The Licence of War (9 page)

Ingram saluted: this was his penalty.

“How much time will they take to despoil my husband’s estate?” Madam Sumner demanded of him, as the house began to tremble with the thunder of boots.

“I can’t say,” Ingram replied. “You and your ladies might seek somewhere quiet to sit, where you’ll be safe from disturbance.”

“
Quiet
?
Safe from disturbance?
” She clenched her fists. “A week ago I lost my eldest son in a skirmish, and today I am losing my home.”

“We
all
have lost,” Ingram told her, his temper fraying. “My sister’s husband died before he could see the child she was to bear him. And Major Beaumont’s sister lost her husband at Chalgrove Field. She was made a widow at not twenty years old.”

“Is that how you excuse his conduct towards us?”

“No, madam. That’s how I explain it.”

“Let us go to the garden where there is little to steal, other than my herbs and rosebushes,” she said to her womenfolk.

“I’ll go with you,” Ingram said.

“Are they such brutes, that we require a guard dog?”

Ingram let the question pass, and followed them.

Even from the garden, they could hear smashing glass, thumps, and crashes; and doors splintered by violent kicks; and harsh exclamations as the men swarmed about in search of booty. A few of the women were weeping, but not Madam Sumner. Her courage reminded Ingram of his doughty aunt, who had worked so hard to preserve her livestock from Prince Rupert’s raids in Gloucestershire the previous spring. “Sweeping the commons, they call it. Robbery, is what I say,” Aunt Musgrave had protested to him, though she was a staunch Royalist.

“You do not appear to share their appetite for destruction, sir,” said Madam Sumner. “Or are you imagining your wife and estate in these circumstances?”

“I have no wife, madam,” Ingram said. “But I’m to marry at Christmastide, if our whole world hasn’t fallen apart. My betrothed is the Major’s youngest sister.” He saw her eyes widen. Trust a woman, he
thought: in the absolute chaos of her own life, she had caught the ill feeling between him and Tom.

As the autumn sun dipped and the garden grew chill, Madam Sumner implored him to go in and ask when the soldiers would depart. Walking through the hall, he saw that it had been fouled with excrement; and not by a single man, but by the efforts of several. “Swine,” he muttered.

He found Tom in the courtyard, where troopers were herding horses, cows, pigs, hens, and geese from the barns, and loading wagons with sacks of feed, barrels, and the carcass of a huge sow dripping blood at the neck. More men poured from the kitchens weighed down by silver and pewter jugs, goblets, and salvers, legs of mutton, baskets of eggs, and loaves of bread, as if in preparation for a feast, while smoke rose in plumes from the outbuildings.

Tom and a horde of others were congregated by an open cask, filling their mugs. “Ingram,” he called over, “come and wet your whistle.” When Ingram made no move, Tom grinned and strolled over to him. “What’s wrong, man? Has one of the ladies swooned?”

“I beseech you,
Major Beaumont
, to call your troops to order, before they’re too drunk to obey you.”

Tom stopped grinning and leant forward, to hiss in Ingram’s ear, “Talk to me once more like that and I shall raze this house to the ground.”

“This house might be your father’s.”

Tom’s eyes flashed. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “It was a joke, Ingram. Why in God’s name can’t you take a joke?”

T
wo days after Laurence went into hiding at Mistress Edwards’ house, troops from the nearby fort came by every dwelling and business in the neighbourhood with copies of a broadsheet, on which was an artist’s depiction of the fugitive. Parliament was offering the princely reward of a hundred pounds for his capture.

“It’s nothing like,” said Barlow, as they examined the image. “And you don’t have a moustache. Read me what’s beneath it, sir.”

“ ‘Laurence Beaumont, Intelligencer to the Cruel and Devilish Catiline, the Lord George Digby. A bloodthirsty, evil-faced man, six foot tall, black and spare, five-and-twenty to thirty years of age..’ ”

“What’s all this about cats?”

“Catiline was a Roman politician infamous for his conspiracies,” Laurence explained. “His lordship would be flattered.” But he felt aghast at his own fame, and a hundred pounds was a tempting sum.

