The Licence of War (38 page)

“My lord,” he said to Wilmot, when he had explained Her Majesty’s request, “you must heed Machiavelli’s wisdom, and pick your battles. You went too far in your accusation, and you’re lucky she’s granted you a second chance with the King.”

“He’s afraid of the consequences, should I press my charge. He knows my men would rally behind me.”

“What’s more important to you,” asked Laurence, “winning a war, or humiliating an officer whose troops you’ll have to govern in your regiment? And why create more enemies in Council? Why prejudice
your friendship with the Queen, and the marriage that she’s helped to arrange for you?”

Wilmot was silent, tugging on his moustache. At length he said, “Mark my words, Beaumont, it’s the last time I’ll compromise my honour and my integrity as a general, or as a man. And in future, I insist that you stand by me
as my friend
, even if you think I’ve picked the wrong battle.” Laurence watched over Wilmot’s shoulder as he scribbled a paragraph, signed his name, and set his seal on it. “Mawson can take it to Oxford. You and I have some drinking to do.”

Sentries waved the shabby, bearded peddler through the Hackney Road fortifications without troubling to search his basket of ribbons, threads, pins, and needles. Price passed as unremarked through the Cheapside crowds and westwards along Paternoster Row towards Ludgate. But when he got to the Saracen’s Head, as a precaution he sneaked round to the kitchen door, which was propped open for the benefit of the cooks labouring over their bubbling pots and spitting roasts.

“Good morning to you, sirs,” he addressed them, in a wheedling voice. “Is Mistress Sprye at work today?”

“She ain’t been here in over a month,” said one of the cooks. “Mr. Nunn threw her out.”

Price felt a twinge of guilt: he could guess why. “Where did she go?”

“To the devil, as should you.”

Price walked east again towards Fish Street, though he thought it more likely that Sue had gone to her family in Bristol, or as he sincerely hoped, had acquired a new admirer. The tenement building repulsed him more than on the winter day he had left it; the same mob of hideous, malnourished children were playing in the yard, screeching as they kicked about an inflated pig’s bladder. One of them pointed at him and chanted jeeringly, “Scarecrow, scarecrow!”

He turned into the passageway, and knocked on the door. “Is anyone in?” he called, not very loudly.

“Who’s there?”

His heart plummeted. “It’s me, Ned.”

Sue opened, and gawped at him. She was clad in the gown she had worn on their tour of St. Saviour’s Church, and he could detect the swell of belly at the front of her skirts. She had lost her country complexion, though not the sparkle in her eyes. “Don’t you look a sight, Ned – I’d never have known you in those rags, with that ugly fringe of beard on your chin.”

“It’s my disguise. It’s dangerous for me to be here, Sue – Parliament’s spies will be searching for me.”

She shut the door, and touched her stomach. “Still, it’s high time you were back.” Before he could stop her, she embraced him, knocking off his hat.

“Easy there!” He dumped his basket on the floor, and took a seat on the bed. Dismal beyond belief, he thought, surveying the stained walls and ceiling, the cracked horn pane window, and her laundry hung on a line of rope. “How’ve you been, Sue?”

“Mr. Nunn wouldn’t keep me because of the morning sickness,” she said, sitting down heavily next to Price. “He paid me a week’s wages, and said he was sorry.”

“
Sorry?
” echoed Price. “The heartless wretch.”

“Where’ve
you
been, Ned? In Oxford?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“Did your Mr. Beaumont tell how he met me at the Saracen’s Head?” Price nodded. “At first I didn’t believe it could be him – he’s as black as one of them heathen mariners that live by the docks. And the way he spoke wasn’t as I’d expected from the son of a lord. He was kind to me, though: he gave me money and advised me to get better lodgings.”

Beaumont had not mentioned this to him, Price noted. “Why didn’t you, then?”

“To save the money for our wedding, of course. And after Mr. Nunn dismissed me, I was afraid to move in case you wouldn’t
be able find me. I hate it here, Ned,” she confessed, her brave front crumbling. “And I’m sick of those noisy brats. They did for the simpleton boy – he jumped in the river when they were chasing him and drowned, God rest his soul.” She reached for Price’s hand. “Thank heaven you’ve come for me, or I might follow his example.”

