An Instance of the Fingerpost

1

It is something of a surprise, and even an embarrassment, to have scarce remembered faces and facts summoned from the gloom of antiquity like so many ghosts. This has been my experience while perusing the manuscript written by that strange little Venetian, Marco da Cola, lately sent to me by Richard Lower. I never imagined he had such a formidable, if selective, memory. Perhaps he took notes as he went along, expecting to entertain his countrymen on his return. Such travelers’ memoirs are popular enough here; it is possible the same is true in Venice, although I am told the inhabitants are a narrow-minded people, convinced nothing is worthwhile if it lies more than ten leagues from their city. As I say, the manuscript was a surprise; its arrival as much as its contents, for I had not heard from Lower for some time. We were somewhat in company, he and I, when we were both making our way in London; but then our paths diverged. I married well, to a woman who brought me a good addition to my estate, and began to associate with men of the very highest rank. Whereas Lower somehow missed, failing to endear himself to those most able to do him good. I do not know why this was. He did, certainly, have an irritability about him which never sits well in a doctor, and was perhaps too mindful of his philosophy and not enough of his pocket to make a mark in the world. But my loyalty and forbearance mean that at least he still numbers the Prestcott family among his few patients.

I gather that he has already sent Cola’s words to Wallis, old and blind though he now is, and daily expects to hear his opinion. I can imagine what that will be—Wallis trium-phans, or a variation thereof. It is only to set the matter aright that I bother to put down a true version of events. It will be a disjointed account, as I am often interrupted by business, but I will do my best.

I should start by saying that I quite liked Cola; he cut an ungainly figure, but pictured himself a gallant and made something of an entertainment during his brief stay in Oxford by the gaudiness of his clothes and the air of perfume that he left behind him. He was constantly pirouetting and bowing and paying bizarre compliments, quite unlike the majority of Venetians, who I understand normally pride themselves on their gravity and look askance at English exuberance. His dispute with Lower I do not pretend to understand; how men could come to blows over such trivialities escapes me. There is, surely, something undignified in two gentlemen fighting over the right to be seen the more artisanal—Lower has never mentioned anything of the matter to me and I cannot judge whether or no he has anything to be ashamed of. That acrimonious and foolish business aside, however, the Venetian had much to commend him, and it was unfortunate I did not encounter him in easier circumstances. I wish I could talk to him now, for there is much to ask. Above all, I do not understand why—it is the most glaring of his omissions—he never mentions in his memoir that he had known my father. It is strange, for we talked much of him on the occasions we met, and Cola spoke of him warmly.

Thus my opinion of the Venetian, from what I knew of him. I suspect that Dr. Wallis will paint a different portrait. I never quite understood why that worthy divine so took against the man, but I am fairly certain that he had no real reason to do so. Wallis had some strange obsessions and, of course, a profound dislike of all papists, but often would be just plain wrong—this was one of those occasions.

It is generally known that, until Mr. Newton eclipsed him, Dr. Wallis was considered the finest mathematician this country has ever produced, and this reputation has obscured his occult activities for the government and the malice of his character. Frankly, I have never been entirely certain what either of them do that is so wonderful—I can add up and subtract to get the estate accounts in order, and I can place a bet on a horse and calculate my winnings, and I cannot see why anybody should need to know more. Someone once tried to explain Mr. Newton’s notions, but they made little sense. Something about proving that things fall. As I had taken a bad drop from my horse only the previous day, I replied that I had all the proof I needed on my backside. As for why, it was obvious that things fall because God has made them heavy.

However clever he was in matters such as these, though, Wallis was no judge of character, and made fearful mistakes; Cola, I think, was one of them. Because the poor man was a papist and desperately trying to ingratiate himself, Wallis assumed there was some sinister motive behind it all. Personally, I take people as I find them, and Cola never did me any harm. And as for being a papist, that is not my concern; if he chooses to burn in Hell there is nothing I can do to save him.

Despite his amiability, though, it was clear to me at least that Cola was a fool in many respects, an example of the difference between learning and wisdom. I have a theory that too much learning unbalances the mind. So much effort goes into squeezing in knowledge that there isn’t enough room left over for common sense. Lower, for example, was a desperately clever man but got nowhere; whereas I, with no education to speak of, have great position, am a Justice of the Peace and also a Member of Parliament. I live in this vast house, built especially for me, and am surrounded by servants, some of whom even do my bidding. A fine achievement, I submit, for someone who was born, through no personal fault, with less than nothing and who once narrowly escaped Sarah Blundy’s fate.

That young woman, you see, was a harlot and witch, despite the prettiness and the strangeness of manner which so captivated Cola. Now, in my mature years and having come closer to God, I am astonished at my carelessness in placing my soul in peril by consorting with her. However, as I am a just man, I must state the absolute truth—whatever her other crimes and however much she had to die, Sarah Blundy did not kill Dr. Robert Grove. I know this for a fact, for I also know who did kill him. Had Cola been more mindful of the Bible, he would have realized that the proof lay in those notebooks he carried to jot down the words of others. He reports that at the dinner in New College, Grove had a dispute with Thomas Ken, who stormed out, muttering the words “Romans, 8:13.” Cola remembered the reference, wrote it down and entirely missed its significance; indeed, he missed the significance of the whole occasion, failing even to understand why he was invited in the first place. For what is this passage? Unlike him, I took the trouble to find out, and it confirmed the belief I have held all these years—“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.” My friend Thomas was convinced Grove did indeed live for fleshly pleasure, and a few hours later he died. Had I not known better, I would have called that a remarkable prophecy.

I accept readily that Thomas was tormented beyond endurance before he acted, for I knew well Grove’s qualities and defects. I had suffered much from his barbs as a child myself, when he had taught me as part of his duties in Sir William Compton’s household and, although I knew him well enough to see the good that lay therein (once I was large enough not to be beaten by him, for he was formidably strong in his arms) I knew how hurtful his wit could be. Thomas—poor, slow, honest Thomas—was too easy a target for his sallies. So much and so mercilessly did he taunt my friend I might even claim that Grove brought his fate upon himself.

And myself? I have to relate my journeys, not one, but several, all undertaken at the same time in my quest for prosperity and (dare I say it) salvation. Some of what I will say is public knowledge already. Some is known only to myself and will cause great consternation amongst the atheists and the scoffers. I doubt not that what I say will be scorned by the erudite, who will laugh at my presentation and ignore the truth that lies within. That is their concern, for the truth I will tell, whether they like it or not.

2

It is my desire to set out clearly my account of events, and not bother with the sillinesses indulged in by so-called authors trying to earn spurious fame. God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think; occasionally I am forced to listen to someone reading to while away time in the evening and, on the whole, I find it all quite absurd. All those elaborate conceits and hidden meanings. Say what you mean to say, then be silent, is my motto, and books would be better—and a lot shorter—if more people listened to my advice. There is more wisdom in a decent volume on husbandry or fishing than in the most cunning of these philosophers. If I had my way, I’d mount them all on a horse at dawn, and make them gallop through the countryside for an hour. That might blow some of the nonsense out of their fuddled minds. So I will explain myself simply and directly, and I have no shame in saying that my narrative will reflect my character. I was at Oxford intended for the law; and I was intended for the law because, though the eldest and only son of my family, I was going to have to earn my living, so low had we sunk in misfortune. The Prestcotts were a very old family but had suffered considerably during the wars. My father, Sir James Prestcott, had joined the king when that noble gentleman raised his standard at Nottingham in 1642, and he fought courageously throughout the Civil War. The expense was enormous, as he maintained a whole troop of horse at his own charge, and he was shortly reduced to mortgaging his land to raise money, confident that this was a wise investment for the future. No one, in those early days, seriously considered that the fighting would end in anything other than triumph. But my father, and many others, reckoned without the king’s rigidity and the growing influence of the fanatics in Parliament. The war went on, the country suffered, and my father got poorer.

Disaster occurred when Lincolnshire—where much of the family property was—fell wholly into the hands of the Roundheads; my mother was briefly imprisoned, and much of our revenue confiscated. Even this did not shake my father’s resolution, but when the king was captured in 1647, he realized that the cause was lost and so made such peace as he could with the new rulers of the land. In his opinion Charles I had thrown away his kingdom through his folly and mistakes, and no more could be done. Father was reduced to virtual poverty, but at least retired from the fray rich in honor, content to resume his life.

Until the execution. I was only seven on that terrible winter’s day in 1649, and yet I recall the news of it still. I think every man alive then can remember exactly what they were doing when they heard that the king had been beheaded in front of a cheering mob. There is now nothing which more brings home to me the passage of the years than to meet a grown man who does not recall, as his strongest memory, the horror that the news produced. Never in the history of the universe had such a crime been committed, and I remember vividly how the sky turned dark and the earth rocked as the anger of heaven was loosed on the land. It rained for days afterward, the sky itself weeping for the sinfulness of mankind.

Like everyone else, my father had not believed it would happen. He was wrong. He always had too good an opinion of his fellows—perhaps that was his downfall. Murder, perhaps—such things happen. But a trial? To execute in the name of justice the man who was its very fount? To lead God’s anointed onto a scaffold like a criminal? Such blasphemous, sacrilegious mockery had not been seen since Christ himself suffered on the Cross. England had sunk low—never in their worst nightmares did anyone suspect it could sink so very far down into the sulphur. My father gave his loyalty entire to the young Charles II at that very moment and vowed to dedicate his life to achieving his restoration.

This was shortly before my father’s first exile, and before I was sent away from my family for instruction. I was called formally to his room, and went with some trepidation as I assumed that I must have misbehaved, since he was not a man who gave himself much to his children, being too occupied with more important matters. But he greeted me kindly and even permitted me to sit, then told me of what had happened in the world.

