The Licence of War (70 page)

“Not uselessly – you’re needed here. And Seward says you’re starting to walk. Why don’t you hobble down to supper tonight? There must be something we could argue about, to amuse the family.”

Tom squinted at Laurence, as if undecided as to whether he should be provoked. Then he grinned. “Perhaps I shall.”

“Until later,” said Laurence, ducking out; he had seen Elizabeth loitering in the passage.

She beckoned him into the library and shut the doors. “How is Mr. Price?” she inquired, tentatively.

“Rising in his career with the Secretary of State. He still has hopes of marrying you.”

She hoisted her shoulders in a world-weary fashion. “I don’t know what I want, Laurence. My time in Oxford was such a nightmare. And
now I think that in my loneliness I may have viewed Mr. Price as I wished him to be, not as he is – though I believe he’s a good man at heart, or he wants to be good, at any rate.”

Laurence thought of Mistress Edwards’ verdict on her grandson’s character. “I doubt
he
knows who he is. And it strains him to the limit to be perfectly honest with anyone, including himself. I can’t fault him, on that score. I’d be the pot calling the kettle black.”

“You’ve certainly kept a great deal about him from
me
,” said Elizabeth, in Lady Beaumont’s chastening tone. “But what answer should I give, if he asks again for my hand?”

“You won’t have to answer,” Laurence said. “It will be done for you.”

Over supper, he broke his news to the women. His sisters and Mary wept openly. Lady Beaumont, in characteristic fashion, directed her anger at Lord Wilmot. Catherine was subdued. Laurence explained that he had a last, private business to conclude on behalf of the Secretary of State, and that he would return in a week or so to bid them all a proper farewell. Catherine could decide, in the meantime, whether to travel with him to France.

At the end of the meal, Seward went out to Lady Beaumont’s rose garden for his customary pipe of tobacco, and Laurence followed. “Seward,” he said, “forgive me if I upset you by my lack of faith in the King. I would hate it to come between us.”

Seward breathed a weighty sigh. “As would I, Beaumont, and you’ve made no secret of your views, to me or to his lordship, who confided in me his own low opinion of Lord Digby. The circumstances of your disgrace hurt us the most. Now, did you succeed in London?”

“Yes, though I had to depend on my friends and your sleeping draught.” As they meandered through the flowerbeds, Laurence told him all about it, and the bargain with Pembroke.

“Why would the King hand over his treacherous letters?” snapped Seward. “You were forced into a fool’s bargain, with a rogue.”

“He helped us at huge risk to himself, and he’s since fallen under the suspicion of Veech.”

“Then he may receive his just deserts at the hands of Parliament rather than those of the King.”

“Not if I’m in time to prevent it by eliminating Veech, although Pembroke may already be suspect to others in Parliament.” Laurence stopped and faced Seward squarely. “Veech’s murder is the business I pledged to conclude for the Secretary of State.”

Grabbing a blossom off a rosebush, Seward rubbed it between the tips of his fingers and thumb, until the crushed petals scattered on the ground. “That’s what will happen to you, should you re-enter London.”

“As I’m well aware. I must lure Veech out, as he lured me in.”

Seward studied Laurence in the twilight. “You are afraid of him, as a man,” he said finally. “I have not seen you so afraid before.”

“All that I know of him scares me,” Laurence admitted. “And I’ve never wanted a man dead, as I do him.
And
, to complicate matters, I want his death to look like an accident that inculpates nobody.”

“Why, Beaumont? In case Pembroke is accused of killing him?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Laurence, laughing. “But no – my main reason is to clear the lawyer, Draycott, whose family Veech threatened.” He described Draycott’s mission to Digby, and how Draycott had been tossed into Oxford Castle. “I have the King’s permission to liberate him on the grounds that he could assist me – as I think he will, though he deserves his freedom anyway. Yet his politics are with Parliament, and his entire life is in London. Were St. John to find evidence implicating him in Veech’s murder, he would lose everything.”

Seward was silent again, lighting his pipe. Through a cloud of smoke, he remarked abruptly, “Our chat about the witch’s poison inspired me to hunt for a vital ingredient in the woods near Clarke’s house.”

“Eye of newt?” joked Laurence, though he was fascinated.

