The Licence of War (57 page)

“I’ve more respect for my close stool than for that spineless lackey of yours.”

Veech wanted to laugh: it was an accurate description. “As I won’t neglect to inform him. My lady, you may protect Beaumont at the cost of your own life, but is it fair that you should sacrifice your maid’s? In better circumstances and with a physician to tend her, she might still have a hope.”

“I will not succumb to bribery. And you are not king in this place. The governor has promised to—”

“I told you already, the governor won’t abide by his promise,” cut in Veech. “Why else has he kept you apart from the girl these three weeks, when you’ve begged every day for her to join you? The longer you hesitate, the worse for her, and her death will be on your conscience.”

“If the governor will not bring her to me,” said Lady Hallam, “I want to be moved to her cell.”

“Do you, now,” said Veech. “Well he might agree to
that
.”

After a prodigious midday meal with the Beaumonts, Antonio retired to his chamber for a siesta to find Diego sitting on the bed, the wizard’s bowl balanced on his lap. He had filled it with water and was intent upon the surface. “I warned you that thing is cursed,” yelled Antonio, and smacked it to the floor. “Get rid of it, or I shall get rid of
you
.”

“I understand your rage, Don Antonio,” said Diego sympathetically. “You are a disappointed man. Shall I explain why?” He lowered his voice and began to count on his fingers. “One, you know as little about the true state of Lord Beaumont’s finances as when we first got here. Two, you’ve failed to penetrate the Lady Elena’s chilly indifference. No tears shed when you spoke of her mother’s lingering death, and her brothers slain in the wars. As you said, it’s as though she sliced out her own heart on quitting her native land. She and her eldest son are as similar in temperament as in looks – the opposite from his lordship, who wears his generous, honest heart on his sleeve. He’s more Spanish, in that way, than either of them. Which brings me to
three
,” went on Diego, still counting. “Like his son Thomas, he is blinded by his emotions – in the case of Thomas, pride, resentment, and greed, and in the case of his lordship, absolute devotion to his wife and to his eldest son. You can shout what you wish into his lordship’s ear about the Lady Elena’s past or Laurence’s paternity and he will take no notice. If he came in upon you in the act of adultery with her, he would retreat blushing from the scene, and excuse it to himself as a moment of cousinly affection. And as to
four
: rather than being rabidly jealous of you, he relishes your company, which must be the ultimate insult.”

Antonio flung himself down on the bed. “I refuse to admit defeat.”

“Nor should you. As a matter of fact, I’ve made some unexpected progress on the issue of his lordship’s finances.” Diego bent and grabbed the bowl: an obvious challenge. Antonio ignored it and waited for him to continue. “In my conversations with the servants and the grooms, I have occasionally remarked that if I were his lordship I’d
keep a portion of my wealth concealed from the enemy, and that there must be plenty of good hiding places about the estate.”

“And what have the servants and grooms told you, monkey?”

“Not a word. Yesterday evening I was drinking beer in the stables with the grooms. All they would talk about was horse colic, and founder, and other such favourite subjects of theirs, so I got bored, and wandered out. As I neared the path that leads to the dovecote, I felt the effect of what I’d drunk, and stepped into the bushes. And as I was happily watering them, Lady Elena hurried along the path with a lantern, stealthy as a thief. The light disappeared – she was inside the dovecote. What could she want there, at past eleven o’clock, I had to wonder?”

“I trust you shook the last drops from your prick and followed her.”

“Yes, I did, and when I looked in, she was on her knees digging at the earthen floor with a trowel. She lifted up a section, reached in her hand, and pulled out a small bag that she tucked into her skirt pocket. I had to hide in the bushes again as she prepared to leave, but as she had gone, I went back to inspect where she had been digging. She had foiled me: the door to the dovecote was stoutly padlocked.”

Antonio whistled between his teeth. “
Madre de Dios
, they must be precious doves.”

“There are others as precious to her ladyship under
this
roof.” Diego stroked the rim of his bowl, meditatively. “The hardest to catch will be the tastiest, if you want vengeance.”

