Plague Child (17 page)

‘Food,’ said Mr Black.

‘You mean – what to do with all the food?’ said Anne.

Mr Black smiled and nodded. He pointed with his cane to the Bible that always lay at his bedside, and Mr Tooley picked it up. I think he expected the Old Testament, but Mr Black chose the New.

‘Luke,’ he managed, ‘fifteen –’ He fell back exhausted, but Mr Tooley seemed to know, or divine which verse and pointed at it. Again Mr Black smiled and nodded, and Mr Tooley read it. His voice shook a little as he did so:

‘Then bring out the calf that has been fattened, and kill it; let us eat and make merry; for my son here was dead, and has come to life again, was lost, and is found.’

Chapter 19

They were some of the happiest days of my life, that spring and summer. While the country was slowly tearing itself apart, I seemed to have come together as a person. War threatened, but never came.

Every day I expected to see Eaton ride into the yard at Half Moon Court. I wrapped up the clothes I had escaped in, ready to give them to him. I wanted to have no obligation to him; but would not take the risk of returning them. When Eaton never came I supposed he and Turville had given up on the idea of me ever being a gentleman. The money Mr Black had received regularly from Eaton stopped. With it, it seemed, went the risk to my life. Crow was dead. For a time I saw Captain Gardiner on every street corner, but as I kept up the military training and grew tougher and stronger my fear diminished.

I heard nothing of Matthew and no longer cared about finding my real father. That wink Mr Black gave me, and that reading from Luke, was as good as – nay, a thousand times better than – any blood a father has given to his son. Anne continued her dual mission of helping Mr Black to write again and, through the process, learning to write herself. Sometimes I joined in, but I felt I spoilt the atmosphere between them, for it was impossible to conceal our feelings for one another. One day I snatched a kiss. I saw Mr Black staring rigidly at me with his good eye and pulled sharply away, fearing his wrath – until, once again, he gave me that outrageous wink.

But as I grew closer to Mr Black, and he depended on me, Mrs Black scarcely spoke to me. She knew nothing about George printing for the King, she said – and if she did, I think she was secretly proud of it. She dismissed politics as an alehouse argument dressed up in fine words which never brought food to the table. For her, everything had been settled. Her daughter had been about to marry a man who was a pillar of the community and did business with one of the richest men in the city. Now all that had been snatched away. And for what? A grubby apprentice with big feet who had gone through endless pairs of boots and who had bewitched her poor sick husband, which had been proved beyond doubt by her astrologer! Prodigal? That was certainly the word! Didn’t it mean wasteful? Spendthrift? Most certainly. Except he had nothing to spend.

Mrs Black was right about that. There was no money. Mr Black, who gave me long and painful instructions on how to run a business that no longer existed, insisted there were ample funds. The cash box in which he kept money to run the business was empty. I suspected George of taking it, but Mr Black was so confused, I had no means of knowing how much, if anything, had been there. All there was to live on were the lead and tin tokens shopkeepers issued because there was such a shortage of small coins. Worth a halfpenny or a farthing, Sarah kept them in small leather bags for the butcher, baker and dairy. There was a cry of triumph when anyone discovered odd ones in a drawer, and a celebration when a small hoard was discovered in a pitcher.

When the last of the tokens bought us only rye bread and no cheese, I remembered the tumultuous day I had witnessed when the King had attempted to invade Parliament. I wrote my first pamphlet, borrowing money from Will for the ink and paper to print it. I gazed at the proof I pulled with the fond pride of a father for his first child:

It went through so many runs I had to reset the battered type. Its success brought in other business and I was courted, not as a gentleman, but a pamphleteer; courted and reviled, for the pamphleteer was seen as the lowest form of writer, seditious, licentious, even worse than a playwright, a whore in print, bought one day and thrown away the next. Occasionally I grew tired and disgusted with myself and wrote some poetry, but as these sold even less than moral tracts I went back to my stories, preferring to be reviled and read than not read at all.

Mrs Black, however, began to look more kindly on me. With more money coming in she was able to afford a better class of astrologer, Mr Lilly. He found an error in the cheaper one’s calculations. Mercury was in conjunction, not opposition to the sun and I was therefore a messenger, not a devil.