That same day, he and Barlow made a trap door in the ceiling of Mistress Edwards’ bedchamber, so that he could climb beneath the rafters in case of emergency, and Barlow started to spread word that there was illness in the house. “Most contagious – we’ve had to close our door to visitors,” he told a gentleman who had knocked furtively hoping for a spiritual consultation with Perdita. Blackman Street became a gaol, from which only Sarah, Barlow, and Price could come and go, and the sale of religious pamphlets at Westminster was cancelled. Meanwhile, Barlow’s nephew Jem, a pug-nosed, stunted boy of about sixteen, had found Violet’s shop boarded up. The goldsmith had not been seen in Cheapside for some time; he had apparently omitted
to pay his taxes. The shop remained shut as the week dragged to an end. This was another setback for Laurence: how would he make contact with Violet, when finally the man got to London? Nor was there any sign of relief from neighbourhood patrols, which agitated him more and more, for the sake of his friends. Again, he blamed himself: although reason and instinct had fuelled his decision to disobey Lord Digby, he knew that a measure of spite had also been involved, which was both unprofessional and petty of him; and he wished now that he had confided in Isabella.

On the evening of Laurence’s eighth day at Blackman Street, Price walked in on him and Barlow sitting glumly across from each other at the table. “The Trained Bands won’t be patrolling for much longer,” Price announced. “The Earl of Essex has issued a call for reinforcements. They’ll be off on campaign, and both of the forts near us will be short of troops.”

“How d’you know that, Price?” Barlow asked.

“From a washerwoman at the fort in St. George’s Fields,” he said, straddling a chair. “She’s sweet on me, the old trollop. Today she told me that Captain Harper and Corporal Draycott brought in a wounded man on the night our Mr. Beaumont escaped. His leg was bleeding, and they carried him away that very night, even though they have a surgeon at the fort. She never saw him herself, but he must have been an important fellow, because he was taken to Derby House.”

“You may have injured Pym’s spymaster with that shot of yours,” Barlow said to Laurence.

“Oh Christ,” said Laurence, horrified. “If he’s the man who nearly accosted me outside the fort, I believe he won’t stop searching until he catches me. I must flee London, as soon as the militia leave.”

“You’re right, sir,” nodded Barlow, “though Mistress Edwards will be sorry. She so wants a taste of revenge on John Pym before she dies.”

“She’ll be sorrier yet if I’m found in her house – and so will you all. That was good work, Price, but not good news.”

A petulance crossed Price’s face, as though Laurence were spoiling his fun. “But what about that list of names? And what about the man Albright, whose ears were shorn off? You can’t go now, sir – we’ve just started our investigations.”

Laurence reflected: Price had indeed done good work. “If you discover anything more, you can report to me in Oxford – if I ever get back there alive. And if I don’t, you can report to Lord Digby.”

The petulance vanished, and Price’s eyes gleamed. “Might I call myself your agent?”

“I suppose you might.”

“You can count on me, sir – you won’t regret it.” Price bounced from his chair. “Gentlemen, it’s time for
me
to leave. Early tomorrow I’ve an appointment with Mistress Sprye, of the Saracen’s Head tavern. I think I’ll take her for a walk by St. Saviour’s, and lay a posy on Jane’s grave.”

For over a week, Draycott’s egregious confusion of Veech and Beaumont had deprived him of sleep, appetite, and peace of mind. Captain Harper was treating him with utter scorn, and when he returned from duty to his house off Chancery Lane, Judith would keep asking the reason for his despond. He could not bring himself to tell her, until the morning that he came down to breakfast and she pointed at a broadsheet lying on the kitchen table. “What a dreadful face.”

“Wife,” he said, “send the children upstairs with their nurse. We must speak, in private.”

Once he had poured out the whole story, she counselled him. “Giles, you should apologise to Mr. Pym’s secretary, or he might shoulder the blame for this dangerous man’s escape. I am only thankful you were not killed by him that night, or horribly injured, as was Mr. Veech.”

Pym’s secretary received Draycott with alarming news: the great man had been about to summon him to Derby House for an audience. What punishment would be in store for him? Yet after he gave his
account of events, Pym merely said, “You made an honest error, Giles Draycott, as did my secretary. And remember who you were dealing with: Laurence Beaumont must excel in deceit.” Pym took from his desk a copy of the same broadsheet. “Have you seen this?”

