Sea Change (29 page)

The move from Cat and Dog Yard to Leicester Fields was accomplished with fewer difficulties than Spandrel's mother seemed to have anticipated. Her meticulous oversight of the removal man's work suggested that she half-expected some disaster to intervene before she could lay claim to being mistress of a respectable household at a reputable address. But, as the removal man muttered at one point, 'Nobody's going to make off with any of this,' nodding towards a cartload of their possessions. 'I've seen better stuff dumped in the Fleet Ditch.'

If Mrs Spandrel had overheard such insolence, she might have boxed the fellow's ears. Spandrel, for his part, would probably have told him to button his lip, had he been less preoccupied with a disaster whose proportions threatened to eclipse his mother's worst fears. 'Don't look so miserable,' she rebuked him as they stood together in their new and sparsely furnished drawing-room. 'I'll soon have this fit for the Princess of Wales to take tea in.'

'I'm sure you will, Ma,' Spandrel managed to say. And sure he was. But that did not make him any less miserable. 'Happy St George's Day.'

'Well, it's a happier one than I thought I'd ever see again, I'll say that.'

'Me too.'

'Then put a smile on your face, boy. And help me unpack.'

'I can't. I have to go out.'

'I might have known. Why?'

'Let's just say…' He put together some kind of a smile. 'I have to see a man about a dragon.'

Whether the congregation for evensong at Westminster Abbey that afternoon was larger because it was St George's Day Spandrel had no way to tell, since he had only ever been a reluctant churchgoer at best and then only on Sunday mornings. Evensong, especially in the august surroundings of Westminster Abbey, was for him a strange experience. His atheistical tendencies would not have made it an agreeable one in any circumstances. The circumstances that had led to his attendance, however, were such as to override religious scruples. What would have been merely disagreeable became instead an ordeal.

The nave was well filled with worshippers and Dean Atterbury made his entrance only after the choir had filed in. Spandrel caught a glimpse of an erect, sombre-faced figure in flowing robes soon lost to him behind a pillar. Even a glimpse was subsequently denied him by the Dean's position in the choir-stalls in relation to Spandrel's own beyond the screen.

But the Dean's voice was denied no-one. It tolled sonorously, like a bell, echoing in the vaulted roof. 'When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.' What did Atterbury consider lawful and right? Spandrel wondered. Who was the wicked man? 'Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and weaknesses.' Sins and weaknesses. Yes. They were what had brought Spandrel to this pass. And very possibly the Dean too. 'Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness, and live; and hath given power and commandment to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins…'

'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.'

'Amen.' Evensong was at an end, after nearly an hour of psalms and lessons and prayers. Most of the congregation was still kneeling, but the Dean was already leading the choir out. Spandrel's long-awaited chance had come, a chance he had no choice but to take. He had deliberately sat at the end of a pew and now rose and walked rapidly and unnoticed across the south aisle to the door that led out into the cloister next to the Deanery.

There was a pearly early evening light in the close. The choir was progressing round the cloisters towards the school. But the Dean, attended by a flock of chaplains, was bearing down on Spandrel, or rather on the side-entrance to the Deanery, next to which Spandrel had emerged from the Abbey.

'My lord,' he said, standing his ground. 'I must speak to you.'

Atterbury stopped so abruptly that several of the chaplains carried on past him, only to have to scuttle back when they realized what had happened. One of them advanced menacingly on Spandrel, as if intending to remove him from the Dean's path. But Atterbury held up a restraining hand. 'One moment, Kelly.' He examined Spandrel through cool blue eyes. 'Well?'

'It is a matter of the utmost importance, my lord. Affecting … a subject close to your heart.'

'What subject?'

'I cannot… speak of it openly.'

'Can you not?' Atterbury thought for a moment, then said, 'Deal with this, Kelly,' before sweeping past Spandrel and into the Deanery.

'But my—'

Kelly's broad black-robed back was suddenly between Spandrel and his quarry. The Deanery door slammed shut. The Dean and his retinue were gone. Save only Kelly, who slowly turned and gazed down at Spandrel from a considerable height, before cocking one bushy eyebrow and baring a fine set of teeth in what might as easily have been a snarl as a smile. 'Your name?'

'William Spandrel.'

'Your business with the Dean?'

'Is, begging your pardon, sir, with the Dean alone.'

'I'm the Dean's ears and eyes.'

'Even so—'

'I'll not bandy words with you, sir.' Spandrel was suddenly seized by the collar and hauled onto tiptoe in an unclerically muscular grasp. 'I am the Reverend George Kelly, confidential secretary to my lord the Dean and Bishop. What you tell me you tell him. And tell me you will.'

'Very well. I…' Slowly, Spandrel was lowered back to the ground. His collar was released. 'I'm sorry. I… didn't

'Out with it.'

'It concerns…' Spandrel took a deep breath. He was about to plunge into waters of unknown depth. 'The cause.'

'What cause might that be?'

'There is surely only one.'

'Hah! And so there is.' Kelly gave Spandrel a cuff to the shoulder that nearly felled him. 'Well, we have the cloister to ourselves. I'll allow you one circuit to tell your tale. One only, mind. I have no time to waste.'

'Nor have I, sir.' They started walking. And Spandrel started talking. But his thoughts travelled faster than his words. Walpole had told him to speak to Atterbury. Intermediaries, however confidential, however trusted, would not suffice. Yet Kelly would know half a story for the fraction it was. He would not be fobbed off, nor easily taken in. He had to be given enough — but not too much. 'I'm placed in a difficult position. I'm instructed to deliver an article to the Dean in person.'

'Instructed by whom?'

