Traitor's Field (48 page)

Thurloe said slowly, ‘Astbury?’

‘Astbury.’

‘Sir George Astbury?’

‘There was another man before him. A different sort of man. Harder. Less civilized, less. . . less noble than Astbury. I allowed myself to see him less.’
Or perhaps he trusted you less.
‘I suspected him of pushing the King to restrict my travelling. But then he disappeared from the Court. Some loss of favour, some scandal perhaps; some excess. Young man, you have if I may say a too monarchical conception. You think of the individual man. Which is surprising in a product of the new liberties. In such a business, one man is vulnerable – to the assassin’s blade, or the too-impertinent dose of the pox. And what can one man do?’

‘Meaning that there was a. . . a group, an organization? A network?’

The face rippled again: Mayerne was frowning. ‘I never knew for certain. And that, to be very sincere with you, was the most significant point. I was aware of – I could feel, you understand? – the existence of some group of men. Merely a reference now and then, you understand? The men behind the man. Men with great resources. Men who looked back and forward with great perspective. Men who dealt in centuries, not in Kings.’

‘Was there a name for the group? Did you know any of the names?’

‘The names, no. This group does not seem to exist, you understand? One does not meet them, correspond with them, hear from them. There are. . . like in the dance – but you would not know the French Court, I think? Ah, that was a place – there are veils. Veils behind veils. A Court office; a chamber of the royal administration. A man like this Astbury was a kind of veil, I think. And there was. . .’ Thurloe waited. ‘A bureau – a department of the administration – just a reference once, and it seemed as merely another veil.’ A shudder of the face. ‘No. I forget it.’

Thurloe watched the pudgy face, almost a baby’s. Sir Theodore de Mayerne didn’t seem forgetful.

‘A man once visited me here because he said he was troubled by a distemper of the leg; by the end of the conversation I had helped to set an agent in the Court of Bohemia. Earlier, when first I began to travel to England from France, King Henri’s advisers thought I would be their spy. Their intermediary was a Dutch spice merchant in London named Witt. He was murdered – apparently by thieves – within a month. He was replaced by a Frenchman. Two years later I realized that this man was in regular contact with someone at the English Court. Two years after that, Henri was assassinated and this man quickly gained a good position in the administration of Louis, the new King of France.’

Again the shuddering in the body, and the head came forward.

‘You must learn to see as I have learned. Not a battle, not a country, not a King. But the great currents of European politics and history. I urge you, do not be too confident with your Cromwell and your Parliament and your victories and your laws. The man Astbury, he died. His place will have been taken by another. Perhaps that man dies, but he will be replaced. There is much more than them. If England becomes uncomfortable, there is Scotland, or the Continent, or maybe England again while your back is turned. Always, in the shadows beyond, there will be a power that watches you, and manipulates. The men who rule in London today, do not be sure that there are not some among them playing this game. And it is a greater game than you can possibly imagine. The death of the King, the new power of your Parliament: for these men it is not a defeat, merely an adjustment.’

The room was silent. The thick mixture of scents, food and books and potions, hung heavy.

Thurloe nodded, slowly. ‘Sir Theodore, thank you. You represent a – a more civilized world of learning and life. I wish you well in your studies. Perhaps – if I can lay hand on some tulips, say – I may call on you again.’

Mayerne considered this. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Perhaps you may. Good evening, young man. Next time, bring me news of Scotland. I am interested in the possibilities of the coal there.’

Thurloe nodded and left, wondering as he began the cumbersome journey back down the gloomy passage what other aspects of Scotland Sir Theodore de Mayerne might be interested in.

A bell rang behind him – for a servant, presumably – but then a voice blustered out from the study, ‘Young man! Master. . . Zur–lo!’

Thurloe walked back into the study. Mayerne seemed to scrutinize him, and he waited in silence.

‘I remember now – You won’t forget my little requests, no?’ Mayerne was red from the exertion of raising his voice. ‘This bureau of intelligence. The veil: I once heard it named as the’ – he prepared his lips for the words – ‘Comptrollerate-General. Comptrollerate-General. . . for Scrutiny and Survey.’

It was a bureaucratic name, empty of meaning, and Thurloe wasn’t even sure he’d caught the words aright.

J
ames Graham, Marquess of Montrose, came like a second adolescence among the Scottish Royalists refuged in the Netherlands. He was an ill-defined sense of hope, and a constant lurking embarrassment. Early worn by battle and flight, his age was a mask that didn’t quite fit – tired, leathery face and straggling long hair – through which his enthusiastic eyes still gleamed real. Ladies were charmed, realized themselves smiling, found themselves checking how breasts and waists appeared in old dresses, wished they had money to give him as he discreetly asked, wondered if their current desperate circumstances might justify some brief act of abandon. Men took a glass of wine too many with him, felt that they shared his bravery and virility, made empty promises of funds. All saw the door close after him and felt uncomfortable: felt their fallen looks, their shrunken pockets, their fugitive ease. 

Then they remembered that Montrose had always unsettled them, and this brought a kind of comfort. Montrose, with his passions and his quests, had always been trouble.

Montrose: the quickest to seize a cause by the throat and drag it out to battle, while other men – wiser men – waited for the season to ripen and turn, as it invariably did against Montrose in the end. But always somehow the hour’s darling, a hero regardless. And now the seasons had come full circle, and it appeared after all that he had been right to stand out against them. In the places in the Netherlands where the Scots gathered together, news of Montrose’s coming was heard with silence and shifting eyes. His youthful follies now seemed like their crimes.

William, Duke of Hamilton knew all this, and knew the queasy mix of feelings in himself as he waited to receive Montrose. He chose to do so alone, standing, in the centre of a bare room, a stag at bay.

