The Best of Men (75 page)

“What?” she murmured, and then her eyes opened. “Are you sick, my lord? Your colour is very high.”

“It is the dream that has agitated me, though I am not sure why.”

“Was it about Elizabeth?”

“No – about your cousin Antonio, of all people!”

As he described it to her, her expression changed from concern to appalled shock, and then to anger, as though he were deliberately insulting her. “If you love me, you will never speak of this again!” she cried, and launching from the bed, she swept out of the chamber.

Immediately Lord Beaumont felt heartsick: why, at a time of mourning and sorrow, had he been so thoughtless as to trouble her with memories of her past? He must beg her forgiveness. He threw off the covers and was getting to his feet when a mist dimmed his sight, and his legs grew numb. Then came a rush of heat within, as if his head were made of some explosive substance ready to ignite; and he clutched vainly for the bedpost, knowing himself about to fall.

A
dam regarded Laurence sourly, then pointed towards a lone man hunched on the ground a little apart from the other soldiers in Prince Rupert’s encampment. “Over there.
Sir
,” he added, through his teeth.

As Laurence came closer, he saw that Tom was stripping and cleaning a pistol. The look of concentration on his face and the trim of his beard and moustache were so reminiscent of a younger, vigorous Lord Beaumont that Laurence hesitated painfully before speaking his name.

“What brings you here?” Tom inquired. “Have you at last come to offer your sympathies upon Ormiston’s death?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?” Laurence asked, though he felt guilty that he had not sought Tom out. Indeed, he had sought out no one lately save Isabella, often at the expense of his work for the Secretary of State.

“A few paltry lines of your scrawl!” Tom was clutching the pistol so tightly that his knuckles were white. “What if it had been Ingram? Do you think I would have let a day pass, if I could help it, without telling you how sorry I was?” He stopped, perhaps waiting for Laurence to speak, or to control his own emotion, before resuming more quietly, “You know how Ormiston died? In my arms, with his
belly blown open and his guts hanging out. He spoke just a few words, and then he was gone. We only lost a couple of men, and he had to be one of them. Have you ever done that – held a man in your arms as he takes his final breath?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, then.” Tom started cleaning the pistol again with ferocious determination.

“Tom, there’s more bad news – from home,” Laurence said. “Our father has suffered an apoplectic fit.”

“A fit?” Tom’s eyes widened. “He’s not – he’s not dead?”

“No, but he’s partly paralysed, and he can’t talk. Our mother fears that he could have another seizure. She wants us both to come home. Falkland has granted me leave and will settle with the Prince for yours. We can ride out now.”

“It’s
you
he’ll want to see – his heir.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Laurence exclaimed, “he might die. He may be dead before we even get there.”

Tom was searching in his doublet. “Here, give this to Elizabeth.” He held out a ring, which he dropped into Laurence’s hand as though to avoid all contact with him. “Ormiston wished her to have it. You can make whatever excuse you choose for my absence.”

“Please, as your brother, I’m begging you –”

“Ormiston was more of a brother to me than you’ve ever been, or ever will be,” Tom cut in hoarsely.

“For the sake of our family, then. Please come.”

Tom shook his head, and turned back to his pistol.

On the way north out of the city, Laurence called at Isabella’s house. Her maidservant Lucy invited him in, smiling until she saw his expression, then motioned him quickly upstairs. At the bedchamber, he paused by the open door; Isabella was at her sponge bath. He watched, quite
still, as if in disturbing her he might shatter everything between them.

She must have felt a presence, for with that endearing instinct of a woman caught unawares she crossed her arms over her breasts, to peer over her shoulder. “You!” she said; then like Lucy, she became instantly grave. “What is it, Beaumont?”

He picked her up, dripping wet as she was, set her on the bed and knelt down before her. “My father is sick. He may be dying. I have to go to him.”

“Oh my love,” she whispered. He rested his head on her lap and inhaled the fragrant perfume of her soap, wanting to stay, comforted by the simple warmth of her skin against his. But she drew him up, and looked very directly at him. “It was too good to last, wasn’t it. We should accept what we knew all along. It must end.”

“No,” he insisted, trembling. “Whatever happens won’t change my feelings for you.”