I could now afford a doctor for Mr Black, but he seemed to have benefited more from having no doctor at all. His speech had returned, slowly, albeit hesitant and slurred, and he was able to host the celebration of the fulfilment of my indentures. Seven years I had been there. Seven years – and at last I could throw away my uniform, my boots and my cursed hat!

On a hot, humid, August day, Big Jed carried out tables and set them up under the apple tree. To mark the great occasion, he said, I was ‘excused pike’ for a week – but in truth drilling with a pike or shouldering a musket at Moorfields had fallen off. Fear of all-out war had dwindled as there seemed to be only isolated skirmishes far from London.

Will, Ben, Luke and Charity came. She was with child, and as a treat (and perhaps practice) brought her small sister Prudence and brother Tenacious. Pamphleteers were there, like Crop-Eared Jack, who had had an ear cropped for his radical views. I most wanted Mr Ink to be there, but to my disappointment he had not arrived when Mr Black rose to make his speech. There was a rumble of thunder from the coppery blue sky, but Mrs Black said it was passing. She had bought the day from Mr Lilly, who had told her there would be no rain.

Mr Black declared that the mysteries of the Guild had been satisfied, albeit after some debate about conduct (much laughter and thumping of the table).

‘Tom . . .’ His voice shook. ‘You are now free. You m-may now . . . go into an alehouse.’

There was a great shout of laughter and another rumble of thunder, which Mrs Black dismissed with a wave of her hand.

‘You may even play . . . p-pass-dice.’

There were more cheers and someone said he felt a spot of rain but Mrs Black said he was imagining it.

‘And . . . and . . .’ He stopped, leaning on his stick. Mrs Black got up anxiously, but he waved her testily away. He was unable to get the words out and I thought it was illness, but then, when he did speak, realised it was emotion. ‘You are . . . now . . . f-f-free to . . . m-marry.’

Anne’s hand crept into mine. Mrs Black smiled. The rain sluiced down. Laughing, half-drenched, we were toasted in the house until the rain cleared and the sun came out again and we saw a lonely figure, dripping wet, under the apple tree.

‘Mr Ink!’ I cried. ‘Dear friend – you got here just in time!’

‘I was delayed by the news.’ He looked dazed, twisting his hat between his fingers, from which an inky rain dripped.

‘News?’

‘The King has raised his standard in Nottingham.’

It had been expected for so long, but was still a shock when it came. What we did not expect was Eaton. He rode into the courtyard that evening, on his black gelding. He was almost civil, for him. He gave me a small bow, almost mocking, and called me Mr Tom. Just as he had done for seven years, he saw Mr Black in his office, the difference being that this time I was there. He said the King raising his standard had drawn Lord Stonehouse’s attention to unfinished business.

‘I . . . I have no business with Lord Stonehouse,’ said Mr Black steadily.

‘You have a contract, sir.’

The contract concerned me. In effect, Eaton said, I was indentured not to Mr Black but to Lord Stonehouse. We put up a very spirited defence, telling him I was now free. The Guild had approved it. Furthermore, no payments had been made by Lord Stonehouse that year, and that had broken the contract. Eaton clenched his fist, controlled himself with an effort, and tossed a letter on the desk to Mr Black, telling me if I wished to discuss the contents I should appear promptly at Mr Turville’s chambers at nine next morning.

‘I have no wish to discuss anything, sir,’ I said.

‘Very well. I bid you good evening, gentlemen.’

I saw him off. When I returned to the office I thought Mr Black had had another fit. He could not speak. I seized the letter that lay open on his desk. Lord Stonehouse had bought the freehold of Half Moon Court and given Mr Black one month to quit. I knew that any move Mr Black made from the house he loved would kill him.

Chapter 20

I took out the parcel containing the austere dark blue doublet and breeches, not to return but to put on. Once more, I was a gentleman. But I did the last thing Eaton expected. I went not to Turville but to Queen Street, to Lord Stonehouse’s town house, determined to face the puppet-master, not his puppets.