He looked back further than this last decade of troubles: these two families had been rival centres of power before the name Montrose, before the Hamiltons had been Dukes; before the Stuarts had overstretched themselves and brought English politics to Scotland. It came in the life of every Hamilton, and sometimes more than once, that he must face one of these turbulent reivers over a council table or some marshy skirmish field. This uncomfortable meeting with Montrose was itself a point of duty – of family tradition.

Hamilton’s dark pugnacious face hung fixed, dour. The receiving room had been new-scrubbed, and a blanched acrid reek of soap still sat sterile in the air.

‘Your Grace, I come for your greeting and your blessing.’ An open door and an open mouth and Montrose was off at a canter. ‘The extended hand of Hamilton would be more honour than my cause deserves.’

Hamilton watched this, lugubrious. He seemed to consider the words. Eventually he said quietly, ‘Hullo, Jamie.’ Then, with the same steady sincerity, ‘The cause of Montrose has never needed blessing from me, and I can add you no honour you do not already own.’

Montrose’s face opened further: it was true enough, but pleasant to hear. ‘You are the leader of His Majesty’s interest here, Willie, and it’s my duty as well as my pleasure.’ The smile dwindled. ‘On which account’ – for once, he waited for the words – ‘I offer you my formal condolence for your brother’s murder and my personal. . . I was so very very sorry, Willie. He was so – so very dignified, and he carried it through like a lion, and – and the meanness of their execution of him only showed how much greater a man he was than they.’

Hamilton closed his eyes a moment. ‘Thank you, Montrose. That was. . . nobly said.’

Montrose leaned in suddenly, and the smile escaped its restraints. ‘Shall we now avenge him a little?’

Hamilton smiled slow and a little sad. ‘You’re as hot-headed fighting for the King as you once were hot-headed against him.’

‘But I’ve stayed true since, Willie. And there’s many here, and some back in Edinburgh, who now find my cause and the King’s a little more congenial.’ It was said without offence, and Hamilton merely nodded very slightly. Montrose was hurrying on, the words interrupted only by a flashed smile. ‘If they’d a’ come round a little sooner, maybe, we wouldn’t be skulking and scurrying as we are.’

The words rushed around Hamilton like bees with a bear. He nodded again, accepting the point and indifferent to the style. The royal fortunes would ebb and flow – the tides were a little quicker these last years – but there would always be Hamiltons steady in the flood. And always Montroses splashing around them.

‘Edinburgh begins to remember that its natural loyalty is to the King. And maybe we shall give them a little prod of it first, eh?’

Hamilton frowned, and still the words came steady. ‘Are you sure that you’re not being a little previous, Jamie? Are you sure Edinburgh will fall in as quick as you say?’

‘The King’s advisers have their spurs in me. I go in his name, and that will carry me well enough, I fancy.’ Hamilton’s face started to darken with worry. ‘Oh, don’t waste your time warning me of the politics.’

‘There’s not—’

‘I’m sure you’ve tales of tricks and factions, and I’m sure you’re right. I know your Edinburgh men well enough, Willie; they’ll all have swapped sides again by supper time, and they’ll have their eyes on the spoons.’ Hamilton’s mouth had no time to become a smile or a word. ‘We can wait till Dumgoyne floods and there’ll be no right time. If we wait we lose.’

‘I’ve seen too many good Scots wasted.’

‘And your brother will be one more such, if we do not pick up his flag!’ The Duke flinched. The boyishness was suddenly absent in Montrose and Hamilton stepped back. ‘God’s sake, I am right done with this politics and these plodding two-faced men.’ His head made an irritated shudder, and the long hair swung wild.

But as he re-focused on Hamilton, the impishness sprouted again. ’45, wasn’t it?’ The uncertainty was affected, and the sharp smile was fixed on the gloomy face opposite. ‘I think you were a mile or so short of being able to join your friends at Kilsyth, eh, Willie? I missed the chance to defeat you with them.’

Something like life flickered in Hamilton’s face. ‘Had I been there, Jamie, you might have defeated no one.’

Shay’s departure from the rusty manor lost in the west was like so many others before it: hurried, he not wanting to open himself to the possibility of staying a moment longer and Meg trying to make it easy for him; unemotional and unceremonial. He was a stranger to most of those on the farms around: a spirit glimpsed at certain seasons, or in certain star-stricken years; a grim threat told by mothers to errant children. By the time he was striding out to his horse, on the morning of his departure, Margaret Shay was already the centre of a little whirl of local visitors seeking her help or her wisdom or her judgement. Not for the first time, Shay felt an odd discomfort – even a jealousy:
for all my decades of service, am I failing in duty?
Braver men caught his eye: a grunted word of respect. Women curtseyed, eyes down.

And in the middle of the bustle, a single accidental moment: Meg hurrying out of the parlour with a purse of coins, Shay turning back to some word from Gareth, a collision. The unexpectedness of the intimacy felt like novelty. He looked down into her upturned face, as it moved from surprise to appraisal. He saw again the strong tight lines of jaw and cheek and forehead, saw the grey eyes watching him, considering him. She glanced towards where her visitors were, then back. She kissed a finger, and placed it carefully on his lips. ‘Be wise as well as brave, Shay,’ she said, and patted him on the shoulder and moved past him.

He was an early harbinger of spring to Astbury, a hundred miles nearer the sunrise. The earth thawed under his boots. Politicians and armies were waking from their enforced hibernation, and he must set to work among them. Shay’s arrival foretold the strangest shoots and blooms among the devices of men.

For the moment, Astbury’s ordered, segregated gardens were so many varieties of barrenness: skeleton regiments of stakes and stalks on the dark earth. But as he rode he could see Jacob moving among the trunks and beds, and soon enough Jacob would conjure life there again.

And I, meanwhile, will conjure death again.

At Astbury, closer to the world, he found news.