“I will have to leave the country for a while, to mend our fortunes,” he said. “And your mother has decided that you will go to my friend, Sir William Compton, and receive instruction from tutors while she returns to her own people.

“You must remember one thing, Jack. God made this country a monarchy, and if we stray from that, we stray from His will. To serve the king, the new king, is to serve your country and God in equal part. To give your life for that is nothing, to give your fortune less still. But never give your honor, for that is not yours to give. It is like your place in the world, a gift from the Lord which I hold in trust for you, and which you must guard for your children.”

Though I was seven at the time, he had never talked to me with such seriousness before, and I adopted such gravity as a childish face can manage, and swore that he would have cause to be proud of me. I managed not to cry as well, although I remember the effort most strongly. That was strange; I had seen little of him or of my mother in my life, and yet I thought of his imminent departure with great despondency. Three days later, both he and I left our house, never to return as its owners. Perhaps those guardian angels we are told watch over us knew this, and played melancholy music and saddened my listening soul.

For the next eight years, there was little for my father to do. The great cause was lost, and he was in any case too poor to participate. Such was his distress that he was forced to leave the country and seek his living fighting as a soldier, as did so many other Royalist gentlemen. He went first to the Netherlands, then served Venice, fighting on Crete against the Turks in the long, miserable siege of Candia. But when he came back to England in 1657 he immediately became a central member of that group of patriots, later known as the Sealed Knot, which worked incessantly to bring Charles back from exile. He endangered his life, but did so joyfully. They might take his life, he said, but even his worst enemy would acknowledge him to be an upright, honest man.

Alas, my good father was wrong, for he was later accused of the most base treachery, which malevolent lie he never shook off. He never knew who accused him, or even what the charges were, so could not defend himself and refute the allegations. Eventually he left England once more, forced out of his own country by the malicious hiss of the gossip mongers, and died of grief before his name was cleared. I once saw a horse on my estate, a handsome, grand beast, driven to distraction by the incessant viciousness of flies which buzzed all around it. It ran to escape its tormentors, not knowing where they were; when it flicked its tail to drive one off, ten more came to replace it. It ran across an open meadow, fell and broke its leg, and I watched the saddened stablehand dispatch it for its own good. So are the great and noble destroyed by the petty and mean.

I was just eighteen when my father died in his lonely exile and it marked me for life. The day I received the letter that told me he had been buried in a pauper’s grave, I broke down in sorrow before a violent anger gripped my soul. A pauper’s grave! Dear Heaven, even now the very words make a coldness seep through my body. That this courageous soldier, this best of Englishmen, should end in such a way, shunned by his friends, abandoned by a family which would not even pay for his funeral, treated with contempt by those for whom he had sacrificed everything, was more than I could bear. I did what I could eventually—I never found where he had been buried, and could do nothing for his body, but I built him the finest memorial in the whole county in my church, and I take everyone who comes to see it and meditate on his fate.

It cost me a considerable fortune, but I do not begrudge one penny of the expense.

While I knew my family had been greatly reduced, I was not yet aware of how much we had suffered, for I understood that, on my twenty-first birthday, I would obtain full title to the estates which had been supposedly protected from the government by an assortment of legal devices. I knew of course that these lands would come burdened with so much debt that it would take me years to reestablish myself as a person of moment in the county, but this was a task I relished. I was even prepared to endure several years at the bar, if necessary, to accumulate those riches which lawyers find so easy to come by. At least my father’s name would be perpetuated. The ending of a man’s life is but death, and that comes to us all in the fullness of time, and we know we have the blessing that our name and honor continue. But the demise of an estate is true extinction, for a family without land is nothing.

Youth is simple, and assumes that all will be well; part of the estate of manhood consists in learning that God’s Providence is not so easily understood. The consequences of my father’s fall did not appear to me until I left the seclusion of a home where, although I was not happy, I was at least protected from the buffeting of the outside world. Then I was sent to Trinity College, Oxford, for, although my father had been a man of Cambridge, my uncle (who had charge of me when I left Sir William’s house) decided I would not be welcome there. The decision spared me no grief, as I was as rejected and despised for my parentage in the one university as I would have been in the other. I had no friends as none could resist cruelty, and I could not tolerate insult. Nor was I able to mix with my own, for although enrolled as a gentleman-commoner, my sniveling, mean uncle allowed me scarce enough money to live as a servitor. Moreover, he allowed me no freedom; alone of my rank, my small money was given over entire to my tutor and I had to beg even for that; I was subjected to the discipline of a commoner and could not leave town without permission; I was even forced to attend lessons, although gentlemen are exempt from instruction.

I believe that many men see my manner now and consider me a rustic, yet I am far from such; those years taught me to hide my desires and my hatreds. I learned swiftly that I would have to endure several years of humiliation and solitude, and that there was little 1 could do to alter that. It is not my way to rage uselessly against a situation I cannot change. But I noted those who were heartless, and promised myself that, in due course, they would regret their coarseness. Many of them have done so.

I do not even know that I greatly missed the temptations of society, in any case. My attentions have always been focused on my own people, and my childhood prepared me little for more promiscuous intercourse. Such reputation as I had was of a surly, ill-tempered fellow, and the more this grew, the more I was left in a solitude which was broken only by my forays among the townsfolk. I became an adept at disguise, leaving my gown behind me and walking the streets like a citizen with such confidence that I was never once challenged by the proctors for improper dress.

But even these excursions were limited, for once I shrugged off my gown, I also shrugged off my credit and had to pay ready money for my pleasures. Fortunately, the urge for diversion came on me only infrequently. For the most part, I engaged my mind with my studies and consoled myself by conducting such investigations as I could into greater matters. I was gravely disappointed in my expectation that I would soon learn enough to proceed with the getting of money, however, for in all the time I was at the university 1 learned nothing of the law whatsoever, and was somewhat derided by my fellows for having any such expectation. Jurisprudence there was aplenty; I was swamped in canon law and the principles of Aquinas and Aristotle; 1 came to have a nodding acquaintance with the Justinianic code, and acquired something of the art of disputation. But 1 looked in vain for instruction on how to launch a suit in Chancery, to contest a will or query the provisions of an executor.

And while my legal education proceeded, I also decided that I would take the more direct revenge that my father had not been able to exact, for not only did his soul demand it, I considered it by far the quickest way of solving my family’s material problems—once persuaded of the innocence of the father, I was certain His Majesty would recompense the son. Initially, I thought the task would be easy—before he fled, my father’s judgment was that Cromwell’s Secretary of State, John Thurloe, had seeded the calumnies against him to spread dissent in the royalist ranks, and I never doubted that he was correct. It had all the hallmarks of that dark and sinister man, who ever preferred a knife in the back to an upright, honorable combat. But I was too young to do much and, besides, I assumed that sooner or later Thurloe would be tried, and the truth known. Again, youth is naïve, and faith is blind.

For Thurloe was not brought to trial, did not have to flee the country, had not one penny of his ill-gotten gains taken from him. The comparison between the fruits of treachery and the reward for loyalty was stark indeed. On the day near the end of 1662 that I heard it confirmed there would be no trial, I realized that any revenge would have to come from my own hands. Cromwell’s evil genius might escape the law, I thought, but he would not escape justice. I would show all the world that some people, in this debased and corrupted country, still knew the meaning of honor. With the purity of youth it is possible to think in such noble and simple terms. It is a clarity that experience strips from us, and we are all poorer for the loss.

3

From that day I date the beginnings of the campaign that totally occupied me for the next nine months and which ended in the most complete vindication. I had virtually no assistance; instead I criss-crossed the country, seeking out the evidence I required until I finally understood what had happened and was in a position to act. I was abused and humiliated by those who did not believe me, or else had good reason to deflect me from my task. And yet I continued, buoyed by my duty and by the love of the best father a man could ever have. I witnessed the depths of turpitude in those who seek power and understood that, once the principle of birth is undermined, the disinterest that alone can assure good government is fatally compromised. If anyone can achieve power, then all will try, and government becomes a mere battle in which principle is sacrificed for interest. The lowest will impose themselves, for the best will shun the gutter. All I managed was to achieve a small victory in a war which was already lost.

Such thoughts were far beyond me in those days, as I walked the streets, sat in lesson and prayer, and lay awake at night in bed, listening to the snoring and snuffling of the other three students who shared the same room with my tutor. One resolution alone stayed in my mind; that I would, in due course, take John Thurloe by the scruff of the neck and slit his throat. But I felt strongly that more than mere vengeance was needed; perhaps those lessons in the law had seeped into me, or perhaps I had imbibed my father’s high sense of principle without realizing it. What would he have done? What would he have wanted? This was my ever-present concern. To strike without proof would be false revenge, for I was sure he would not have wanted his only son to be hanged like a common criminal, bringing further stain onto the family. Thurloe was too powerful still for a direct assault. I would need to circle round him, like a huntsman stalking a wily deer, before I could inflict the fatal, final blow.

To set my thoughts in order, I regularly talked over my problems with Thomas Ken. He was one of my few friends—perhaps even my only friend—at the time, and I trusted him absolutely. He could be tedious company, but each of us needed the other and supplied a lack. We knew one another through a family connection, before he was sent to Winchester and thence to New College for a career in the church. His father had been a lawyer consulted on many occasions by my own father when he set himself to oppose those rapacious interlopers who had swept down from London to drain the fens before the war. My father wished both to protect his own interests and also the rights of those families who had grazed the land since time immemorial. But it was hard work, for the bloodsucking thieves who wished to steal other men’s land acted under the umbrella of the law. My father knew that the only thing that can oppose a lawyer was another lawyer and so this Henry Ken advised him on many occasions, always honestly and effectively. The diligence of one, and the skill of the other, combined with the unstinting resistance of the farmers and graziers whose livelihoods were threatened, meant that progress in the draining was slow, the expenses bigger, and the profits much smaller than expected.