I went there, my words all prepared, like the speech of a player, but as I approached my courage began to drain away. I knew that, in spite of Mr Pym and Parliament, and the rioting crowds, without the moves behind the scenes of some of the richest and most powerful peers in England, peers who had fallen from favour with the King, there would have been no revolt. Pamphleteers called them the Great Twelve – peers like Warwick, Bedford, Essex and Stonehouse. No wonder I slowed, my legs shaking as if I had the ague, as I approached Queen Street.

The street was wider and more imposing than the streets of the City. The classical façades of the four-storey terraced houses were uniform straight lines of stone and brick, with none of the comfort, the crookedness, the narrowness of wood. There was no place to hide. No comforting alleys. A constable eyed me from his sentry box at the end, but was distracted by a coach demanding entry, and I slipped by on the other side of it, past a scavenger who was sweeping up shit as the horses lifted their tails. The air was different. Not country air but air you could breathe without grabbing for a nosegay every turning or so. I did not need to ask for Lord Stonehouse. There in the centre of the terrace, the size of two or three of the other houses, was Falcon Lodge. Giant pilasters flanked windows crowned with triangular pediments. Above the main entrance, carved in a stone shield, was a falcon with a threatening, upraised claw.

It was a cloudy but warm day, and the double doors to the entrance hall were open. From the street I could see into the black-and-white checkerboard tiled hall, lined with pictures and Greek busts. Servants scurried about in green silk livery embroidered at the chest in silver wire with the forbidding falcon. Lord Stonehouse’s role in the Great Twelve was to head the Committee of Requisition and Intelligence. This, I discovered later, was the official name for plunder. Most prominent Royalists had left London. Their houses were being seized and searched for arms or letters as well as silver plate, which was to be melted down for coinage to pay the militia. The raider usually took a percentage of the choicer pieces for his trouble. In the City, old scores were being settled under the guise of legitimacy. Benyon had fled with what he could cram in a coach before his fine house in Thames Street was stripped by rival merchants. All this meant a constant flow of visitors to the house in Queen Street.

A corpulent man descended from a coach handing a card to a servant, who dropped it into a silver salver where there was a nest of similar cards, calling out to someone I could not see: ‘Sir Samuel Pope on the Marquess of Hamilton’s business.’ My foot was in the air, almost on the first marble step. The servant’s eye rested on me. It had the beady, penetrating look of the falcon. It was then I lost heart. What could I say? ‘Thomas Neave, on the business of bastardy’?

I walked on, with a pretence of casually idling by. It was as I returned that I heard him. The whole street heard his rich, savage tones through an open first-floor window. There were interruptions in a quieter voice, but they were swept away. ‘Is that all you have come to tell me? That you have
not
changed your mind! I don’t know how you dare come here when your friends have fled! Do you think I’ll protect you? . . . Do not interrupt me! . . . Sincere? If I could believe that!’

The other voice broke through, higher-pitched but just as virulent, a voice at the end of its tether. ‘I am, Father, I am! I believe in this more than anything else in my life!’

‘You believe in nothing but the throw of the dice! You’re gambling Parliament will lose and you’ll get the estates!’

‘That’s a foul thing to say! You’re wrong! You’re going against your God, your King –’

At that point Lord Stonehouse must have remembered the casement window was open. He strode over and shut it. His face was distorted with anger. He was breathing so heavily he rested for a moment, closing his eyes, before swivelling round and disappearing from view. The servants all had their backs to me, straining to hear. It was an impulse, done as the thought was entering my head. I sprang up the steps and picked up a card from the bottom of the salver, holding it out as the servant turned. I had noticed that a number of servants ferried guests through, and I was gambling that this servant had not dealt with the gentleman whose card I proffered. He stared at the card then coldly at me. My stomach lurched to the bottom of my expensive leather boots but then ‘Sir Andrew Marham!’ he called, tossing the card back into the salver. What I had not seen from the street was that the next barrier was a scrivener, half-hidden behind a pillar.

He had his head turned towards the elaborately carved balustrade of the staircase – another falcon, with coneys and hares caught in his talons – catching another tirade from Lord Stonehouse on the first-floor gallery, before a door slammed, followed by a shattering of glass. The scrivener, a small wizened man with spectacles, winced. ‘Not the best day to see his lordship, Sir Andrew,’ he said, before frowning. ‘Sir Andrew?’ He consulted a list in front of him. His voice rose. ‘Sir Andrew is already waiting.’

