The Best of Men (6 page)

“On the subject of marriage, I’m quite ignorant myself.”

“You know what I mean,” said Lord Beaumont, suppressing his own amusement. “Now why are you so unwilling to join your brother?” Laurence’s smile hardened slightly, and he looked away with a hint of impatience. Pondering whether to press him further, Lord Beaumont observed not the changes in his son’s appearance but what was the same: his rangy physique, his untidiness, the animation in his features, and his eyes, so much his mother’s. It was the colour and set of her eyes that had captivated Lord Beaumont over thirty years ago in Seville: celadon, fringed with long dark lashes, they were almond-shaped and slanted like those of an Oriental. He remained utterly hostage to their charm.

“Ingram told me that Seward is still at Merton,” Laurence said abruptly, leaving his father’s query unanswered.

“He is,” said Lord Beaumont, allowing it to pass, gratified that Laurence should ask after their former tutor. “He has given up most of his teaching and pursues his esoteric studies, which I pray will not get him into the same trouble he once faced in King James’ reign, when I was up at College.”

“Ah yes. He was suspected of witchcraft, or something of the kind, wasn’t he.”

“It was all nonsense, of course, and he defended himself admirably, but academics have long memories. He wrote to me during your absence assuring me that you would return, although at the time I believed it was just to comfort me. He was so attached to you when you were a lad. Indeed, your mother often worried that he might be … overly attached.”

“She shouldn’t have worried,” Laurence said, laughing. “I really must call on him.”

“He would be delighted. Oh, and while you are there, you might do me a small favour.” From the book he had been reading, Lord Beaumont pulled out a sheet of paper. “This is from John Earle, a fellow of Merton for some years whom Seward no doubt knows. Earle and I have been playing a game together, an exchange of letters in cipher to test our wits, although in this case, I fear Earle has tested mine too greatly, for I cannot unscramble what he has put down here. Perhaps I might beg your assistance with it. You studied such things with Seward, did you not, and had quite a talent for them?” Laurence nodded, a peculiar wariness in his eyes. “You might have better luck than I, and you could then leave our transcription at the College, for Earle to collect at his convenience.” As his son began to read the letter, Lord Beaumont went on, “Earle belonged to Lord Falkland’s circle of friends at Great Tew. He was also chaplain to the Earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of Oxford. It was a shock to me, by the bye, that Pembroke sided with Parliament.”

“But you never liked him,” Laurence commented. “You called him an ambitious, foul-mouthed boor.”

“Did I! Yet he is a patron of the arts, like his brother before him. He no doubt held a grudge against the King after his dismissal last summer from the office of Lord Chamberlain. Hoping to appease the radicals, and please Her Majesty who always detested him, the King had him replaced by the Earl of Essex. Essex sided with Parliament anyway, and so the King only ended by making an enemy out of his former ally.”

“Too late for appeasement, as with the execution of Strafford. Still, I thought you said that Pembroke was one of the moderates in Parliament.”

“He is, and as a figure in the Lords he can exert his influence in favour of a peaceful settlement.”

“He’d have much to lose if the King won victory in battle, and he was caught on the wrong side.”

“From what I hear, he claims he would not take up arms against His Majesty.”

“Ah, so he’s merely hedging his bets.”

“I trust principle still has some role in his actions,” Lord Beaumont said, discomfited by Laurence’s cynicism. “At any rate, let us return to John Earle. He has lately been appointed tutor to the young Prince Charles and may be too busy for games, but I should like to answer him nonetheless. What do you make of it?”

Laurence inspected the passage again and asked for a quill. Lord Beaumont waited, watching him as he scribbled various numbers below the original characters, matched them with alphabetical letters, and at length produced groups of syllables, then words, and finally full lines. “It’s a substitution cipher with suppressed vowels,” he said, and showed his father the result.

“Pray read it aloud for me, sir.” Laurence obliged him, after which he exclaimed triumphantly, “A passage from Herodotus – how
excellent! You must explain how you unravelled the cipher. And could you write me a better one, to confound Dr. Earle?”

“I think so,” said Laurence, wiping an inky forefinger and thumb on his breeches.

