The Licence of War (48 page)

“My lady, begging your pardon,” said Stanton, “you cannot deny him access: he has the authority.”

Veech was surveying her as he might a pox-ridden drab who had tried to proposition him. “How many apartments are there?”

“The gallery here, a dining parlour, and the bedchambers – mine, my husband’s, and one more for our guests – and my husband’s dressing closet and study. Downstairs are the servants’ quarters, the kitchen, scullery, and pantry, and the privy offices. And beneath are Sir Montague’s cellars, a storeroom, and the cesspit.”

Veech limped out, and Draycott heard him telling the men, “Start with the guest bedchamber.” He returned and meandered about the gallery, lifting the tapestries and brocade curtains to squint behind them. He halted by a table, on which a pile of books was tidily stacked, and opened one book after another. “Latin and Greek, my lady! I thought your husband was a man of commerce.”

“Most of those are gifts from his patrons,” she said. “He cannot decline them, even if he has no aptitude for languages.”

Veech held each book by its bindings and smacked it against the edge of the table so that the leather cover ripped from the spine. He rifled through the pages, and dumped book upon book onto the floor by her feet; no
Remedia Amoris
, Draycott was relieved to notice.

“Mr. Veech, I must object!” cried Stanton, but he was interrupted by someone yelling from below.

“Corporal Stanton, sir, we’ve nabbed a thief.”

Stanton beetled his brows at Veech and stalked out. “You come, too,” Veech said firmly to Draycott.

On the front steps, two soldiers were restraining a thickset man whose wrists were tied together. He was crimson with indignation. “I know the rascal,” Stanton said. “He’s Peter Barlow of Southwark parish, and has served more than a few sentences in gaol as a housebreaker.”

“You can have no honest reason to be in this neighbourhood,” snarled Veech. Then he drew Draycott aside. “He must be the same Barlow that lived at the old bawd Mistress Edwards’ house, and was Edward Price’s friend.”

“Is it against the law to walk the City freely?” Barlow protested; and the instant he spoke, Draycott identified him as the outraged citizen in Blackman Street, on the night of Beaumont’s escape.

“Have you seen him before, Mr. Draycott?” asked Veech.

Barlow met Draycott’s eyes without flinching. “No,” said Draycott, appreciating the irony: Veech would have been with him when he knocked on Barlow’s door, had Beaumont not fired that crippling shot.

“I admit, I did mill kens in the past,” Barlow said, “but I’ve been clean and above board these six long years, and there’s nowt to criminate me here. You must state your charge, or let me go.”

“He’s right, Corporal,” Draycott said.

One of the soldiers passed Stanton a cloth sack. “He threw it into the bushes as we took him, sir.”

Veech tore the sack from Stanton’s grip and pulled out of it a loaf of bread with a tiny corner nibbled away, as if by a mouse. He dug his fingers into the nibbled corner and withdrew a tight roll of paper that he unfurled; and his mouth stretched into a grin. He gave the paper to Draycott.

“What does this mean?” said Draycott, privately horrified: the minute lines of script upon it resembled the cipher of the documents he and Lady Isabella had burnt.

Veech spoke into his ear. “Did you not have a look inside the packet I gave you?”

“No. Why would I?”

Veech pointed at the script. “The figure is Lord Digby’s, copied by me from a cache of his letters Parliament had seized, at the outbreak of the war. And I invented as evidence against her ladyship a most treasonous conspiracy, inspired by her husband’s barrels and poor Sir Everard, Digby’s ancestor. She was watching you, sir, when you imagined yourself alone in the gallery. She got her hands on that packet and wrote out the contents while you slept.” Veech was correct, Draycott realised, except in the details; but why had she not told him
in the morning? So that was the cause of her tormented look! Did she mistrust him, or could
he
no longer trust
her
? He thought he might faint. His belly cramped, and he vomited onto the pavement. “You’re not to blame she had the better of you,” Veech said cheerfully. “Now we have her, and I’ll soon learn where Barlow was to deliver his loaf of bread. Corporal,” Veech said in a louder voice to Stanton, “convey the thief under guard to Derby House.” Stanton was eyeing them both uneasily. “Not a word to her about Barlow and our discovery,” Veech said to Draycott. “Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll show you how she spied on you.”

