Traitor's Field (56 page)
Authors: Robert Wilton
‘In your secret diplomacy in the Stuart Court, did you meet a man named Shay?’
The eyebrows rode up again. ‘Shay.’ And dropped. ‘No. I do not. . .’ The eyes closed. ‘The name, though. . .’
Thurloe waited.
‘Somehow in connection with. . . Wallenstein. His murder in 163. . . 3 was it? 1634? Bohemia. Somehow I remember the name Shay in that connection.’
‘This Shay was – one of the killers? He would have been on the side of—’
‘The side?’ The great body heaved. ‘Young man, you have the silliest idea of European politics.’ Mayerne’s head slumped. Thurloe waited, uncomfortable. ‘But no. . . No. . . Shay though.’ The faint eyebrow bristles, slowly up again. ‘I remember a Shay. A woman.’
‘A woman?’
‘In the 1630s I was guest on three occasions with a young man in Oxfordshire. A troubled soul; a very worthy
chevalier
of the intellect. He attracted to that place many very civilized, open minds. Scholars. Poets. Churchmen. Travellers. Natural philosophers. Devotees of Erasmus and sympathizers of Grotius.’ Thurloe was struggling.
Always there is a world behind the world
. ‘I met once – twice – a woman named Shay there. A careful, piercing intellect, and quite the better of any of the men. You should speak to. . . but my so ancient brain will not. . .’
Thurloe waited.
Beyond the walls of this garden is a world of battles and tortures and conspiracies.
‘Another. She was less interested in the debates, but she knew everyone. But everyone. Most charming, and apparently in the company of every faction of the Court. If you could ever meet her. . .’ The eyes had disappeared again. ‘But I have it! Constance Blythe. Constance Blythe.’ The repetition was slow; the first name emerged as if French, the surname as a squawked attempt at the vowel.
‘Constance Blythe. Thank you, Sir Theodore.’
‘I’m obliged to you for your Scotchman, young man. Let us continue in correspondence.’ And Thurloe left him, slumped in his carefully ordered paradise.
Sir Mortimer Shay and Lady Constance Blythe stood on the edge of an Edinburgh hall, silent, and watching the cautious courtesies of the men and women around them as they felt their way into conversations.
It was a tentative time: new loyalties being tested and doubted; old enmities being swallowed, bitter and uneasy. The English Royalists who had come back from exile wore their fineries to impress, light laces and bright colours, and felt cold and uncomfortable among the more staid formal clothes of the Scots. Laughs came hesitant, and every glance was reviewed for meaning. Shay watched it all bleakly.
Lady Constance said, ‘Tell me you’re busy, Shay. Tell me you gallop through the night on quests of passion and revenge. Tell me this cause is worth something.’
‘As it happens, I have some instructions to send tonight. Whatever success the King has with the Scots, he will need his supporters in England to rise. Will that do?’
She was watching him, and smiling. ‘Actually, it might.’ She turned to face the hall again. ‘You remember Jasper Fylde? I was thinking of him just now.’
Shay shook his head, indifferent. ‘No.’
‘Of course you don’t. Dead these twenty years. And Tom Blayne, about the same time. And John Egerton, who died at – which battle was it? And Hoxton, who was killed with you in Germany. Can you imagine what it’s like to know that all the men you’ve bedded are dead? I longed to be sweetness, and I find I am disease.’
‘There are men enough left, Con; and you’re as handsome as ever.’
She glanced at him with something like pity. ‘Bless you for that, Shay. Shall we grow ancient together? A great boar and a fat sow in the corner of the farmyard, sustaining ourselves on turnips and some unconscious memory of pleasure? Idle shrivelled brains, and idle shrivelled privates. But no. You’ll be away to some meadow, where Meg is always spring.’
She looked out into the drifting figures. ‘And what of me now? Am I supposed to be their memorial? Here lieth. . . none any more, because they’re all dead.’
A snicker of laughter near them. She glanced at it, and gave a little frown of distaste. ‘Think of it. Life was fruit, and jewels, and music, and a generation of beautiful men. I danced and sang whole years away. We were golden and glorious, all of us.’
‘We were rancid, petty and foolish.’ He smiled roughly. ‘We lived our every hour, though.’
‘Like gilded cattle before the slaughter.’
‘You were too wise for that, Con.’
‘Not wise. Never wise. But I had brain enough to be useful to you and your predecessors.’
Shay nodded into the room. ‘This is the field where I must fight my battle. Tell me of it.’