“The fact is, I shouldn’t have come at all,” Price said, in a sombre tone, sliding his hand from hers to pull off his coat. “Lord Digby would fly into a rage if he knew.”

“Who’s Lord Digby?”

“His Majesty’s Secretary of State. Mr. Beaumont and I are his agents.”

“Ooh Ned, you
have
risen in the world!”

Price ripped apart the coat lining and extracted forty pounds in coin, piling it into her lap. “This is for you and the child, Sue. You’ll have more when I can send it from Oxford. But as I said, I daren’t stay with you here.”

Nervousness crept into Sue’s eyes. “A couple of men were in the taproom just over two weeks after I met Mr. Beaumont: a Mr. Veech and a Mr. Draycott. Mr. Veech said they were friends of yours, and that you’d gone to Oxford on work for him. He asked if you’d ever talked to me of Mr. Beaumont.”

“What did you say?” he demanded, gripping her arm.

“That you hadn’t. Then he said he had a hundred pounds for you, and you should call on him to get it. Who are they, Ned?”

“No friends of mine.” Price shivered and released his grip. “Veech is a spy for Parliament, and Draycott answers to him. That’s why I mustn’t enter the City again.”

“You won’t have to. We’ll go to Oxford together and be married there. We can set ourselves up nicely before the child is born.”

Price had prepared his speech. “Sue, what was between us was an error for which I accept entire responsibility. But the truth is that I can’t marry you.”

Her expression hardened. “Have you another wife?”

For a moment, Price considered lying. “No.”

“Then you owe it to me to abide by your promise.”

“Even the King can’t abide by his promises these days! We’re a country at war, and I’m in the thick of it.”

“You were in the thick of it when you courted me.”

“Not as I am now. You deserve a life happier and more secure than you’d have with me – you and the child.”

“It’s
our
child, Ned.”

“With your fine qualities, you’ll have a string of suitors vying for you,” Price breezed on. “You need a man with a decent trade, not that of a spy, which is what I am. We’re not so different from thieves, us spies,” he added, borrowing Beaumont’s words.

“You
are
a thief – you stole my virtue.”

“And I can’t wrong you more than I already have. I’m thinking of your welfare. You may not understand that today, but you’ll be grateful to me in time.”

“Grateful?” she repeated, after a deafening pause. “To be used for your pleasure and tossed aside?”

“Now that’s unfair. I could have written to you, to say goodbye. I risked my life to tell you to your face, and help you out with money.” She glared at him and next at the coins, then brushed them from her lap as though they were soiling her. “Oh Sue,” he admonished; some had rolled under the bed. He knelt to hunt for them but was loath to fumble in the litter of mouse droppings, and the accumulated dust and grime. “Have you got a broom?” he asked, straightening up.

“No, I’ve something else for you.” A wave of tepid fluid stung him in the eyes. Sue was brandishing an empty chamber pot. As he blinked and spluttered, she threw aside the pot, seized a pewter candlestick and crashed it into the bridge of his nose. Blood gushed instantly from his nostrils and he howled in pain.

“Will you stop,” he yelled, as she raised the candlestick for a second blow.

“If it wouldn’t kill me I’d tear your child from my womb,” she shouted. “A pox on you, you low deceiving rascal. Get out.”

Staggering to his feet, Price snatched his coat and hat and basket of wares, and rushed to the door. He whipped it open, but not fast enough: the candlestick struck him squarely between the shoulder blades. He moaned and raced out across the yard clutching his free hand over his nose. The children doubled up with laughter and chorused, “Scarecrow, scarecrow!”

At the corner of Fish and Thames Streets, he stumbled over to a water trough, nudged away the horse that was drinking from it, and plunged his head in, gasping as he surfaced, having to breathe through his mouth. Gingerly he fingered the damage: his nose was broken. When the ripples in the barrel subsided and he saw his reflection in the water, he started to weep. “Stupid, goddamned fool that I am, no better than a dog returning to its vomit,” he blubbered, picking up his basket, and traipsed towards the Strand. He would lurk there until dusk, when the patrols thinned, and he could approach the Hallam residence.

“Why should Sir Montague Hallam wish you to sup with him, Giles?” inquired Judith, as she sponged a stain from his Sunday doublet. “I thought your business was finished more than a month ago when he signed the contract with Parliament.”

