The Best of Men (31 page)

“You will be studying with a veritable jewel in Merton’s crown,” Lord Beaumont had told the youth proudly. “As his former student, I can attest to his excellence. It is not often that a scholar of his age and seniority is prepared to take on the duties of tutorship, so you must be on your best behaviour, Laurence.”

The boy had not been at College for more than a week when he was late for a lesson. “What kept you, Beaumont?” Seward said. “I am obliged to punish your tardiness unless you’ve a good excuse.”

“I fell asleep in prayers again.” Without the least shame, Beaumont unhooked his breeches from behind, pulled up his shirt and displayed his hard little backside. He had been beaten so violently that blood had been drawn. “Dr. Middleton’s work,” he said, as he restored his clothing, adding with a wink, “He very much enjoyed it, too. I bet he’s pulling away at his yard as we speak.”

From then on Seward took care to avoid any unnecessary physical contact with the boy, suspecting that his charge had given him a subtle warning, and when Beaumont deserved punishment, as he often did for his laziness and general disregard for rules, Seward had it meted out by one of the other tutors.

The following April, Seward and he were summoned to Chipping Campden by a terse note from Lady Beaumont. They were escorted to her chamber, where she received them alone.

“Dr. Seward, my son has committed a serious offence,” she announced. “A maidservant in our employ is four months gone with his child, I assume begotten during his Christmas holiday here. She has been dismissed, of course, but the blame rests on him.” Beaumont flushed, which Seward had never seen him do before. “Will you admit to your wanton act?” her ladyship demanded of him.

“Yes,” he said, bowing his head and shuffling his feet.

“And how will you make amends?”

“I – I don’t know.”

She turned to Seward. “What sort of an education is he receiving!”

“My lady, he has not been allowed to consort with any females while under my authority,” Seward affirmed, knowing that Beaumont had been notably absent on some nights. He would sneak in later smelling of cheap perfume and a slightly fishy scent that Seward guessed must be the odour of a woman’s intimate parts. He himself had never been with a woman in all his life, and the very thought of it repulsed him.

“Laurence, you may go,” she ordered. Afterwards she said to Seward, “We have decided to send him away for a period of continental travel, to separate him from any influences which might encourage him to further debauchery. At my husband’s recommendation, he will be in your trust. Lord Beaumont will arrange matters with the College. But, Dr. Seward, how has Laurence picked up such unchaste habits? From the other boys?”

“I cannot say,” Seward replied; she was making a fuss of nothing, in his view. “He deserves your reproach, my lady, but the passion of youth does lead to temptation. I do not seek to mitigate his offence, yet many of us have fallen into similar errors, in our early years.”

As he finished his banal speech, he was perplexed to see that she had lost her air of command and looked almost frightened. “What are you implying, Doctor?” she said, in a tight voice.

“My lady, only that he should be pardoned. He has an impulsive, giving nature, and –”

“In this case he has given too much of himself,” she said, regaining her composure. “You must instil in him greater moral sense or we shall have to find someone more vigilant to supervise him.”

Their interview ended, and Seward was shown into the library, where Lord Beaumont greeted him kindly, asking if he would mind an absence from the College.

“I shall be more than happy to forego my duties there for a while,” Seward answered.

“Then it is settled. We are grateful, Dr. Seward. I know that Laurence is very fond of you.”

“As I am of him.”

“Between us two,” Lord Beaumont said, almost apologetically, “I am not in the least concerned if he sows a few wild oats. I just wish he would venture outside the confines of his own household so that his mother would not have to know. Though I’d prefer that he have a good clean country girl, rather than lie with town prostitutes,” he added, smiling. Seward cleared his throat; Beaumont had evidently done both. “And now, Dr. Seward, permit me to introduce you to my younger son, Thomas. In five years he shall follow Laurence to Merton College, God willing.”

A child was playing at the far end of the room, swinging a toy sword about in combat with some invisible assailant. On Lord Beaumont’s request he came to them obediently. He was blond and fair-skinned, his blue eyes round and widely set, his nose and plump cheeks spattered with freckles, and he bowed solemnly to Seward. Like a miniature gentleman twice his age, Seward thought, and the picture of Lord Beaumont. Then, as though the secret had been whispered in Seward’s ear, he understood why he had awoken such fear in the irreproachable Lady Beaumont.

