‘Will not Jessup’s voice betray him?’ Duval asked.
Prince Rupert had considered this.
‘If his last pint of alcohol doesn’t kill him, it’ll numb his voice for a good while. Any odd behaviour on Jessup’s part will be taken for the king’s terror at his coming death. No doubt his gentlemen of the chamber will surround him. He will also have some of his own people there. Drums and fifes will accompany him. They’ll walk to the Banqueting House. Outside the House is the scaffold erected between Whitehall Gate and the gate leading from St James’s. So our plan, as prepared, is to overpower any guards within the rooms and, dressed as redcoats, as we shall be under our cloaks the whole morning, accompany “His Majesty” to the Banqueting House and onto the scaffold erected outside. We’ll need to take a prayer book to place in his hands. M’sieur Aramis, you shall be, if he won’t agree, our Juxon. You have his build and general appearance. Meanwhile, Hyde will guide the king to the passage I’ll show him on my map while Moll will be waiting. From there the king will be brought back to the Alsacia.’
To me the scheme still sounded impossible. Cromwell and his officers would surely anticipate every effort to rescue the king. And what if we got that far?
‘Are any of us to remain behind once Jessup’s dead?’ I asked from curiosity.
‘No. A rearguard is a luxury. Aramis, if disguised as the priest, will have to find his own way home. I’m anxious not to arouse suspicion. The tunnel is the best way out. Perhaps our greatest asset in that respect is Moll here.’
I looked up involuntarily. She was blushing, her own eyes downcast.
‘Without you, Moll, we cannot get through the first gate and the passage into St James’s Palace. Shall you have your pistol with you?’
‘In my muff.’ She held up her fur hand-warmer. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have as much insurance as I can carry.’
‘So, while attention is on the king and the executioner holds up his head for the crowd to see, the others will head for deserted Scotland Yard and from there to Whitehall Stairs and the river.’
‘Which is frozen fast as we now know.’
I had not known that the whole river was frozen. I raised my eyebrows. ‘So no boat?’
‘No boat, but a road. And a good diversion. The citizens of London prepare a voluntary Frost Fair! It takes advantage of the public holiday. We have some chance of mingling with the crowds on the ice. With the king, we shall make our way first to Whitefriars Stairs and thence to the safety of Alsacia. The last steps of our plan we’ll execute at nightfall when the other passengers shall accompany His Grace.’
‘They’ll guess what’s happened and who’s involved! You can be sure of that.’ Slowly Aramis fingered the silver and ebony crucifix at his throat. He considered the plans and engravings laid out on the table. ‘They will send men to our gates. Of that, I think, we can be certain.’ The Abbé d’Herblay fingered his elegant beard, his beautiful features dark in thought. ‘This M’sieur Cromwell is a good strategist, correct?’ He reached out a gloved hand to turn the prints, which included Prince Rupert’s own sketches of the palace’s secret passages. ‘He will have anticipated this business, perhaps?’
Prince Rupert nodded and smiled. ‘Absolutely. There’s little chance that he hasn’t. He’d relish the opportunity to lay a trap for us. That would deliver to him several of his greatest enemies.’
‘Particularly Your Highness.’
‘Indeed, but even Mazarin would be unable to save you, gentlemen,’ Rupert addressed the musketeers. ‘And, since most are commoners, save me, you risk hanging, drawing and quartering while I can expect the mercy of the axe. No doubt we shall be accused of attempting to save a traitor from his just deserts.’
Everyone laughed at this apart from Molly and myself.
After discussing further details, Athos raised a languid hand. ‘How will you be certain, Your Highness, that Cromwell will allow this Frost Fair to take place? Did he not recently abolish Christmas?’
‘Under pressure from his left wing, probably.’ That was my contribution. Everyone but Moll looked at me blankly. ‘His zealot Puritans,’ I corrected myself. ‘From all I’ve learned, Cromwell is not that much of a religious hypocrite.’
‘Yet Puritans have his ear, I think,’ said Aramis. ‘Not so?’