“He has some other legal issue to discuss,” replied Draycott, hating the falsehood. He had torn up Sir Montague’s note, an apology for the delayed invitation: Lady Isabella had been called to a sick friend, and was only recently back in London.

“Is this connected with your duties for Mr. St. John?”

“I’ll find out when I see him, Judith.”

“I wonder sometimes about those duties, you are so reticent about them.”

“I am reticent on St. John’s order,” said Draycott; thank God that, as yet, he had never had to speak to her again of Veech.

“It seems to me he pays you a great deal for very little work.”

“Should I complain?”

“Not when we’re still paying off bills,” she said ruefully, setting aside the sponge.

“There may be more work ahead that will keep me busy of an evening. With the extra money, you could hire a lady companion to sit up with you, as the children’s nurse goes early to bed.”

“Why would I sit up, Giles, unless I worried that you might not come home?”

“No need, then.”

He dressed, combed his hair, and sprinkled a few drops of rosewater onto the palms of his hands to dab on his freshly shaven jaw. How appalled she would be if she knew what Veech had ordered him to do; and did the righteous Mr. St. John know?

Draycott tried to kiss her at the door, but she averted her face. “I’ll prepare the spare chamber for you – you may be late.”

“I can snuggle into our bed.”

“Please, Giles, I’ve slept so badly ever since Geoffrey died. I had intended to beg of you …”

“What, my dear? Tell me – whatever can I do for you,” he said, taking her in his arms.

“Do not … come to me at night.”

“I haven’t, Judith, in as long as we’ve been mourning, though it might have solaced us. Are you afraid to get another child?” he asked, remembering how he had felt. Time had blunted the edges of his bitterness, and now he thought a new life would bring them closer together; he missed his wife’s body, as much out of affection as habit.

“I don’t wish to have
any
more children.”

The finality in her voice shocked him. “You would contravene God’s law and my rights as your husband.”

“That’s why I am begging. You can say no.”

He clapped on his hat. “It’s not the moment to talk. Be sure and fasten the bolts on the windows, and don’t answer the door. I promise not to disturb you tonight.”

“Thank you, Giles,” she said, as if he had accepted her wish.

——

The gallery looked cosier to Draycott on this mild April evening, as he waited for Sir Montague and Lady Isabella. Candles glowed in sconces on the walls, and the vivid colours of the tapestries were muted by shadow. To distract himself from thinking about Judith, he began to peruse a stack of books on the window seat. They were in Latin; Sir Montague was schooled in more than wine, he supposed. The slenderest of them, bound in purple calfskin and embossed with gilt letters, was Ovid’s
Remedia Amoris
. During his Cambridge days, he had read
The Metamorphoses
, though his tutor had deemed some of Ovid’s works immoral and had forbidden them to the students. Intrigued by the title, Draycott opened the book. On the flyleaf was a handwritten dedication in flowery script: “In the hope that you may be inspired to forget the past and embrace the future. I remain, as ever, your faithful George, Lord Digby,” and beneath it, “Christmastide, 1643.”

Draycott snapped the book shut. Sir Montague’s faithful George was one of Parliament’s chief enemies, and Veech might call this evidence of Sir Montague’s guilt in the affair of the barrels. Or was it? They knew Sir Montague did trade with Oxford Royalists. But
faithful George
hinted at more than a business relationship. And what past was Lord Digby urging him to forget?

Draycott heard footsteps and the swish of skirts. He restored the book to the pile and hurried to station himself in front of Lady Isabella’s favourite tapestry, pretending to admire it.

She entered with Lucy. “Mr. Draycott, Sir Montague had an unexpected appointment in Whitehall, and had no chance to send you word. He was obliged to go out: the Earl of Pembroke is a valued customer, and most partial to my husband’s claret.”

“No matter, your ladyship,” Draycott said. “I’ll look forward to the pleasure of his company on some other occasion.”

“Please stay, sir, if
my
company won’t bore you. Over these past weeks I attended a beloved friend in his last illness, and I am in want of cheerful conversation.”

He reconsidered, noticing the hollowness to her cheeks, and the shadows beneath her eyes. “Then I shall, my lady, and I am sorry for your loss.”

“Our sorrows can’t compare: you suffered the death of a child, while my dear Mr. Cotterell was an old man who had lived a fruitful and contented life. Now, let us eat.”