“Laurence,” Lord Beaumont said, an idea surfacing in his mind, “you should not waste your gifts. Why not put them to some nobler purpose? You might work for Lord Falkland. The concerns of state security fall under his charge, as does the collection of intelligence. You could be useful to him.”

“What are you suggesting?” Laurence asked, a tension audible in his voice that puzzled Lord Beaumont.

“You could decipher messages for him and invent codes, as you are doing for me. I meant no more than that – perish the thought of you being a mole! That is not an occupation for gentlemen.”

“It certainly isn’t,” Laurence murmured.

Lord Beaumont felt a shade fearful, wondering what his son had done while abroad, and he realised that he did not actually want to find out. “Falkland would never use you so,” he said. “Yet to allay any concerns you might have, it can be made clear to him which duties you will accept, and which you will not.”

“How would that be made clear?”

“Through a letter of introduction. I could set out precisely –”

“I haven’t depended on your name for some years,” Laurence interrupted. “But that’s not the point. Falkland can’t assure you that he’ll keep my nose clean, and it would be unfair to ask it of him.”

“He is my good friend! He is also a man of honour, the best and most scrupulous of His Majesty’s advisors, which is why he was selected –”

“That he may be. But there is such a thing as
raison d’état
.”

“Yes, I admit –”

“And it takes precedence over anyone’s scruples, in peace as in war – especially in war. And if war breaks out, I don’t think it will be a
short engagement, nor will it be an affair of gentlemen. Though I could be wrong,” Laurence concluded sardonically. “The atrocities I witnessed abroad may have tainted my view of matters here.”

Good God, thought Lord Beaumont, shaken by the force of his son’s reaction and deliberate choice of words. “Nevertheless,” he said, “we must not forget that our King did rule these seventeen years over a prosperous realm, the envy of many other crowned heads.”

“And now the money is spent, and he’s had to call a Parliament that won’t vote him what he wants. And his Queen, who’s been run out of England by his own subjects, must pawn the crown jewels for arms so that he can afford to wage a war.”

“We may still hope that cooler tempers will prevail. I have the greatest faith in Falkland and his allies. My son, you too could have some voice in all this. You have so much to offer – your swift intelligence, your academic learning, as well as your experience of conflict, which has taught you the value of peace. To act upon the stage of politics would befit a man of your rank.”
A role I never played myself
, Lord Beaumont mused regretfully. Then he hurried on, “I do not wish you to be compromised in any way, if you believe that is what might happen. Yet you should visit Falkland, if only to pay your respects.”

There was a silence, during which he saw a kind of weary distaste in his son’s face, and afterwards a more calculating expression, which he did not altogether like.

“All right,” Laurence said, “I’ll go. Though I don’t need a letter of introduction.”

“Your mother will be proud of you.”

“For the first time.”

“Well, sir,” said Lord Beaumont, “there is a first time for everything.”

Upon leaving the library, Laurence went to his chamber, sat down on the edge of his bed, and put his head in his hands. He stayed motionless for some minutes, lost in contemplation, before searching inside his doublet and producing the folded letters, now grubby from much handling and far more inscrutable than Dr. Earle’s missive, proof even against his own gifts. He had not needed Khadija to tell him of their value, just as he had not needed her to comfort him with promises of a future love. And what tragedy could these flimsy sheets of paper prevent? They could not stop a war: the conflict between King and Parliament had been fomenting too long and had too many causes. But if they had a bearing on it, as he strongly suspected, the Secretary of State might take an interest in them. At the same time, he remembered Ingram’s reaction to a few mere details of his own past. He was one of many hundreds of returning veterans, and rumour had a way of spreading. If Lord Falkland were to hear anything discreditable about his activities abroad, so also might Lord Beaumont. And the truth would hurt him, Laurence knew.

Laurence had to admit that if not for Captain von Mansfeld, he would have abandoned his sanity altogether, stuck in that vile field hospital, still weak from his wound and with no hope of escape. On the bleak night that they first met, he was squatting to defecate in a corner of the yard when a group of officers rode in on glossy, well-fed horses. Behind them, moving more slowly, was a mule dragging a stretcher with a body tied up on it. The officers dismounted and led the mule and its awkward burden into a barn, now vacant, where prisoners of war had been kept. As he pulled up his breeches, Laurence considered stealing one of the horses, trying to calculate whether he had the strength
to mount on his own, let alone ride any distance. Then he heard a voice cry out in a familiar tongue. Squelching through the thick mud towards the barn, he peered around the door.