“Yes, sir – it frightened my wife. She could not understand why I was hoodwinked by such a sinister-looking man, but the artist did him an injustice. The image is not like him at all.”
It is almost more like Veech
, Draycott nearly added. “He was … handsome and engaging in his person. His manner, as much as what he said, made me believe him.”

“Hence my summons: we require a better description of him. I do not mean of his appearance – that information we have. Clement Veech wants to ask you about your encounter with him.”

“How is Mr. Veech?” inquired Draycott, wishing he did not have to think again about the mad chase through rain-soaked streets, the explosion of fire, and Veech collapsed howling on the ground.

“He has begun to recover, in the care of my physician. Up to today, he was too feverish for conversation. My secretary will take you to him. Giles,” said Pym, “though I am not acquainted with the details of his past, I sense that Clement Veech has endured terrible suffering. It must have hardened him. Suffering can have that effect, or the opposite.”

Draycott studied Pym’s grey face and sunken eyes; the man knew of what he spoke.

“You must prepare yourself for the smell,” Pym’s physician murmured to Draycott outside the door to Veech’s chamber. “He is still wearing the clothes he was brought in with. I can tend the wound, but otherwise he forbids me even to touch him.”

“And his fever?”

“It has abated, and his delirious visions have stopped, praise God. He seemed tormented by them, and was crying out in a foreign language.”

Draycott entered the darkened room, and approached the bed; the stench was like that of a charnel house he had once been forced to visit, to inspect the body of a murdered woman. “Mr. Veech?”

“Come closer, Corporal Draycott,” said Veech. His skin seemed preternaturally blanched, apart from the shadowed sockets of his eyes. His left leg, resting on a bloodstained pillow, was exposed to the thigh, leaving the wound open to view; it looked as if some carnivorous animal had gnawed a hole above his kneecap. “If you are about to shit through your teeth, sir,” Veech said, “there’s a pail under the bed.”

Draycott swallowed. “Thank God you are recuperating.”

“God?” Veech laughed quietly. “It was I who told the surgeon how to remove the ball, and rinse the wound with vinegar. I’ll be lucky to walk again.”

“Mr. Pym said you wanted to question me about Mr. Beaumont.”

“I heard you’re a lawyer, with experience of the courts. In the course of our duties, you and I are both trained to watch and listen for the small things that betray a man’s character, and to record them to memory. Is that not so?”

“Yes,” said Draycott.

“Then you’ll be able to tell me what Mr. Beaumont wore, what was in his saddlebag, his exact words to you, how he spoke, his gestures – everything you can recall, down to the very scent of him. I must know him, sir, like the back of my own hand.”

Weeds were sprouting over the mound where Jane was buried, and soon, when the earth settled, her grave would be impossible to locate. Price knelt to place on it a bunch of flowers that he had gathered in the nearby fields; she would forgive him for not buying an expensive posy from the street-sellers. He was remembering his last night with her after he had a spectacular win at dice, and how she had screamed with laughter and flailed her legs in the midst of congress when he had tickled the soles of her feet.

“A penny for your thoughts, Ned?” asked Susan Sprye, her brown eyes melancholy; he had told her that Jane was his sister.

“Jane and I used to play together among these graves when we were children,” he said, with a doleful sniff. “We loved our parish: St. Saviour’s is one of the best churches in London.” He rose and brushed the soil from his knees. “Come, I’ll show it to you.”

The huge oak door was unlocked. Inside, a verger was sweeping the floor of the chancel. Otherwise Price and Susan were alone. Price wanted to curse as he looked round. How St. Saviour’s had changed since that bunch of zealots had seized power: the altar draped in a white cloth rather than splendid brocade, statues of saints gone or left headless, and the wall-paintings defaced. Rocks had been thrown at the stained-glass windows, and sunlight streamed through the holes.

He and Susan paused in the nave to admire the vaulted ceiling, and then he beckoned her to one of the canopied tombs, thankfully undisturbed. “It belongs to the poet, Gower. He’s been dead over two hundred years. He was rich, and famous. The neighbourhood is celebrated for its poets and playwrights.”

“And for its strumpets,” she giggled.

“William Shakespeare worshipped here,” boasted Price.

“Who’s he?”

“He was among our greatest playwrights, and he was also a player, in the time of Queen Bess, and His Majesty’s father, King James. He’s been dead not thirty years.”