The Best of Men (90 page)

“We are not bound for Madrid.”

Diego’s smile faltered. “But my uncle told me—”

“Shut up and listen. And if you breathe a word of what
I
am about to tell you, I’ll have the Inquisition on you like a pack of hounds before you can say a Hail Mary. Is that clear?” Diego nodded. “We’re to ride for Cádiz, instead, from whence we’ll take ship for England.”

“Has King Philip already dispatched to you the funds for King Charles?” Diego queried, seemingly unflustered by Antonio’s threat.

“No. We’ll collect them in Cádiz, together with diplomatic papers, to ensure my safe passage.”

“I’d suggest that you carry two sets of papers, Don Antonio, one genuine and one false, that you can present according to the situation in which we find ourselves. Vessels departing from our ports may be boarded and searched these days, given our war with France. Also, the rebel English Parliament has seized control of King Charles’s navy, and your mission to England is anathema to Parliament’s interests. As soon as we cross into English waters, we may be in very
hot
water, and those funds could fall into rebel hands.”

Antonio had an urge to smack Diego’s impertinent face. But the advice was sound. “Aren’t
you
a clever monkey. And how would I obtain my false papers?”

“I have some skill at forgery,” replied Diego, with a modest lowering of his lashes.

“Could you provide me a sample of your work tonight?”

“If I might borrow paper and writing instruments from your office. Don Antonio, it would further assist me if you could be more … truthful about the purpose of our voyage,” Diego went on, his eyes still lowered.

Antonio started to laugh. “I might, if you teach me a little English. For instance, how do you say,
un paso en falso, y acabo muerto
?”

“If I put a foot wrong, I shall end up dead,” Diego responded, without hesitation.

As the cell door swung open, Laurence squinted into the flame of a torch. Harper’s bulk loomed over him. “Come with me.”

“Have you heard from Mr. Pym?” asked Laurence.

Harper did not reply.

Sweating and dry in the mouth, Laurence went ahead of him upstairs. Draycott was standing by the fire in a weary attitude. “There
has
been a mistake, sir,” he said to Laurence. “I spoke with Mr. Pym’s secretary. We must beg pardon for the delay we caused you.” Draycott frowned at Harper, who flushed. “Mr. Pym is pleased to receive you, sir,” Draycott added, to Laurence. “A guard from the fort will escort you to Derby House, lest any further mishap interfere with your duties.”

“I won’t require the guard, Corporal, only my belongings.” Draycott handed Laurence his saddlebag, and he checked that the pistols and knife were inside. He smiled at Draycott, and grinned nastily at Harper. “Thank you and goodnight to you both, gentlemen.”

His knees were shaking on the way out; it had been far too easy. In the street he stopped to get his bearings, and pulled his hood over his head. As he took a step forward, a tall, thickset man in a long, flapping coat and wide-brimmed hat burst from the shadows on the opposite side of the street and hurried towards the fort. Although the man’s face was invisible, the sheer determination in his gait suggested danger to Laurence. The man slowed, raising his arm as if to aim a pistol. Hastily Laurence swerved into the closest alleyway, and began to run eastwards to Southwark.

“I don’t know what he is to the Committee of Safety, Corporal, but I wouldn’t trust him to empty my pisspot,” muttered Harper. “You should follow him with some of our boys – see which way he went.”

“
Captain
,” said Draycott, “I’ve been to Derby House and back, in godawful rain, to establish the fact that our prisoner was none other than Mr. Pym’s agent, Clement Veech. I might have spared myself the journey. I knew he was telling the truth, on that barge. Even if I lack your years of soldiering, from time to time my legal skills have their uses.”

“Oh yes? And how’s that?”

“When I questioned him about the Royalist plot, he provided details with which few people are acquainted. For example, that Chaloner received the Commission of Array
before
Waller got possession of it.”
Harper appeared suitably mystified. “And he gave me an exact description of Lady d’Aubigny and her friend, Lady Murray.”

“Friends of
yours
, are they, Corporal Draycott?” Harper sneered.

“No, Captain, but I happened to be taking a deposition at the Tower when they were brought in as captives of Parliament. No one had been allowed to see their faces, but once inside the Tower precincts they had to remove their veils. Veech could not have described her so well, unless …” Draycott broke off as the door banged open.

