Plague Child (18 page)

‘I –’

It was the only word I uttered. The personal pronoun was enough. I existed. I was alive. Richard ignored me. He would not speak to me. I was unspeakable. The words he said to his father were acid with anguished bitterness. ‘Couldn’t you wait until I was gone?’

‘I had no idea he was here!’

‘He let himself in, I suppose?’ His sword came out in a blur of movement which brought the point to my throat. He expected me to skip back but I would not. Moments before I had been so moved I’d had the impulse to embrace him and his father. Now I stared back with a hatred that matched his own. ‘Bought this fine lace with his wretched, seditious pamphlets, I suppose?’ With a flick of the blade he ripped away my lace collar. I instinctively jerked back. From that moment they ignored me. I had torn open an old wound and with every word they lacerated it further.

‘I have not seen this boy for years and that is the truth!’

‘You old hypocrite!’

His father’s face reddened so, I thought a blood vessel had burst. ‘Do not dare talk to me like that!’

‘Proud? You were proud to be rid of me, weren’t you?’

‘That is not true! I meant every word I said.’

There was such agony in Lord Stonehouse’s voice I struggled to interrupt, to clear up the misunderstanding, but I might as well have tried to walk through a hurricane. They pushed me to one side against the balustrade. Down in the hall I could see the servants, the waiting visitors and Eaton staring up. He gave me a vicious look, but even he dared not interrupt. Eventually, when they had torn their voices hoarse, Richard walked away down the stairs, only then seeming aware of the spellbound people in the hall.

Lord Stonehouse stood at the top of the stairs. Broken veins throbbed in his cheek, and spittle soiled the linen at his neck, but he was an impressive, forbidding figure nonetheless. He was tall and had not run to too much fat. Muscles stood out in his arms which could still control a horse or wield a sword. His hair was shorter than his son’s and had more dark than grey in it. He was carelessly dressed in black, his status shown only by the small gold-and-enamel medal of St George at his throat, the insignia of the Garter, worn, perhaps, to remind his son that he had once been a close confidant of the King. He was so used to an audience and too powerful to care what they thought, that he addressed his son as if there was no one there.

‘Richard! Come back . . .’ The first word was a command, the last ended in a plea. Richard caught the tone and hesitated. He turned, his face, which was as haughty and as proud as his father’s, was also awash with the same uncertainty, with a longing to return to the way they had originally parted before he saw me. If one had moved down a step, or the other up, they might have done so. But each was too proud to do so, and as if regretting his conciliatory tone Lord Stonehouse jerked his head towards his room and said gruffly, ‘Come.’ But when Richard turned away the old man’s rage burst out: ‘I’ll have you arrested!’

Richard unsheathed his sword, the blade almost catching the scrivener as he fell back against his desk. ‘I’ll see you in hell, Father,’ he yelled. ‘You and that impostor!’

Chapter 21

I was locked in a closet. All that long day, after the violence of Richard’s departure, there had been a brooding silence, broken only by whispers and the sound of carriages arriving and departing. The closet was an annex to the library, now used as a storeroom for correspondence seized from Royalist families. A passage marked by Parliamentary intelligence on one blotted page pleaded with a relative to ‘. . . take the Children & the Family Plate to the Countrie before the Harveste is inne and this Dismal Businesse begins’.

It was evening and the candles were lit when two servants took me upstairs. They would not answer my questions, or even look at me. They knew, as servants always know, that I was the plague child, and treated me as if I was still contagious.

I was taken into Lord Stonehouse’s study and motioned to a spot some distance from his desk. Lord Stonehouse sat in a pool of light from the candelabra burning over his head. With him was a man I took to be his secretary, who gave him papers to sign. Lord Stonehouse drank some wine, belched, moved to sign a paper, then stopped.

‘Eight horses?’

‘Eight, my lord.’

‘I know the Duke of Richmond’s stable. He has twelve fine Barbary horses. Find what has happened to them, will you, Mr Cole?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

He pushed the paper away unsigned. His voice remained equable, unemotional. ‘Horses and plate. Any soldier, officer or no, convicted of stealing them must not only be hanged but kept hanging as a warning to the others. Anything else?’

The secretary indicated me, bowing as he withdrew. Lord Stonehouse stared at me as if he had forgotten all about me. I am sure this was not an affectation. He had the administrator’s ability to dismiss one problem entirely from his head while he dealt with others. He looked at me as if I was a piece of paper on his desk. ‘You thought you would plot against me, did you?’

‘P-plot, sir?’ I stammered, in bewilderment.

A bony finger jabbed me in the back. ‘My lord,’ Eaton corrected me. He had been so still in a corner he had merged with the dark tapestry behind him.

Lord Stonehouse’s voice was as cold as his look. ‘Step forward. Look at me.’

I forced myself to look at the man who might be my real father. At that moment I cared little. I had lost any desire for a real father, particularly one who condemned you to a pit at birth.

