The King’s List. Peter Ransley

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СКАЧАТЬ indicated another portrait of Lord Stonehouse, which hung over our proceedings. When I dined alone, if I noticed him at all, I always saw him as a stern but comforting presence for, in spite of our differences, we were alike in one thing: we both hated extremes, and struggled to keep things together rather than let them fall apart.

      ‘He is not here to stop you.’

      ‘His ghost is.’

      ‘Nonsense.’

      ‘He haunts the place. He does not want us here. When his wife died he spent all his time here. As you do.’

      She began calmly, almost flippantly, but again her voice shook and the implication of what she had said only seemed to strike her when she had spoken. She dabbed her lips, her hands trembling, said she was out of sorts and begged to be excused. Luke and I finished our meal in silence. I went up to her apartment to enquire after her. Her maid, Agnes, told me she was not well and had retired for the night. Agnes had come from Highpoint and I sensed her disapproval as she put away Anne’s dress. The crackle and sheen of the silk, black then sharp green as it caught the light, aroused me again. I took a step towards her room. The maid turned to me enquiringly. I felt my cheeks burning like a schoolboy as I brought out some stilted phrase about wishing her ladyship a good night, and almost walked into a chair on the way out. Her ladyship! For the first time it struck me that what had kept us together had also kept us apart.

      I tried to work. I had a report for Thurloe on the City I must finish. Together with the generals, money would decide the next government. Everything was in the balance. I knew the hidden vices of every alderman in the City: who might be bought, sold or persuaded. But every time I began writing, the crackle of the paper brought back the lustre and sheen of her dress. Her ladyship! She was a printer’s daughter from Farringdon. I saw the rain gleam again on the twisting rump of the Quaker woman. That was how it had started. Of course. A good whore was all I needed. I had not been to Southwark for a long time.

      The lantern clock in the hall showed midnight. Was it really that time? It was too late and too dangerous. And the servants would know. They knew, or sensed, everything. Somehow I could not bear it reaching her. The indecision raged around in my head. Normally I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but that night I slept little.

      Up late, stupefied from lack of sleep, I enquired after her again. She was still indisposed. Indisposed! Far from going away, my sudden, inexplicable desire for her had grown during the night. It was absurd, laughable, to have a wife and not have her if I chose. I pushed past the maid. As well as brightening the place, she had altered the layout of the rooms. I found myself in the changing room next to the bedroom. It was full of the smell of her, herbs which I fleetingly recognised, like lavender and sage, intensified by some aromatic oil. A shift of voluminous white linen lay ready to be stepped into. Crimson-faced, the maid snatched up a linen cloth. The sharp, acrid odour reached me before I caught sight of the blood staining it. The maid thrust it among the dirty washing.

      It was the time of her flux, her flowers as the delicate put it. I turned away, muttering apologies, covering my nose. I did not, like the uneducated, believe that the woman’s flux turned wine sour and sugar black; but, being nature’s device to upset her humours, it might affect mine.

      On the landing I saw Luke, who was going in to see her, and told him she was still not well. ‘She is missing Highpoint, sir,’ he said. ‘As am I.’

      For a moment I was tempted. Highpoint was probably safer than London. I longed for the even tenor of what had been virtually my bachelor life. I could concentrate my energies on trying to influence what the next government would be. But I saw the hope and expectation in Luke’s face and dismissed the thought. He might get up to anything near Oxford with his Royalist friends. I told him curtly it was better if we stayed together.

      He bowed his head. ‘Then can I go out alone, sir?’

      ‘If I have your assurance that you will have nothing more to do with the Sealed Knot.’

      He tightened his lips stubbornly. ‘Then can I have a guard other than Scogman?’

      ‘He is not your guard. He is your companion.’

      ‘He is not respectful, sir.’

      ‘Enough! You will do as he says.’

      Nevertheless, a day or two later, I told Scogman to be more respectful. He looked astonished and said no one could possibly give Luke more respect. ‘Even when I’m insulted I turns the other cheek.’

      ‘He insults you?’

      ‘He calls me a bilker and a leather-mouthed prig.’

      I was shocked that Luke knew such thieves’ cant, let alone used it. Perhaps he picked it up in his short stay in prison. I took a guilty pleasure in enjoying the thought that Luke might be less of a gentleman than he appeared. The fact that there was some truth in Luke’s allegation started to bring a smile to my lips, but Scogman was displaying such righteous indignation I bit my cheeks and looked at him sternly.

      ‘A bilker. When was this?’

      ‘At the Moor in Watling Street. He told me to wait outside, sir, while he had a coffee. When I told him I would follow him casual-like, as if we did not know one another, he said I was like a pair of frigging darbies round his ankles.’

      This time I could not prevent a smile coming on my face. The Moor Coffee House was frequented not by Royalists but by shipping merchants and posted news of ships. There was a reason for Luke to go in there. The Highpoint estate owned part of a ship and Luke had shown an interest in it.

      ‘Let him go in there.’

      ‘Alone?’

      ‘You are always telling me you cannot stand the coffee there.’

      ‘Foul-smelling Turkish piss.’

      ‘Wait for him in the alehouse next door then. They could do with some of the business they’re losing to the coffee houses.’

      As a scout in the army Scogman had sensed trouble like a rat smelling a ferret. He had that look now, his lips tightening belligerently. ‘Very good, sir. But he’s up to something.’

      It was a little later when I asked Agnes about Anne’s condition that the thought occurred to me. Curious that I had been so repelled by the sight of that bloodstained linen pad, it had never occurred to me. If she was still bleeding, she could bear a child.

5

      I was determined to be as formal in my approach as she was. I even considered calling her into my study. After all, was not having a child a business like any other? A business at which I had singularly failed? Luke was weak, a milksop who ran to his mother, easily led by others. Scogman believed a good flogging was the solution but it had never worked for me. I believed with Thomas More that a whip should have the violence of a peacock’s tail. In any case it was too late. When he was building the New Model Army Cromwell used to tell me that selection was more important than training. You could not train damaged goods.

      I would have to start again. In the end I did not call her into my study. It would have been unheard of. To my knowledge no woman had ever been in that room, save the maid who cleaned it. Lord Stonehouse frowned from his picture above the fire at the thought of it. СКАЧАТЬ