The Licence of War (24 page)

Price accepted wine from one of the servants standing like soldiers on parade along the length of the hall. He was sipping at his glass when Beaumont came in with a companion. This must be Beaumont’s old friend, Walter Ingram, thought Price, jealously; never had Beaumont turned such an unguarded, boyish smile on him. Beaumont was dressed not in black but in a suit of olive green that brought out the paler shade of his eyes. Today he looked fit to be a lord’s heir. Ingram had on navy velvet slashed with a sky-blue satin. His was an open, humorous countenance, and his light brown hair was thinning at the crown.

Price addressed Ingram first. He could tell that Beaumont was not pleased to see him: the enchanting smile had gone, and the guard was raised again in those slanted eyes. “May I offer you my congratulations, sir? Edward Price is the name.”

“Thank you, Mr. Price,” said Ingram. “Do you know my brother-in-law?”

“Yes, we are both in Lord Digby’s service. How are you, Beaumont?”

“Frozen to the marrow,” Beaumont replied. “That church is like a bloody grave.”

“Forgive me for intruding,” Price said, “but I have news from his lordship.”

“I hope you’ll attend the banquet, Mr. Price?” Ingram said.

“Thank
you
, sir – with pleasure.”

“Pardon us a moment, Ingram,” Beaumont said. He guided Price out of the hall, into a parlour of more human dimensions, and shut the door.

“Everything’s set for Major Ogle’s release from Winchester House,” Price began, unable to contain his excitement. “Mr. Devenish,
who is a worthy gentleman, told me that Ogle will be let out under supervision of a keeper, towards the end of this month. He’ll then slip away and get himself to Oxford.”

“What else?”

“I’ve had more luck.” Price described his chance encounter with Draycott at Winchester House, leaving out mention of the broadsheet. “And three days ago, I met Clement Veech. He’s hired me as his agent – exactly as Lord Digby had hoped.”

Price expected a
Price, you are priceless
, but Beaumont said only, “Go on.”

“Veech asked me about you. I said I’d ride to Oxford and see what I could find out. He was willing to wait. And here’s the best part. Lord Digby suggested that I feed him
misinformation
, to confuse him, in case he has some idea of our true plans for the City this spring.”

Beaumont laughed mirthlessly. “His lordship is full of plans, each cleverer than the last.”

“Well
I
had one, for him. You heard about Mistress Edwards’ death, and how her house was to be sold? I suggested to Lord Digby that he pay Barlow to keep it as a safe house. Lord Digby thinks—”

“I don’t give a shit what he thinks,” cut in Beaumont, startling Price. “The house isn’t safe any more, and you must steer clear of it. Describe Veech to me,” Beaumont said, in a less scathing tone. “You have a good memory – tell me every detail you can remember.”

Mollified, Price considered. “He’s tall, broad in the chest and brown-haired, with a heavy brow and deep, dark eyes. Though his face is creased as worn leather, there’s a peculiar, soft aspect to his features, and his hands are white and fleshy. He was wearing the same coat as when you glimpsed him: long and baggy, with sleeves that hang low over his wrists. He walks with a bad limp, and he wears a wooden contraption around his knee. When he seated himself, he had to shift his leg into place, as if it were a dead thing. And when he was served his food, he put more salt and pepper on it than I’ve ever seen a man use before, and wolfed it down without breaking a sweat. He’s got a
voice as deep as his eyes, and he speaks quietly, with a sort of menace. But I have him fooled, Beaumont. And I’ll soon have him eating out of my hand.”

“He’s more likely to bite it off. Price, one of the worst mistakes to make in our work is to see in a man what we want to see – it’s a kind of wishful thinking that can lead us to underestimate our enemy. How was Draycott with him? Did they seem amicable?”

“No, but then Draycott barely talked. Veech wouldn’t let him …” Price trailed off.

Two girls had burst into the room, arm in arm. The loveliest of them, a dark blonde, had Beaumont’s Oriental, almond-shaped eyes and fine features. The other was blonder, with a more English cast of face, her expression as pert as the statue’s breasts. Her eyes were on Beaumont.

Beaumont switched to an easy manner. “May I present my sister Elizabeth Ormiston and Mistress Penelope Furnival.”

How unfavourably Sue compared, mused Price, as he examined these gorgeous creatures’ unblemished complexions, the yards of satin in their gowns, and their fashionable pearl necklaces and earrings. “Mr. Edward Price, at your service, ladies,” he said, answering their curtsies with a bow.