They found Lady Isabella standing by the fireplace with her arm around Lucy, whose goggle-eyed fear reflected Draycott’s own. “I must talk to Corporal Stanton,” Lady Isabella said. “Where is he?”

Veech ignored her. “Mr. Draycott, lift up that tapestry of the Devil tempting Jesus, and see what’s behind it.”

Draycott obeyed. There were two holes in the wood-panelled wall, and in the fabric of the tapestry, two holes cut to correspond. Without Veech’s prompting, as if in a hateful dream, he went from the gallery into the parlour and reached up to the canvas of Sir Montague’s father. He ran his fingers over the eyes, and touched two grooves: the original eyes had been excised, and a slat painted to match inserted underneath. He left the parlour, to study the panelled wall between it and the gallery. When he pressed it with both hands, it shifted, and a door the span of his shoulders creaked wide. On the inner side of the door was a metal bolt. He squeezed into the space. Thin shafts of light from the gallery allowed him to locate, on the opposite wall, a hinged slat. He slid it away: a perfect view of the parlour; and through the holes facing the gallery, also a perfect view. And he remembered the eyes he had seen move, and the sneeze that had stopped his embraces.

He stumbled out and into the gallery, feeling nauseous again. “Who was hiding there last night?” he demanded of Lady Isabella, though he wanted to know as well about those other occasions.

“No one. It is my husband’s secret,” she confessed, with a mixture of shame and disgust. “He cannot have release like most men. He must view others, covertly, to achieve it. Before our marriage, he would hire pimps and whores to perform lewd acts for him while he looked on.”

Veech was laughing. “How the idle rich amuse themselves, eh, Mr. Draycott? My lady,” he said in a new, polite manner, “your distress gives me pause for thought. If you will write and sign a declaration that neither you nor Sir Montague is involved in any conspiracy against Parliament, I’ll postpone my inquiries until he is home.”

“I shall be pleased to deny the spurious charge, Mr. Veech, if you would order
all
of your men to quit this house at once. Including you, sir,” she added, to Draycott.

“The troopers can go, my lady,” said Veech, “and Mr. Draycott and I will stay only to supervise the phrasing of your declaration. It must be unequivocal.” He went out to the head of the stair, and began shouting for the troops to leave.

With his back to the doors, Draycott bounded over to Lady Isabella and mouthed, “Veech has Barlow and your copy of the evidence. All he needs now to convict you is a sample of your writing.”

“Does he suspect
you
?” she mouthed.

“No – he thinks you saw me hide the packet.
I lied to him that I had planted it
.”

Her expression changed, and she spoke in a cold, clear tone. “I wonder how you live with yourself, Mr. Draycott, after your pretence of affection towards me.”

“I might wonder the same of you,” Draycott retorted, imitating her humiliated distaste. He swung round; Veech was in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.

“Get your mistress pen and paper,” Veech told Lucy. “Why the long face, sir?” he said amiably to Draycott. “Your work here is almost done.”

“What a shit hole,” Tom said; he and Laurence were gazing up at the dingy plastered front and broken windows of the Green Dragon Inn.

“Tom,” said Laurence, “don’t let him aggravate you, and don’t be surprised by what I might say to him. And keep that sword of yours sheathed, unless we’re attacked first.”

He walked ahead of Tom into the close, smoke-filled taproom. War had not changed life for this underbelly of society: a dismal crew were tippling in an atmosphere pervaded by the stink of rancid fat, cheap ale, and sweat. A girl pranced on a table to the tune of a pipe and a tin drum, her breasts bared and her skirts hiked to the thighs; and in the near corner, a grizzled veteran puked onto the floor, to the satisfaction of a dog that lapped at the spreading pool.

Tom nudged Laurence’s elbow. “That’s his valet, Diego, over there.”

Diego beckoned them through the taproom into a quieter, brighter chamber. In an alcove to one side was a small table lit by a branched candlestick where a dark gentleman sat by himself. “
Los hermanos Beaumont
,” Diego announced, and went back into the taproom.

Nothing could have prepared Laurence for the shock as Antonio de Zamora stood up and bowed. Dressed in a soldier’s leather coat with a plain white collar at his neck, and high riding boots, de Zamora wore a sword of English design at his hip. His full head of hair, cropped like Diego’s, was greying, as were his beard and moustache, and he was a little shorter than Laurence and a shade thicker through the waist. Yet they had the same high cheekbones and flare to their nostrils, and around de Zamora’s mouth were etched the same smile lines that Laurence saw when he looked in a glass; and, most strikingly, they had the same green eyes.