‘I suspect anything which distracts from the possibility of the people storming the scaffold will be welcome tomorrow,’ Duval suggested. ‘There are a good many Londoners who worship godless commerce better than their maker or His representative on Earth. They’ll be in a celebratory mood. Possibly their last chance to rob honest folk. All the worst elements of the nation gather in London just as you find in Paris the most parlement Frondeurs.’
‘May I ask what is your quarrel with les Frondeurs, m’sieur?’ asked Aramis, frowning. He was himself a supporter of the aristocratic arm of that movement.
‘None, m’sieur, at this moment. Forgive me if I inadvertently…’
But Athos was smiling now, as was Porthos. ‘Who could guess our friend’s allegiances? Come now, Aramis! Let’s not quarrel over politics. All of us here have seen where such arguments lead, with friend fighting friend and all important matters diverted! Bad blood infects the entire being. No?’
With a small smile and a slight inclination of his head Aramis relaxed. ‘I agree. The Frost Fair will suit us very well, assuming Cromwell allows it.’
‘It has not been disallowed,’ said Jemmy, who had been going about the town learning what he could, ‘and it was running earlier today when I walked beside the river with my lady. The people make merry and play at who knows what to take their thoughts away from the enormity of the act being done in their name. The Puritans allow it this once as it makes their work easier.’
It surprised me to know that some of us could come and go like that or, for that matter, had lady friends in seventeenth-century London. There was no real reason I should have been surprised, of course, since most of the people around the table were from that era. I should have been more surprised that I was one of the few who had gone to at least three different worlds pretty much at will.
Duval might well be a likely traveller between dimensions. A loyal Stuart supporter in the entourage of the Duke of Richmond, he had built himself a fine house in Wokingham, where my own Methodist weaver ancestors, down from Yorkshire, had settled. They remembered him in the village. That his exploits dated from Restoration times—the 1660s—was now a relatively minor issue for me. I had become used to meeting men and women representing different eras. Had it been seemly I could have quoted Duval’s famous epitaph:
Here lies Du Vall:
Reader, if male thou art,
Look to thy purse;
If female, to thy heart.
If Dick Turpin, who lived a century or so later, could drink with Prince Rupert of the Rhine, then I should be surprised if Duval could not also be there. In one penny blood I’d read Duval, Turpin and Tom King all met Bonnie Prince Charlie at Colloden and voyaged to America to battle redskins.
Popular fiction, of course, mixed up all kinds of dates. I had fleetingly seen Pecos Bill in the pub earlier. One of our companion publications when I was editing Tarzan had the legendary Texan as a contemporary of Calamity Jane, Davy Crockett and Buffalo Bill. Earlier myth cycles had Attila the Hun threatening the France of Charlemagne or King Arthur dealing with invading Saracens. I had come to accept that I had somehow slipped into a world where myth was being created and was real and active. Regular history was of relatively little consequence. Perhaps, after people like us had interfered with time and history frequently enough, there were worlds now where King Arthur actually did go man to man with his great, almost equally mythic enemy, Saladin! I hoped to learn a bit more of the truth behind this process later, if I had the chance. Naturally it had occurred to me that this process might be a projection of my own mind. To keep sane, I had to believe the reality around me.
We spent another hour or two familiarising oursel
ves with the plans. The light had gone out of Moll’s face, replaced by an unfamiliar heat. I had made up my mind to say nothing to her. I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise Prince Rupert’s plot to save the king. As it was, I could imagine everything likely to go wrong. We could be arrested the moment we left Alsacia. Feeling a little as if I were already condemned, I ate a hearty lunch. There was a time when I couldn’t board a plane until I had a large helping of steak and kidney pudding, apple pie and custard, and a bottle of decent claret inside me.
Molly was careful to keep clear of Prince Rupert. He seemed wholly uninterested in her. Was this acting on both their parts for my behalf? I refused to speculate. In Rupert’s private room at the Swan we continued to debate our plans until I made my excuses. I was just beginning to understand the full import of what could happen if we were arrested. Guy Fawkes and Co had discovered the folly of relying on tunnels. Very nasty. Barbaric. Feeling a little queasy, I left them all, slipped out of the gates and made my way up Shoe Lane into Farringdon Road and Brookgate.