A man stood in the entrance, his long, baggy, foreign-looking coat slick with rain, water trickling from the brim of his hat, a matchlock pistol in his right hand. “Who was it that went out of here just now?” he demanded, in a rich, sonorous voice.

“Who the devil are
you
?” exclaimed Harper.

The man surveyed Harper and Draycott as though they were piles of dung upon the pavement. “Clement Veech, servant to Pym.”

Draycott and Harper exchanged stares. “What?” cried Draycott, to Veech. “But Pym’s secretary was sure that
he
was Veech. My description fitted him perfectly.”

“How did you describe him?”

“As tall and dark, with an authoritative manner,” Draycott said, realising that Veech was neither as tall nor as dark, nor of the same build. And he was much older, his broad, full face creviced with lines, whereas the other man had a thin, high-cheekboned, foxlike visage.

“What else, Corporal?”

“I …” Draycott quailed beneath Veech’s gaze. “I recounted what he had said to me: that he had served some years in the Low Countries before returning to England, and was presently coming from Oxford under cover with vital news to report to Pym.”

“The last part should have given him away: I’ve never been in Oxford. What colour were his eyes?” asked Veech, pointing a finger at his own, which seemed to Draycott a fathomless black.

“They were extremely pale in shade – a … a greenish yellow, I believe.”

“You fools – you let go Laurence Beaumont, Lord Digby’s chief spy.” Veech turned on his heel. “Call out the troops, Captain Harper. If we move fast, we may still catch him.”

Laurence could barely see through the downpour. His breath came in uneven gasps as he tore through the desolate lanes, his nerves working like a quarried beast’s, his heart thumping. He imagined he could hear the splash of boots behind him, over the ceaseless wash of rain.

It was not his imagination: the boots were gaining on him; and now he heard the rattle of steel, and shouts. Slithering into a doorway, he flattened himself into the shadows, and cocked one of his pistols. He must be only a short distance from the south end of Blackman Street, where there was another, even bigger fort than the one he had left. Mistress Edwards’ house lay to the north of the street, in a narrower section crowded with tenements. Somehow, he must get past the fort and up the street.

He launched out of the doorway. “Stop or we’ll fire,” voices bellowed immediately; and fire they did. He bent low and raced on. Halfway up Blackman Street, a ball singed his cloak. Fear made him reckless. He whipped around and fired, with no idea who or what he might hit. An agonized howl rang out, and he recognised Draycott’s voice crying, “Dear God, no!” and Harper bawling, “Damn you, men! After him!”

With the last of his energy, Laurence hurtled up the street, skidded to Mistress Edwards’ door, and hammered on it with his fists. It opened almost at once, and he staggered inside. “Shut it, quick,” he hissed, and unseen hands obeyed.

A candle flared, illuminating a lugubrious, stubbly face, and a white nightgown. “Troopers after you, Mr. Beaumont?” Barlow asked in his funereal tone, as if inquiring about the weather. “You get upstairs, sir, and let me deal with them.”

Laurence blinked awake after a profound and dreamless sleep to see Cordelia, his favourite of Mistress Edwards’ ménage, seated on the edge of his bed. She glowed with surprising health in her shabby, patched dressing gown. “Cordelia, you look very well,” he said, smiling at her.

She wriggled a hand beneath the bedclothes, and pinched him on the thigh. “Not six months since you last hid with us, and here you are, in trouble again.”

“In far less trouble than I might have been, thanks to Barlow.”

She mimicked Barlow’s rumbling voice. “ ‘How dare you disturb me at this hour of the night? I’m a tax-paying citizen. I shall complain to the authorities, I shall.’ Oh, he was a laugh with the troopers, sir.”

“
I
wasn’t laughing.”

Her hand strayed higher. “Fancy some sport?”

“I would, but I’m promised to a certain lady.”

“Did you get married?” she asked, continuing to explore.

“N … no, but I hope to marry her.”

“Where is she?”

He shifted away; Cordelia had provoked in him the inevitable reaction. “At Oxford.”

“Well, then! What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. And the flesh does seem willing …”

“It is, but I can’t.” He reached down, and stilled Cordelia’s hand. “Thank you, though,” he said, giving it a friendly squeeze.