“Monkshood, best harvested in the autumn, but the root I dug up was unusually plump, for this time of the year. I dried it and ground it into a powder. Some of her other recommendations I determined
were more superstitious than lethal, except fresh snake venom, which would be hard to obtain in Clarke’s neighbourhood.”

“I wish I’d known. I could have got you some – from Lord Digby.”

Seward cast Laurence a devilish smile. “The venom was superfluous. I tried the powder on a sow that was diseased and unfit for eating. The beast was paralysed within an hour, and dropped down cold in three.”

“Did the witch provide any antidote?”

“Belladonna.” Laurence grimaced; he had once ingested a dose of that drug to bizarre and stupefying effect, until he had become unconscious from it. “And foxglove,” Seward added, “though I did not try them on the sow.”

“The antidotes must be as lethal as the poison.”

“If taken alone in sufficient amount, yes. Together, they act in counterbalance: her poison slows the system, while her antidotes do precisely the opposite. I sampled a speck of the poison diluted in water. The taste is simultaneously sweet, pungent and acrid, and produces a tingling on the tongue and then numbness. It would be difficult to disguise in a cup of wine or ale.”

Laurence remembered what Price had told him about Veech’s abundant use of salt and pepper. “Would strong spices mask it, in a dish of some sort?”

Seward ruminated, puffing on his pipe. “They might. Veech would have an awful death: the mind is lucid throughout, as the body loses function and ultimately fails.”

“Good,” said Laurence. “Did you bring the poison with you?”

“Heavens, no – it is at Clarke’s house.”

“We might ride there tomorrow. I’ll continue on to Oxford, to free Draycott.”

“You haven’t asked if Thomas is well enough for me to leave his bedside.”

“We both know he is.”

“Hmm,” said Seward. “You remind me of another thing: when
he was delirious, he spoke of the battle at Marston Moor, and later I asked him to describe the terrain. I am now convinced: it was what I foresaw in my dream.”

“Then … your dreams are as prescient as your visions. We could have let de Zamora keep that bowl, and saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

“Whatever the case, Marston Moor did not signal the defeat for the King, so as his lordship said, there remains hope for the royal cause.”

Laurence shrugged ambivalently. “Since you
do
have your bowl again, why not try peering into the future of Mr. Veech?”

“I’ve no need of it to know that you require my expertise in your murderous operation. I’ll accompany you, on to Oxford.”

“Thank you, Seward. I wasn’t sure how to ask that favour of you.”

“One favour merits another – I am in Catherine’s debt. You must ask
her
how she outwitted Diego,” Seward chuckled. “She was as clever a thief as he.”

When Laurence and Catherine retired to bed, he forgot to inquire, still preoccupied by the business of Veech; and then while making love to her, he could not help thinking of his last time, with Isabella in Pembroke’s house. Their terrifying climax seemed to portend the death of a relationship. Yet little by little, Catherine softened and distanced the memory, and he became absorbed in the moment.

“I want to come with you to France,” she told him, eventually.

“Things may be hard, at the beginning,” he said; how to confess that he might not live to enjoy his exile?

“No harder than what you must do here in England,” she said, with peculiar certitude.

“What is that?” he asked, unnerved.

Hopping naked from the bed, she crouched to drag out from underneath a large, flat object. “Will brought it for us from my father’s house. Should we take it on our voyage?”

Laurence glanced down at the portrait of Isabella as Aphrodite. Then he looked up at Catherine. Her certitude had vanished and he witnessed in her face a struggle as naked as her body, between yearning and despair, as when they had examined the magpie’s injured wing, on the day he had proposed to her. Could she have guessed from his reticence in the courtyard that he had been unfaithful to her with Isabella, and that in quitting England he must bid goodbye to the woman he loved? “No, Catherine,” he said. “We’ll leave it behind.”

Lady Beaumont extinguished her candle, and rested her head back on her pillow. Three generations of Beaumonts were gathered beneath this one roof; and soon, God willing, there would be more children to assure the future of a line unbroken through the centuries since William the Conqueror bestowed lands in Gloucestershire upon his loyal henchman, Laurent de Beaumont. Despite Laurence’s news, she felt an inner peace that had not graced her for longer than she could recall.