“Mr. Price,” said Elizabeth, “you must be my brother’s uninvited guest. Tom told me,” she said to Beaumont, with a little wink.

“I
am
invited now, by the bridegroom himself,” said Price, giving her his most dazzling and adulatory grin. “He asked me to attend the banquet, though I know nearly no one and may be at a loss for conversation – unless some kind person rescues me.”

She stroked her fingers to her hair, an inadvertent gesture that Price read instantly. “We were about to drink to Anne and Ingram. Will you join us, sir?”

“Seward, what ails you?” asked Clarke, as they sat before the last glow of a log fire, with Pusskins sprawled before them on the hearth. “We
are about to start a season of rejoicing in the peace and quiet of my country house, and you are the epitome of gloom.”

Seward could not lie to his friend. “I woke this morning with the certain knowledge that I must look into my bowl, and yet I sense I shall foresee a bad vision.”

“You should have left that thing behind in your rooms. The eve of Christ’s birth is no time for occult dabbling.”

A peal of bells rang out from the village church, as though to emphasise Clarke’s point. “Midnight,” Seward said, redundantly. “Please, Clarke, go to bed and let me do what I must.”

“If I find you here tomorrow morning struck dead by some infernal entity you conjured, I shall deny you Christian rites.”

Seward managed a chuckle. “My spirit would haunt you forever after.”

“It could scare me no more than you do now, you repulsive old skeleton,” said Clarke, heaving himself from his seat, and lumbered upstairs.

As soon as Seward heard Clarke’s rhythmic snores, a sound much like the purr of his cat, he went and filled his bowl from the jar of Fludd’s liquid. He recited a prayer to invoke the angels’ blessing, and waited, anticipating either a vision of the King’s death or of the Spaniard who so resembled Beaumont. He had begun to guess what harm that man might be bringing to England.

In his youth, Beaumont had got one of his mother’s maidservants with child; and as his tutor, Seward had endured a lecture from Lady Beaumont for allowing her son to develop unchaste habits. Bemused by her disproportionate rage over such a common offence, he had urged her to pardon the boy, saying, “Many of us have fallen into similar errors, in our early years.” His mundane words had sparked in her a sudden alarm. She had as fast regained her composure; yet since that day, he had his suspicions about Beaumont’s paternity. Beaumont had never shown any, and as for Lord Beaumont, he would often remark, accurately in Seward’s view, upon the likenesses in character between
himself and his heir. But if a secret existed, it must be kept, for if revealed, it could destroy the family.

The surface of Seward’s bowl was at first a blank. Gradually he perceived a swirl of white: a snowstorm, through which he saw the figure of a man on horseback racing away from flashes of fire. As the man glanced back at whoever was trying to shoot him, his face was impossible to identify amid the gusts of flakes, though his panic was unmistakable. He twisted about and raced on, bent low over the pommel to avoid the shots. Not low enough, for a blazing ball streaked towards him, and he was hit. He swayed in the saddle. Could these be the King’s last moments on earth, Seward wondered, feeling faint with horror. The vision dimmed, only to clear again: the man was now slumped forward, his head lolling and jouncing against the animal’s neck, his arms dangling by its sides. The horse had slowed to a walk, and beside the imprint of its hooves in the snow, there was a trail of blood. Then the vision became obscure, and disappeared altogether.

“Hurry and take your turn, Liz, before we fall asleep,” Anne said, yawning. “This is even more tedious than watching Laurence win.”

In the congenial atmosphere of the parlour, Laurence studied Elizabeth from across the chess board as she fiddled with her ivory knight. He had seen that languorous expression in her ever since the wedding banquet, when she had dedicated most of her attention to Price, and he did not like it. “I was pondering my strategy,” she said, and set her knight down on the board.

“Not there,” cried Ingram, who was playing every alternate move with her against Anne; Laurence had opted to sit out of the game, after they had grumbled so much about his string of victories.

“Too late.” Anne snatched up the knight with a black pawn. “That’s what you get for being moonstruck.”

Elizabeth blushed, but did not deny the charge.

“Moonstruck by whom?” Ingram asked Anne.

“Mr. Edward Price. She’s been conspicuously silent about him for ten whole days – which is how I can tell. Who is he, Laurence?”

It was a fair question, Laurence thought. Had Elizabeth met Price in his Blackman Street garb, or even in his loud purple suit, and had she heard him speak and observed him without his lately acquired gentleman’s manners, she might have been less impressed. The Price to whom she had been introduced was partly a creation of Digby’s, but also the product of Laurence’s own assiduous tutelage, although Price had required no tutor to detect in Elizabeth what her trouble was and how he could appeal to her, which he had, with every possible show of gallantry. “I don’t know him very well,” Laurence said. “He was … helpful to me in some work I had to do, so I gave him a recommendation to Lord Digby.”

