The Licence of War (10 page)

“Well before my day,” Susan said archly.

She was a fetching girl, in her dark red cloak; buxom, yet not fat, and fresh-skinned, with a bloom of pink in her cheeks. She was self-assured, and a bit saucy, too; traits Price appreciated in the female sex. They made conquest more of a challenge. “My father was a patron of Shakespeare’s company,” he went on. “He yearned to tread the boards himself, or so my dearest mother told me before she passed away, though such a thing would have been far beneath his rank.”

“So you
are
a gentleman,” she remarked, as if she had entertained her doubts.

“Yes, but … I was born out of wedlock. My noble father was generous enough to recognise me in his will.”

“Is that how you get by, Ned Price? How you afford your costly clothes?”

He let the question pass, and drew her to an older tomb, with the effigy of a knight on a crumbling stone slab. “He may have fought in the Crusades.”

“Crusades?”

“Long ago, armies from every corner of Christendom rode off to free the Holy Land from the infidel Turks – the Saracens.”

“As in the Saracen’s Head!”

Price nodded. “Thousands perished in the name of religion. There’s war for you.”

“Will you fight in
this
war?”

Her tone was probing; and she was from the Royalist West Country. “If I fight,” he said, in a low voice, “it will be for the King.”

She gulped and fluttered her lashes. “I’d hoped you weren’t a rebel, Ned, but I didn’t dare ask.”

“I didn’t dare admit I was loyal to him, Susan. Or … may I call you Sue?” Price bent to kiss her, and when she offered no resistance, parted her lips with his tongue. A cough from the chancel suspended his explorations; the verger was glaring at them. Price whisked her behind a pillar. “Sue, I’ve adored you since first I laid eyes on you. I am mad for love of you.” He kissed her again, and delved a hand into her cloak.

She shoved him away. “You scapegrace, don’t you mistake me for a loose woman. I was raised in Bristol, a city of sailors who’ve been about the world, and I know something of it. Now you behave yourself.” She offered her arm to him, chin in the air like a queen. “Tell me more stories of these dead folk.”

Price nattered on for a while, amused by her naive responses. But
eventually his supply of stories wore thin, and his stomach began growling. “I’m hungry, Sue,” he said. “Let’s go out to a chophouse.”

“Not yet.” She led him towards a marble wall tablet crowned by winged eagles, and gestured at the names inscribed on it. “Who were they? More poets?”

Price scanned them impatiently. “No, they were St. Saviour’s rectors. You won’t want to hear about …” Then he looked a second time.

“Victor Jeffrey, Anthony Burton, James Pritchard, and Christopher Harris,” recited Price, in a triumphant, singsong voice.

Laurence jumped up from the table where he had been at cards with Cordelia and Perdita, and slapped Price on the back. “Mr. Price, you are priceless.”

“But, Ned, you forgot Clement Veech,” said Cordelia.

“I didn’t – his was the only name missing. Still, isn’t it the most extraordinary coincidence, sir?”

“Yes and no. The man who provided those names was a visitor to this house. He must have known Southwark. Perhaps he went to pray at St. Saviour’s to atone for his sins,” said Laurence, thinking to himself that fornication with whores would have been a mere peccadillo on Radcliff’s part, as compared to attempted regicide.

“Why would he want you to believe the vicars were spies for Parliament?” asked Perdita. “And why add the name of Clement Veech if it wasn’t on that tablet?”

Laurence shrugged. As Seward had said to him, Radcliff was a lying rogue, and the list may have sent him on a wild goose chase. “It could be somewhere else in the church. He could have borrowed it from anyone.”

“I went to see my washerwoman, after I left Sue at the Saracen’s Head,” Price said next. “Harper’s detachment is to quit London within the week. More militia are setting out from across the City.”

“Thank God,” exclaimed Laurence. “Then I’ve not long to wait.”

“Let’s have a proper feast before you go,” suggested Cordelia. “We did that before, when you had to leave, and … who knows when you’ll come back again.”

Laurence emptied his pockets of coins. “Here’s for the feast. And while Sarah’s out, she could buy an ounce of poppy tincture for Mistress Edwards.”

“Few of the apothecaries sell poppy nowadays,” Price told him. “The Bands have commandeered their supplies.”

Cordelia winked at Price. “You’ve got light fingers, Ned – steal it from the Bands.”

Laurence hurried upstairs to inform Mistress Edwards of Price’s news. She was lying fully dressed on her bed, though in a concession to comfort she had removed her teeth. Without them her cheeks were hollow and her mouth puckered as a dried fruit. In one hand she held a small pewter bowl, for expectorating, and in the other a bloodstained handkerchief. “Of course you must seize this opportunity to fly, sir,” she mumbled, once he told her. “And I am glad if we’ve been of help.”