And so Thomas and I had a natural amity, for it is known that the loyalty and gratitude of Lincolnshire men, once forged, can never be broken. It must be said, however, that we made an odd pair. He was of a severe and clerical disposition, rarely drinking, always praying and constantly looking out for souls to save. He made a religion of forgiveness and, though now a firm Anglican who maintains he was ever so, I know that in those days he inclined to dissent. Naturally, that made him suspect then, where hatred was mistaken for fortitude, and smallness of mind was a sign of loyalty. I confess with some shame now that I took great delight in causing him to become discountenanced, since the more he prayed, the more I laughed, and the more he studied, the more bottles I opened to make him blush. In truth, Thomas would have loved to wine and wench, just as I had to struggle hard to keep out feelings of pious dread which, in the dead of night, would creep upon me. And occasionally, in a sudden burst of anger, or a flash of cruelty in his words, the careful observer could see that his kindness and gentle nature were not natural gifts from God, but were wrenched in a hard-fought battle with a darkness deep in his soul. As I say, it was Grove’s misfortune to torment him so much that, one night, the battle was temporarily lost.

For all that, I always found Thomas patient and understanding, and we were useful to one another in the way that people of opposite character can sometimes be. I would give advice about his theological ditherings—soundly, I may say, as he is now a bishop. And he would listen with enormous patience when I would describe, for the fiftieth time, how I would take John Thurloe and slit his throat.

I could hear him let out his breath as he prepared to argue with me again. “I must remind you that forgiveness is one of the gifts of God, and that charity is strength, not weakness,” he said.

“Piffle,” I said. “I do not intend to forgive anybody, nor do I feel in the slightest bit charitable. The only reason he is still alive is because I do not have the proof I need to avoid a charge of murder.” Then I went on to tell him the entire story again.

“The trouble is,” I concluded, “I don’t know what to do. What do you think?”

“You want my considered opinion?”

“Of course.”

“Accept the will of God, get on with your studies and become a lawyer.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant, how do I find this proof? If you are a friend, please put aside your nit-picking theology for a while and help.”

“I know what you meant. You want me to give you bad advice, that can only imperil your soul.”

“Exactly. That’s just what I want.”

Thomas sighed. “And supposing you find your evidence? What then? Will you go ahead and commit murder?”

“That depends on the evidence. But, ideally, yes. I will kill Thurloe, as he killed my father.”

“No one killed your father.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You maintain that your father was betrayed and falsely disgraced. Justice was not done. Would it not be better to right that wrong by making sure it was, this time?”

“You know as well as I do how much it costs to prosecute someone. How am I meant to pay for it?”

“I merely mention it as a possibility. Will you give me your word that, if it is possible, then you will do it rather than taking matters into your own hands?”

“If it is possible, which I doubt, then I will.”

“Good,” he said with relief. “In that case we can begin to plan your campaign. Unless, of course, you have one already. Tell me, Jack, I have never asked, since your countenance always discourages such questions. But in what was your father’s treachery supposed to consist?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds foolish, but I have never been able to discover. My guardian, Sir William Compton, has not spoken to me since; my uncle refuses even to mention my father’s name; my mother shakes her head in sorrow and will not answer even the most direct questions.”

Thomas’s eyes narrowed at my blunt statement. “You have your criminal, but do not yet know with any precision what the crime was? That is an unusual position for a man of law to find himself in, is it not?”

“Perhaps. But these are unusual times. I assume my father was innocent. Do you deny that I must do so? And that, in religion as in law, I have no choice in this matter? Quite apart from the fact that I know my father was quite incapable of acting in so base a fashion.”

“I grant it is a necessary starting point.”

“And you grant also that John Thurloe, as Secretary of State, was responsible for all that pertained to the destruction of anyone who challenged Cromwell’s position?”

“Yes.”

“Then Thurloe must be guilty,” I concluded simply.

“So why do you need proof, if your legal logic is so fine?”

“Because we live in distempered times, when the law has become the cat’s paw of the powerful, who tangle it in rules so that they may escape punishment. That is why. And because my father’s character has been so abused that it is impossible to make people see what is obvious.”

Thomas grunted at this, for he knew nothing of the law and believed it to have something to do with justice. As I had once done myself, until I studied it.

“If I am to triumph at law,” I continued, “I must establish that my father’s character was such that he could not have betrayed anyone. At present he is cast as the betrayer; I must discover who put this story about and for what purpose. Only then will a law court listen.”

“And how do you intend to do this? Who could tell you?”

“Not many people, and most of those will be found at court. Already a problem, as I cannot possibly afford to go there.”

Thomas, dear soul that he was, nodded in sympathy. “It would be a pleasure if you would let me assist you.”

“Don’t be absurd,” I said. “Why, you are even poorer than I am. God knows I’m grateful, but I’m afraid my requirements far exceed your resources.”

He shook his head, and scratched his chin in the way he always did before launching into a confidence.

“My dear friend, please don’t concern yourself. My prospects are good and getting better. The parish of Easton Parva is coming up in the gift of my Lord Maynard in nine months’ time. He has asked the warden and thirteen senior Fellows to recommend a candidate, and the warden has already hinted that he thinks I would be more than suitable, as long as I can make clear my full adherence to doctrine. It will be a struggle, but I will grit my teeth, and then eighty pounds a year will be mine. If, that is, I can fight off Dr. Grove.”

“Who?” I asked in astonishment.

“Dr. Robert Grove. Do you know him?”

“Very well. And I still have some tender spots to prove it. He was the curate at Sir William Compton’s when I was sent to that family. He acted as my tutor for many years. Such as I know, he put there. What has he got to do with this?”

“He is now back in his place as a Fellow of New College, and he wants my living,” Thomas explained, “even though he has no claim to preferment except that he has not received any. Frankly, I am very much better suited. A parish needs a young and sound minister. Grove is an old fool who only gets excited when he thinks about the wrongs done to him in the past.”

I laughed. “I would hate to be between Dr. Grove and something he wants.”

“I have no great objection to him,” Thomas said, as though I needed to be reassured on this point. “I would be happy for him to be pastured out to a comfortable living, if there were two of them. But there is one only, so what can I do? I need that living more than he. Jack, can I tell you a secret?”

“I will not stop you.”

“I wish to marry.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s it, is it? And how much has the lady?”

“Seventy-five a year, and a manor in Derbyshire.”

“Very nice,” I said. “But you need a living to persuade the father. I see the problem.”

“Not only that,” he said in some obvious distress. “I am obviously not allowed to marry as long as 1 am a Fellow of the college, and I cannot cease being a Fellow until I have a living. What is worse,” he concluded ruefully, “I like the girl.”

“How unfortunate. Who is she?”

“The daughter of my aunt’s cousin. A woolen draper in Bromwich. A soundly based man in all respects. And the girl is obedient, meek, hard-working and plump.”

“Everything a wife should be. With her teeth as well, I hope.”

“Most of them, yes. Nor has she had smallpox. We would do well, I feel, and her father has not dissuaded me. But he has made it clear that he would not countenance the alliance if I cannot match her portion. Which means a living and, as I have no other connections, one that comes from New College or through its influence. And Easton Parva is the only one likely to come vacant in the next three years.”

“I see,” I said. “These are serious times. Have you been on campaign?”

“As much as possible. I have talked to all the Fellows, and find myself well received. In fact, many have given me to understand I have their support. I am confident of the outcome. And the fact that the gold men will advance me funds now indicates my confidence is not ill-placed.”

“And the decision is taken when?”

“Next March or April.”

“Then I suggest you start living in the chapel, just in case. Recite the Thirty-Nine Articles in your sleep. Praise the Archbishop of Canterbury and the king every time you take a drink of wine. Let not a breath of dissent escape your lips.”

He sighed. “It will be hard, my friend. I can only do it for the good of the country and the church.”

I applauded his sense of duty. Do not think me selfish, but I was very keen for Thomas to win his place or, at least, to be the favored candidate for as long as possible. If it was noised that he would not get the living, the moneylenders would shut their coffers with a snap, and that would spell disaster for me as well as for him.

“I wish you the very best of good luck, then,” I said. “And I counsel you once more to be cautious. You are prone to saying what you think, and there can be no more dangerous habit in one wanting preferment in the Church.”

Thomas nodded, and reached inside his pocket. “Here, my good friend. Take this.”

It was a purse, containing three pounds. How can I put this? I was overcome, as much with gratitude for his generosity as I was by disappointment over his limited means. Ten times that much would have been a start; thirty times could have been spent with ease. And yet, sweet man that he was, he gave me all he had and risked his own future in the gift. You see how much I owed him? Remember this; it is important. I take my debts as seriously as my injuries.

“I cannot thank you enough. Not only for the money, but because you are the only person who believes in me.”

Thomas courteously shrugged it aside. “I wish I could do more. Let us turn to business now. Who might you approach to tell you about what happened to your father?”

“There is only a handful who might know something. Sir John Russell was one, Edward Villiers another. And there was Lord Mordaunt, who did so well from helping the king back onto his throne that he gained a barony and a lucrative sinecure at Windsor as part of his reward. Then, of course, there is whatever I might one day persuade Sir William Compton to tell me.”

“Windsor is not far from here,” Thomas pointed out. “Scarcely a day’s journey, and only a couple if you walk. If Lord Mordaunt is to be found there, then it would be the most economical place to start.”

“What if he will not see me?”

“You can only ask. I recommend that you do not write in advance. It is discourteous, but avoids the possibility that he might be forewarned of your arrival. Go and see him. Then we can decide what to do next.”

We. As I say, underneath that clerical exterior, there was a man yearning for the sort of excitement that a little bit of bread and wine could never provide.

4

Well and good; but before I went, I made the acquaintanceship of the Blundys, mother and daughter, who play such a large role in Cola’s story. In doing so, I set in train events which gained me the most terrible enemy, whom it demanded all my ingenuity and strength to defeat.

