of money, like a golden river, through the city.

Julius Ducket had just invented government debt.