I wanted to see my mum.
45
SETTING THE COMPASS
The Swarm assaulted me savagely as soon as I was through the gates. I almost wept with the furious pain of it. I was barely sane. I made a huge effort to relax. Mum would be bound to notice if I was tense. I invented a story about migraines and bad dreams. That would explain any anxiety she detected. I really did think I might never see her or my girls again. I’d written Sally and Kitty a letter which I’d leave with Mum. I’d thought enough about time paradoxes and the like to know that by tomorrow, even if we were successful, I might have vanished from the face of the earth.
Mum was in the living room, on the sofa watching TV. She turned it off when I walked in. ‘Hello, love,’ she said. ‘Anything wrong? You look a bit peaky.’
‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’
‘If you like, love, though I haven’t got any of that insipid stuff you drink.’ She had it in her head that Assam had no body to it. She also hated tea bags. She had enjoyed a brand loyalty to Brooke Bond tea for as long as I remembered. I didn’t mind. I was in the mood for a good old-fashioned cuppa. As the water boiled I called from the kitchen, ‘I’m going to be gone a few days, Mum. I’ve got a job that’ll take me out of town.’
‘What? America again?’
I knew I wouldn’t have much chance of being transported if I was caught but I said, ‘That’s right,’ and got the teapot down. I fed off the comforting familiarity of the house and the little bit of yard outside backing on to St Odhran’s graveyard. Very little had changed since I was a boy. The smell was the same. Comforting. She had got new furniture, carpets and wallpaper from time to time but they always seemed identical to the old.
‘How’s the girls?’ she asked.
I said they were doing fine.
‘And Helena?’ asked Mum. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Not bad.’ Waiting for the kettle to boil, I sat across from her on the other side of the fireplace.
She said nothing as she tidied up the coffee table. I could tell she was getting ready to listen.
In the state I was in, a little support from my mum was very welcome. I finished making the tea and found the McVitie’s chocolate digestives. I put everything on a tray and took it in. She had the gas fire on full and it was a bit warm, but her overheated room, with its familiar photographs and knickknacks, was comforting.
‘I was thinking of telling Helena I’d take the children for a couple of days,’ she said.
‘She’d like that.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen them since Christmas. It would be nice for me and would give her a break.’
‘Smashing,’ I said.
‘You all right for money, love’? She was trying to find out what she sensed was wrong. I laughed.
‘Honest, Mum! I’m rolling in it. I just sold a couple more novels in France.’
She didn’t really approve of France. She thought I had to be writing something racy. But I think it was mostly because my dad had gone astray there.
‘Well,’ she said dubiously, ‘you know best. How’s Barry doing?’
Once again I thought she was stuck in her own little time warp. I reminded her that Barry was back in Shropshire these days. Telford. The ugliest settlement in England. She was fond of Barry but couldn’t remember from one day to the next what I’d said about him. ‘He’s fine.’
‘I bet he misses London!’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ I said.
We agreed on that. Few Londoners could ever work out why someone would live anywhere else. At least until they were sixty-five and migrated south to the nearest bit of coast.
‘Have you ever thought of leaving, love?’ she asked me. I think she worried that we might move away from her. I told her I never wanted to live anywhere but London.
‘Cockneys get sick out of the Smoke,’ I said. She enjoyed that.
I stayed another hour or so. ‘I’ve got to get up bright and early tomorrow morning,’ I said.
‘Look after yourself, love,’ she said as I left. She blew me a worried kiss.
I walked back to the Sanctuary considering the next day’s plan. Could we really convince the king’s guard that Jessup was their man? It was very cold now. Too cold for snow. That would explain any bulky clothing, at least, but the day was likely to be bright. What on earth was I getting myself into? Something in me really didn’t care what happened. I rarely felt as powerless as I did then. Or as responsible for so many. The children and my mum would miss me if something happened. I wondered if Helena would care. Maybe she’d be relieved to see the last of me.