His linen was crumpled and there were wine stains on his collar. Yet this very carelessness of dress spoke more eloquently of power than the finest clothes. His face was long and gaunt and his nose slightly hooked, like the falcon that was his symbol, and his jet black eyes had the bird’s unyielding, penetrating stare. It was hard to believe this was the man whose emotional parting with his son that morning I had interrupted. His voice had the rasping harshness of another bird, a rook.

‘You chose your moment well.’

I had spent the day regretting bitterly the misunderstanding, the rupture I had caused between father and son. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ I mumbled wretchedly, jumping as I got another prod in the back: ‘– my lord.’

My very abjectness goaded him to a sudden fury. I learned later that, like many strong, obdurate men, he could not abide weakness. I saw Eaton flinch, his scar curling into his cheek, for he knew what was coming. Lord Stonehouse leapt up. ‘Sorry? Sorry! You will be sorry! Did you think you could come in here and pick up your inheritance like that?’ He snapped his fingers in my face. ‘Did you? Did you?’

Spittle struck my face. I tried to answer, but it was impossible against this violent torrent of words. He raged at me, saying he had atoned for what he did. He had clothed me. He had educated me. God knew, he could do no more! And how did I repay him? By destroying his relationship with his eldest son. Despite all their endless arguments they had always been reconciled, but now it was over, and I was the reason for the final rift. He was only stopped by a fit of coughing. He leaned against his desk, breathing heavily, taking a swallow of wine. Red veins flared on his cheeks.

‘No news of Richard?’

Eaton re-emerged from the gloom of the tapestry. ‘No, my lord. You were considering whether he should be arrested. Shall I –’

Lord Stonehouse flung the glass at Eaton, who only just ducked in time. ‘Arrested? Arrest my son? For the only noble thing he has ever done?’ Eaton wiped the dregs of wine from his face. The look of hatred he gave Lord Stonehouse’s back was so savage that the ones he had given me seemed mild in comparison. Lord Stonehouse came back to me. His anger was spent, replaced by the cold remorseless look he had displayed at his desk. I preferred the violent, uncontrolled fury. I remembered the reports on me which, year after year, must have passed over that desk, pages read by these cold eyes, which I felt knew every blemish, every sin. Uncannily, he seemed to read my mind.

‘When I first brought you from that slum, the first reports suggested you would be hanged. You are but a step from it now.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? He thinks I have to have a reason to hang him, Eaton.’

Eaton laughed. It was short-lived, for Lord Stonehouse gave him a long, cold stare before coming so close to me I could smell the wine on his breath. ‘I could have you hanged as an impostor. There is no proof who you are.’ His black eyes that never left my face told me he would do it, as easily as he had signed the plague order to consign me to the pit. ‘Who put you up to this?’ he said softly. He darted a look towards Eaton and the look of fear on the steward’s face sent a shiver through me. ‘Put – put me up to what?’

‘You think you can walk in here and claim your inheritance, do you?’

‘No, my lord! That that is not what –’

‘It was deliberately planned, wasn’t it?

‘I don’t know what –’

‘Who told you my son was going to be here?’

‘No one!’

‘Liar!’ He felt my doublet. ‘The finest velvet. Who bought you this?’

Again he shot a look at Eaton. Guilt was written all over the steward’s face. I saw it all then. I remembered Eaton’s panic when he first saw me in the clothes. His saying to Turville they were going too far. Desperate that Richard should not inherit and ruin their rich livings, they had painted an optimistic picture of my prospects. The town house they talked about now seemed like a dream; perhaps there never were any such prospects of inheritance, apart from a fantasy in Lord Stonehouse’s mind, or simply as a threat to use against his son. Eaton and Turville had plotted to sell me at the right time – and I had turned up at a spectacularly wrong one.

He fingered the doublet again. ‘Who gave you this? What have they been telling you?’

The words were almost out of my mouth, but I bit them back. If I told him the truth he would be convinced I was part of a plot with Eaton and Turville. ‘Nothing! I bought these clothes myself.’

I glimpsed the look of relief crossing Eaton’s face. Lord Stone-house picked it up too; he read things into every nuance. ‘You?’ The word was loaded with disbelief and contempt. He would have got the truth out of me but for that contempt – contempt at the very idea that a miserable wretch like me could possibly earn money to afford such clothes. That riled me, for my pride was as great as his, but it was a different sort of pride; the pride of seven years of honest work and toil. The sale of my pamphlets had begun to make me more money than I had dreamed possible and I could – just – have bought the clothes.

‘Yes – I earned it!’ I spread out my hands. Every crevice of my hands down to the whorls of my fingers were once again engrained with ink. The work I was so proud of was beneath his contempt. And no argument would convince him once he had decided he was right. He shook me so my head rattled. I lost my temper, grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him from me.

I felt I was at the end of a journey which had begun with my rescuing from the mud those words that were going to change the world. The words had started the process, and the army would finish it. But if this was one of the men who was leading the army, one of the Great Twelve whom Mr Pym himself deferred to, what hope was there? His words were twisted and devious. They were not the words of hope, of change, but of double meanings and despair.

