The Best of Men (28 page)

Lord and Lady Beaumont were waiting with Mary at the entrance to the hall, and as he walked in, they bombarded him with anxious inquiries about the invalid. When they were assured that Tom’s life was in no danger, and once he had been put safely to bed, accompanied by his wife, Lord Beaumont observed to Laurence, “You look worn out, sir. It seems we shall have to nurse you both back to health!”

Laurence could not even smile; he had spent too much time on the road with Tom, and he now feared that the Colonel’s men might arrive at the house to arrest him before he could get to the meeting place near Aylesbury. “I can’t stay,” he said. “I have to set out again at first light tomorrow.”

“On what business?” his mother asked.

“It’s a private matter.”

Lord Beaumont frowned at him. “Did you perchance pay a call on Lord Falkland in Nottingham?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Has it any connection with your need to ride out so early?” When Laurence hesitated, his father said to Lady Beaumont, “I should have informed you, my dear. I suggested that Laurence inquire whether he could be of assistance to Falkland. He is so clever with figures and languages and ciphers, I thought there might be a place for him in Falkland’s service. And I must confess,” he added to Laurence, “I wrote to him on that subject.”

“So he told me,” Laurence said.

“I hope he also told you that I did impress upon him your concerns, and that I wished him to treat you well.”

Laurence groaned inwardly.

“Well treated?” cried Lady Beaumont. “My lord, have you taken leave of your senses?” She turned on Laurence. “What have you agreed
to do for him? Has he employed you in some kind of … underhanded occupation? For if you made any such commitment, I will not allow it!”

“Oh my dear,” murmured Lord Beaumont. “Falkland would never bring dishonour upon our son.”

“Tell me, Laurence,” she insisted.

How astute she was, he thought, and how unworldly was his father. “I’ve made no commitment to Falkland,” he answered, with absolute truth. “In fact, when I was in Nottingham, I enlisted in Wilmot’s Horse.”

They appeared astonished. “I must congratulate you,” his father said, at last. “We were aware how hard it would be for you to take up arms again.”

“But why not serve with Thomas’ troop?” objected Lady Beaumont.

Was nothing ever good enough for her, mused Laurence. “Wilmot’s an old friend of mine, and I owe him a favour,” he replied. “You’ll have to be satisfied with that.”

O
n the way to London with Lord Spencer, Falkland pondered yet again why Mr. Beaumont had failed to keep their appointment. He still refused to accept the explanation Colonel Hoare had offered that morning, as they waited a whole hour for the man to appear.

“Beaumont’s a complete and utter scoundrel,” he had told Falkland, after describing what he had learnt from his investigations amongst the veterans of the foreign war. “I reckon he was lying to you about how he acquired those letters. He may know more about the regicides than he was willing to admit, and after he saw you, he probably lacked the nerve to defend his concocted story. As I said, my lord, you must let me question him.”

“That I forbid,” Falkland had insisted, appalled by Hoare’s imputations, as by his eagerness to interrogate Mr. Beaumont, given what the process would entail. “And I don’t believe you. He was begging me to act on the intelligence.”

“Then will you alert the King as to a plot that threatens his life?” Hoare had inquired, coldly.

“I must know more about it first, from Mr. Beaumont. I shall speak with him myself upon my return. And afterwards of course I shall address His Majesty.”

Colonel Hoare tended to place too much faith in the veracity of rumour, Falkland thought, and whatever were Beaumont’s sins abroad, his father had written him a high recommendation. He deserved another hearing.

On arrival in the city, Falkland found it as noisy, crowded, and smelly as always; he could not understand how anyone would choose it over the peace and cleanliness of the countryside. But many things had changed: playhouses were closed, the taverns were half-empty, and the apprentices had left work to train with their own bands to defend the capital. Even women were employed digging earthworks, skirts kilted up, singing psalms as they wielded their shovels. Apparently all the churches had been stripped of the art that they had housed for centuries, and while Falkland did not share his mother’s Catholicism nor her love of Episcopal trappings, he was sad to imagine statues defaced, and frescoes and panels whitewashed over.