She sniffed. ‘A marsh. Little firm ground to be had. There are some who are sincere in their religion, but they know that the King’s adherence to that cause is political only, and so they will use him politically. The old soldiers are true enough. Leslie. Leven. They’re obliged to play at politics but they are not political. Don’t let your sympathy over-account their influence. You cannot trust Argyll too little. A heart so shrunken by thirst, and by betrayal, that he is become ambition only. A beast of survival. His mother was a Douglas, royal blood on both sides though not always the right side of the blanket. For Argyll, and for Hamilton, even though he’s a solider man than his dead brother, the little difficulties of the Stuarts are just a distraction from older squabbles.’
‘And the English here?’
‘Fisher. Booth.’ A little shrug. ‘Wilmot’s true. Apt to try to be cleverer than his brain would stand, and to drink more than his manhood would stand. He tried to make a peace with the Parliamentarians in ’43. No, ’44, of course. Taylor. Percy. . . Percy thought he was going to marry Lady Margaret Soane, but Fisher beat him to it. 163. . . 8.’
Shay watched the hard lost eyes. ‘Good. Something else. Last year, Parliament sold all of the royal pictures. Vast amount of money. There were a handful of men doing most of the buying. Huygens. Javach. Le Blon – I think he was fronting for Swed—’
‘For Golden Christina, yes, he would have been.’
‘And Kenyon. Martin Kenyon.’
‘Kenyon.’ The eyes flickered, and were still. Shay waited. ‘Helped to arrange the King’s visit to Madrid in 1623.’
‘So buying for Spain.’
‘Perhaps. Not the one to worry about. Javach – Jabach, actually – he’ll have had the private suppers with the Parliament men, if they’ve sense. Lives in France, works for Mazarin. If there was politics among the pictures, it was him.’ Again she focused on the people in front of them. ‘Look at us!’ She shivered for effect. ‘Such desperate, wheedling men now. Ralph Fortescue once hid a pearl in his cuff and let it drop into my hand, and the next day sent the most elaborately dirty poem on the theme. Last night a man took my hand to kiss it and he actually left crumbs in my palm. Desperate.’
Shay grunted. ‘I grant, I look at some of these political men and wonder why I bother.’
Constance Blythe’s surprise was genuine, though the voice stayed low. ‘But you don’t do it for any of us, surely. Truly, Mortimer, I would die of ecstasy if I thought that I was in your mind as you fought your wars across Europe, or as you carved your way through this island doing. . . whatever you do. But you’re no Lancelot. It’s not for one sad old whore, or for any of these painted relics. Not even for Meg. You do it because it is you.’
Shay was staring bleak across the room. ‘And what do you offer me at the end, Con? What is my rest or reward? Is that all I am ever to be – an eternal destruction?’
‘We must live what we are, Shay. There is nothing else.’
T
O
M
R
I. S.,
AT THE
A
NGEL
,
IN
D
ONCASTER
Sir,
I was heartily glad to hear from you, and relieved that you yet endure these turbulent times in fair health. I know not what to make of the goings between Leveller and Royalist: it is plain that the men trapped in Pontefract had contact with the world outside by divers privy means, but with whom I cannot say.
I am now established in Edinburgh, which is a very pit of politics, with every man jostling for his interest and his private advantage, so that I do think myself glad when most solitary, or in the company of the meanest servant rather than one of the Court men. No doubt, though, the Royal party is in the ascendant, and the more belligerent of the King’s interest are become very cocksure accordingly. There is still some hedging and cavilling by the leaders of the Scottish Church, but all know it for mere posture and performance, intended to get the best bargain they may. All know that they will come round to public support of the young King Charles, and with the levies, who already perform prodigiously under the guidance of veteran sergeants of our own late conflicts and those in the Continent, looking most warlike, there is such a general enthusiasm for battle that it does quite chill me. The defences of this place are vast, with many unchristian tricks and traps laid for those who would attack.
You will understand that communication with me in Edinburgh may be difficult. But there is a lad who goes to and fro Galashiels, and if you were to write to me at Macrae’s at that place your words may chance to reach me, and would bring pleasure if they did.
[SS C/T/50/63]
‘It looks too hard a nut, gentlemen.’ Cromwell, hot and hard-breathing like the horse from which he’d just descended, thick hair plastered to his head from the steady drizzle, was already talking as he approached. Lambert, his second-in-command, and Scot and Thurloe turned and gathered as he joined them under the tent awning. ‘We went as close to the city as respect for providence would allow, and the lines are well-made. I won’t risk good men against them.’ He ran a hand through his sodden hair, and looked at the three of them.
Scot, obviously disappointed at the possibility of withdrawal, said, ‘I regret that I have not better information to offer from inside the city.’
Thurloe said, quietly, ‘I hear that the lines are strong, and the men enthusiastic to fight.’
Cromwell’s face twisted in a silent growl at him, and then he nodded. ‘One last demonstration to try to tempt them out. If that fails, we must withdraw for a spell. The men are drowning in this rain to no purpose, and the Scots left us a desert to feed on. Lambert?’