“You have been invaluable, as always,” he said.

She patted her counterpane with a gnarled claw, for him to sit. “So has your money, to us. I may put some of it aside for the girls, for when my time comes.”

“I wish I could have got you your vengeance on Pym.”

“You might yet, though I doubt I’ll live to hear of it.”

Laurence felt his eyes sting, and covered her hand with his; how frail were those old bones to the touch. “What will become of the house?”

“I’ve asked Barlow to sell it and split the proceeds with the girls. Perdie and Cordelia are good for nought else than whoring, and I don’t know what Cordelia will do when her baby’s born. Rosie has family in Chelmsford, out Essex way. As for Sarah, I believe that Barlow might make an honest woman of her, after I die.”

“Barlow and Sarah? I’d never have guessed: what a pair of sly devils,” he joked, to lighten the conversation.

“Now don’t you go teasing Barlow, sir. He’s bashful when it comes to love.”

“Unlike Price,” Laurence remarked, curious to find out more about his new recruit. “Price is sharp, isn’t he.”

“So sharp he’ll cut hisself, if he doesn’t take care.”

“Cordelia said you knew the truth about his origins.”

Mistress Edwards wagged her head. “He doesn’t know it, sir, and nor do I want it known, but he’s my grandson.”

“Why must it be a secret?”

“It was his mother’s wish. My only child, Cicely was. I’d sent her to be raised by decent folk, so she wouldn’t follow in my footsteps. She married young, to a charming scoundrel. Daniel Rawson had three wives hidden away, besides her, and his business was robbing travellers on the roads. He gave a wonderful speech at Tyburn, the day he was hanged.” Mistress Edwards laughed sourly. “Ned’s inherited his charm and his silver tongue, but not his name. Cicely’s father was a Mr. Price, from somewhere in Wales.”

“What happened to your daughter?”

“She came back a widow to Southwark with Ned – they lived apart from me, not at my house. Ned was bright at his lessons, and at first she had hopes for him. But he fell into vicious company. She died broken-hearted – he was seventeen, then. And I thought to myself, if I couldn’t stop him from being a thief and a trickster, I’d keep my eye on him so he wouldn’t end like his dad. I had Barlow take Ned under his wing.” She gave Laurence a piercing look. “Ned’s not turned out all bad. He’s half my daughter’s, and she was a dear, honest lass, God rest her.” Laurence said nothing, waiting. “Would you be a friend to him, sir, and get him out of Barlow’s trade, while he’s still young enough to learn another? He has such promise, and I’d die happy if I knew it wasn’t wasted.”

“I have in fact agreed to something of the kind,” Laurence told her, and kissed her withered cheek; he would not have refused her, anyway.

“Bless you, sir, that is a true relief to me, more than revenge on Pym.” She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief. “Now on to present matters,” she said, in a stronger voice. “The Bands may be marching out, but there’ll be other troops after you – and every citizen loyal to Parliament or to their pockets. Remember my Maud, who married a sea captain and sailed to the Indies?”

“I wouldn’t forget
her
: she was the tallest woman I’ve ever met, and she could pick me off my feet.”

“Open my oak press, and look inside. She left me a patterned gown to cut down for my own use, but I won’t require it where I’m going.” Mistress Edwards watched as he drew out the pieces: bodice, skirt, and sleeves. “Hold them up to yourself.”

Laurence did, and was surprised. “A fit … except Maud was somewhat better endowed in the bosom than I am.”

Mistress Edwards cackled. “We’ll stuff the bodice, and give you a modest collar to your chin. Rose is clever with paint, and you’re a fine-boned, smooth-skinned lad, not a hairy ape like Barlow. You’ll pass nicely, if the troopers keep their distance.”

“If they try any mischief with me, they’ll be sorry for it,” said Laurence, in a high, prudish voice. “I don’t tolerate unwanted advances.”

Mistress Edwards burst into more cackles, triggering a cough that deprived her of speech for some minutes. She spat into her bowl and mopped her lips. “As we’re talking of advances, sir, I hear my girls don’t please you this time round. Cordelia told me you’re to wed your lover. Did she make you swear to be faithful?”

“No, it’s a question of trust, on both sides,” he said. He would have liked to confide in her about his situation with Isabella, as he had in his friend Ingram’s wise aunt, Madam Musgrave. While different in character, she and Mistress Edwards shared a maternal quality singularly lacking in Lady Beaumont.

