Traitor's Field (34 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
‘Miss a piece?’
Lyle turned fast, alert. His face was dark against the window, and Thurloe couldn’t see the expression. Lyle grunted. ‘It’s easier when you don’t let ’em blow it up first.’
‘Seems to have the same effect.’
Lyle looked around the room. ‘Careful man. He hadn’t left much to find. Good habits.’
‘This was Beaumont, wasn’t it? The priest they – we – hanged for communicating with the Royalists in Pontefract.’
‘Mm.’ He began to come closer, stepping carefully and intermittently looking around at the destruction he’d created. ‘He was their channel in and out. We’ve had the place ever since. Giving it up now.’
‘You knew for a while – before you arrested him, I mean?’
Lyle paused by a table and, perversely, righted a mug that was lying on its side. He looked up. ‘A little while.’
Thurloe was somehow both committed to the game and tired of it. ‘But you didn’t find anything more about their system?’
He could see the face clearly now. Lyle was watching him; then shrugged.
Does he not tell me because he assumes I know, or because he does not want me to know?
‘We spotted a courier once. Suppose he was a courier – it was odd – didn’t fit the normal pattern. Anyway, our soldiers tracked him west a day or two but lost him.’
He watched Thurloe a moment more, then lost interest and started forwards.
A courier?
‘I assume that any reports – anything you intercepted, anything you found – were all passed to Scot, in London. It would be recorded there.’
Lyle stopped, not in front of Thurloe but to his side, and smiled. ‘Yes, Thurloe. It would.’
He brushed past, and disappeared into the next room.
Thurloe left.
As he opened the front door and stepped into the daylight, there was a boy suddenly in front of him.
The boy was even more startled than he was. He hesitated, held out a tightly folded paper, then pulled it back again.
Thurloe waited.
‘I’ve a letter, sir. For the Reverend Beaumont. But I didn’t know what to. . .’ He looked down at the paper, then up. ‘Him being hanged. And that was months back. I didn’t. . .’
‘All’s right, boy. I’ll take it.’ Thurloe gave him a penny.
Thurloe turned and stepped back into the house, then stopped. Paper in hand, he looked up towards the sounds of Lyle making his farewell round of the wrecked building.
Then he turned again, slipped the paper into his coat, and re-entered the daylight, closing the door quietly behind him.
T
O
T
HE
R
EVEREND
G
EORGE
B
EAUMONT
, D
ONCASTER
Dear Reverend,
I have been a wanderer these four months, since despair at what was becoming of Doncaster and Pontefract sent me into the bitterest roads of winter, and only now that I am, by the great kindness and mercy of God himself only, come unto some new station of rest and relative permanence, do I find the time to communicate with him who was most often in my thoughts as I roamed the land.
You were ever my guide in those dark evenings – and there have been many lonely rootless moments since that I have wished for your excellent mixture of principle with pragmatism.
And what has become of our young friend with the ‘Levelling’ tendencies? You know that I was ever uneasy at the dallying between the partisans of the King’s interest and those most restless spirits in the Army, however tempting the possibilities for the Royal cause. But I confess a fondness for that lad; so handsome, and so earnest. Has his great scheme come to anything yet?
I continue to move, of course, in the same circles as I was used to; the followers of the Royal interest are a little forlorn in these days, but in any gathering there is always at least one with the blood and the heart for a scheme or a dare, and it keeps one’s spirits alive. I mention it because only last week I listened to a man still very convinced that the Crown’s dutiful obligations to all of its people equally, and the desire of those Levelling men for a society more flat and more free and without the traditional gradations, were principles in natural harmony, and he hinted that there were still those of both persuasions pursuing such an alliance most heartily. I confessed myself openly both weary and wary of such schemes, but it brought to my mind our young friend and our many conversations in strange furtive Doncaster, with soldiers at every window.
I do not wish to put you to extra burden, but it would please me much to hear just a line of the town. You may write to me as J. H., at the Sign of the Bear in York, and through my friends your words will surely find me, as they were ever wont to do, wherever I may have strayed.
Your friend.
May, 1649
[SS C/T/49/18]
Thurloe read it three times straight. To discipline his mind, he tried to hold his focus on the character of the writer – his doubts, his loneliness, his melancholy – but kept returning to the alarming implications of the middle paragraphs.
And what could he do with this? He was not the intended reader. Nor was he the proper man to receive and interpret the letter on behalf of Parliament. Through irritation and impetuousness he had in effect become the Reverend Beaumont. A dead man.
To admit his false status in either direction seemed difficult now. While his heart burned a little at the ambiguity of this strange position, Thurloe’s head was wondering at its possibilities.
Sir, this day the royal [assume crown(s), from context] have been found in the Palace of [assume Westminster, from context], and transported under guard east of the city to the Tower. No more is known of what is planned thereafter.
[SS C/S/49/40 (LATER DECYPHERING)]
Shay never considered landscape as other than terrain: barriers, weaknesses, avenues of attack or escape. So he was watching Jacob, rather than the flower beds in which the old man bobbed and prodded. People were terrain too: obstacles or advantages, vulnerabilities or strengths.
But Shay’s consideration moved naturally from Jacob to his task, and from the task to the garden, and for a moment he tried to see the fascination or the attraction in the geometric plots, the regimental divisions of plants, the games with space and colour.
Jacob was walking towards him, carrying a small cloth bag, leaves and a stalk protruding from the top of it. Some new exotic curiosity for the garden. Shay wondered what the arrangement was between Anthony Astbury and old Jacob. Astbury was the sort of man who would want one of the modern gardens, but he probably left Jacob to get on with the details. The old man was more than just gnarled hands and strong shoulders; lettered too, presumably.
‘Good soil is it, Jacob?’
Jacob made a noise which Shay took for agreement.
‘A few generations of Astburys adding to the mix, eh?’
Jacob liked this. ‘Aye, sir. ’Tween them and the dung he’s nice and rich.’ A watchful smile. ‘Family are mostly up at the church. But there’s a dozen or more dogs hereabouts; couple of servants maybe. And, uh. . .’ He scratched his nose.
‘That soldier. Came to see George last autumn and died.’
Jacob looked at him again. ‘Aye, sir. ’Sright. Out in the orchard.’
‘We’ll all get there, eh Jacob?’ The agreement noise. ‘Jacob, you helped George burn some papers. Just before he left for the war – that last time.’
Nothing from Jacob.
‘Was there a book among them? Large book – like a ledger?’
The old eyes were pale and sharp, and they watched Shay a moment.
Not remembering, but deciding
. ‘No, sir. Th’weren’t.’
Shay grunted, indifferent. ‘Well. I’ll go and pick out a plot for myself, eh?’ But Jacob was off, his latest protégé cradled carefully in his hand.
Jacob the phlegmatic. Jacob the lettered.
Shay turned and watched him go.
Jacob ruling the garden, collecting rare deliveries from across Europe.
Next to the Jug Inn in Stoke, where Astbury received his correspondence: an apothecary’s shop.
Jacob the gardener: another glimpse of how George Astbury had run his affairs?
Sir, the [assume crowns, from context] of the Kings of England having previously been found inside the Palace of [assume Westminster, from context], and taken privily and securely to the Tower, [presumably Oliver Cromwell] now begins to think that they should be destroyed utterly, that they offer henceforth no temptation nor possibility of a re-crowning of any King in England. [Presumably Cromwell] is also jealous of the money that may be gained for his cause by the mere value of the gold. The timing of this destruction may not be long hence, although [presumably Cromwell] will seek to have his view endorsed by his confederates, such is its magnitude.
[SS C/S/49/56 (
LATER DECYPHERING
)]