He was so shocked I had dared to lay a finger on him, he gaped at me open-mouthed while words poured out of me. I told him about rescuing the words from the mud, about how I thought he was a great leader like Mr Pym, but all he was interested in was hanging a man for stealing Barbary horses and turning an honest printer out of house and home. Eaton turned away, wincing, expecting Lord Stonehouse to explode as I said all that and more. Oh, I said all kinds of twaddle, things I had picked up from Crop-Eared Jack and barely understood, but I made up for my lack of understanding with passion and belief while he stared at me as if I was a creature just dropped from the moon.

When he had got some kind of breath back he picked up a bell from his desk. Still I kept on talking, starting from the very beginning when he had picked me up in the dockyard when I had burned myself. It was him, I knew it was him, I said, when he looked about to deny it. I said everything I might have said to him if I had been brought up by him instead of his money. When two burly servants came in and seized me, the story had to be cut pamphlet size. In short, I told him, I had not come for treasure.

‘Treasure?’ he said, with a puzzled frown.

‘I mean inheritance. I have come for this –’ And I pulled out the letter he had sent Mr Black.

‘Wait!’ He motioned the servants to release me and took the letter. He stared at the falcon seal. I thought for a moment that it was a trick of Eaton’s and he had never seen it before, but it was so unimportant to him he had forgotten it. He read it through to remind himself of it before looking up. ‘You came here for this?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Is that all?’

There was that sharpness of disbelief in his voice that set me off again, sounding like Crop-Eared Jack in his pot, saying I was the very last person to want an estate. Landowners seemed to forget that there was a Charter of the Forest as well as Magna –

‘Be quiet!’ he roared. He gestured towards a painting of Highpoint House. It was much larger than the one in Turville’s house and, I realised, done at a much later date, for the village that straddled the river was not there; perhaps it had been removed because it spoiled the view. ‘You would not have that?’

‘I would not, my lord.’

‘Then you are a fool.’

Riled again, and having nothing to lose I said: ‘I see what problems it brings you, my lord.’

His black eyes bored into me. I felt the servants, one at either side of me, staring stiffly ahead, hands twitching at my elbows, ready to lift me away like a course at dinner. Then he grunted and smiled. It was a smile bitter as vinegar, but still a smile. ‘Not, perhaps, such a fool,’ he muttered. The hands of the two servants stopped twitching and returned in unison to fold behind their backs.

He looked at the letter again. ‘You came here for Mr Black?’

‘Yes, my lord. He has been like a father to me.’

He winced, and walked up to me, giving me a piercing look. ‘Like a father?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

He turned abruptly away so I could not see his face. He crumpled the letter as he walked towards the window, pieces of wax from the seal crumbling from it and pattering on the floor, leaving a little trail behind him. It was quite dark now, candles glowing in the houses opposite. A window was open but the air was thick and warm and as still as the servants guarding me. It was so quiet I could hear their breathing and the creak of their shoes as they shifted slightly. Eventually he tossed the letter on his desk and swivelled curtly to Eaton. ‘You did not tell me any of this.’

Eaton came to life. ‘It was all in the reports, my lord. The devil in him, the temper, the –’

‘No, no, not that, Eaton, not that.’ The old man walked restlessly away. Then, like a lawyer suddenly finding a flaw in a case, he pounced on me. ‘But the wonderful Mr Black, like a father to you – you ran away from him!’

Triumph shone in his eyes. I was a fraud, making up a story to show what a wonderful son I was – and would be, in contrast to his own. It was a plot to get his estate from him. Plots were wrecking my life every time I tried to build it up. I was done with plots. He would see the worst in me anyway, whatever I said, so I flung the words bitterly at him: ‘I ran away because your son’s men tried to kill me.’

Eaton winced. He looked as if his scar had been freshly reopened. I remembered Turville saying he would not want to be the man who, without the most incontrovertible evidence, told Lord Stonehouse his son was a cold-blooded murderer. He stood quite still for a moment, then dismissed the servants, ordering them to stand outside his room. His face had the bleakness of those winter days that are never far from night. Eaton retreated into the shadows. Lord Stonehouse sat in the pool of light looking for the first time what he was, one of the most powerful men in England – or at least in that part of England opposed to the King. All my bravado left me. I began to shake and could not stop. His silence was the most awful thing, much more so than his violent, unpredictable temper, which was at least human; the measured way in which, with a key from a bunch at his waist, he unlocked and opened a drawer, had me convinced he was going to draw out a black cap.

Instead, he took out a file of papers. When he went through them, my shaking increased, although it was from a different cause. I recognised immediately Mr Black’s flowing, Italianate script, of which he used to be so proud. With my printer’s eye I could read upside down as well as in reverse. As Lord Stonehouse turned the pages I caught ‘devil beat out of him’ . . . ‘Latin good, but morally’ . . . ‘outstanding’ . . . ‘if not in hell first’. They were the carefully written versions of the drafts I had seen in Mr Black’s office, submitted once a quarter for the last seven years of my life. It was to this office, this desk they had come. Lord Stonehouse had made notes in the margin in a cramped, hurried scrawl. What moved me was not the notes – I could not read them – but that he had made them at all. Whatever the truth about my parentage, I realised I meant something to him and I saw him then, for the first time, as my benefactor.