The call of a nightjar brought him back to the present, and he wondered, as he had so many times, who Beaumont’s true father could have been. A Spaniard, most likely. Beaumont had no clue to this day, and he so loved the man he considered as his father that Seward would never disabuse him.

About to give up and empty the silver bowl, Seward caught an image reflected in the water. It was the face of a man he had once known. His gut contracted painfully, and he stumbled back in shock. This was a sign: he must tell Beaumont the truth about the coded letters. He should not have kept silent so long, deceiving a dear friend, but he had been afraid for himself. Rumours had dogged him for years. He had endured the whisperings of jealous academics, suffered the confiscation of his books and alchemical equipment, and faced accusations of sorcery. He had even feared for his life. In his waning years, all that he desired was peace and obscurity in which to pursue his journey towards spiritual enlightenment. His past had surfaced, however, to threaten not just his life but that of the King. He had been cowardly, he realised, as only the old can be.

Now another image came to him unbidden, not in the bowl but in his head, of the pattern on the Toledo sword that he had left with Isaac Clarke for safekeeping. “Oh, what have I wrought?” he exclaimed to himself, and inked his quill to compose a note to Beaumont. Then, as swiftly, he reconsidered. He could not trust such information to paper. He would have to tell Beaumont in person.

Diana was sitting with Margaret in the parlour, both of them trying not to laugh while her eldest boy recited lessons from his hornbook to the nurse; the poor woman, being illiterate, could detect none of his mistakes. On Diana’s lap, her younger child babbled away happily, playing with a coral-and-silver rattle.

“Sir Robert is home early today, madam,” said Margaret, as they heard the sound of hooves in the courtyard.

Diana thought of that other day when her husband had arrived back early, nearly a month ago. Out of tact, or perhaps a reluctance to know more, Robert had not once mentioned Beaumont again. She
was grateful for this and had been especially solicitous towards him ever since.

Quickly she handed the child to the nurse and rose to look out of the open window; Robert was dismounting from his horse, and as he marched towards the house, she saw his face. “Something is the matter,” she murmured, and hurried to greet him.

She reached the foot of the stairs just as Robert walked in. “Oxford has surrendered to Parliament,” he said, tearing off his cloak with unwonted violence.

“Oh my God!” she cried. “But Sir John Byron had command of our defences –”

“He left a few days ago. The King is short of men, and I assume Byron’s regiment could not be spared, so the rebels had an easy time of it. The common townsfolk have always favoured them, and you should have seen them lording it about the streets, burning books and aiming shots at every statue of the Virgin that they could find. What’s worse, we merchants must now do business with this occupying force at prices it has set to its own advantage, or else have our goods confiscated. We have been given until the end of the week to decide.”

“Surely
you
will not treat with the enemy.”

“As if I had a choice! How much would you have us lose?”

“Oh, forgive me, sir,” she whispered, embracing him.

“I should send you and the boys away,” he said, more gently.

“You may send them. I won’t leave you.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Bless you. Oh, I almost forgot. You will be receiving a visitor shortly. I met Mistress Savage in the High Street.”

“Isabella Savage? Goodness, it has been years since I last saw her,” Diana said, amazed. “What can she be doing in Oxford?”

“You will have to ask her yourself. I was sorry for her today – her
splendid coach was trapped in an alley, and some drunken soldiers were pelting it with dung. I sent one of my men after them with a whip, and they staggered off. I cannot believe she would risk travelling with only her driver for protection. Very foolish, but then I never had a high opinion of her. I told her to come to my house immediately, before she could be set upon again.”

“You acted most courteously,” Diana said, knowing Robert’s antipathy for Isabella.

“My love,” he said, smoothing her hair with his fingers, “let’s be brave and pretend that everything is as it should be. And now I’ll read over my accounts for a while. It is not as though I can conduct any other business under the present circumstances.”

