“You are to be examined by the Privy Council, madam,” said the man politely. “You and your maidservant. You are to bring your son with you. The little girl may remain here with your landlady.”
“Under all circumstances my little girl remains with me,” said Lucy firmly.
The man yielded, then said with a flicker of a smile, “I have no instructions to arrest the puppy, madam.” Before Lucy could reply Jackie said, with an exact imitation of his mother’s gentle but utterly obstinate tones, “Under all circumstances my dog remains with me.” His head was up and he had Snowy in his arms, and it did not appear that the rotund little bundle of white fluff could be prised out of them with either ease or speed. The man shrugged his shoulders and they got into the coach. Don Quixote and Falstaff got in with them but the white-faced man stayed in the street. Lucy was enormously proud of her son for in this moment of crisis there was not even a hint of screams or tears. He showed a royal courage. Anne was quiet and calm and so was Mary. Lucy’s thoughts were quick and clear. Only one thing really mattered. No one must know Jackie was the King’s son. Therefore no one must know that Justus was her brother. But Justus must know what had happened.
“One moment, sir,” she said to the man in the street who was about to slam the coach door. “I am not a rich woman but I must have a lawyer to advise me. I have heard of a Mr. Justus Walter whose fees are not high. Could you inform him of my desire that he should help me?”
“Mr. Justus Walter has already been arrested, madam. Also Colonel Howard.”
He slammed the door and the coach moved off. Lucy and Anne could not speak to each other, since the two men were with them, but their eyes met and Lucy could only hope that Anne understood that Jackie’s paternity must not be revealed. Jackie himself was mercifully now awed and silent.
It took them only a short while to reach Westminster. They were taken to a block of government offices and into a small ante-room. Falstaff stayed with them, his bulk separating Jackie and his mother, but he was kind. He told Lucy that Colonel Howard and Mr. Justus Walter were now being examined separately by the Council, and he thought they might have to wait some while for their turn. He was right, for it was an hour before they heard the slamming of a door and then the sound of men’s boots tramping down a stone passage. Lucy’s hopes that she might see Justus or Tom faded away with the dying footsteps.
“Now is it my turn?” she whispered to Falstaff. “Probably, madam,” he answered. But the summons, when the door opened and a man in black with a sword at his side stood there holding it wide, was for Anne Hill. She went with him at once, white-faced but composed, and Lucy was proud of her. “She will be back in a few moments,” Lucy said to the startled children. But Anne did not come back and Jackie began to show his first sign of fear. Sliding off the seat he tried to get round the mountain of flesh beside him to where his mother and Mary sat hand in hand. But he was instantly replaced, and his mouth opened. In terror of what might come out of it Lucy asked, “Please may I tell my children a fairy story?” Falstaff smiled. “I have no orders to the contrary, madam.”
Raising her voice enough for it to get round Falstaff to Jackie Lucy embarked instantly upon his favourite story of Prince Kilhwch and his wonderful horse, and the white-breasted greyhounds with their collars of rubies. She had told it so well that even Falstaff sat enthralled, a plump hand laid on each knee and his eyes on Lucy’s face. A pretty wench, he thought. A pity if they hanged her for a spy. But still Anne did not come back and even while her story ran on, waxing mightier in creations of her own imagining, Lucy was aware that her physical strength was running out. When her own time came to go before the Council would she even be able to stand? Suddenly the door opened and she looked up to greet Anne. But the black man with the sword at his side was alone. “Your turn, madam.”
“My maid?” she asked him. “Where is she?”
“Waiting for you in another room, madam. Come at once.”
She turned to Falstaff. “My children,” she gasped. “They will be terrified without me.”
He smiled. “As soon as you are in the Council Chamber, madam, I will take them to your maid. Do not fear for them.” He was immensely kind. Even in hell, she thought, one can find kindness, and she felt braver. She kissed her children, told them they would be taken to Anne, that she would join them very soon, and then they would go home. They listened wide-eyed and nodded, but just as the door closed behind her Jackie let out a wild cry of “Maman!” And as she was led down the passage she heard him scream.
After that she was aware of nothing until she found herself standing before a long table facing a line of grave-faced men in sombre garments. The room itself had a richness of dark carved wood and a line of sunlight slanted from a high window. They asked her name and she said that she was Vrouw Flinck, widow of a Dutch sea captain, and that she had come to England on a holiday with her two children. They asked her if the Dutchman had fathered both her children and she said yes. They asked how it was that she was travelling in the company of Colonel Thomas Howard and Mr. Justus Walter and she said with truth that she had met them in Antwerp and they had offered their protection for the journey. They asked her some searching questions about her late husband and she became a little confused, and faint from the long standing. They were kind, and allowed her a chair to sit on and a glass of water.
Then the man sitting in the centre of the table told her she was Mrs. Barlow, alias Lucy Walter, that she had borne a bastard son to Charles Stuart, eldest son of the late king, and that this son was with her, together with a daughter of uncertain paternity but certainly not the child of Captain Flinck aforementioned. She was now, he told her, a spy in the pay of Charles Stuart, who had himself sent her upon this mission to England. What she knew, what she had been sent to find out, they would discover from her later. Meanwhile she would be held in custody by order of the Lord Protector. Had she anything further to say?
Strength had come back to her again. She stood up and denied all that had been said. She was Vrouw Flinck, she had never been mistress to Charles Stuart and her son was the son of her late husband.
“We have your papers, madam,” he said coldly. “We have your letters from Charles Stuart and the paper containing his promise of a pension. We have not yet had time to examine them fully, but we have them. Your writing desk was removed from your lodgings immediately after you left the house.”
She was despairing and confused but still she tried to protect Jackie. They might send him to Carisbrooke Castle and he might die there like Princess Elizabeth. “Yes,” she said, “I did bear a son to the King. But he died. The boy now with me is not the King’s son.”
There was no more to say and she found that she had to sit down again. They let her rest for a moment and then she was taken away, down the long stone passage that had already echoed to the steps of Tom and Justus, being taken she knew not where. A door was opened and she was in a little room with Anne and the children, and Jackie was clinging to her crying hysterically. Then they were being taken down some steps and out under the blue summer sky. They were in a street. And presently they were going down steps again and being helped into a boat. The waterman pushed off and they were out on the river travelling towards London Bridge. The sun and air, the circling gulls and the happy traffic of the busy river revived them, and Lucy soon had the children laughing and happy. For them now the queer thing that had happened to their shopping expedition had turned into just another of their river trips. “Where are we going, maman?” asked Jackie.
“You will see,” replied Lucy gaily.
They were passing under the bridge and she remembered vividly her journey as a child with Robert Sidney. While the children were crying out in delicious terror at the strange echoing noises under the bridge Lucy whispered to the man beside her, “Where are you taking us?”
“To the Tower, madam,” he whispered back. “By the order of the Lord Protec
tor.”
She realized that she had known the answer before she asked the question. They were out in the sunshine again and came very soon to the familiar steps and saw the great fortress looming above them, but the darkness that had fallen upon her as a child spared her as they got out of the boat, so engrossed was she with the children. Jackie was clinging to her with one hand and clutching his puppy with the other. She looked down at him and he gazed up at her, wide-eyed and terrified. “It is the zoo,” she said. “Where they keep animals. I told you about it. I came here when I was a little girl and I had a happy time. You will too.”
She smiled back over her shoulder to Mary and Anne who were following. Mary’s answering smile was not very sure of itself but Anne’s was serene as a summer’s day. Thanking God for her maid’s steadiness Lucy mounted the steps with a dignity that even Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey, who had come this way before her, had not been able to equal. Catching the infection of courage from his mother and from Anne Jackie recovered the royal composure he had shown in the street when they had wanted to take away his puppy.
“A beautiful boy,” thought the man who was waiting in the shadows of the doorway above them. “And the girl moves like a queen.” It had never been the custom for a Lieutenant of the Tower to act the part of welcoming host to any but prisoners of the very highest rank, but Sir John Barkstead had been curious to see this couple and he came forward now and bowed politely to Lucy and her son, as long ago Mr. Cottington had bowed to Robert Sidney and the little Lucy. This repetition was surely a good omen, she told herself. That visit had had a happy ending and by the mercy of God this one would too.
But once inside the Tower the two visits no longer resembled each other. They were taken to no friendly library this time but handed over to a warder who took them upon what seemed an interminable journey through echoing, ascending tunnels of stone, and once they heard the roaring of lions in the deeps below them.
Then they were in their cell, and alone, and it seemed that they were not to be separated for there were two beds in two corners of the cell, with a small truckle-bed pushed under each. And they could see the river from the barred window. And presently food was brought to them and because they were ravenously hungry that was good too. Their apprehensive thoughts clung to these comforting things and found respite. “We are being kindly treated,” said Lucy. And indeed it was so. No crime had been proved against them yet. They were simply awaiting in custody the pleasure of the Lord Protector. They were here on a visit, the children were told, and when after their meal they were tucked up on one of the beds with the puppy they were instantly asleep.
Lucy and Anne sat on the hard bench by the window and without the children the respite was suddenly over. “What did you say, Anne?” Lucy asked.
“The truth, madam. They asked me if you were Mrs. Barlow, mistress of Charles Stuart, and if Jackie was his son, and I said yes.”
“When they asked me the same thing I said I was Vrouw Flinck and Jackie the son of my dead husband. You knew, Anne, that I travel under an assumed name for Jackie’s safety.”
“Did you not notice that there were three men in the street when we came out, but only two got into the coach? I looked back as we drove away and saw the third going into the house. I imagined he would quickly find your private papers and so when I stood before the Council it seemed the truth would be best.”
“You were right, Anne. But how did he find my papers so soon? My little desk was hidden under my clothes in the big chest, and my letters from the King were in the secret drawer.”
Anne smiled a little. “These men know women always hide their treasures under their clothes, and secret drawers are not hard to find.”
“Mine was hard to find.”
“No, madam. I found it long ago on our first visit to Paris.”
The two looked at each other. Anne had been very white all day but now the colour flooded her face, making the scars of the burning stand out clearly. “Did you read my letters from the King?” asked Lucy quietly.
“Yes. I did not love you then as I do now. You are the first person I have loved since my mother died.”
Lucy took Anne’s hand but she did not look at her since Anne was now crying a little, and she knew her maid was not the type to cry easily or to wish to be looked at while she did it. She did not know that she had more to forgive Anne than the reading of her letters, nor did she know that the effect of this imprisonment upon their outward lives would be negligible but upon their relationship to each other deep and lasting. When she spoke again it was to turn their thoughts back from a forgiven treachery to the dilemma of the moment. “We have told a different story. Will that weigh against us?”
“It may, madam. We are suspected of being spies, I believe. That seemed to me the reason for all the many questions they asked me about yourself and your way of life, and about Mr. Justus Walter. They suspect him too. I imagine all will depend upon how soon Colonel Howard is able to clear himself, and afterwards we hope to clear us.”
“Colonel Howard?”
“He is a Parliament spy. Did you not realize it? How else could he have come so openly to England?”
“Tom, Tom,” murmured Lucy, and she would hardly believe it. Tom, who was so kind and had been a boy with Charles, a traitor to him. Tom a traitor to Charles. She was too stunned to weep.
“The Colonel would have an easier task if Mr. Richard Walter had come over with us,” said Anne.
“Yes,” Lucy answered sadly. It would always hurt that Richard was a Parliament man, but she was not so fond of him as she was of Tom. Then with a movement she felt the presence of her marriage certificate sewn inside her corsets. At least that, the most precious to her of all her papers, had not been in the little desk. And her ruby ring was on her finger and her mother’s pearls round her neck. But the diamond brooch and the Queen of Bohemia’s jewels were in the desk. “My jewels, Anne,” she whispered.
“If they do not return those they will be thieves,” Anne said. “And they call themselves Godly men, servants of God and all the rest of their clap-trap. We have a hold over them there.”
They ate their supper and went to bed, Jackie sleeping beside his mother and Mary beside Anne. But Lucy could not sleep for clouds had covered the sky and exhaustion and darkness were soon busy with their habitual task of turning every molehill of trouble into a mountain of tragedy. Tom spying on his King. Anne reading her letters. She could understand now why Charles’s thoughts were always so neurotically occupied with the subject of disloyalty. It was a hideous thing and the fear of it a sickly poison in the blood. Anne she had forgiven already, for to love Anne, she intuitively knew, was one of the reasons why she was still alive, but that did not lessen her grief or her fear lest that one thing had not been the end of Anne’s treachery. And she was afraid that in spite of his kindness her affection for Tom had turned to something very like hatred; for it was not against her that he had sinned but Charles. “Oh God,” she prayed, “not hatred. Do not let me hate.”
But still she seemed imprisoned in a hatred of Tom that mounted slowly as the moonless darkness deepened the horror of the place where she was. She tried not to think of the things that had happened within these walls, but it was impossible not to think of them for grief and agony were imprisoned in each cell of this evil body of stone in whose grip she lay.
This Tower was not a place, it was a living demonic thing whose dark spirit fell upon her again as when she was a child. The terror then had seemed prophetic. Was it this it had foretold? No, not this. The menace was still in the future. She drifted into a half-dream in which she was wrestling with the thing, trying to keep it held to her own being that it might not fall upon Jackie, but she did not succeed for Jackie suddenly cried out and awoke and came scrambling up into her bed like a terrified nestling. Broad awake now she pulled him under the blanket with her. “It was only a nightmare, my darling,” she s
aid as she hugged him. “Tell me about it. What was it?”
But like Mary Jackie only trembled and could not tell her what it was. But the mere fact of their two bodies clinging together, the comforting warmth of human flesh, soon steadied them both and Jackie whispered, “Tell me a story, maman.”
For the first time in their lives she found herself telling him a grown-up story, no fairy prince this time but the story of the man who had been in her thoughts ever since she had come back to London. She told him about Old Sage. She described the herb stall under the dark tree beside the white Ionic columns, and told him how she used to sit in the church, and the sweet smell that came from the herbs stored in the roof. Jackie was fascinated and for an hour they whispered together of the marvellous old man, and Old Sage was as much with them as though he had noiselessly unlocked the door of the cell and walked in. “And he is dead,” Jackie said at last with sudden sadness, “He is gone.”
“Not gone,” Lucy answered instantly, “The Great Ones come back.”
“What do they do?” asked Jackie.
“They come back,” repeated Lucy, “and go about the world. They go where they are wanted.”