“What a sin that would be,” said Antonio, chuckling to himself. “How I wish we had with us our devout Jesuit, Fray Luis Iglesia, to hear my confession afterwards. But in any case, I am tempted. She’s a fresh little bird, the wife of my Lorenzo.”

The Royalists had spent a week recuperating in Worcester from their forced march, and then pushed towards Shrewsbury, in an attempt to lure Waller deeper into hostile territory and separate him further from
Essex’s army. The King cherished hopes of support from Rupert, who was now in the north, and had written imploring his nephew to speed to the relief of York from Parliament’s northern regiments and the Scots, but also to tidy matters up as fast as possible and come to his own aid. “His Royal Highness Prince Rupert must be like unto God: everywhere simultaneously,” Digby commented to Laurence. Meanwhile, the Royalists were again low on supplies. Since Waller had not barred their line of retreat, they tailed back to Worcester, and the next day retraced their route through the Cotswolds, in the direction of Oxford.

By dusk on the sixteenth of June, they made camp around the village of Broadway, a short ride from Chipping Campden. Laurence requested leave for an overnight visit. Though he longed to see his father and Catherine, it was Lady Beaumont he needed most urgently to address.

He saw flame flickering by the old stone walls of the dovecote, as he dismounted and tethered his horse in a thicket of trees. He had sent the gatekeeper to forewarn her ladyship, and she was waiting for him, beckoning him into the dovecote like some sentinel guiding him into the netherworld, her shadow alarmingly magnified by the lantern that she held aloft. “Laurence, did you ride from Worcester? We heard His Majesty had escaped there.”

“No, his army lies at Broadway.” Laurence wrinkled his nose at the familiar, acrid smell of pigeon dung. “He’s marching for Oxford to reunite his forces. I haven’t much time: I’m due back in camp before dawn. Thank God I stopped at the gatehouse, or I wouldn’t have known about your Spanish guests! Why didn’t you write to tell me about them?”

“I
did
write, and sent Geoffrey to Oxford with my letter, but you had already left. In that letter I informed you we had yet worse to distress us.” Lady Beaumont set her lantern down on the clay floor; illuminated from below, her features seemed to him as gaunt as Seward’s. “On the very day our guests arrived, Elizabeth absconded.
She
is in Oxford, with that man Price.”

Laurence now recalled Price’s distant manner, and his courageous choice to stay in the city. “Damn him. And damn her for being such a fool.”

“Subsequently we received these.” Lady Beaumont delved into the pocket of her skirts and produced two letters, then held up the lantern for him to read.

“Christ! At least he says they won’t marry without your permission.”

“You must bring Elizabeth home, or she will be ruined. We had to lie to Antonio that she had gone to be with friends in Chipping Campden town. His lordship is heartsick.”

“As I can well imagine – I’ll do what I can.” Laurence searched for a way to broach the issue of her and de Zamora. “How is … your cousin?” he said, at length.

“Antonio has not changed a whit. He fawns over his lordship and the girls, and as I suspected, he is penniless. But he has had nothing out of us, thus far, save his bed and board. Antonio is effusive in his praise for you and Thomas. He talked of meeting you last month. He claimed that immediately afterwards he was assaulted by thieves, and then became gravely ill – hence his strange delay in visiting us. Can it be true?”

“Who knows – he’s forever vanishing and surfacing, and vanishing again. But I can guess why he delayed coming to Tom, and to me: he must have been asking round about us, to find some way to play us off against each other.”

“Play you off? But … why?”

Silence descended, apart from the cooing of pigeons high above. “Did you ever love him?” Laurence burst out. “Were you and he lovers? Or did he … did he seduce you, before you were married?”

He felt as if he were shrinking beneath his mother’s glare. “What in heaven’s name has he suggested to you, Laurence?”

“That … I am his son,” answered Laurence, in a feeble voice. “Am I?”

“Was he drunk?”

“No, far from it.” Laurence spilt forth everything, like an evil vomit. Yet even as he spoke, trembling, of that night when a mutual desire had been illicitly slaked, he detected not a trace of shock, pain, or guilt in her expression. Instead, he saw only contempt.

“He is a sad character beneath pity,” she said, at the end.

“He is
convinced
that I am his.”