Behind me I could hear the approaching rap of the servant’s shoes on the marble floor. I felt everyone’s attention was on me. In desperation I did the only thing I could think of – I produced the truth, even if I had to gild it a little. I smiled. ‘Thank goodness he has not gone in to his lordship.’ I took a handkerchief from my cuff, with a flourish I had learned from Turville, and wiped my forehead. ‘I am Sir Andrew’s secretary. He forgot some papers. And I must give him a message.’ I drew from my pocket the letter Turville had sent evicting Mr Black, which bore the magic seal of the falcon.

The rap of the servant’s shoes approaching me stopped. The scrivener picked up his quill. ‘Your name, sir?’

‘Thomas Neave,’ I said stupidly, but automatically. He stopped in the act of dipping his quill. I feared he knew the name from my pamphlets. He peered up at me sharply, but evidently deciding that my rich blue velvet and lace could not possibly clothe a gutter object like a pamphleteer, wrote in his book
Thomas Neave Esq
. which, I must admit, gave me a thrill of pleasure. He directed me between statues of Mars and Minerva to a reception room with an oval ceiling painted with nymphs being chased by satyrs.

Three gentlemen, deep in conversation, one of whom was presumably Sir Andrew, looked up and then ignored me. I was full of myself with the success of my deception. I would seize the right moment, see Lord Stonehouse, and be gracious but firm. I would appeal to his better nature in telling him I wanted nothing from him but my own life. It never occurred to me that he might not have a better nature, that it might have been lost a long time ago.

Sir Samuel, the corpulent man from the coach, who occupied most of a silk upholstered couch, shook his head as the distant argument above ebbed and flowed. He gave it as his opinion that if Richard Stonehouse did join the King he would be finally disinherited. A lean, clever-looking man, squeezed into a corner, who turned out to be Sir Andrew, disagreed. Whatever happened, Lord Stonehouse always forgave his eldest son. What mattered to Lord Stonehouse was blood. The third man, whom they called Jacob, was much younger than the others. Perched uncomfortably on a squab, hungry to join in, he said there was a second son.

‘Edward!’ Sir Andrew smiled. ‘He has milk, not blood in his veins.’

‘Mother’s milk, at that,’ murmured Sir Samuel, and the two men laughed.

Stung, the young man declared that he had heard, on good authority, if Richard was cut off, a bastard stood to inherit. The other two laughed uproariously at this. Sir Samuel clapped the young man on the back, dislodging the papers he was carrying, and almost squeezed Sir Andrew from the couch with the shaking of his stomach.

‘You have swallowed that one!’ Sir Samuel glanced towards me as I stared studiously at a satyr chasing a nymph across the blue sky. He wiped his eyes. ‘You are good value for a dull wait, Jacob. Depend upon it, sir, there is no such person. He is a figment of Lord Stonehouse’s imagination, put about to bring his errant son to heel. Unfortunately, it has had the opposite effect.’

I was beginning to enjoy my entry into good society when I heard Eaton in the hall, cutting across the well-fed tones of Sir Samuel with a voice as sharp as vinegar, demanding to know who was waiting. I cursed myself for giving my own name and shot to the door to see Eaton picking up the scrivener’s book. I slipped across the hall towards a door, but as I reached it the handle began to turn and I glimpsed the livery of a servant emerging. Beside me was the statue of Minerva. There was just enough space to squeeze behind it as Eaton exploded.

‘Thomas Neave!’

‘Sir Andrew’s secretary, Mr Eaton.’

‘Sir Andrew’s –’

I pressed myself as tightly as possible behind the statue but the stone curve of her skirt bulged into me so part of my doublet protruded. Eaton strode towards me. If he looked down he was bound to see me, but his eyes were on the waiting room. He marched in, the abject scrivener and the servant on duty in the hall trailing after him. There was a confused babble of voices. I did not stop to hear the outcome. The hall was empty. I ran up the grand stairway and on to the gallery. The walls had alcoves at intervals containing looking glasses and richly wrought cabinets. Passing a pair of double doors I heard the murmur of voices close to the door. Lord Stonehouse’s was so different from the violent hectoring tone that at first I did not recognise it.