Diana attempted a smile, and returned to the parlour. “Take the children to play in the kitchen yard,” she ordered the nurse. “I don’t want them disturbing Sir Robert.” To Margaret she confided, “Oxford is lost to the rebel army. Not a word to the servants.”

“Oh my lady!” gasped Margaret, “what will become of us?”

“I wish I knew. And I have a guest arriving, Mistress Savage. We must make up the spare chamber for her. Come, it’s best that we keep ourselves busy.”

Not long after they were finished, a coach drew into the courtyard pulled by four sweating chestnut horses. Diana ran to meet it, watching eagerly as the door swung open and Isabella emerged without the assistance of her driver, who was unloading her baggage. She wore the plainest dress and her hair was dishevelled, yet for all that she had not changed, Diana thought, with a touch of envy.

“What an ill-mannered bunch those troopers are,” she said, hugging Diana. “Thank heaven Sir Robert chanced by.”

“I dread to imagine what might have become of you otherwise. You must stay with us, no question of it. We have already prepared
your chamber. But do you not have even a maidservant with you?”

“My last one I let go, she was stealing from me,” Isabella replied. “I did not have time to hire another.”

“Dear me,” said Diana, scandalised as Robert had been that her friend should travel alone. “You must want to refresh yourself.”

“Later. Let us talk first. Do you have children now?” Isabella inquired, with an odd, melancholy sweetness to her expression.

“Two boys, four years old, and eighteen months.”

“You are lucky.” After a little pause, Isabella smiled in the languid way that Diana remembered well. “And you are as pretty as ever. So many women lose their looks after childbirth.”

In the parlour, Diana called for Margaret to bring them fruit cordial, while Isabella pinned back her hair.

“It’s been almost a week since I set out from Nottingham,” she told Diana. “One of the axles broke on the coach, and I had to spent a couple of nights waiting for it to be repaired. I was sleeping in a veritable outhouse, for there were no inns about. I have flea bites over every inch of me.”

“You came from Nottingham?” Diana asked, sitting forward. “Then do you know if the King is marching south?”

“His army will have left yesterday.”

“To liberate Oxford?”

“Alas, no. We encountered a scout outside Banbury who said that His Majesty is bound for the west to swell his ranks before engaging with the enemy.”

“You are better informed than any of us in town.”

“If this first battle is to decide the war, I dislike our chances. Essex’s army is far superior in size.”

Diana chose to switch to a lighter subject. “Whose coat of arms is that on your coach, your husband’s?”

Margaret had entered with a flagon and glasses; she was examining Isabella from the corner of her eye.

“No, no,” Isabella replied, laughing. “I am still unwed. It is that of Digby’s father, the Earl of Bristol.”

“So your noble patron is still looking after you,” Diana remarked, feeling envious again.

“Yes, though in the end I wish I had travelled less ostentatiously. Those drunks would not have pestered me if I had been on horseback.”

“How
could
you journey by yourself at a time like this?”

“As a matter of fact, two gentlemen accompanied me when I started out. Then there was an altercation, and I continued on my own.”

“Had they been true gentlemen,” Diana observed, as she filled their glasses, “you would not have been left unescorted.”

“How right you are, my dear. I shall chastise Mr. Beaumont at the next opportunity.”

“Did you say
Beaumont
?” exclaimed Diana, almost dropping the flagon.

“Yes. They were brothers. Laurence and Thomas Beaumont.”

“Why – they are – they are kinsmen to Sir Robert. Distant cousins.”

“Ah!” Isabella paused again, as if to absorb the information. “Do you see much of them?”

“Oh no, very little.” Diana took a sip from her glass, now wishing Isabella would speak of something else.

“They are both wed, I assume.”

“Only the younger brother, Thomas. The eldest was to be married some years ago. Then he … he went abroad, to fight.”

“Is that so! They are both remarkably good-looking, are they not, though in such a different manner. Which do you find the most handsome?” Diana hesitated, uncomfortable at the idea of Beaumont and her friend together. “I am certain that you have devoted some thought
to the issue, or it would not provoke such colour in your cheeks,” Isabella teased. “Let me see if I can guess.” Yet she got no further, for Margaret suddenly jumped up and ran to the window.