“He has probably lost his wits after too many blows to the head in battle. Or else his fabrications may be a form of inherited madness. Amazing that none of the Fuentes and de Capdavilas was born an idiot, given how they married into each other’s families over the generations. The custom is yet more common among Spanish noble houses than it is here in England.”

Thank God there were no such deformities in our family
, de Zamora had said. Or were there? Laurence had himself questioned de Zamora’s sanity. “Could you have married him, if your families had agreed?”

“They would
never
have agreed. My father abhorred him – that much of his story is true. And we were nearly as impoverished, on our side, after my father’s death. I am ashamed to confess that my mother would not have accepted a Protestant foreigner for a son-in-law had she not been desperate for money. Naturally Antonio was envious of your father’s wealth, and he was of the majority in Seville who deplored the match, though he pretended the opposite to your father.”

“Might he have been intimate with you, without your knowing? Could he have come into your chamber and drugged you, or … accosted you while you slept?”

She began to laugh. “You
have
been misled, I presume by your adventures with my less reputable countrywomen. Virtue was so treasured a commodity in young ladies of my rank that I could not receive any male above the age of fifteen unless my mother’s gentlewomen were inches from me. They guarded me and my sisters, day and night. Your father likened our courtship to besieging a fortress.”

Laurence laughed also, picturing the young Englishman, hat in hand, scaling the ramparts of some formidable Andalusian castle to win his Spanish princess. But then, unexpectedly, his eyes stung with tears. “I thought that if the story was true, it would explain why you … why you and I have always been at odds.”

Her face softened. “Your theory is more exciting than the truth, Laurence. Your wet nurse used to say that the first child is the most difficult, and you
were
difficult in character, impossible to discipline. Your father held the reins too loosely, and I could not tolerate his indulgence. Perhaps when you have children of your own, you will understand: it is only human to make mistakes. And we have both made mistakes, you and I.”

“Yes,” he admitted, “I know
I
have.”

“Now,” she recommenced, “I had wanted to deal with Antonio myself. But I am afraid that he is mad, and more dangerous than I had initially perceived. The Spanish Envoy said that he is being sought for in London, on a charge of murder – a hanging offence – and it appears that the Envoy is as anxious to be rid of him as we are. But I would prefer him banished to Spain. He has a wife and family, and he
is
my kin.”

“He might leave voluntarily, for a sufficiently attractive reward. Not just money – something to flatter his pride. What is he most proud of?”

“He brags constantly about his glorious military record.”

Laurence remembered how de Zamora had scorned his own less than glorious service in the Low Countries. “A commission from King Philip would do the trick. The Envoy might forge us a document and have it delivered to Chipping Campden, by a messenger with the proper credentials. Why not write to him tonight, and I’ll take the letter with me to Oxford? All being well, he’ll receive it within a week – there are regular diplomatic couriers travelling back and forth from Oxford to London.”

“I shall write at once.”

“I can wait here for you, to avoid another meeting with your guests.”

Lady Beaumont picked up her lantern, and slipped her arm into his. The gesture astounded him. “They are abed in the south wing, Antonio with his nightly jug of wine,” she said. “They are too far away to hear you come in through the stillroom door. And it would do your father such good to see you.”

“I’d also like to see Catherine.”

“She sleeps in Mary’s chamber. I’ll wake her, and send her to yours.”

She held the lantern while Laurence fastened the padlock and tested it with a sharp tug. Then she led the way along the path through the kitchen garden. It was she who deserved a military commission, he thought; and how ironic that de Zamora’s troublemaking should at last have brought them closer. He felt a giddy joy. With their old, bitter disputes behind them, it was as if every obstacle might be conquered and every wound healed in the family.

Catherine sat poised on the edge of the bed hugging her knees to her chest, her dark eyes following Laurence’s movements as he undressed in the candlelight. “You were a long time with your father. What did you talk about?”

Laurence tossed his doublet on the floor and pulled his shirt over his head. “Oh, many things: the war, the house, Elizabeth, Mary, our Spanish guests – and you.”

“I so wanted to tell them of my illness, but I knew I’d be safe from it if I wore my ring. I only fell sick because the ring had dropped from my finger.”