The Whispering Swarm (27 page)

‘Why, it's Master Michael, all grown up!' She still seemed much younger than I. She was as beautiful as ever with her pale skin, those violet eyes and crimson lips. Even though she mocked me it was pretty clear she rather fancied me now I was bearded, well dressed and aggressively assured in most things except the duel to the death.

Then I realised that the whispering in my ears had stopped.

 

20

RETREAT

‘Let's lift a bumper or two to welcome young Master Maur's Cocke, who might be my own nephew.' Still teasing, the tall prince locked his arm in mine while Moll took the other. I had never felt so free from care, so fully among friends as I felt that moment at The Swan With Two Necks. Prince Rupert of the Rhine recalled his beloved brother Maurice of whom I reminded him ‘in all but size'. Duval spoke nostalgically of his days at King Charles's court and the French musketeers drank to the death of all cardinals. They swore the present pope was bad enough to turn an honest papist Protestant.

I assumed Prince Rupert, being a Stuart and the nephew of the king, to be a Roman Catholic, too, but when I said something to that effect he showed real anger.

‘I am a Protestant, young Maur's, through and through. I have defended my religion against all threats—and I assure you, sir, they were real. Neither defeat in battle nor Jesuits and Inquisition have converted me to their cause. When I was imprisoned, sir, King Ferdinand sent priests to me almost daily. For two years. I am in every sense a confirmed Protestant. To the marrow. My sword was always in service against the pope, though that's not why I fight in England. Here, my uncle, King Charles, goes to stand upon that scaffold not because he chose the pope over his sworn religion but because he refused to bow to the dictates of holier-than-thou fanatic Puritans who believe a papist lies under every bed and every lapdog is a familiar.' He put his arm about my waist. ‘They'll find they've been duped and their cursed rebellion no more than the instrument of the few to enrich themselves. The majority fight not for liberty but for gold.' His flounced lace rustling, he called for more ale and patted the bench. That large, unruly white dog came to stand with its forepaws on his leg, panting for an anticipated treat. ‘Ain't that so, Boye.' The dog was a huge poodle, one of the original hunting dogs from which the smaller breed came. He seemed a good-natured animal. I heard he travelled everywhere with his master. I would learn that a Puritan propagandist's favourite trick was to accuse an enemy of witchcraft. A faithful dog was a ‘familiar', their equivalent of suspected WMDs in your palace.

Later, and more thoroughly in his cups, Prince Rupert confided that he fought in this case not for faith but for blood and friendship. ‘An adventure you would find most satisfying, Master Maur'sson. Had you any inclination to join our cause.'

I smiled and shook my head. ‘My vocation is to watch and note,' I said. ‘Participation is forbidden me, Your Grace.' I recognised someone as good at talking people into ideas as I was.

The prince's expression was almost melancholy as I lifted my tankard in what I hoped was a graceful salute.

‘Your help would greatly facilitate us,' he said quietly.

‘I have responsibilities,' I said, feeling a hypocrite. I took a long drink.

To break the moment, Prince Rupert drew us all in with a gesture so that he could tell us a story. His oddly accented English was pleasant to the ear. His long hair was naturally curly and kept falling into his eyes. His beard and moustache were as well groomed as my own. I was astonished that his exaggerated linen stayed as clean as it did. He used a shake of his lace cuff to emphasise a point. A direct and charming man, fond of bad language and casual insult, he commanded considerable loyalty. He was a great general. If he had been a better courtier he might have beaten Cromwell and saved his uncle's crown. Now he seemed tired and I wasn't surprised when he made his excuses and stumbled off to bed.

Cavaliers were skilled at the art of celebration. It had been a long time since I'd heard so much good-natured laughter in one place. These men were hard drinkers and eloquent speakers. They had magnificent stories. I particularly enjoyed Porthos's account of a spy and a case of poisoned wine. It was wonderful to be accepted into that legendary company and for the moment at least I stopped trying to explain what was happening. I was thoroughly distracted and really had no incentive just then to ask questions of myself or this place.

Moll flirted with me all night. I felt no guilt when I responded, just elation. Harmless pleasure. I wished Helena had not been such a sceptic and had come with me. I knew how much she would enjoy herself. I was sure she would be no happier in the middle-class world her mother wanted for her. I had not, of course, turned my back on Ladbroke Grove. I loved my children more than anything. Was I learning, like Henry Kissinger, that power was the greatest aphrodisiac? So many temptations! Sweet threats to my dream of domesticity.