It saddened him further to realise, as he began negotiations with Parliament at Whitehall, that he had embarked upon a bootless mission. From the outset, he had predicted that the King had not gone far enough in agreeing only to put a formal end to hostilities if both sides withdrew the accusations of treason each had brought against the other. And so, in a private conversation with the leaders of Parliament, Falkland extended His Majesty’s terms, saying that the King was ready to consent to a thorough reformation of religion, and to anything else that they could reasonably desire. He knew that he might be compromising himself, for His Majesty had just once, and very vaguely, intimated such broad concessions, but in the end Parliament voted to reject even these. Falkland sent a messenger post-haste to Nottingham with the news, then sat in his coach alone and wept.

On his last night in the capital, he and Spencer were invited to attend a feast in the Banqueting House, to signal a close to their visit.
He wondered if the location had been selected to heap upon them a final insult. For the House, constructed and decorated richly in honour of His Majesty’s father, King James, whose resplendent form had recently been depicted on its ceiling by Rubens, had formerly been the scene of many royal ceremonies and pageants. How ironic, Falkland reflected, that he must now sup with men who might blow out his guts if he met them on the battlefield. Nonetheless, social decorum had to be observed, and so he and Spencer, in full regalia as members of the House of Lords, would go to break bread with the enemy.

He returned to dress at the house where he was staying, that of his friend Edmund Waller, who had been one of a minority in Parliament that voted to accept His Majesty’s peace terms. As he walked in, he was surprised to hear music: Waller must have come home early from the Commons and was now in his parlour playing an air on the bass viol, with another man at the virginals. Falkland listened, unwilling to disturb them, the minor key suiting his mood. But they had heard his footsteps and broke off.

“Falkland,” cried Waller, coming out to him, “you tried your best.”

“Parliament has given me what amounts to an unequivocal declaration of war,” said Falkland. “How could the King possibly commit to withdrawing his protection from his advisors and, yet more outrageous, have them pay the costs of this war as traitors to the realm?”

“Pym and his allies would love to see Lord Digby’s head stuck over Traitor’s Gate,” Waller remarked, with a smile.

“Mine too, perhaps.”

“No, my dear friend. You have their respect, and always will. And be comforted. London is far from lost to the King. He has only to march as far as Reading, and he’ll see that his capital has not deserted him. I’ll write to you, and keep you apprised of the climate here.”

“I pray you, be careful,” Falkland warned. “Letters can be intercepted. For you, especially, as a Member of Parliament, it would be
unwise to risk anything of the sort. And now,” he added, with a sigh, “I must prepare myself for the banquet.”

Yet it was not as much of an ordeal as he expected. He had been seated beside the Earl of Pembroke, who behaved very graciously towards him, and expressed deep regret that an impasse had been reached.

“My lord,” Falkland said, as the last platters of a meat and fish course were cleared away, “I am pleased to discover that you have not hardened yourself against His Majesty, after your last encounter at Newmarket when he rejected your own peace petition.” The King must have incurred Pembroke’s wrath long before, Falkland thought, when he dismissed him from the position of Lord Chamberlain. It was amazing that Pembroke should seem to bear no grudge. Falkland had always known him to be a choleric sort, sensitive to the slightest breach of his dignity.

“He is our anointed King, may God preserve him,” said Pembroke. “At any rate, if a campaign this autumn can’t be avoided, which I fear it can’t, Englishmen will at least be taught what it is to spill each other’s blood on home soil. When the armies break for the winter months we will have more of a chance to negotiate a peace.”

“Unless one side emerges triumphant,” Falkland pointed out.

“But that would leave the other desirous of revenge and restitution. My lord,” Pembroke went on more urgently, “I think we have much to discuss. Would you permit me to take you in my coach wherever you are staying tonight? We could then talk a while undisturbed.”

“Very well. I am at Edmund Waller’s house.”

“The poet?”

“Yes, and my good friend, although I had lost touch with him lately because of our country’s woes.”

“We have all lost touch with friends – another reason we must speak.”