I do not know who will read this scribbling of mine; possibly no one except Lower, but I realize that in these pages I will be recording some acts in which I can take little pride. Some I feel no need to apologize for; some cannot be rectified now; some can at least be explained. My dealings with Sarah Blundy were due to my innocence and youthful, trusting nature—by no other means could she have entrapped me, and come close to destroying me entirely. For this I must blame my early upbringing. Before the age of six I was raised for a while by a great-aunt on my mother’s side; a pleasant lady, but very much the country woman, forever brewing and planting and serving physick to the entire area. She had a marvelous book, vellum-bound and gray with ages of fingering, handed down from her own grandmother, of herbal receipts which she would make herself and dispense to all and sundry, highborn or low. She was a powerful believer in magic, and despised those modern preachers (such she called them, for she was born when the great Elizabeth was still thought beautiful) who scorned what she believed to be self-evident. Crumpled bits of paper, and cloud reading and divination by key and Bible were part of my upbringing.

Despite the prelates, I must say I have yet to find any man who really disbelieves in spirits, or doubts that they have the most profound influence on our lives. Any man who has lain awake at night has heard the ghosts of the air as they pass by, all men have been tempted by evil, and many have been saved by good inhabitants of that ethereal space which surrounds this world and joins us to Heaven. Even by their own standards, the sour-faced prelates are wrong, for they hold fast to Scripture, and that states clearly that such creatures exist. Does not St. Paul talk of a voluntary worshipping of angels? (Colossians 2:18.) What do they think Christ drove into the Gadarene swine?

Naturally, it is hard to tell angels from evil spirits, for the latter are adept at disguise, and often beguile men (and more frequently women) into believing they are other than they truly are. The greatest caution is required when making contact with such beings, for we put ourselves in their hands, by creating a debt of obligation to them, and just as a lord or master remembers his debts, so do these creatures, good or evil. By going to old Blundy I took risks that, in the maturity of age’s wisdom, I would now shun. Then I was too carefree and too impatient to be cautious.

Old Blundy was a washerwoman, and by reputation a cunning woman, some said even a witch. This I doubt; I smelled no whiff of sulphur in her presence. I had once encountered what was supposed to be a real witch, who was burned nearby in 1654, and a smelly old hag she was. I now believe this poor woman was probably innocent of the charges which brought her to the stake; the devil is too cunning to make his servants so easily identifiable. He makes them young, and beautiful and alluring, so gracious they might never be detected by the eye of man. Like Sarah Blundy, in fact.

Nonetheless, the mother was a strange old crone, Cola’s description of her is wildly off the mark. Of course, she was not at her best when he encountered her, but I never saw any sign of that sympathetic understanding of which he speaks, nor of gentleness and kindness. And constantly asking questions. It was simple enough what I wanted, I told her eventually. Who betrayed my father? Could she help or not?

It all depended, she said. Did I have suspicions? It made a difference to what she did. And to what she would not do.

I asked her to explain. She said that really difficult problems involved conjuring up particularly powerful spirits; it could be done, but it was dangerous. Although I said I would take the risk, she said she did not mean spiritual dangers; she was afraid of being arrested and charged with necromancy. After all, she did not know who I was. How did she know whether I was sent by a magistrate to trap her?

I protested my innocence, but she would not be moved, and repeated instead her question. Did I or did I not know the identity of my target? Even vaguely? I said I did not.

“In that case we cannot roll names in water. We will have to gaze instead.”

“A crystal ball?” I sneered, for I had heard of such baubles, and was on my guard to avoid being duped.

“No,” she replied seriously. “That is just nonsense used by charlatans. There is no virtue in balls of glass. A bowl of water will suffice just as well. Do you want to go ahead?”

I nodded tersely. She shuffled off to get a saucer of water from the well outside, and I put my money on the table, feeling the skin of my palms beginning to prick with sweat.

She did not bother with any of the mummery that some practitioners adopt—no darkened rooms, no incantations or burning herbs. Just put the bowl on the table, asked me to sit in front of it, and close my eyes. I heard her pour the water in, and heard her pray to Peter and Paul—papist words which sounded strange from her lips.

“Now, young man,” she hissed in my ear when she had finished, “open your eyes and gaze at the truth. Be forthright and be fearless, as the chance may not come again. Look into the bowl and see.”

Sweating profusely, I slowly opened my eyes and bent forward, staring intently at the still and placid water on the tabletop. It shimmered slightly, as though some movement had disturbed it, but there was none; then I saw it grow darker and change in its texture, rather as though it was a curtain or hanging of cloth. And I began to see something emerging from behind this cloth. It was a young man with fair hair, whom I had never seen before in my life though he seemed familiar somehow. He was there only for an instant, and then passed from view. But it was enough; his features were embedded in my mind forever.

Then the curtain shimmered again and another figure came into view. An old man, this time, gray with age and worry, bent over from the years and so sad it made your heart break to see it. I couldn’t see the face clearly; there was a hand over it, almost as though the apparition was rubbing its face in utter despair. I held my breath, desperate to see more. And bit by bit I did; the hand slowly came away, and I saw that the despairing old man was my father.

I cried out in anguish at the sight, then swept the bowl from the table in rage, making it spin across the room and shatter against the damp wall. Then I jumped up, spat an insult at the old woman and ran out of that disgusting hovel as fast as I could go.

It took another three days, and the careful ministrations of Thomas and the bottle, before I was myself again.

I hope I will not be considered credulous if I say that this strange encounter was the last time I saw my father; I am convinced that his soul was there, and that the disturbance I caused played a great part in the events that came after. I do not remember him well; after the age of about six I met him only a few times as the war meant I was sent first to live with the great-aunt I have mentioned, then to the household of Sir William Compton in Warwickshire, where I spent those years under the tutelage of Dr. Grove.

My father tried to come and assure himself of my progress, although his duties ensured that this was rare. On one occasion only did I spend more than a day in his company, and that was shortly before he was forced into his second and last exile. He was everything a child could hope for in a father; stern, disciplined and wholly conscious of the obligations which exist between a man and his heir. He taught me little directly; but I knew that if I could be half the subject he was, then the king (should he ever return) would count me as one of his best and most faithful servants.

He was not one of these effeminate apologies for gentry whom we see strutting and mincing their way through the court these days. He eschewed fine clothes (although he was fine looking when he chose) and was disdainful of books. Nor was he a great conversationalist, idling away his hours in talk when practical things were to be done. A soldier, in short, and no man was ever grander in leading a charge. He was lost in the welter of backstabbing and conspiracy that the courtier must master; too honest to dissimulate, too frank ever to win favor. It marked him out, and if it was a fatal flaw, I cannot consider he was diminished by it. His fidelity to his wife was as pure as a poet could imagine, and his courage a byword in the army. He was at his happiest at Harland House, our main seat in Lincolnshire, and when he left it he was as grieved as if his wife had died. And rightly so, for the land at Harland Wyte had been in our family for generations; it was our family, you might say, and he knew and loved every square inch of it.

The sight of his soul in such distress rekindled my enthusiasm for my task, as it was clear it was tormented by the injustice he still suffered. So, when I had sufficiently recovered my strength, I concocted a story about the illness of an aunt from whom I had expectations to gain my tutor’s permission to leave town, and set off one bright morning for Windsor. I coached as far as Reading, as the university has no monopoly on the route and prices are affordable, and then walked the remaining fifteen miles. I slept in a field, as it was still just warm enough and I did not wish to spend unnecessarily, but breakfasted in a tavern in the town, so I could brush myself down and wipe my face and present a reasonably proper appearance. I also learned from the keeper that Lord Mordaunt—whom I discovered was bitterly detested in the town for his lack of extravagance—was indeed in residence as warden of the castle, having returned only three days before from Tunbridge Wells.

There was no point in dallying; having come so far, it would have been foolish indeed to hesitate. As Thomas had said, a refusal was the worst I could suffer. So I marched boldly to the castle, then spent the next three hours sitting in an anteroom while my request for an audience was conveyed through an army of lackeys.

I was grateful for my breakfast, as it was well past dinnertime before I received any response. In the interval I marched up and down, awaiting the condescension of the mighty, vowing that I would never behave in such a way to those seeking my patronage when my fortune turned. A promise, I must say, I broke the moment I had the opportunity to do so, as by then I understood the purpose of all this attending—it establishes the proper boundaries, creates a due deference amongst those seeking favors and (most practically) discourages all but the most serious. And eventually my reward came when a servant, more cordial now than before, opened the door with ceremony, bowed and said that Lord Mordaunt would grant me an interview. If I would come this way…

I had hoped that simple curiosity, at least, would prompt just such a response and was glad that my guess had proven correct. It was not often, I imagine, that anyone had the presumption to present himself on the noble gentleman’s doorstep in such a fashion.

I knew little of the man whom I had traveled to see, except that all expected him to become a figure of great consequence in the government, a Secretary of State at the very least, and soon to improve his barony to a full earldom because of his favor with Lord Clarendon, the Lord Chancellor and the most powerful man in the land. He was a brave plotter on the king’s behalf, a man of great fortune from one of the highest families in the land, with a notably virtuous wife and the sort of good looks that makes any man a place. His devotion to the king’s service was all the more remarkable since his family had kept out of the struggle as much as possible, and were masters at not committing themselves and emerging with their fortunes intact. Mordaunt himself was said to be cautious in advice, but bold when needful, and disinclined to faction and petty squabbling. This was the surface appearance of the man, at least. His only weakness was impatience and an abrupt way of dealing with those he considered incompetent—but that was a great flaw, for there were many such at court, and even more who wished ill on any friend of Clarendon.

I approached through a series of rooms until eventually I was led into his presence—a grand and, in my mind, unnecessarily pompous proceeding. At least the final room was small and commodious enough, a bureau stacked with piles of paper and shelves of books. I made my bow and waited for him to address me first.