As the evening progressed I relaxed as if into a warm bath. I was scarcely refusing responsibility to my family in the material sense. In the Alsacia I had as much emotional responsibility as in a dream. Two shants of porter helped me towards happy compromise. Moll's attitude towards me was different. She said I was masterful. Time had gone forward
and
backward in the Alsacia. I had left Moll when I was a boy. I was returning to her a man of the world. And now she seemed several years younger than I. I was glad. So when Moll suggested we retire to some privacy, I hungrily agreed. If Helena wanted to divorce me, I'd give her grounds. Later I would know regret and guilt, but not now. Now I was free of the Whispering Swarm.

Somehow I said goodnight to my new friends. I followed Moll up that same old wooden stair to the apartment on the third floor of the tavern. Once we were inside I began to kiss her but she pulled away, unbuttoning her frock, laughing in that deep, throaty way I still love. I was aware of her perfume, her soft, curling red-brown hair, her violet eyes and that delightful smile at once challenging and yielding.

She took my hand. ‘Let's go to bed,' she said.

 

 

BOOK TWO

Fear the fulfillment of thy deep desires.

—
THE BOOK OF ARIACH

 

21

COMRADES ALL

I went up to Fleet Street to phone Helena and tell her that I was fine. I would arrange to have a few things picked up. I had signed myself into a retreat, I said. A monastery. I thought it was for the best. After a pause she agreed and asked how she could get in touch. I told her the monks wouldn't allow us phone calls and for a while I couldn't have visitors. I would come to see her at my first chance. Meanwhile if she needed me urgently she could contact me through Barry Bayley, who knew how to reach me. I spoke to the girls and told them I loved them. I was doing research for a book. While I was out I dropped in on my mum and gave her much the same story. I phoned Barry, told him where I was and how he could contact me. I asked him to get some stuff for me from Ladbroke Grove. He was the only one who knew where the gates were. He met me just inside. He wouldn't come any further. He didn't like what was happening.

‘Mike, this is all a bit weird. Are you sure you know what you're up to?'

I told him Helena didn't care what I did. She'd had enough of me. I was accepting the inevitable. He was still concerned. He asked me to come back to Ladbroke Grove with him and when I refused he shook his head. ‘I think this is a mistake.'

‘At this stage all I have is a choice of mistakes.'

Barry's inclination was to do nothing until circumstances changed, but that wasn't how I handled things. As Helena said, I made decisions even when there was no possible decision to make.

Molly found us a fine suite of rooms in the south wing of The Swan With Two Necks. They were across the stable yard from the first set I had seen. The apartment was furnished snugly. It had an air of calm. I at once began to relax. I realised that I had forgotten what it was to stop worrying. To know peace. I had been anxious for years, trying to reach deadlines, making sure the family was fed and sheltered, keeping the magazine going, not listening to the Swarm and making sure I generally took care of everyone. I got authors jobs or publishers. I was persuasive, even when I wasn't trying. I had a gift, that was all. My mother said it was for blarney. My uncle Willie had had it. Until he retired he sold high-end cars to toffs. Mr Ackermann said Willie could have talked Hitler into becoming a Zionist.

The pace of the Sanctuary was peaceful most of the time. All my life I had rarely found the quiet my temperament craved. Life with Moll was like a holiday. She was as sentimental as I was. She saw the world romantically. If anything, Helena was a cultivated doubting Thomas, a rationalist from a home of rationalists rebelling against a Methodist background. Although hard working, Helena made a bohemian virtue of chaos. Molly's rooms were neat and tranquil. At night you could hear almost nothing. In contrast, our home in Ladbroke Grove was like a lunatic asylum. Yet I often missed the noise, the upheavals, the quarrels, the intellectual arguments around the big rectory table. Realistically I knew why this thing with Moll felt like a holiday. Because it
was
a holiday. It wasn't really supposed to last. I knew life was only simple when focused by the beginnings of a love affair or the prospect of sudden death. I felt horribly guilty. I really was desperate because I did love Helena. And the children. But I went ahead anyway.

What made me want Molly so badly? I have tried to analyse her appeal to me. She wasn't really my type except she struck a chord in me. An echo, a powerful resonance. She was my dream girl. Even in the throes of love and lust, I wondered sometimes if maybe she wasn't more than one person's dream girl. Maybe that was the secret of her success.