46
SECRETS AND SURPRISES
I went back via Ludgate Circus. This part of the city was pretty dead at that time of night. The café across the road from the Old King Lud still had its lights on. I couldn’t see any customers. The pubs were all full, of course. Many journalists were just starting the serious drinking of the evening. Later, they would stagger along to the expensive late-night chocolate shop near El Vino which did a thriving trade in their guilt, selling massive boxes to anyone who needed to take a peace offering home or had forgotten someone’s birthday. In that profusion of grey office stone, undecorated sandwich shops and no-nonsense masculine chophouses, the place was as incongruous as a diamond in a bag of licorice allsorts.
I turned off at Carmelite Street. The News of the World bloomed with yellow light, shadows came and went in the windows, but everything else, apart from the steadily throbbing printers, was dark. The streets grew even darker and narrower the closer I came to Carmelite Inn Chambers and the gates of the Sanctuary. The Whispering Swarm filled my head like a great gallery of quarreling men and women, growing increasingly urgent the closer I got to the gates. The Alsacia was calling me home. I slipped through into welcome silence. I left the Swarm on the other side of the gate and crossed the square to have a quick drink in the Swan.
By now the tavern was quiet. There were only a few people there, most of them talking quietly in the booths, but I was glad to recognise that mass of dark auburn hair. Captain St Claire stood at the bar finishing a glass of brandy. His hat was set back on his head. He wore a suit of dark blue wool, linen shirt, a suede waistcoat to his knees, military-style overcoat hanging open, his belt and sword strap secured by heavy brass buckles, tall riding boots folded at the tops. Into a blue sash around his waist he had stuck his pistols. As usual he wore both a basket-hilted longsword and his shorter-bladed sword, one on the left, the other on the right. These days I recognised him as a professional soldier. Perhaps a Dutch mercenary. He might have fought on either side. Foot on the rail, he lifted a brandy glass to his lips.
He seemed pleased to see me. ‘A cold night, Master Moorcock!’ Would I care for a drink? I accepted a half-shant because I’d be going early to bed.
He said he’d join me in that for the same reason. When we had our pints we took them to the long, em
pty table opposite the bar.
‘I hear the Thames has frozen,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen that.’
‘Nor I, until now. I grew up near the Humber and she did not freeze in my time. Of course, she’s a faster-running river.’ He was probably talking about a beautiful rural river and not the industrial one I knew.
‘Is it true establishments of every kind are actually built on the ice?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘Shopkeepers have set up tents and stalls in a long row from the Temple to Lambeth right across the river. I’m told it’s frozen all the way down to the bed. Boys pull carts with the wheels removed, sliding passengers across. The boatmen charge folk to walk the ice, since their livings are threatened. There are mummers acting plays pretending to tell the story of the king’s trial, and sellers of hot codlings, sausages, meat pies and the like, taking every advantage for commerce. They allow it, of course, because it will distract the commons from any thought of rebellion against Cromwell. How can folk be blamed in these impoverished times?’
I heard a note of familiar disenchantment in his Humberside burr. ‘You don’t approve of commerce, Captain St Claire?’
‘I’m not among those who say it’s demeaning to practise trade. Men who affect disdain for merchants are mere hypocrites, since all depend upon trade. It’s trade, not kings and their schemes, have made this land wealthy. For all we grumble, we’re paying the lowest taxes in Christendom. That a man should make a fair profit for his efforts is only just. English cloth warms kings and commoners worldwide. But I share the general view condemning unfair profit at the expense of the hard-working weaver!’
I heard in his reply an argument still fueling revolution.
‘Neither am I of the Leveller persuasion,’ St Claire insisted. ‘But could not inherited wealth and excessive profits be examined by Parliament and a tax be implemented to spread wealth more justly? It is surely a sin in God’s eye for the commonwealth to let poor folk starve or afford no doctors for their ailments, no food for their children, no roof, no hearth to warm elderly bones. Perhaps the answer is to levy a tax on all to provide for all. Thus no citizen need go hungry or sick or unlettered. We could build more workhouses which do not separate families. Schools could be attached to them. Children could be educated to read and figure for themselves, read their Bibles and reckon their own accounts the better to practise intelligent frugality. These are not sinful ideas, I think, but truly Christian ones following the teachings of our Lord. Every right-thinking creature in this sad kingdom holds some version of these views.’