After the company rose for a final health, Falkland said his goodbyes, gave instructions to his servant Stephens to follow him, and accompanied Pembroke outside.

“The Banqueting House always brings me back to the old days of King James’ reign,” Pembroke observed, as they settled themselves in his coach. “I was quite a favourite with him, until George Villiers displaced me in his affections, and got created Duke of Buckingham for it.”

“At least you did not meet your death at the hand of an assassin, as did the late Duke,” Falkland reminded him.

“Too true that being a favourite of kings has its dangers,” Pembroke said, with a hint of bitterness. As the horses picked up speed, he began again, “I should like to lay before you a proposal. I ask you to mention it to nobody as yet, not even your closest allies. Have I your word?”

“My lord,” said Falkland, “I cannot be party to anything that might harm His Majesty’s interests, nor will I betray the confidence of anyone who has chosen to serve him.”

“Be assured,” Pembroke said earnestly, “I would never seek to impugn your position as Secretary of State.”

“My position is not at issue here. My concern is to do what is right. Whether it is perceived as such, I do not care. I must satisfy my conscience.”

“That is exactly why I would discuss this matter with you! Because you are a man of honour and principle who loves his country and abhors bloodshed. As do I, my lord, as do I!”

Falkland took a moment to respond, surprised by the heat in Pembroke’s voice. “What is it that you propose?”

“We need to form an alliance of moderates on both sides: like-thinking men, such as ourselves. Before the end of the autumn campaign there is little to be gained by open discussion, so we have almost three months to prepare the ground.”

“And if there
is
a clear victor?”

Pembroke shook his head vehemently, his fierce, aquiline profile exaggerated by the flame of the single lantern within the coach. “My lord, a civil war does not end in clear victory. The defeated tend to rise
again, perhaps in five or ten years, perhaps in the next generation. And most of us do not want to shed the blood of a brother or a cousin or a friend. So how can war be stopped, after today’s vote, you may ask.”

“I do indeed,” said Falkland.

“By a strong and decided group of us who can present King and Parliament with a
fait accompli
, a well-knit agreement amongst principal ministers to govern our kingdom according to new laws. Our immediate task is to approach those whom we think might favour such a scheme, and canvass their views, without being explicit as to our plan.”

“Behind His Majesty’s back? We won’t succeed.”

“He will be ruined if we do not!” Pembroke shut his eyes tight for a moment, as if imagining this calamity. “His nephew Rupert may win him every battle in the field,” he continued in a more forceful tone, “but too many of his subjects have made it evident that they will not accept his governance as before, and he will have to find an accommodation, whatever the outcome of an armed conflict! With the sword you may hack off a branch. But if the root remains, what have you achieved, other than to strengthen its growth?”

Falkland could not deny this. “And who are you considering, on the King’s side?”

“After you, Culpeper, Lord Spencer, and Edward Hyde, the lawyer. And Lord Digby, possibly.”

“Digby? You can’t think of
him
as a potential ally!”

“He is now generally detested here, I grant you. But two years ago he moved in Parliament for a select committee to remonstrate with His Majesty on
the deplorable state of the kingdom
, if I recall his exact words. He was not always inimical to our aims, and he could be swayed.”

“Swayed too easily,” Falkland said, picturing Digby’s round, angelic face and duplicitous blue eyes. “He shifts like the wind.”

“Then start with those you can trust. I shall do the same. There are many here who actively disagree with the radicals. Your friend Waller
proved as much in voting for your terms of peace.” Falkland nodded, guardedly. “We must correspond with each other within the month,” Pembroke said, “in a secure code known only to the two of us.”

To Falkland’s relief, the coach had arrived at Waller’s house and was slowing to a stop. “Within a month?” he queried. “That is too soon.”

“But are you agreed, my lord?” Pembroke seized Falkland by the arm, as though he might fly out of the coach to avoid committing himself. “Is this not the sole means of preventing our country from disaster? The King toys with one policy and another, and in the meanwhile, we could negotiate a thousand times and go nowhere. Will you join me?”

“Let me consider it. I cannot be rushed into deciding. Indeed, as I often say, when it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary
not
to make a decision.”