“I gather you are the son of Sir James Prestcott, is that correct?”

I nodded. Lord Mordaunt was a man of medium height, with a well-formed face spoiled only by a nose disproportionately small. His figure was fine, especially in the legs, his movements gracious and, however grand the ceremony of introduction, he cast that aside the moment that the interview began, and engaged in the most amiable conversation which gave the lie to rumors of his pride and haughtiness. I came away admiring the man for his sagacity; he seemed a worthy comrade in arms for my father, and I believed that each had been equally honored by the trust and love of the other. The contrast with a man like Thurloe could not be greater, I thought—the one tall, fair and open, like a Roman of old in bearing and manner, the other certainly wizened and twisted, operating in the dark, never doing anything in the open, always using the instruments of deceit.

“An unusual approach, verging on the discourteous,” he commented severely. “I imagine you must have a good reason.”

“The very best, my lord,” I said. “I greatly regret troubling you, but I have no one else to turn to. You alone can help me, if you will. I can offer nothing in return, but my needs are small. I want a little of your time; that is all.”

“You cannot be so foolish as to expect preferment. I could not help you in that regard.”

“I came to talk to people who knew my father. To clear his honor of stain.”

He considered this remark fully, digesting all the implications it contained, before he replied, gently but cautiously. “That is commendable in a son, and understandable in a child whose fortune depends on it. But I think you will have an uphill struggle.”

In the past, my tendency when faced with such remarks was to erupt into a burning rage, during which I would voice all manner of angry ripostes; as a youth I returned home with many a black eye and bloody nose. But I knew such behavior would not help here—I wanted help, and that could only be obtained through politeness and deference. So I choked back my anger, and maintained a serene countenance.

“It is a struggle I must undertake. I believe my father was innocent of all wrong, but I do not even know what he was accused of doing. It is my right to know, and my duty to repudiate the accusations.”

“Your family, surely…”

“They know little, and tell less. Forgive me for interrupting, sir. But I need to know at first hand what transpired. As you were one of the key figures in His Majesty’s great trust, and are reputed for your fairness, I thought to approach you first of all.”

A little delicate flattery often oils the wheels of converse, I find; even when it is recognized for what it is, such comments show a recognition of indebtedness. The only requirement is that the compliments be not too coarse, and do not jar on the ear too loudly.

“Do you think my father was guilty?”

Mordaunt considered the question, still with a faint air of surprise on his face that the discussion was taking place at all. He made me wait a long time so that the kindness he did me was fully appreciated before he sat down, then indicated he would permit me to sit also.

“Do I think your father was guilty?’’ he repeated thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I do, young man. I tried hard to believe in his innocence. Such belief was earned by a brave comrade, even though we rarely saw eye to eye. You see, I never had any direct indication myself that he was a traitor. Do you understand how we operated then? Did he tell you?”

I told him that I was working more or less in the dark; I had rarely encountered my father once I had come to an age at which such matters were understandable to me, and then he had been as discreet with his family as, I am convinced, he had been with everyone else. There was always the possibility that the soldiers would come for us, and he wanted us to know as little as possible for our sake and his own.

Mordaunt nodded, and thought awhile. “You must understand,” he said quietly, “that I—very reluctantly—concluded that your father was indeed a traitor.” I moved to protest here, but he held up his hand to quieten me. “Please. Hear me out. That does not mean that I would not be happy to be proven wrong. He always struck me as a good man, and it shocked me to think that was a sham. It is said that the face mirrors a man’s soul, and that we can read there whatever is written on his heart. Not with him. With your father, I read wrongly. So if you can prove this was not the case, then I will be in your debt.”

I thanked him for his openness—the first time, indeed, I had come across such an even devotion to justice. I thought to myself that if I could persuade this man, then I would have a case; he would not judge unfairly.

“Now,” he went on. “How exactly do you plan to proceed?”

I do not remember exactly what I said, but I fear that it was of a touching naïveté. Something about finding the true traitor and forcing him to confess. I added that I was already certain John Thurloe was the man behind it all, and that I intended to kill him when I had the evidence. However I phrased it, my remarks brought a small sigh from Mordaunt.

“And how do you intend to avoid hanging yourself?”

“I suppose I must discredit the evidence against my father.”

“Which evidence are you talking about?”

I bowed my head as the depths of my ignorance forced my confession. “I do not know.”

Lord Mordaunt looked at me carefully awhile, although whether it was with pity or contempt I could not make out. “Perhaps,” he said after a while, “it might help you if I told you something of those days, and what I know of the events. I do not speak because I believe you are correct, but you do have a right to know what was said.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said simply, and my gratitude to him then was whole and unfeigned.

“You are too young to remember much, and were certainly too young to understand,” he began, “but until the very last moment His Majesty’s cause in this country seemed doomed to extinction. A few people continued to fight against Cromwell’s tyranny, but only because they thought it right to do so, not because there was any anticipation of success. The number of people sick of despotism increased year by year, but they were too cowed to act without a lead. The task of giving that lead was taken on by a handful of loyal subjects, of whom one was your father. They were given the name of the Sealed Knot, because they bound each to the other so tightly through their love of each other and their king.

“They accomplished nothing, except to keep hope alive in men’s hearts. Certainly they were active; scarcely a month went by without some scheme or another—a rising here, an assassination there. If these had come to fruition, Cromwell would have been dead a dozen times long before he died in his bed. But nothing of substance took place, and Cromwell’s army was always there, a vast block against anyone who wanted change. Unless that army could be defeated, the road to the Restoration would be forever closed, and you do not defeat the most effective army in the world with hope and pinpricks.”

I suppose I must have frowned at his criticism of these heroic, lonely men and their struggle, and he noticed it and smiled regretfully. “I do not disparage,” he said softly, “I state the truth. If you are serious you need all the information, good and bad.”

“I apologize. You are right, of course.”

“The Sealed Knot had no money, because the king had no money. Gold can buy loyalty, but loyalty, on its own, cannot buy weapons. The French and the Spanish kept His Majesty on a shoestring, allowing him enough to live in his exile, but not giving enough to do anything. But we were ever hopeful, and I was entrusted with the task of organizing the king’s men in England so they might act should our circumstances change. I should have been unknown to Thur-loe’s office, as I’d been too young to fight in the war and passed those years in Savoy for my education instead. Nonetheless, who I was became known very swiftly—I was betrayed, and could only have been betrayed by a member of the Knot, who knew what I was doing. Thurloe’s men swept me up, along with many of my associates, at the very moment when they knew we had incriminating documents on us.”

“Excuse me,” I said, foolishly risking a second interruption, even though I could see the first had displeased him. “But when was this?”

“In 1658,” he said. “I will not bother you with the details, but my friends, and chiefly my beloved wife, beggared themselves in bribes and so confused the panel of judges who examined me that I was released, and escaped before they realized the size of their error. No such good fortune was with the others. They were tortured and hanged. More importantly, it meant all my efforts in the king’s cause were in vain—the new organization I had labored to construct was destroyed before it even began its work.”

He paused, and courteously requested a servant to bring me some cakes and wine, then asked me whether I had heard this story before. I had not, and told him so. I felt like telling him also that I found it thrilling to hear such details of danger and bravado, and that I wished I had been older, that I could have met the dangers with him. I am glad I did not; he would have found the remarks childish, as indeed they were. Instead I concentrated on the gravity of the events he was describing, and asked a few questions about his suspicions.

“I had none. I thought merely I was cursed with the greatest ill fortune. It never occurred to me then that my peril might have been deliberately caused. In any case my meditations on the matter were swept away a few months later, when we heard the glorious news that Cromwell was dead. You remember that, I’m sure?”

I smiled. “Oh, indeed. Who could not? I think it was the happiest day of my life, and I was full of hope for the country.”

Mordaunt nodded. “As were we all. It was a gift from God, and we felt at last that Providence was with us. Our spirits rose immediately, and all energies were rekindled, even though his son Richard was declared Protector in Cromwell’s stead. And from that hope a new plan emerged, without it even being commanded, a way at least to rattle the regime. There was to be a rising in several parts of the country at once, by forces too big to be ignored. The Commonwealth army would have to split to deal with them and that, it was hoped, would open the way for a swift landing in Kent by the king’s forces and a rapid march on London.

“Would it have succeeded? Possibly not, but I do know that every man involved did the best he could. Arms that had been stockpiled for years against such a day were brought out of hiding; men of all sorts declared in secret their readiness to march. Great and small mortgaged their land and melted their plate to provide us with money. The sense of excitement and anticipation was so great even the most dubious were swept up in the enthusiasm and thought that, at last, the hour of deliverance had come.

“And again, we were betrayed. Suddenly, everywhere that men were to rise, troops appeared. They knew as if by magic where arms were stored, and where money was hidden. They knew who had been appointed officers, and who had the plans and lists of the forces. The entire venture, which had taken the better part of a year to bring to fruition, was dashed to the ground and trampled on in less than a week. Only one part of the country reacted swiftly enough; Sir George Booth in Cheshire brought out his troops and did his duty. But he was all alone, and had to face the onslaught of the entire army, led by a general second only to Cromwell himself. It was a massacre; as complete in its destruction as its ruth-lessness.”

There was a silence in the room as he finished speaking, and I sat there transfixed by his tale. Truly, I had not imagined anything so shocking. The failure of Sir George’s rising I knew about, of course, but I never dreamed that his collapse had been caused by treachery. Nor did I suspect this was the crime of which my father was accused. Had he been responsible, then I would have hanged him myself. But I had not yet heard anything to suggest that he was guilty.

“We did not rush to accuse anyone,” Mordaunt continued when I put this to him. “And your father led the campaign to uncover the man responsible. His indignation and outrage were terrifying to behold. And yet it appeared this was duplicity; eventually we received documents from within the government which indicated without a shadow of doubt that the traitor was your father. When he was confronted with the evidence in early 1660, he fled abroad.”