Cordelia pouted and lay back on the bed. “Didn’t we have fun in better times, before you left to fight abroad, and before the rebels took over and made every day a Sunday,” she reminisced. “The place was lovely: hangings and paintings, and feasts – gentlemen coming and going until the break of dawn – with more
coming
than going, I’d say. Not that you’ve changed, sir, which is why a little sport—”

“Hey, what’s this?” he interrupted, noticing her rounded belly. “Mistress Edwards must have had a change of heart, in her old age.”

“She has, sir.” Cordelia stroked her stomach proudly. “I’m over four months’ gone.” Then she saddened. “The Mistress won’t do as she used to for us girls, ever since she lost Jane in August.”

“Lost?”

“She couldn’t staunch the bleeding.”

“Oh God, poor Jane,” he murmured, understanding. “What a way to die.”

“We buried her in the yard of St. Saviour’s. Ned Price persuaded the clergyman that she was his sister, and pure as the driven snow. You haven’t met Ned, have you, sir.”

“Who’s he?” said Laurence, distracted, thinking of Isabella. In her youth she had been lucky to escape Jane’s fate.

“A player’s son, a nobleman’s castoff – it’s a fresh story every day,” said Cordelia. “Only Mistress Edwards knows the truth, but she won’t tell us. You can be the judge of him yourself: he’s in the kitchen with Barlow.”

Conditions had deteriorated in the front room where Mistress Edwards received her gentlemen callers. From his last visit Laurence was accustomed to its disguise, a necessary precaution since Parliament deemed her business a serious crime: plain whitewashed walls, bare floor, and hard, high-backed chairs around a table on which a selection of religious books and tracts were laid out. But now damp bubbled behind the plaster, and a depressing odour of rot hung in the air.

“Barlow?” he shouted out.

His guardian angel sloped in, followed by a younger man. “Mr. Beaumont, Ned Price,” Barlow introduced them.

“A pleasure, sir,” declared Ned Price, his grey-blue eyes sparkling, and bowed with a flourish. Laurence extended a hand. “Oh,” said Price, looking bemused as he clasped it, “I see you prefer the Puritans’ manner of greeting.”

“We
are
in a house of prayer,” said Laurence, “and they do have some habits to recommend them.”

Price was of average height, his hair a middling brown, and his features, otherwise as undistinguished, were infectiously animated. A sanguine temperament, Laurence thought; and whatever mystery shrouded his origins, Price cut a fine figure in his slashed doublet and breeches, lace collar, and calfskin boots. While Laurence had never bothered about his own dress, his upbringing had taught him the difference between quality and fake goods; and he had learnt during his rather less-privileged years as a spy and cardsharp to note every detail of what others wore. Price’s collar was an imitation of Brussels spinning, and the suit tailored deceptively well from cheap, flashy fabric.

“My friend, you really must stop saving my life,” Laurence said to Barlow, gripping his meaty paw.

“All right, then, sir – I shall.”

“No, truly, man, I have to thank you.”

“Barlow needs no thanks – he derived immense gratification from baffling those dunderheads,” Price interjected exuberantly.

Barlow ignored him. “I was on my way to bed when the shots rang out, sir. Did you get one of them troopers? Your pistol smelt to me as if it had been fired.”

“I fired once, and I must have wounded somebody,” said Laurence, hoping that he had not hit Corporal Draycott. “I heard a cry of pain, at any rate.”

“A shame
I
wasn’t here with Barlow,” said Price. “I’d have gone to the door posing as a man of the cloth who had visited to instruct Mistress Edwards’ household in their Bible studies.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and talked through his nose like a divine. “ ‘A malignant fugitive, on the loose in this neighbourhood? We shall not sleep safe until he is apprehended!’ What do you say, Barlow?”

“I say you are in love with yourself, Ned Price.”

“Don’t talk of love to me, you heartless monster. Barlow still hasn’t remunerated me for a job of work we did the other day,” Price explained to Laurence, “so I couldn’t buy supper last night for my sweetheart.”

Laurence was tickled to catch Barlow’s familiar euphemism: a job of work. Price must be a thief, like Barlow.

“Is she the serving wench you’ve been ogling at the Saracen’s Head?” Barlow asked.

“Mistress Susan Sprye is not a wench, Barlow. She’s of yeoman stock and hails from the West Country.”

“What does she want with you, you penniless bastard?”

“I’m penniless because
you
haven’t—”