“Beaumont, I told you once before,” she said, “think of who you are and will be, and who
I
am. I cannot marry you, and I cannot give you children. All that I could ever be to you is a mistress, of whom you would eventually tire.”

“Have some faith,” he encouraged her, but she said nothing to this, and merely kissed him goodbye.

“I trust I can rely on
you
not to dissolve into tears,” Lady Beaumont told Laurence with unaccustomed gentleness, as he looked down at his father.

Lord Beaumont lay sleeping in bed, in his neat cap and gown, his mouth contorted on the right side. His skin was unnaturally pale. His hands, palms up on the coverlet, resembled inanimate objects that did not belong to him. If not for the rise and fall of his chest and the soft sound of his breathing, he might have been a corpse laid out for burial.

“We have hope – he is much better than he was,” she went on, more briskly.

Laurence sniffed, before asking, “How so?”

“He can speak more clearly and has regained some movement in his frozen side. According to the physician, we may anticipate even greater improvement. Martha prescribed lily of the valley, in a tincture with wine, to regulate the heart. And walnuts ground to a powder – I do not understand the point of this last item, but it may be having some effect.”

“She’s following the doctrine of signatures. The walnut resembles the brain.”

“Thank you for that interesting information,” said Lady Beaumont, with a faint smile. “Have you seen Elizabeth?”

“Yes.” He thought of his sister in her rose-pink gown, standing at the altar beside her husband. “I just gave her Ormiston’s wedding ring – from Tom.”

“Why is Thomas not here?” she demanded, her smile vanishing.

“He said he would follow me as soon as he could. Poor man, he’s broken up – he loved Ormiston.”

“More than his father?”

“Oh no, I’m sure not.”

She sighed and lowered her eyes. “I was angry with his lordship, just before the fit came over him, and I cannot help thinking that I am partly to blame.”

Surprised that she should confide in him, Laurence slipped an arm around her waist to comfort her, then realised that he had never done such a thing in his life. He could detect her equal amazement in the straightening of her spine.

“I must thank Lord Falkland, for permitting you to come,” she remarked, moving away from him. “How is he, these days?”

Not a happy man. Since the events in London, any hope of peace is finished. The war party is on the ascendant, on both sides.”

“How long will he let you stay?”

“As long as I wish, unless some emergency arises,” Laurence answered, knowing that Falkland’s generosity was born of embarrassment, over His Majesty’s stubborn indifference on the issue of the conspiracy.

“Will you stop that?” Seward inquired of his cat. Tail high and back arched, it was winding in and out of his legs as he tried to solve a complex algebraic formula. “My dear Pusskins,” he said, “it is four of the clock, the sole time of night when I can have peace and quiet, amidst all the chaos of Her Majesty’s arrival on these premises. Pray let me concentrate! Clarke was wise, to seek refuge in the countryside,” he muttered to himself.

Just then, the cat nipped sharply at his ankle, making him jump up. He was about to berate it again when a memory stirred within him. He looked through the window to the dark quadrangle beyond and saw no one. But a second later there came a knock at the door. He opened it a crack, to Sir Bernard Radcliff, and stepped back in fright.

“Dr. Seward,” Radcliff said, “may I come in?” Seward admitted him, after which Radcliff inspected the room as though in a dream; he was hollow-cheeked, his eyes darting from one object to another. “Everything here is as I remembered it!” he exclaimed, as if he and Seward were still on the best of terms.

“No thanks to the depredations of your servant,” said Seward, keeping close to the door in case he needed to make a quick escape; Radcliff was wearing his sword.

“Doctor, I am in need of your assistance,” Radcliff confessed, in a humble tone.

“To cast a royal horoscope?” Seward said, with wary sarcasm.

“No, to finish the mischief just such a horoscope started. To stop a regicide.”

“Go to His Majesty and make your confession.”

“You know that if I do, I’ll pay with my life and my family will be paupers.”

“The price of treachery is ever steep.”

“I predicted the King’s death! I did not plan it.”

“Liar! You would not be here at all, and nor would I, had you not been frustrated in your evil scheme! Why should I help you?”

Radcliff fell into Seward’s chair and buried his face in his hands. “I want to save my wife and child from dishonour. No more than that.” He looked up, beseeching. “You must have foreseen I would come to you.”