“The matter was never resolved, then?” I said. “He did not have the chance of rebutting the charges properly.”

“He would have had every chance, had he stayed in England,” Mordaunt replied, frowning at the hint of skepticism in my voice. “But the documents, I think, were unanswerable. There was letter after letter in a cipher only he used; notes of meetings with high officials in the government in which conversations were recorded, and containing information he alone could have possessed. Notes of payment…”

“No!” I all but shouted. “That I will not believe. You tell me, you dare to say, that my father sold his friends for money?”

“I tell you what is there, plain to see,” Mordaunt said severely, and I knew that I had overstepped the bounds of propriety. His favor now hung on the thinnest of threads, and I made haste to apologize for my incivility.

“But the main accusation against him came from the government? You believed that?”

“Government papers, but not from the government. John Thurloe was not the only person to have spies.”

“It never occurred to you the papers might have come to you deliberately? To point the finger of accusation at the wrong person and sow dissent?”

“Of course it did,” he said tartly, and I could see that I was beginning to weary him. “We were extremely cautious. And if you do not believe me, you should also go and see other associates of his, and they will tell you honestly what they know as well.”

“I will do so. Where would I find these people?”

Lord Mordaunt looked at me disapprovingly. “You do need help. London, boy. Or rather, considering the time of year, Tunbridge Wells. Where they are jockeying for position like everyone else.”

“And can I come and see you again?”

“No. What is more, I do not want it known that you have been here. I suggest that you conduct yourself with discretion and be careful with whom you talk; this is still a delicate matter, which men remember with bitterness. I do not wish it known that I have helped you in picking at old wounds best forgotten. It is only because of my memory of what I thought your father was, that I have even talked to you today. And I want something in return.”

“Anything in my power.”

“I believe your father was guilty of a monstrous crime. If you find any evidence suggesting I am wrong, you will tell me of it instantly, and I will do everything in my power to help.”

I nodded.

“And if you agree that my conclusions were correct, you will tell me of that as well. Then I can rest peacefully. I am haunted by the possibility that a good man may have been unjustly accused. If you can be persuaded of his guilt, then I will accept it. If not…”

“What?”

“Then a good man has suffered, and a guilty one has gone free. That is an evil, which must be corrected.”

5

The journey to Tunbridge wells took me four days as I skirted round London rather than go through it, and I did not begrudge a moment of the time even though I was keen to make swift progress. The nights were still warm, and the solitude filled my heart with a tranquillity that I had scarcely known before. I thought a great deal of what Mor-daunt had said, and realized that I had made progress—I knew what my father was accused of doing, and I knew how the accusations were put abroad. Forged papers, coming from within Thurloe’s office; finding them would now be part of my quest. More than this, however, I knew that a traitor, well-placed and well-informed, had indeed existed; if it was not my father, the number of people it might be was small—only a handful of trusted men could have betrayed the rising of 1659 so very comprehensively. I had seen his face in old Blundy’s saucer of water; now I had to discover his name. I knew how it was done and why; with good fortune I would also discover who.

I could have fallen into company, as many people were on the move, but I shunned all attempts to draw me into companionship, sleeping alone in woods at night wrapped in my blanket and buying such food as I wanted in the villages and small towns I passed through. That solitary mood passed only when I came to the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells itself, and noted the bustle of coaches and carriages, the neverending trails of wagons taking produce in to keep the courtiers supplied with their needs, the growing numbers of itinerant peddlers, musicians and servants, heading there in the hope of squeezing some money for themselves by selling their wares. In the last two days I did have a companion despite myself, as a young whore called Kitty attached herself to me, offering her services in exchange for protection. She was coming from London and had been attacked the day before, and did not want the experience repeated. She had been lucky that first time, as no visible damage was done beyond some bruises, but she was frightened. Had she lost her tooth, or broken a nose, her earnings would have suffered badly, and she had no other trade to fall back on.

I agreed to protect her because the creature had a strange fascination; for a country boy like myself, such a phantasm of city corruption had never come into view before. She was not what the lurid tales had led me to expect; indeed she was very much more correct than many fine ladies I met in later life and, I suspect, no less virtuous. She was about the same age as me, a soldier’s bastard abandoned by the mother for fear of chastisement. How she’d been brought up I do not know, but she was wiser and more cunning for it. She had no notion of honesty whatsoever, and all her morality lay in her obligations—help her and hers and she would owe. Hurt, and she would hurt back. That was her entire moral universe and what it lacked in Christianity, it more than made up in practicality. It was at least a code she could keep to, simple as it was.

I should say that I did not partake of what she had to offer the night before we arrived in Tunbridge Wells; fear of the clap and a heaviness of mind about what I was to do the next day took away my appetites; but we fed, talked and later fell asleep under the same blanket and, though she made fun of me, I think she was quite happy that it was so. We parted on good terms outside the town, with me hanging back for fear of being seen in her company.

Like my father, I have never been a man for courts or courtly ways; indeed, I have always avoided the taint of corruption that goes along with such association. Although I am no Puritan, there is a level of decency which a gentleman should maintain, and the court in those days had quickly abandoned any pretense at the sturdy values which make any country fit to live in. Tunbridge Wells shocked me beyond measure. I was quite prepared (for rumors were spreading thick and fast by then) to find the ladies of the court unmasked in public and even sporting wigs and perfume and makeup; I was appalled to discover that the Horseguards were wearing them as well.

But such things hardly concerned me; I was not there to cut a dash, to duel, to lacerate with razor-sharp wit or to worm my way into a position. Nor did I have the resources to do so. To gain a post worth £50 a year, a friend of mine had to lay out near £750 in bribes, all borrowed at interest, and consequently must defraud the government of more than £200 per year to live decently and pay his debts. I scarcely had enough to buy the post of His Majesty’s ratcatcher, let alone one worthy of my standing in society. And, given the fact that I was my father’s son, all the money in the world would not have won me even that lowly post.

I could not stay in town when I arrived as it was too expensive; the place knew its vogue would not last long and the court would soon turn its fickle attention elsewhere. It was an ugly little settlement with no attractions but the waters, which were a la mode that year. All the fops and fools were there, prattling on about how much better they felt for drinking the foul-tasting muck when all the time they jostled to be close to men of influence. Around them, the tradesmen gathered like flies trying to suck what money they could from their purses. I do not know which side was worse—both made me sick at the stomach. Prices were outrageous but, even so, all the rooms were let easily to courtiers willing to pay handsomely to be near His Majesty; many were even in tents on the common nearby. In my brief time there, I never even came within eyeshot of the king. I was too ashamed of my dress to go to a levee, and too concerned of an insult should my name become known. I had a task to accomplish, and did not want my life cut short by some fop’s sword. If publicly insulted, I would have to call and I was wise enough to know that I would almost certainly lose.

So, avoiding all the fashionable resorts and those who populated them, I confined myself to the lesser taverns on the outskirts of the town, where the footmen and lackeys would come once their duties were done, to gamble and drink and swap tales of the high and mighty. I saw my traveling companion the once, but she was too obliging to acknowledge me publicly, although she did give me an insolent wink as she passed on the arm of a grand gentleman, who was not ashamed to display his lechery in public.

From the servants I learned very quickly that I had wasted my trip as far as talking to my guardian Sir William Compton was concerned, for he was not there. His advancement had been utterly blasted by a dispute with Lord Chancellor Clarendon over hunting rights in Wychwood Forest, which they both claimed, and as long as Clarendon held the strings of government, Compton could whistle for preferment. He knew this well, it seemed, so had decided to save his money and stay on his estate, not even bothering to come to court.

Two others of the magic circle were indeed present, however—but I soon learned that although Edward Villiers and Sir John Russell had been staunch comrades in adversity, the blessings of success had divided them more than Thurloe’s schemes had ever managed. Villiers was in my Lord Clarendon’s party, into which he was drawn by Lord Mordaunt, while Sir John, a member of the Duke of Bedford’s great family, had attached himself to the opposition, whose only unity came from a detestation of Clarendon. Such is power, that good men, loyal, generous and courageous in the field, squabble like infants when they become courtiers.

Nonetheless, I had two people whom I could approach and I felt that the evening passed gathering gossip in the tavern had been well spent. I was tempted to approach Villiers, as he most clearly had the ear of men in power, but after some consideration I decided to start with easier meat and so set off the next morning to pay my respects to Sir John Russell. I wish I had not done so. I would prefer to pass over this incident in silence, as it reflects badly on one born a gentleman, but I am in the mood to tell everything, “warts and all,” as Cromwell said. Sir John refused to talk to me. Would that this were all; but he rebuffed me in a way calculated to humiliate, even though I had never done him or his any wrong. It was some months before I discovered why my name caused him to act in such a way.

What happened was this—I arrived at seven in the morning, and entered the lower part of Russell’s inn, asking the landlord to send his manservant so that I might request an audience. Not correct form, I know, but anyone who has ever waited on a court on the move knows that formality is at a discount. All around me were a few dozen or more people, some waiting on favors, some merely eating before going out to attend the audiences of others. The room was abuzz with lesser courtiers trying to take their first step on the long and slippery ladder to preferment and office. I was such a person myself, in a way, and so like them I sat patiently and waited. In this lonely position—for no one is more lonely than a supplicant in a roomful of supplicants—I sat for half an hour, waiting a response. Then an hour, then another half hour. At past ten, two men came down the stairs and advanced on me. The chatter in the room stopped—everyone assumed that I had successfully negotiated the first stage of my suit and wanted to watch the occasion from a mixture of curiosity and envy.

The room was perfectly quiet, so everyone heard the message delivered—indeed, the servant spoke in a sufficiently loud voice to make sure of this.