Very shortly after I moved to the Alsacia to be with Molly, my anger subsided. I began to feel homesick as well as guilty about what I was doing. Like most of my friends I was essentially a family man. I missed my children. I had never fantasised about having affairs. I had sown plenty of wild oats. There was almost nothing sexual I hadn't tried more than once. I knew myself fairly well. I knew what I needed. Simple. To love and be loved. Ambiguity was my enemy. I grew nostalgic. South Kensington, with its museums and posh shops, is nearly always sunny in my memories of those early years with Helena. I told Molly that I felt as if I were the character in the folk tale who visits the fairy village for a night and can never find his way back. Or perhaps I'd get home to find that like Rip Van Winkle I had slept for an age. I was almost afraid to leave. I was hoping for reassurance, rather than an answer. Molly seemed sympathetic. But she didn't share my anxieties.

‘There's no secret to it,' Molly insisted. ‘Nothing but fast-growing grass and a certain trick of light and fog.'

Yes, that was what she said and I did not bother to ask her to repeat it. I thought I had caught her meaning, the way you do with an unfamiliar slang. I wonder if I heard only what I wanted to hear, as Helena claimed.

Molly knew the Alsacia pretty well. We spent some of our time wandering around the little streets and alleys. She wanted to show me favourite places. She had been born here but her mother was originally Iranian. Moll wouldn't talk much about her. After a while the smell became familiar. Its thoroughfares were mostly narrow lanes and cul-de-sacs resembling the maze of a Moroccan
mellah,
where Jews were confined to a tiny area of a city. The cobbled alleys were slightly canted to the middle, forming crude gutters carrying off waste to a central sewer and from there into the fast-running Fleet. All the streets and gutters had to be washed down by hand using big yellow cakes of soap and boiling kettles. The few children to be found in the Sanctuary loved to play in the foaming water. It was the only time they were bathed. Yet they all showed signs of good health in spite of the unsanitary conditions. I could only speculate about the toughness of the immune systems in the ones who survived.

Many of the Sanctuary's streets weren't cobbled at all but were made of hard-compacted wood, grit, mud and old stone put down in Roman times and hardened over the centuries. While it often misted or fogged, the Alsacia never knew real rain while I was there. The streets would have turned to deep mud. People were not short of water. They drew it from the Thames by bucket or hand pump. Strangely, they could never see to the far bank. The fog was always thickest on the dockside. While watermen occasionally rowed back and forth, they spent most of their time together ashore in an unwelcoming quayside pub called The Lost Apprentice. It was painted in the same murky shades as the fog itself and was only identifiable by the brownish angles of its walls and the obscured sign bearing a few faded letters—ST APP. All kinds of dark superstitions surrounded The Lost Apprentice. Nobody else in the Alsacia ever went there without an excellent reason.

Few others lived along the riverline. In the winter the water froze. It was always dank; bitter cold at night and not much nicer by day. In the streets running back from the river and to the west of the abbey, little shops sat next to houses next to potteries and breweries and slaughterhouses and bakers and warehouses and all the other trades and crafts of an old-fashioned community. From one alley you might suddenly see an eruption of complaining goats or glimpse through an archway a courtyard where a pair of big Jersey cows were milked. People drew the line at pigs. Chickens were more populous than the midden heaps they favoured and eggs were frequently covered in dung. There's sometimes a fine line between what you are about to eat and what you have recently eaten. I have never tasted better eggs.

The Alsacia had very few customs or practises I associated with good hygiene. But the livestock showed how the Sanctuary was able to remain self-sufficient. I think they bought flour or grain and had it delivered by river. You were fine if you had the sense to boil all drinking water over your mule-manure fire. Many Londoners I knew identified the Alsacia's predominant smells with good health, the cure for everything from TB to the monthlies. I had grown up playing in sewage outlets feeding the hidden Fleet, covered for a century or more. I could easily see how the district had become a zone of safety, able to withstand attacks from the outside world. As far as the authorities were concerned it wasn't worth the effort to try to catch the average crook who was anyway contained by the Alsacia and rarely likely to leave. Most who fled to the Alsacia's protection were only occasionally worse than debtors or petty thieves and the prisons were already overcrowded. So, until now, that was why the place was tolerated. Alsacia judged murder as foul as those on the outside and their justice was swifter than any to be found at the Old Bailey. For these reasons no city watch could ever recruit men to die in the Sanctuary of the White Friars, where the inhabitants were known to defend their territory with well-kept weapons—to the death. ‘We cause them no discomfort, they'll cause us no pain' was a popular motto.