'The late Earl of Sunderland.'

'And what were you to the Earl?'

'Nothing. I… came to his attention.'

'By reason of the article you're charged to deliver?'

'You could say so, yes.'

'What is the article?'

'Something that will make the people of this country cry out for the restoration of King James.'

'And what is that?'

'The secret account-book of the chief cashier of the South Sea Company.'

'Hah!' Kelly pulled up and pushed Spandrel back against a pillar. 'You expect me to believe that?'

'It's true. I can give the Dean the Green Book.'

'And what will that avail him?'

'It lists all the people the company bribed. Up to and including… the Elector of Hanover.'

'“The Elector of Hanover.” You choose your words like a man picking lice, Spandrel. What's the meaning of them?'

'The meaning's clear.' Spandrel looked Kelly in the eye. 'I have the Green Book. And with Sunderland dead, no-one knows I have it. Except you.'

'Why should Sunderland have entrusted such a thing to you?'

'Of all people, you mean?'

'Yes. Of all people.'

'I'll explain that to the Dean. I can answer all his questions. And I can give him what the King needs more than any number of loyal priests.'

'What does he need?'

'Ammunition. To fire a cannonade that will blast the Elector back to Hanover, where he belongs, and clear the way' — Spandrel nodded towards the Abbey — 'for a coronation.'

Kelly stared at Spandrel long and hard. Then a priest appeared in the far corner of the cloister and moved along the walk parallel to the one they were standing in. Kelly followed him with his eyes. A door opened and closed. He was gone.

'I must see the Dean.'

'But must the Dean see you? It's for him to say.'

'And for you to advise.'

'As I will.' Kelly nodded thoughtfully. 'Be at the Spread Eagle in Tothill Street this time tomorrow. I'll bring you your answer there.'

'But—'

'Be there.' Kelly stabbed Spandrel in the chest with a powerful thrust of his forefinger. 'That's all I have to say.'

Spandrel returned to Leicester Fields that evening by way of several inns other than the Spread Eagle. He fell to wishing that the matter could have been settled, one way or the other, rather than deferred for another twenty-four hours. Even then, there was no saying that his meeting with Atterbury, if he was granted one, would not be on yet a subsequent occasion. He did not seriously doubt that such a meeting would take place eventually. The lure was too strong for a true Jacobite to resist. But when would it be? And what would it yield? The uncertainty gnawed at him like hunger. And, as with hunger, time only made it gnaw the worse.

He was almost grateful to be able to spend most of the next day arguing with Crabbe, the engraver, over how much interest should be added to the long outstanding payment due for the completed sheets of the map. Crabbe drove a hard bargain, but had taken good care of the sheets and wished Spandrel well, though with a typically gloomy qualification. 'This is no time to be venturing into the market, young man. You'll get no subscribers till things look up. And it'd be best to wait until they do.' He was probably right. But Spandrel could not presently see more than a matter of days into the future. And he did not care for what those days promised to contain. He thanked Crabbe for the advice and went on his way.

Spandrel's mother was busy interviewing candidates for the post of maid-of-all-work in her new household when Spandrel arrived home. He took the sheets into his room and sat with them in the thinning late afternoon light, casting his eye over the intricately drawn and precisely scaled patterns of parks and streets and squares and alleys — and his memory across the weeks and months of labour needed to produce them. A map, his father had once said, is a picture of a city without its inhabitants. And how beautiful it looked without them, how clean and elegant. The people who had made the city were also those who had marred it. And even a mapmaker had to live among them. He could not walk the empty ways he had drawn. No-one could.

The Spread Eagle was one of several coaching inns serving the route from Westminster west out of the city. Its proximity to the Abbey made it a logical enough choice, even though Spandrel was surprised that a priest should nominate an inn as a rendezvous. But the Reverend Kelly was about as unpriestly as could be imagined, so the surprise was muted. Waiting in the tap-room that evening, Spandrel found himself wondering whether Atterbury employed Kelly more for the power of his arm than the depth of his piety. Perhaps, if he really was as busy a plotter as he was a preacher, he had need of such men about him.

Sure enough, when Kelly ambled in, he looked more like a half-pay army officer than a bishop's secretary. There was nothing remotely clerical in his dress and the set of his powerful shoulders, taken together with his swaggering gait, confirmed that humility was not a prominent feature of his character. He ignored Spandrel at first, preferring to buy a drink and exchange several guffawing words with the tapster before moving to speak to some lounging fellow in a corner. Then both men walked across to Spandrel's table.

'Good evening, Spandrel,' said Kelly, in a genial growl. 'This is a friend of mine, Mr Layton.'

Mr Layton was a smaller, less imposing figure than Kelly, with quick, darting eyes and a louche smile. He had been flirting with the pot-girl earlier. Spandrel had paid him no heed. But clearly Layton had paid him considerable heed.

'Mr Layton tells me you came alone and at the agreed time,' Kelly continued. 'That's reassuring.'

'No-one else is involved in this,' said Spandrel. 'I told you that.'

'Indeed you did. You also told me you had an article to deliver to my employer.'

'Yet you came empty-handed,' said Layton, with a feral twitch to his smile.

'You came without your employer.'

'You'd hardly expect a bishop to set foot in a taproom,' countered Kelly.

'Is he willing to see me?'

'He wants to see what you have for him, certainly.'

'So he can, when we've agreed terms.'

'Terms, is it?' Layton snorted. 'I warned you, George. The fellow's out for what he can get.'

'Sunderland's dead.' Spandrel smiled gamely. 'I'm no longer bound by his instructions.'

'How much do you want?' asked Kelly, mildly enough, as if merely curious.