“You are Jack Presteott?”

I nodded, and began to rise.

“The son of James Presteott, the murderer and traitor?”

I could feel my stomach contracting as I sat down again, winded by the shock, and knowing that there was more to come and nothing I could do to avoid the blow.

“Sir John Russell presents his compliments and asks me to tell you that the son of a dog is a dog. He has instructed me to ask you respectfully to take your traitorous presence away from this building, and never have the insolence to approach him again. If you do so, he will have you thrashed. Leave this place, or be thrown into the gutter, as your foul father should have been.”

There was total silence. I could feel thirty pairs of eyes boring through me as I gripped my hat and stumbled for the door, aware of nothing at all, just some fleeting impressions.

A sorrowful, almost sympathetic look on the face of the first servant, and the hardness of the other, who rejoiced in humbling me. The look of malicious triumph in some supplicants, the eager interest of others as they thought how they would tell and retell this tale over the next few weeks. And the blood, pounding in my head as the rage and hatred poured into my soul, and feeling as though the force within my skull would split it open. I was sensible of nothing else by the time I reached the door, and do not even recall how I got back to the anonymous misery of my cot above the stables in the tavern.

How long I lay there I am not sure, but it must have been some considerable time—I assume (I was sharing the place with half a dozen others) that there must have been some coming and going, to which I was entirely insensible. All I know is that when I recovered my senses, my beard had grown to a stubble, my limbs were weak and I had to shave before I could show my face to the world once more. The water from the well was freezing cold, but I presented a reasonably civilized appearance when I went down to the inn across the courtyard. I had half forgotten what had transpired, but it came back to me in a flash when I walked through the door. Dead silence, followed by a snicker. I walked up to ask for some beer, and the man beside me turned his back, in the cruel way that comes so naturally to the coarse—although considering the example they had been set by their betters, perhaps it was not so surprising.

It is hard to relive such humiliations, and even now I find my hand shakes as I dip my pen in the ink and write these words down. So many years have passed, with such grace and goodness in them, yet that moment still cuts deep and the anger returns. I have been told that the heart of a gentleman is the more open to such wounds than those of ordinary people because his honor is the greater, and it may be so. I would have continued had it been likely to serve any purpose, but I knew that the incident had ruined my expedition; there was no way now that I could approach Edward Villiers with any hope of a polite reception, and I would not expose myself to another rebuff. There was no alternative but to leave as swiftly as possible, although I was determined that, before I did so, I would gaze on the face of Sir John Russell, to see whether it matched the vision I had seen in Mrs. Blundy’s saucer of water. Mordaunt’s visage had not, of which I was heartily glad, and I already knew that Villiers was also different. I confess I hoped that Sir John, who had already done enough to earn my lifelong enmity, would compound his sin and make my quest more simple.

Alas, it was not to be; I spent many hours lurking outside the inn, and (as quietly as possible, so as not to be recognized) outside the fashionable gatherings, listening with gloom to the sounds of revelry within, getting myself soaked to the skin by the first rains of autumn as I stood, doggedly and patiently. Eventually I was rewarded, after a fashion. I had tipped a stall-keeper to point out Sir John when he emerged, and as I was almost giving up hope, he nudged me in my ribs and hissed in my ear—“ ‘Ere he is, in all his finery.”

I looked, half-expecting to see an almost familiar face coming down the steps. “Where?” I said.

“There. That’s him,” said the trader, pointing out a roly-poly, fat man with a pink face and a straggly, old-fashioned mustache. I watched with the greatest disappointment as this creature (who looked neither deceitful nor familiar) got into a waiting coach. He was not the man that the Blundy woman had shown me.

“Go on then,” said the man, “go and present your letter.”

“My what?” I said, having forgotten entirely that this was my supposed reason for wanting to know who he was. “Oh, that. Later, maybe.”

“Nervous, eh? I know. But let me tell you, young sir, you’ll not get anywhere with this bunch unless you go ahead with your plans.”

I decided to take this unsought, but probably good, advice by packing my bags and leaving the town. It did not contain what I was looking for.

6

It is mid-afternoon and I am told (you note how it is these days—I am told) that we are setting off for my country seat in the morning; I have little time to continue my narrative. I have already had my head shaved for that damn fool wig, the tailor has been to see me, all is busy with activity. So many things there are to prepare and to get ready, and I care nothing for any of them. These tedious little details are hardly germane to my story, but I notice this tendency in me; it comes more frequently now. My dotage, I suppose it is; I find that I can remember what happened all those years ago more easily than I recall what I was doing the day before yesterday.

To return to my story, I arrived back in Oxford with a deep resentment in my heart and an ever greater determination to defeat my hidden enemies. I had been away more than two weeks, and in that time the town had filled with students and was no longer the quiet, rustic place it is much of the year. Fortunately, this also meant that all those whose help I needed were now in residence. One was Thomas, of course, whose logic-chopping skills, honed in the theological and logical arts which he taught with surprising skill to students, were vital—he could whip through a pile and tease out a meaning faster than anyone I knew. The other was an odd little fellow he brought to see me one day. His name was Anthony Wood.

“Here,” Thomas said, presenting Wood to me in his room, “is the answer to all of your problems. Mr. Wood is a great scholar and keen to help you in your search.”

Cola describes him briefly and it is one of the few occasions when I can find only small fault with his penmanship; I have never met a more ridiculous creature than Anthony Wood. He was a deal older than myself, perhaps thirty or thereabouts, and already had the bowed back and sunken cheeks of the bookworm. His clothes were monstrous—so old and patched it was hard to see how out of fashion they were—his stockings were darned, and he had the habit of throwing his head back and whinnying like a horse when he was amused. An unpleasant, grating sound which made all in his company suddenly grave, lest they say something witty and be rewarded with his laughter. This, combined with the general inelegance of his movements—all jerks and twitches, so that he could barely sit still for more than a few seconds—began to irritate me the moment I set eyes on him, and it was hard indeed for me to keep my patience.

But Thomas said he would be useful, so I forbore to make fun of him. Unfortunately, the connection, once begun, proved hard to break. Like all scholars, Wood is poor and constantly in search of patronage—they all seem to think that others should pay for their diversion. He has never had any from me, but has never despaired either. He still comes to pay court, in the hope that a coin might slip from my pocket into his ink-stained hands, and never ceases to remind me of the services he rendered all those years ago. He was here a few days back, in fact, which is why he is so fresh in my memory, but said nothing of consequence. He is writing a book, but what is there in that? He has been writing the same one since ever I knew him, and it seems no nearer its conclusion. And he is one of those wiry little men who never seem to age at all, beyond stooping a little more, and acquiring a few more lines on his face. When he comes into a room, it is as though half my life has not happened, and is only a dream. It is only my own aches that remind me.

“Mr. Wood is a great friend of mine,” Thomas explained when he saw the look of disgust on my face as I regarded the fellow. “We play music together every week. He is a monstrous student of history and over the last few years has accumulated a great deal of information about the wars.”

“Fascinating,” I said dryly. “But I fail to see how he can help.”

Wood now spoke, in that high-pitched, fluting voice of his—such precise, mincing enunciation, as neat as a notebook, and scarcely more interesting.

“I have had the honor of encountering many people,” he said, “distinguished in war and in public affairs. I have a substantial knowledge of this country’s tragic course, which I would be happy to place at your disposal to establish what became of your father.”

I swear, he talked like that all the while, all his sentences as perfectly formed as he was grotesque himself. I was not sure what to make of this offer but Thomas told me I must certainly accept, as Mr. Wood was already known for the niceness of his judgment and the voluminous nature of his knowledge. If I needed to know anything about any event or any personality, then I must certainly ask Wood first of all—it would save me a great deal of time.

“Very well,” I said. “But I wish to make it clear that you will tell no one of my search. There are many people who would be my enemies if they knew what I am doing. I wish to take them by stealth.”

Wood agreed reluctantly, and I told him that I would lay all the facts and information before him in due course, so that he might supplement my findings with information of his own. Then Thomas considerately bundled him out of the room, and I gave my friend a wry and reproachful look.

“Thomas, I know I am in need of all the help I can get…”

“You are wrong, my friend. Mr. Wood’s knowledge may be crucial to you one day. Do not dismiss him because of his appearance. I have also thought of another useful person for you.”

I groaned. “Who might this be, then?”

“Dr. John Wallis.”

“Who?”

“He is the Savilian Professor of Geometry, and was deep in the confidence of the Commonwealth by virtue of his skill with codes. Many a secret letter ot the King’s did he reveal to Thurloe’s office, so they say.”

“Should have been hanged, then…”

“And now he performs the same service for His Majesty’s government, it is rumored. Lord Mordaunt told you the documents incriminating your father used a cipher—if so, then Dr. Wallis might know something of the matter. If you can persuade him to help…”

I nodded. Perhaps for once one of Thomas’s ideas was going to be useful.

Before either Mr. Wood or Dr. Wallis could do much to help me, I had an opportunity to repay some of my debt to Thomas by rescuing him from one of the most absurd pieces of ill-judgment. The circumstances were highly amusing, if a little worrying. Everyone knew that Old Tidmarsh the Quaker held some grotesque conventicle in his little house down by the river. Illegal, of course, and considering the trouble such lunatics had already caused, they should have been crushed mercilessly. But no; every now and then a few were locked up, then they were let out again, free to resume their loathsome ways. In fact, they seemed to take pride in it, and blasphemously likened their own sufferings to those of Our Lord Himself. Some (I heard) even claimed to be the Lord in their arrogance, and ran around, shaking their heads and pretending to cure people. The world was full of such madmen in those days. Imprisonment is not the way to deal with such people; half measures merely feed their pride. Leave ‘em alone or hang ‘em, in my opinion. Or better still, pack them off to the Americas, and let them starve.