The officers were standing over the man on the stretcher, volleying questions at him in their native German. As the man panted out a reply, Laurence realised that he was a Spaniard, and the officers’ visible confusion suggested that they could not speak his tongue.

Laurence stepped forward, so that they could see him in the glow of their single lantern. “I can translate for you,” he told them.

They surveyed him derisively, and no wonder: he was half naked, unshaven and filthy, with a repulsive scab below his ribs.

“Are you another Spanish prisoner of war?” asked one of them.

“No, I’m an Englishman,” said Laurence, “and I was wounded fighting on
your
side.”

“An Englishman?”

“Hard to see what he is under all that dirt,” scoffed a second officer.

“Well, whatever you are, help us quickly,” said the first. “This bastard won’t last long. Got caught in crossfire, and had both his legs blown off. But he’s a known courier and had a package of coded messages on him. We must find out what they are about, before he dies.”

“I’ll do nothing until you tell me what it’s worth to you,” said Laurence, at which they hooted with laughter.

“You’ve got balls, attempting to bargain with us,” exclaimed the first officer. He extended his hand, which Laurence was too shamed to sully by grasping in his own. “I am Captain Franz von Mansfeld, no kin, alas, to Wallenstein’s famous adversary, slain when I was a youth. And what is your name?” Laurence told him. “How little there is of you, Herr Beaumont, you’re skin and bone. Help us question the Spaniard and we’ll give you enough to buy a meal and put some clothes on your back.”

“That’s not what I want,” Laurence said, struggling to hide his desperation. “I want you to get me out of this place.”

“Fair enough, if you can do us good service,” the Captain said. “We haven’t a spare horse, but you are welcome to the mule. Come, to work.”

Laurence knelt beside the pallet, his appetite aroused, despite himself, at the familiar bacon-like odour of singed flesh. The Spaniard’s legs had been shredded by cannon fire, and he would soon be dead. “
Amigo
,” Laurence began, “
no tienes mucho más tiempo en este mundo
.” The Spaniard started to writhe about, moaning that he would die unshriven. Laurence thought quickly, and whispered in his ear, “That’s why the Germans brought me to you. I am a priest, also a captive here. I’ve come to take your last confession.” Leaning in still closer, he hissed, “They can’t understand a word we’re saying. They have your package, which will go undelivered, but I can pass on what intelligence you give me. God willing, I intend to escape tonight.”

“First save my soul,” the man responded, a faint suspicion in his eyes.

After his years in the Spanish army, Laurence had witnessed so many priests officiating that he could rattle off a convincing version of the last sacrament. Making fast work of the man’s sins, he pronounced him absolved. Only then did the man begin to provide a more interesting confession, but eventually he wearied, and in a barely audible voice he murmured, “
Gracías, padre, y que Díos te bendiga
.” A spume of blood bubbled forth from his lips, and he was gone.

The officers threw a sack over the body and strode out into the dull morning light, and Laurence followed. “Well, Herr Beaumont, did all that mumbling between the two of you bear any fruit?” von Mansfeld inquired impatiently.

“I know who these were for.” Laurence pointed at the blood-splattered documents in von Mansfeld’s hand, and explained what he had found out.

Von Mansfeld looked astonished. “How in the devil’s name did you persuade him to talk?”

“In
God’s
name,” Laurence replied. “I told him I was a priest.”

“Nice work, Herr Beaumont!” von Mansfeld congratulated him. “But that information is of little use to us if we cannot learn what is in these papers he was carrying.”

“Let me see them,” Laurence begged. Von Mansfeld passed them over to him, and he scanned the lines of densely packed numbers. “I know this cipher,” he said, feigning confidence. “I can break it. Give me a chance and I’ll show you.”

The Captain glanced at his companions, who appeared dubious, then shrugged and nodded. “Very well, sir, we shall give you your chance.”