He appeared as taken aback by the sight of Laurence. Then he beamed. “Laurence and Thomas, I am beyond words to express my joy,” he said, in accented though fluent English. “Pray sit with me, sirs. I cannot recommend the food, but I have ordered wine to celebrate.”
He motioned them to a bench, and distributed the wine. “Here’s to your very good health on our special night.”

“And to yours, Don Antonio,” said Laurence.

“Your health,” Tom said curtly.

De Zamora was studying Laurence, fascinated. “Did you get these in the war abroad?” He stroked his own cheekbone and lower lip where Laurence’s were scarred.

“No, sir,” Laurence replied, wondering what Tom told the man about him.

De Zamora next inspected the deeper scar on Laurence’s left wrist, as if he had known where to locate it. “And how did you get
this
one?”

“From a game of cards.” Laurence switched to Spanish. “Is it your first visit to England, Don Antonio?”

De Zamora switched also. “Yes, and I am sorry to say I find your country uncongenial. The sun has no warmth, the cooking is tasteless, and the wine worse than vinegar. The streets smell of ordure which even your incessant rains don’t clear away. Englishmen are generally coarse-featured and ugly. There are a few pretty women, but there can be few chaste ones – the humblest orange seller in El Andaluz would blush at their immodest comportment.”

“
I
have no objection to it,” Laurence said, shrugging.

“Were you ever in Spain?”

“Two years ago, after I grew tired of fighting in the Low Countries.”

“Whereabouts did you travel?”

“From the Pyrenees to Cádiz.”

“A long way. Did you visit Seville?”

“Alas not, sir.”

De Zamora winked at him. “The
sevillanas
are the comeliest in all of Spain. Some say it is because of their pure stock.”

“Pure stock? One may talk of that in horses, but not in men and women.”

“I beg to disagree. For example, the royal house of Hapsburg has interbred for generations to ensure the purity of their line.”

“A dubious practice, to judge by the size of their chins.”

De Zamora guffawed, and slammed his cup on the table. “Oh yes, they have jaws like lanterns! Thank God there were no such deformities in
our
family. Did my cousin, your mother, ever confide in you the rumour that somewhere in the past, infidel blood had sullied her father’s noble strain?”

Laurence recalled what old Yusuf had said, on that uncanny night back in Cádiz:
I should call you a Moor like myself, if it would not offend you
. “I hope the rumour is true,” he said. “I’ve inherited an immense respect for the Moors from my own father.”

“From your
father
, eh? You’d be a dead man if you said that in Spain.”

“Then there are some benefits to living in my uncongenial country.”

“You don’t wear a sword. Why is that?”

“It keeps me out of trouble.”

“Ah yes, I gather duelling is a punishable offence in Oxford.”

Laurence did not correct the misinterpretation; evidently de Zamora had not heard about his clumsiness with a rapier. “Don Antonio, my brother says that you journeyed here because of
your
brother, Jorge, and a request he made to you on his deathbed.”

Sobering quickly, de Zamora produced from his doublet a creased paper and extended it to Laurence. “Did Thomas tell you the substance of this confession?”

“Yes, more or less.” De Zamora frowned, as if disconcerted by Laurence’s calm. “Is it in your brother’s hand?” Laurence inquired.

“The initial part. The rest he dictated to Fray Luis Iglesia, who administered to him the last sacrament. He was barely able to sign, as you can see.”

Laurence advanced the candlestick, and took his time to read. “He must have been grateful to have had his sins remitted,” he said, as he gave the document back to de Zamora; he could sense Tom stirring on the bench, and jogged his thigh surreptitiously.

“The mercy of our Lord passes all understanding,” said de Zamora. “But will my cousin forgive him?”

“I’m certain she will.”

“Why are you so certain?” de Zamora asked, after a pause.

“Because of her religious faith: she’ll be hugely relieved that his soul is not damned to perdition.”

“I thought she had converted to your father’s church, to be married.”

“Repentance is repentance, even for Protestants.”

De Zamora gulped from his cup; he was temporarily flummoxed, Laurence thought. “How would his lordship accept the news that she was not virgin when he married her?”