“I thought you might address Beaumont first.”

“I tried, when he was at Faringdon. Then he stole my letters and disappeared. Doctor, the Earl of Pembroke has shown me the painting of the god of silence. I assume you scried for Pembroke’s name, for it was in none of the letters.”

“My skills, in this instance, were unnecessary,” Seward said, taking great delight in telling him. “Beaumont identified Pembroke long ago as the master of the conspiracy. And the painting was entirely his idea.”

“By God!” whispered Radcliff. “Pembroke discovered that he sent it, however, and has asked me to bring him to his lordship’s house in London.”

“When was that?”

“Back in May, before the Royalist uprising was thwarted.”

“Why did you not do it?”

“Of course I would not hand Beaumont over to him! My association with Pembroke is finished, and he must know it. He may already have sent someone out to kill me. Although he, too, is somewhat compromised in his activities these days,” Radcliff added. “As one of
the moderates in Parliament, he is under suspicion of involvement with the Commission of Array, and is being watched closely by Parliament’s spies.”

“Alas for him,” said Seward, and pointed at Radcliff’s sword. “Was it you who told him about the Knights of the Rosy Cross?”

“Yes, and at once he saw that their aim of establishing a wholly Protestant Europe fitted marvellously with his own ambitions.”

Seward gave a dry laugh. “I hope he is not aspiring to enter the Brotherhood.”

“He said he desired the privilege but had first to earn it.”

“In that, he may be disappointed.”

“In that, perhaps, but not in other respects,” Radcliff said, his voice shaking. “I have cast his horoscope, on his bidding, and he is destined to live on for some years into a time of peace – well after the King’s death. So there is reason for us to fear that he may still achieve his goal.”

“Oh my God,” murmured Seward. Radcliff had truly excelled at astrology and was unlikely to have made any mistake in Pembroke’s chart, or indeed in the King’s.

“Dr. Seward,” Radcliff began again, more firmly, “I have been gathering information, to compile a list of Parliamentary spies operating in London and beyond. It could be of value to the royal cause.”

“You would buy your neck with it?”

“No. All I can hope to buy is my family’s good name, with that list and my testimony as to Pembroke’s guilt. But now we have very little time.”

“We?”

“Pembroke will not leave this business unfinished. He will want vengeance on both you and Beaumont. So you must realise, we have an interest in working together to bring charges against the Earl,” Radcliff concluded, his steel-grey eyes fixed on Seward. “And if I were you, I would not hesitate to warn your friend.”

Lord Beaumont was ensconced in a high-backed armchair in the library, his feet resting on a stool, while Laurence sat cross-legged on the Turkey carpet nearby, reading to him. He had requested a favourite work in Spanish,
Don Quixote
, and they had just reached the passage describing Dorothea’s seduction, at which Lord Beaumont became visibly moved, occasionally dashing the water from his eyes with his handkerchief.

“‘What is more,’” Laurence continued, “‘Don Fernando’s oaths, the witnesses he invoked, the tears he shed and, finally, his charm and good looks began to incline me forcibly to a course which proved my undoing –’”

“Oh, that a poor, innocent young maid should be so terribly wronged by that scoundrel!” interrupted his father, just as his mother burst through the open doors, a strange, panicked look on her face. Perhaps still absorbed in Dorothea’s fate, Lord Beaumont did not catch her agitation. “My dear wife,” he said, “is it not remarkable how well our son has kept his Spanish? He sounds as if he had never spoken anything else all his life.”

“Put that book away,” she snapped at Laurence, regarding it as she might some deadly weapon. “A letter has arrived for you. The messenger said it needed no reply.”

Laurence rose and took the letter from her. “It’s from Wilmot,” he said, scanning it, hugely relieved that it was not a summons from Falkland. “Her Majesty has arrived in Oxford and has been installed at Merton College. And there’s been a victory, at a place called Roundway Down, near Devizes. Wilmot and Byron crushed Sir William Waller’s army – they killed or took prisoner about fourteen hundred men, and seized all of Waller’s ammunition and his baggage. Her Majesty insisted that the King create Wilmot a baron, out of gratitude for his success. He’s now Lord Wilmot of Adderbury.”