“God moves in mysterious ways, dearest wife,” her husband said, surprising her; she had thought him asleep. “Although we could have wished for it to happen otherwise, both Laurence and Thomas may be spared from death in this dreadful war.” His hand searched out hers, under the bedclothes. “And, my Elena, I have been meaning to tell you: I know you believe me rather obtuse, with my nose in my books and my head in the clouds. Yet my ears were not deaf to the hints dropped by Don Antonio.”

“What manner of hints?” she asked sharply.

“You are and always shall be the love of my life, and you command my unconditional trust. But I would not love you and Laurence any the less, or be any less proud of you, were Don Antonio his true father.” Lord Beaumont yawned, and snuggled up to her. “There! I have said my piece, and can sleep contented.”

“I shall not sleep a wink,” she rejoined, “while you persist in your absurd misapprehension. Antonio is one of the blackest liars in
Christendom, and it offends me that you should be deceived by his wicked insinuations.”

“Please, take no offence. As a young man, when I courted you in Seville, I did not understand him. Now I do. He was in love with you, and, if I am not mistaken, you with him. I was the interloper. Perhaps he journeyed to England at his ripe age to find out whether I had made you happy.”

“You have. And Laurence is without a doubt your son.”

“I know he is,” said Lord Beaumont, “in all that most matters to me. But I do confess,” he went on, less gravely, “I liked Antonio. There is something to be said for a bit of wickedness. And we are not so old,” he added, easing his body closer to hers, “that we cannot be a bit wicked ourselves.”

Regular as a clock, he slumbered afterwards. Lady Beaumont smiled, listening to his snores. He had always been an attentive partner, though in their early years of marriage, she could have no joy of him. She had been spoilt by a far more experienced lover.

Elena’s two brothers were still in skirts and she, the eldest, had been a month shy of sixteen when the family learnt that her father had died of ague in the Spanish Indies. His estates there had been mortgaged against his borrowings. Her mother could spare a small dowry for Elena, but the three other girls would have to choose between the convent and marriage to suitors of inferior blood.

Doña Cecilia had reluctantly admitted Antonio again to the house, in the absence of his hostile uncle, and while convalescing from a wound to his leg incurred in a cavalry charge, he became a frequent visitor. She blamed his unruliness on the fact that he had been orphaned as a babe, and had grown up unsupervised in the crumbling castle of his forebears; and he had enlisted in the Imperial army at the age of fifteen, which was no education in morals. Antonio’s cousins adored him, as did Doña Cecilia’s youngest and prettiest gentlewoman, Beatriz, who was Elena’s special confidante. Antonio would dazzle
them with conjuring tricks, spin tales of his campaigns, and sing to them in his seductive tenor. And when Doña Cecilia’s more censorious ladies were temporarily distracted, he would remind Elena that she was his favourite. “To look at you,” he would declare, “is like gazing into a mirror.” She took this as a compliment, for she thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen. And she was not alone in wanting his attentions: Beatriz tormented her with gossip about how many hearts he had captured in Seville. But in a stolen moment, he said to Elena, “I love you above all others. Will you be mine?” And she answered immediately: “Yes.”

She was waiting for Antonio to open the subject of marriage with her mother when an Englishman arrived in town on the final stage of his continental tour. Heir to a rich estate and a title, James Beaumont had a letter of introduction to the de Capdavilas from John Digby, the English ambassador in Madrid, who evidently knew of the distinguished family, though not of their penurious circumstances. Doña Cecilia was thrilled to receive him. Blond and blue-eyed, Beaumont had a gentle smile, impeccable manners, and a solid grasp of Spanish, but no sense of pride: when the girls poked fun at his appalling accent and his English clothes, he laughed along with them. Antonio would not have borne such an insult.

One night Elena’s mother hurried into the girls’ bedchamber. “My darlings, Don James has asked for Elena’s hand! After I confessed to him our terrible straits, he made me an offer that will save us from ruin. Although he is not of the true faith, Fray Luis says that God will absolve me if I accept it, since I am acting for the good of our house.”

“Don James is too late,” announced Elena. “I have already promised myself to Antonio.”

Her mother stared at her as though she had proposed marrying the boy who scrubbed out their chamber pots. “He has no fortune, and he is your … your cousin!”