‘This is for you and you alone . . . I can trust you in this?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘The doctors say I have one year. Perhaps a little more.’

There was a commotion downstairs. From the gallery I could see Eaton haranguing the servants. Doors were opening and closing. Eaton hurried across the hall towards the stairs. I darted down a corridor. Tried a door but it was locked. I heard the double doors opening and slipped to one of the alcoves behind a cabinet as Lord Stonehouse and his son came out. In the alcove looking glass near the top of the stairs I saw Eaton hurrying up, stop and hesitate. Lord Stonehouse had his arm round his son. He gave Eaton a single, angry look and the steward slowly retreated.

It was the first time I had seen Richard at such close quarters. Ringlets framed a face that was so handsome it made me catch my breath. His eyes were dark and piercing and shone with tears that he was struggling to hold back. ‘I cannot change my mind. I cannot!’

‘I know, I know! I did not tell you for that reason, but – we may not see each other again.’

‘Don’t say that!’

Lord Stonehouse smiled. I had seen that smile before, but always believed it was a dream. It was not the smile of a ruthless man who had ordered Eaton to have me thrown into the pit, or to evict Mr Black from his house, but that of the man who had bent over me years ago when I had fainted from the pitch burn. ‘Well, well . . . I believe you are sorry!’ he said to his son.

Richard could not speak then, but flung his arms round his father. I looked away. Richard had hired two men to kill me. It was difficult, almost impossible to believe. I wished I had not come. Not seen this. I had come thinking them to be purely evil men whom, if I could not fight, I might at least outwit. Lord Stonehouse laughed. He had a rich, deep laugh which transformed his face – there was a memory in it of those happier times I had seen in the portrait with his wife Frances. ‘It is strange . . .’ he said.

‘What?’

Choked with emotion, his father’s voice was an almost inaudible murmur. ‘I am proud of you.’

‘Proud?’ Richard grinned in astonishment. ‘I can’t remember you ever saying that to me before.’

‘I can’t remember you ever doing anything you really believed in.’

He stared across at a portrait of Charles I. Richard followed his gaze. If they had looked to one side they would have seen me as I pressed back into the alcove, but they only had eyes for their King. Richard stood up, straight and proud, his voice now welling with emotion. ‘I do believe in him.’

‘I know. I can see that now. I wish, I wish I could, but . . . God go with you, Son.’

‘God bless you, Father.’

Again they embraced, then Lord Stonehouse strode back into his room. Richard walked across the gallery towards the stairs. Every muscle in me tensed. As soon as Richard Stonehouse went downstairs, and before Eaton had a chance to come up, I planned to be in Lord Stonehouse’s room. What I had just witnessed gave me hope. Underneath his ruthlessness was a man of deep feeling, who would, I was convinced, listen to my appeal.

I darted from the alcove as Lord Stonehouse went into his room. I had a glimpse of rich hanging tapestries before I caught sight of Richard Stonehouse returning up the stairs. I froze. Any movement would betray me. I sucked in air, too scared to let it out in case he heard me. Richard entered the room and I heard him say: ‘My hat.’ He came out almost immediately, putting an elaborately feathered contraption on his head as he walked away. I slowly let out air and took in more to still my pounding heart.

He was almost out of sight but, not quite satisfied with the set of the hat, stopped at one of the looking-glass alcoves to adjust it. His fingers stilled. It was a split second before I realised he could see me in the glass. I do not think he quite believed what the glass told him. Perhaps he thought I was a ghost, for I could not move or say a word. I wished I was a ghost, that I could vanish as abruptly as he thought I had appeared. The venom in his eyes held me mute like a rabbit trapped by a snake.

‘You,’ he said softly. ‘You.’

He came close enough to touch the velvet of my doublet. My clothes seemed to act on him like a match to gunpowder. When he had nearly run me down at the royal procession I looked like a laughable freak in my second-hand clothes. Now, while I was no match for Richard in his fastidious dress of a courtier, from the large, florid rosettes on his shoes to the plumes in his hat, I unmistakably had the look of a gentleman. He had half unsheathed his sword when he saw his father standing at the door. Lord Stonehouse’s mouth hung open. He blinked and blinked again. If Richard thought he saw a ghost, his father was convinced of it. I opened my mouth: