The abrupt sounds of laughter, a woman’s and a man’s, drifted from the bedchamber, and Bennet breathed a sigh of relief. It would not be long now, as he knew the king liked to laugh with his women, but only after the serious business of bedding had been exhausted.
Chiffinch must have known from the muffled giggling that he would soon be escorting the Duchess of Portsmouth back to her quarters, because he straightened his drooping posture and wiped at his seeping eyes with one sleeve. The old man was over seventy and had been, as Keeper of the Privy Closet, one of the few men, apart from Bennet, who reported directly to the king. It always roused Bennet’s suspicions when he personally could not bully, persuade, or buy a man into revealing court confidences. Unfortunately, thanks to the king’s relentless licentiousness, William Chiffinch had already made a generous fortune taking bribes from every duchess, actress, or street moll who traipsed up the back stairs to the king’s bed.
A gentle cough from inside the chamber alerted Chiffinch to the young woman’s approach and he swiftly opened the doors, allowing Louise de Keroualle to exit the royal bedroom. She floated out in a cloud of pale blue silk, disarrayed artfully off both shoulders, her plump baby face pleased and self-assured. He made a deep courtier’s bow, hiding a sudden amused smile. Nell Gwynn, another of the king’s favorites, was sometimes mistaken for Louise. He had only recently overheard Nell sharply rebuke a confused gallant by shrilling, “Pray, good sir, be civil. I am the Protestant whore.”
Nodding to Chiffinch, Bennet walked into the chamber and bowed. The king was already seated at the desk nearest his bed, papers and scrolls in an untidy pyramid, his shoes and his wig still in the chair opposite.
“Henry,” he called, motioning to the earl to stand closer. “I trust I haven’t kept you long?”
Bennet looked about the room, studying the dozens of clocks all ticking in discordant rhythms as though seeing them for the first time, and said pleasantly, “Your Majesty knows my time is his own.”
The king smiled, a cynical curling of the thick lips, and slumped back into his chair. “They’ve hurt us, Henry.” Bennet took note of the “us” and was instantly wary.
“All our work,” Charles continued, “is to be undone because Parliament will play the penurious husband to my wifely supplications. I tell you, I am quite undone.”
Bennet waited for the king to speak again, but the smile was gone, and he knew the silence was for him to offer up some advice, some scheme that would circumvent the barrier that was Parliament. He had been with the king all through the Parliamentary sessions earlier that month, and had watched him try to cajole and charm both Houses not only into giving him the funds to continue the Dutch war but to continue the Acts of Toleration, allowing his close and powerful Catholic ministers to stay in power. The ancient fearful remembrances of Catholics overrunning the seat of government with the brand and the sword during the reign of Bloody Mary were even greater than the recent memories of the black plague and the great fire that had destroyed most of London.
But all of Charles’s seduction and prevarication had come to nothing. Both Houses were clamoring for the king to nullify Toleration and pass into law the public swearing of sole fidelity and adherence to the Church of England. In exchange for the king’s assurances, Parliament would release the purse strings. There was at present a very real and dangerous threat that Parliament would try to coerce, either through law or through blunt force, the monarch into compliance. It was the same impasse that had brought Charles’s father to civil war and the executioner’s ax.
“Sire,” Bennet said cautiously. “Perhaps what is needed now is a gesture of, shall we say, grand and unifying proportions.”
The king frowned more deeply, staring through heavy lids. “‘Unifying’ is to our liking. ‘Grand’ is not. In case you have been sleeping, Bennet, we are dry in the purse as of late.” He stood up restlessly and turned to look through his window out into the gardens.
Bennet came to stand behind Charles and saw several of the queen’s young women animatedly posing under the king’s gaze. That the king had given him his back was a sign of the trust he put in the earl, but it was also a signal, and a threat, of the potential withdrawal of royal favor. Henry Bennet had been with Charles from the penniless, starving days of exile and had reached the highest of appointed offices by being made secretary of state. But his ambassadorial journey with the Duke of Buckingham to Holland the year before to force upon the Dutch the terms of peace had failed miserably, and the war continued. The fact that he, like the king, was a closeted Catholic, although he made a public show of taking sacraments under the Church of England, made him keenly aware of his precarious position at court.
Most of all, the earl knew he was despised by his Protestant colleagues and, worse, distrusted. His years in the Spanish court on behalf of the English monarchy had left about his person the aura of orientalist pursuits and popish ritual. Personally, he cared little what faith was à la mode, Protestant or Catholic; the important thing was what was expedient to further the king’s, and his own, interests.
Bennet cleared his throat and offered, “Your Majesty knows that I have continued to have correspondences with the colonies of the Americas, and that despite two expeditions to the new England some years past we have had no luck in capturing the murderers of your father.”
Charles grunted his assent but continued staring out the window. “I am painfully aware that the colonists have hidden and will continue to hide Cromwell’s covey. It hardly matters now. Natural death will soon do what the hangman has not been able to.”
Bennet moved slightly nearer. “I have recently received a packet from an agent of mine in the governor’s office in Massachusetts. It’s true that Edward Whalley is reputedly in poor health and is likely to die soon. Of William Goffe and John Dixwell, the other two regicides in hiding, we have had little word of their exact place of concealment. However”—and here Bennet paused, knowing the silence would pull the king’s attention away from the spectacle of youthful exuberance and back to the matter at hand—“we have placed the whereabouts of the chief of Your Majesty’s ills in this regard in the person of one Thomas Morgan.”
Charles did not turn around, but Bennet knew he had his full attention now. He leaned in closer, enough to smell the orange-water cologne of the French girl, and said, “I am fully prepared, Sire, to use my own resources to fund this expedition. What I propose is to send a few, perhaps four or five, expertly trained men on a merchant ship.” The last expedition, nine years earlier, had been composed of four ships and four hundred and fifty men; the rattling of sabers must have been heard a hundred miles out to sea. Not one arrest in the colonies had been made. “In this way, Your Majesty, we can take by stealth what has eluded us by force.”
Charles tapped sharply on the window, drawing the attention of the young women, who giggled and turned away in practiced, coquettish flurries.
Bennet took a deep breath to make his words more forceful and said, “Sire, I will speak plainly. There is ill feeling in both Houses. The Dutch, the French, and the Spanish are all waiting to cut our throats, or worse, cut off our trade routes. Now is the time to bring to justice, in a very public way, a man who has been hidden in plain sight by a gang of ill-bred rustics. By doing so you will make it clear to the world that, though it take years, the seat of English government will not be deterred in its will. An exhibition of the hanging, drawing, and quartering of this criminal who held the ax will make a powerful statement, Your Majesty, to the people, and to Parliament.”
“Arlington, do you know why I depend on you?” Charles turned and smiled perfunctorily, though his eyes remained thoughtful and hooded. “Because you are ruthlessly dependable.” In a distracted motion, he rubbed one hand over his closely shaven head. “Do you know what I wish for more than anything in this world?” He had spoken quietly, almost to a whisper, and there was a brief pause before Bennet realized the king had asked him a question.
“I wis
h to dream of nothing,” Charles said, tracing with his eyes the opulent fittings of the room: the lavish tapestries, the intricate gilt-laden furniture, the mammoth canopied bed. “Giving me the body of the man who murdered my father will give me a quiet sleep.” He smiled lazily again, saying, “And, Henry, it will give you a duchy.”
Bennet recognized the subtle signs that he had been dismissed: the look of restlessness on the king’s face, the turning away again to stare out the window at the beauty of St. James’s Park, the language of the Royal Body which stated, “You are no longer in my presence.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Bennet said as he bowed and left the chamber. He passed Chiffinch, returned to his post by the door, and thought, The next time you see me, you old goat, you’ll address me as “Your Grace.”
CHAPTER 3
MARTHA STOPPED HACKING at the weeds in the house garden and dropped the hoe to give her aching arms a rest. She cupped her hands over her eyes and looked across the adjoining fields, four acres in all, black and undulating from the rigors of the plow. The sowing had been well begun and would be finished before the next sabbath. She heard the strangled yerping of the old cock again for the hundredth time that day, made nervous and full of fight because of a coming change in the weather. She had learned to place such readings into the noises of an old rooster from her mother, who had recited to her many times, “A rooster crows at the sun and the moon, but peckish and quarrelsome, rain will come soon.” Rain would be a welcome beginning to the sprouting, even though the sky overhead was clear except for a few high wisps of mottled clouds far to the west.
She heard the sharp squeal of the sow coming from the barn and knew John was feeding her extra mash to make her fatter. She had been held back from slaughter in the fall for breeding, and by the way her belly hung low to the ground, Martha knew they would have piglets soon. Perhaps, she hoped, as many as eight. She sensed Patience was already regretting having promised to give her any piglets over the number six. If the sow had eight, then Martha would get two, enough to buy four yards of good cloth for a new dress. And perhaps a new dress would make her more attractive to a suitor than her present worn and spotted skirt.
She had seen her reflection in a bucket of water often enough to know she had a kind of beauty, mirthless though it was; her skin was clear and unspotted, her forehead high and sloping. Her black hair, thick and ropy as a horse’s mane, was no doubt her glory, but she knew her brows knitted together too often to be pleasing, causing a deep well to form between them. But beyond all of that, she feared, she had too much force, too much animal vitality, to be winning; at least to any civil, unprotesting sort of man.
Picking up the hoe once more, Martha called to her cousin, idling just inside the door, to come spread topsoil in the garden. Patience pushed herself from the door frame and slowly made her way into the garden. The smell of dried fish and manure, coming in waves from the bucket at Martha’s side, made her gag and she clenched her teeth.
As she dragged the heavy bucket behind her, Patience ladled the sticky mess over the loosened soil. As soon as she had covered a small area, she picked up the short hoe and tamped it into the dirt. She continued in this way until a spasm, just below her breast, made her catch her breath and drop the bucket. A look of fear eclipsed the frown on her face, the fear of slipping too soon, in a wave of blood and viscous matter, the nesting bit of life in her womb. Martha quickly caught up her cousin’s arm, her eyes questioning, but Patience shook her head and motioned Martha away.
Martha upended a bucket and settled Patience down on it, tucking her skirt over her lap and out of the dirt. She kneaded the pregnant woman’s shoulders and clucked vaguely to soothe her. Martha knew her cousin mistrusted midwives who used slippery elm to ease the passage of the babe through the birth canal; “a squaw’s poultice,” Patience had called it, a custom of native savagery. But Martha decided that she would go soon and harvest enough for the birthing. Patience would be glad enough of a liberal application between her legs, she thought, when her labors came.
Thankfully, Patience let herself be led into the house. Martha steeped mint leaves in water to quell the griping, assuring her cousin she would soon enough want to eat again. But Patience bleakly eyed the suet pudding made for their supper, and she managed to whisper through gritted teeth that she doubted with her whole being she would ever again eat anything but bread.
ON A SATURDAY morning a harried-looking yeoman appeared at the door soon after breakfast, holding an ancient matchlock. He stood to the fore of two younger men, both carrying hay forks, and all looking as nervous as cats on a sinking ship. He nodded to Patience when she came to the door and asked, respectfully, for Thomas. When she asked their business, he told her that a pair of wolves, perhaps a male and his mate, had felled two lambs on his farm in Andover.
“They have seemed to bound up, fur, teeth, and claws, from the very ground of that place,” he said, his tongue working carefully through broken teeth. “So clever were the beasts, they et through the high leather latches on the lambfold. The Town Fathers has charged us to kill the wolves what killed my sheep.” At Patience’s blank face, the farmer continued. “There be a bounty of fifty shillings apiece for the pelts. And twenty shillings more if the pair be skinned doubly so…at the same time, is what I mean to say…that is, together…” His voice trailed away and he stood, looking baffled by the ensuing silence.
Martha, coming to stand at the door, huffed air through her nose and said, in a loud aside to Patience, “Your boy, Will, would have better luck with my garden trowel against the beasts than these men here with their forks.” Patience covered her mouth against a sudden smile.
“Now, missus, you’ll not laugh when these great monsters climb through your shutters. They’ve come to Billerica now to do some mischief. As your man Thomas is a creditable shot, and as he has his own weapon, we are here to ask him to lend aid in rooting out and killin’ these here wolves. We’ll pay him a part of the boun—”
The sight of Thomas’s towering form approaching the house cut off his speech as cleanly as a hand around the throat. They watched him set by the door a hundredweight sack, his head grazing against the beams at the ceiling, and Martha realized for the first time that he must duck or bump every time he came inside.
“You’ll not catch them by day,” Thomas said, wiping his hands over his shirt. “They’ll be hidin’ in a thorny lair. And if you did find them, you’d need to climb in face-first to kill ’em. No, a gun’s not the way to catch a wolf.” He looked significantly at the rusted barrel of the cradled matchlock, and the farmer bristled.
“Well, then,” the man said hotly, “if you’re too afraid to come, you only need say so.” Thomas shrugged and, wishing the men a good day, walked back into the fields. The lead farmer motioned for his men to follow away, and they walked in single file down the path like geese tied bill to tail feather.
Soon after, though, Martha saw Thomas returning to the house and, with a flash of irritation, thought he wanted his dinner before the appointed hour. But he gave her no notice and instead addressed himself to Patience.
“Missus, if you’d be willing to give over a hen, I can kill those wolves. I’ll buy you back a hen from the skinning bounty.”
Patience looked at him in surprise and said, “But you told Goodman Shed he could not kill the wolves.” Will, who had spoken of nothing else since the farmers took their leave, clapped his hands and tugged at his mother’s skirts, shouting, “Mamma, Mamma, Mamma, let me go. Let me go hunt the wolves with Thomas. I can help, I tell you I can!”
Thomas laughed and answered, “No, Goodman Shed could not kill a cow with that rusted pipe of his, little less a wolf. But I can.”
Patience pulled Will from her skirts and shushed him, but a calculating look had settled into her face. Martha looked from Patience to the Welshman and realized a deal was being struck; Thomas had sent the other men away so he could collect the bounty for himself. She looked with new eyes at his raw
-boned figure; his face, cut by hard living, was well beyond comfortable middle years. But as he inclined his head to Patience, she saw ambition flare in his eyes, like a sudden sharp flame.
Martha, thinking a knotted cord the best way to plumb deep water, clanged the spoon loud and long against the cook pot. “Well, then,” she countered. “You’re going to spend the night thrashing about after the wolves yourself, are you?”
His eyes shifted to Martha’s, and for the briefest moment, she felt the short hairs on her head bristle. He turned his attention back to Patience.
“I’ll build a pen, missus. They’ll come for the hen. Once they’re inside, I’ll spring the gate behind them, and shoot ’em dead.”
After some pointed haggling, it was agreed upon that the bounty would be split three ways, John getting the third equal share for helping build the pen. She felt hostile eyes on her and turned to see Will regarding her with a jutting lower lip. He was a sweet child, she knew, but a handful at times and rebellious.
“What is it?” she asked crossly.
“You shouldn’t look so at Thomas. He’s been a soldier in England,” he said defensively. “Haven’t ya, Thomas?”
Thomas nodded briefly, but there was a sudden guardedness about his posture, a wariness that made Martha think there was a good deal more to the story. The angling scar dividing one brow neatly into two halves took on a more interesting history than a careless fall onto a harvesting blade, or a village brawl. Her father used to say that eight parts of speech came into the world at Creation and that women made off with seven of them. The eighth part held by men was the language of war, conquest, and bragging. The Welshman, like most men, had a tongue for boasting; and she was sure, with the right abuse to his pride, those secrets could be tipped into revelation.