“If I was you, I’d enjoy the moment,” Mistress Edwards advised. “It’s what everyone should do, what lives dangerously. And you mustn’t
offend a girl like Cordelia. She’s got her pride, sir, as well I know: I’ve had her working at the house for me since she was thirteen.”

On the night that the Trained Bands marched out for Essex’s camp, Barlow called together the household. “You can’t risk travelling through town, Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “so you must go south and cross the Thames beyond the fortifications at Vauxhall. Tomorrow Jem is coming by with a donkey cart. We’ll lay a bale of straw in it, and tuck you down into it as if you was an invalid lady on death’s door. The militia will stop the cart as you pass the fort at the bottom of our street, on the Newington road. Jem will deal with them. Then he’ll let you off at the river. Gain the other side, and you must press southwest, the quickest route out of Parliament territory.”

“I’ll paint your face a yellow shade, sir,” said Rose, “and we can bind your head and most of your face as if you had the toothache, so there won’t be much for the troopers to look at, and you won’t have to speak.”

“Let me ride up front with Jem,” said Cordelia. “He doesn’t have a woman’s wiles.”

“No, it wouldn’t be right, not in your condition,” Laurence objected.

“It’s my belly that will do the trick, sir. I reckon most of the militia have wives of their own.”

Sarah had procured a leg of mutton, oysters and winkles from the Southwark fishwives, a cheese, a quince tart, a cask of Canary, and two bottles of burnt wine. Although Mistress Edwards joined them, Laurence saw that food had become a painful nuisance to her. She sipped a small glass of Canary, and within the hour asked Barlow to carry her upstairs.

As the night progressed, Rose and Cordelia sang a duet, accompanied by Price on a cracked and broken-stringed lute, and Perdita recited a scurrilous verse she had composed itemising the vices of their
Parliamentary callers. “Booze enough for me,” Barlow announced when the cask was dry, and wobbled off to bed. Sarah left discreetly, soon after him. Laurence brought out the burnt wine, a potent distillation that reminded him of the winter he had spent at Simeon’s brothel in The Hague, where there was always a plentiful supply. It sped through his veins like opium, allowing him to forget, temporarily, the strain of the past ten days, and the perils of the morrow.

By the second bottle, Price and Rose had fallen asleep at the fireside. Perdita had reached the melancholy stage of inebriation, her arm draped about Laurence’s shoulders, and Cordelia was nibbling the remains of the tart. Laurence excused himself to visit the privy. When he returned, Perdita and Cordelia had disappeared; to bed, he presumed, and he decided to follow their example.

Up in his chamber he undressed, tripping on his breeches. As he sank gratefully in between the sheets, he heard muffled laughter; and under the bedclothes his fingers met a firm, rounded stomach.

“Awake, my turtledoves,” shouted Price, sauntering through the door without troubling to knock.

Laurence frowned at Cordelia, naked by his side. She squinted back at him, naughtily. “Er … what hour is it?” he asked Price.

“Past eleven o’clock, sir.” Price brandished a little vial. “For Mistress Edwards, courtesy of the Trained Bands. My washerwoman sneaked it out of the surgeon’s chest.”

Laurence sat up, his head pounding, and motioned for Price to throw it over. He caught it and sampled the contents. “Thank you again, Price.”

“Ned, did you say eleven o’clock?” Without heed for modesty, Cordelia leapt out of bed. “Go and wake Perdie and Rose, if they’re still asleep. We must get busy.”

“Busier than you were last night?” sniggered Price. And he shot Laurence a conspiratorial look, as if to say,
We’re all the same beneath the belt
.

However acutely she resented the humiliation of facing Mistress Savage a second time, Lady Beaumont could not retreat to Chipping Campden until she had done everything in her power to wrest Laurence from the woman’s clutches. She knew from Lord Digby that her son was still out of Oxford, and so she chose early morning to knock at Mistress Savage’s door, hoping to find her alone or, better yet, dallying with some other lover.

The young maidservant showed Lady Beaumont into the parlour, which appeared to her a more spacious room than on her last visit just over a fortnight before, and far preferable to her own stuffy lodgings at Merton. On a table between two chairs polished to a shine with beeswax was a pitcher full of late pink and white roses; a pile of books lay nearby, scholarly tomes, some of them in Latin and Greek. The windows gave onto a small garden, inviting in the late October sunshine: a tangle of the same pretty rosebushes crept over Cotswold stone walls, bordered by oak and beech trees that were shedding a few of their autumn leaves. Such tranquil domesticity hinted at a good housekeeper, not a talent she had expected in Mistress Savage, and at an ominously settled state of affairs.