“If Liz is moonstruck, you are being purposefully vague,” said Anne. “Where is he from?”

Ingram answered for Laurence. “London, by his speech, and he was trying to hide it.”

“Why should he try to hide the fact that he’s from London?” demanded Elizabeth.

“He might be ashamed of his origins.”

She screwed up her eyes at Ingram. “And that means he is beneath us?”

“What acrobatic logic,” Laurence said.

“
Is
it? Because clearly
you
didn’t appreciate his presence at the banquet, and for that reason dragged him away, when we could have offered him a chamber for the night.”

“I did nothing of the sort – he told me he had to return to Oxford,” said Laurence, which was the opposite of the truth: when Price had begged to stay, hinting that he could not afford accommodation elsewhere, Laurence had supplied him with money, and a servant to deposit him at the town inn.

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Perhaps he was no longer entertained by our company, but didn’t wish to be rude.”

“I don’t believe you. And how did you enjoy entertaining Penelope? If not talking of someone is a measure of attraction, you must be head over heels in love.”

“ ‘Often a silent face has voice and words,.’ ” he quoted, evasively.

“I haven’t heard that line since our time at Merton, Beaumont,” said Ingram. “From Ovid’s
Ars Amatoria
, is it not?”

“Right you are,” Laurence said, recalling the afternoon when Isabella had read to him in her parlour.

Elizabeth heaved a frustrated sigh. “So how soon will you propose to Pen, Laurence?”

“Who’s talking now, you or our mother?”

Elizabeth grabbed her discarded knight and hurled it at him. He caught it in mid-air, and placed it deliberately back on the table.

“Lady Margaret told me Penelope has a twin named Catherine,” intervened Ingram, with his habitual tact. “Did you meet her at Lower Quinton, Beaumont?”

Laurence remembered the young woman who had left the hall as Sir Harold was speaking to him. “No, but I might have seen her briefly.”

“Why wasn’t she at our wedding?” Ingram asked Anne. “Were her parents afraid she might eclipse her sister?”

“Catherine is fragile in health, and extremely shy,” declared Elizabeth, with great authority. “Pen says she’d never want to marry.”

Tom broke up their discussion, marching into the parlour with his cloak and boots blood-splattered from his morning’s hunt. “You should have been with us,” he told Laurence and Ingram, as he pulled off a glove and reached into his doublet. “We shot a buck, and the dogs had themselves a fox. I met the carrier at the gatehouse – this is for you.” He tossed a letter to Laurence. “And there’s one for her ladyship. Adam,” he yelled as he walked out, “fetch me hot water.”

Laurence stuffed the letter into his pocket; it was from Digby, and he had no immediate desire to read it. Then a faint hope arose in
his mind that it might contain news of Isabella, so he excused himself and went up to his chamber. The message was in a code he had designed for Digby.

Digby wrote that the King was much encouraged by correspondence with his London friends, and that a stunning development had emerged for the spring: His Majesty had news of a richer prize than those he was already expecting, around the time of the Royal Assembly’s first sitting in Oxford. Digby provided no further detail. He concluded by wishing the Beaumont household a happy and prosperous yuletide, and urged Laurence to prolong his visit at Chipping Campden for the full twelve days of Christmas. Not a word about Isabella; and the extension of leave meant to Laurence that Digby wanted him out of the way.

In her private office on the third storey of the house, Lady Beaumont was inspecting bills from the feast. She considered the event a success, even if smaller and less elegant than Elizabeth’s; and there had been no instance of gross misbehaviour to provoke any quarrels, as had occurred between her sons last year. Admittedly, however, she found Sir Harold a boor, and Ingram’s aunt an embarrassing relic of old King James’ licentious days. The next wedding to celebrate would be between Laurence and Penelope. Mistress Savage had demonstrated more sense than Lady Beaumont had given the woman credit for, in terminating the affair; and while Laurence had looked woebegone upon his arrival home, he had cheered; and he had behaved courteously towards Penelope. If he was light and reticent in his comments about the girl, that was his nature. He had also pleased Lady Beaumont on a different score: when she had complained to him about the brash young man who was captivating Elizabeth at the banquet, he had shown the fellow out. She had agreed that Elizabeth might receive suitors again, but not until Laurence was married, and definitely not of that kind.