Anyway, I was walking down by the castle a few evenings later when I heard a lot of noise and the sound of running feet. For once, it seemed the magistrate had decided to do something. There were sectaries everywhere, jumping out of windows, running this way and that, like ants bestirred in their nest. Never let these people tell you, incidentally, that they sit still and sing psalms when arrested. They are as frightened as anyone.

I stood and watched the sport with merriment until I saw, with great surprise, my friend Thomas all but falling out of the window of Tidmarsh’s house, and running up an alleyway.

Instantly, as any friend would, I gave chase. Of all the stupid people, I thought, he was perhaps the stupidest. Here he was, risking his future by indulging his ridiculous piety at the very moment when absolute and total conformity was required.

He was no sportsman, and I caught up with him without any trouble. He almost fainted, poor soul, when I grabbed him by the shoulder and brought him to a halt.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

“Jack!” he said with the most profound relief. “Thank God. I thought it was the watch.”

“And so it should be. You must be mad.”

“No. I…”

The explanation for his absurdity was cut short, however, for two men of the watch now hove into view. We were in an alley, and running would not get us out of trouble. “Keep quiet, lean on my shoulder and leave it to me,” I whispered as they approached.

“Good evening, sirs,” I cried, slurring my words like one very much drunker than I was.

“And what are you two doing?”

“Ah,” I said. “Missed the curfew again, have we?”

“Students, are you? Colleges, please?” He peered at Thomas, whose impression of being drunk was sadly lacking. Had he just a little experience of inebriation he might have done better.

“Where have you been for the last two hours?”

“In the tavern with me,” I said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“How dare you doubt my word?” I replied stoutly. “Where do you think we were?”

“Attending an illegal assembly.”

“You must be joking,” I said with a fine demonstration of merriment at the absurdity of the idea. “Do I look like a fanatic? We may be drunk, but it is not with the word of God, I’m glad to say.”

“I meant him.” He pointed at an ever-paler Thomas.

“Him?’’ I cried. “Oh, dear me no. Ecstasy has been his tonight, but very far from divine. I’m sure the lady concerned would vouch for his devotion, though. Don’t let the clerical air fool you.”

Thomas blushed at my words, and fortunately this was interpreted as shame.

“I, for my part, have been playing cards, with some considerable success.”

“Really.”

“Yes. And I am in a splendid mood; I wish to share my good fortune with all the world. Here, sir. Have this shilling and drink my health.”

He took the coin, looked at it for a fraction of a second, and then greed overcame duty. “And if you are chasing Quakers,” I continued happily once it was tucked away in his pocket, “I saw two gloomy types running up the street over there not three minutes ago.”

He looked at me and grinned, showing his gaping gums. “Thank you, young sir. But the curfew is on. If you’re still here when I get back…”

“Have no fear. Now run quickly, or you will miss them.”

I breathed an enormous sigh of relief as they ran off, then turned to Thomas, who showed distinct signs of being sick.

“That’s a shilling you owe me,” I said. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

We walked back in silence to New College; I needed to talk to him but could not possibly do so in my own lodging, crammed in as I was with my tutor—who, I imagined, was already in bed. Thomas, however, being now a senior member of a wealthy college, had the freedom to come and go without bothering about the curfews which plagued my life. Small and poky though his room was, he did not have to share it with his students—a luxurious innovation which caused much comment when introduced.

“You must be out of your mind, my friend,” I said vehemently when the door was closed. “What on earth were you doing? Indulge your sentiments in private if you must; but to advertise them and risk jail when you are trying to secure yourself a living and a wife is madness.”

“I was not…”

“No, of course not. You just happened to be amongst that band of Quakers not knowing who they were, and climbed out of the window and ran away for the exercise.”

“No,” he said, “I was there deliberately. But for a good reason.”

“No reason is good enough for that.”

“I went to talk to someone. Win their confidence.”

“Why?”

“Because I fear I may not get my parish after all.”

“You certainly won’t if you behave like this.”

“Will you listen to me?” he pleaded. “Grove is pressing his case and is winning over several members of the fellowship whom I assumed were on my side. And now he is talking to the warden.”

“What can he say?”

“Simple. That he is old and a bachelor, while I will undoubtedly marry and have a family. His needs, in contrast, are simple, and he will hand over a third of the annual revenue from the living to the college.”

“Can he do that?”

“If he gets it, he can do whatever he wants; it’s his money. He is calculating that it is better to have two thirds of eighty pounds a year than none of it. And Woodward is very mindful of college funds.”

“And you can’t match the offer?”

“Of course I can’t,” he said with bitterness. “I wish to marry. The girl’s father is only just willing to support the match if I have the full amount. What would your reaction be if I went along and said I’d given a third away?”

“Find another wife,” I suggested.

“Jack, I like her. She is a good match, and that living is mine.”

“I see your problem. But not what it has to do with climbing out of windows.”

“Grove is unsuitable to be in charge of a flock. He will bring scandal onto the church, and drag its good name in the dirt. I know this well, but as long as he was kept away from a living it was not my affair.”

“I’m still not following you.”

“He is a lecher. I’m sure of it. He engages in illicit concourse with that servant of his, to the shame of the college and the church. It is a disgrace. If his perfidy is proven, then the college will not risk its reputation by giving him a parish. I was trying to discover the truth.”

“At a meeting of Quakers?” I said incredulously. The story was getting worse and worse.

“This servant attends sometimes, and is said to be important to them, in fact,” he said. “She has a great reputation amongst them for reasons I do not understand. I thought if I attended, I could win her confidence…”

I’m afraid that here I burst out laughing. “Oh, Thomas, my dear friend. Only you could try and seduce a girl on your knees.”

He blushed scarlet. “I was not trying to do anything of the sort.”

“No, of course not. Who is this creature, anyway?”

“A girl called Blundy. Sarah Blundy.”

“I know her,” I said. “I thought she was quite a good girl.”

“That merely demonstrates the limits of your observation. The father was shot for mutiny or something, the mother is a witch, and the girl lived in a hellish society, giving herself freely to anyone who wanted her from the age of ten. I’ve heard of these people and the sort of things they got up to. I tell you, I shudder even at the thought of talking to her.”

“I’m sure having you chant psalms and pray for deliverance would do wonders in winning her over,” I said. “Are you sure of this? I have met the girl, and the mother. For a witch’s daughter she is very pretty, and for a devilish slut unusually civil.”

“I make no mistake.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“I had no chance. They are very peculiar, these meetings. We all sat around in a circle, with this Blundy girl in the center.”

“And?”

“And nothing. It seemed as though all were waiting for her to say something, but she just sat there. This went on for about an hour. Then we heard shouting from outside, and everyone ran in panic.”

“I see. Even if this belief of yours is true, you are hardly going to get her to tell you,” I said. “Why should she? It obviously doesn’t bother her and she must need the money. Why should she risk her position to do you a favor?”

“I believe she must secretly despise him. I thought that if I gave her a promise that there would be no consequences, she would see her duty.”

“I think a few coins might sway her better. Thomas, are you sure this is not a mistake? Dr. Grove was my tutor, you remember, and I detected no sign of lustfulness about him in all of four years.”

I am persuaded that Thomas was convinced of the selflessness of his actions. He genuinely wished the parishioners of Easton Parva to have the very best minister possible and was certain that he was that person. Naturally, he wanted the stipend, and the wife and dowry that went with it, but that merely to make him a better servant of his flock. He was motivated by righteousness, not greed. That was why matters fell out so badly in the end. Simple selfishness causes less harm than desperate virtue.

For my part, I freely confess the selfishness of my own actions. I needed a supply of money, and for that I needed Thomas to have some. Besides, he was my only friend at the time, and I felt beholden to him. For my sake as much as his, I decided that he needed the sort of assistance only I could provide.

“Listen, my friend, go back to your studies, and abandon this meddling because you are not at all suited to it. I will deal with the Blundy girl for you and will soon have her singing like a canary.”

“And how will you do that?”

“I will not tell you. But if you pray for the forgiveness of my sins, then you will be working hard in the next few weeks.”

As usual, he looked shocked at my irreverence, which was just as I hoped. It was so easy to upset him in that way. Laughing happily, I left him to sleep, went back to my college, climbed over the wall undetected and crept softly into the room of my snoring tutor.

7

I went to see John Wallis, mathematician and man of God, as Thomas had urged; at this stage I knew little of that grand divine except that he was not well liked, although this I put down to the fact that he had been foisted on Oxford by Cromwell. Much of his unpopularity was due to the fact that, at the general purge of Puritans when the king came back, Wallis had not only kept his position but had even received signs of official favor. Many of those who had suffered for the king and had not been so rewarded resented this bitterly.

Rather presumptuously, I visited him at his home, for he was a rich man and kept rooms in his college, a substantial house in Merton Street and also, I gathered, a place in London. His manservant assumed I was a student wanting instruction and it was only with some difficulty that I gained an audience.

Wallis saw me immediately, for which favor I was impressed; lesser lights in the university had, in the past, kept me waiting for hours for no reason. Consequently, I went into his presence with some rising hope in my heart.

I suppose everybody has in their mind now an idea of what these people look like. The cleric, rosy-cheeked from too much high living; the natural philosopher, absent-minded, a little unkempt with the buttons of his tunic done up in the wrong order and his wig all askew. If there are such people, then the Reverend Dr. John Wallis was not one of them, for he was a man who, I believe, never missed or forgot anything in his entire life. He was one of the coldest, most frightening people I ever encountered. He sat perfectly still and watched me as I came in, indicating only by a slight nod of the head that I should sit down. Now I think more about it, there is something about quietude which is very eloquent. Thurloe, for example, sat very still as well, but the contrast could not have been greater. It may sound strange for me of all people to say it, but Thurloe’s stillness had a humility about it. Wallis had the immobility of a serpent as it eyes its prey.

“Well, sir?’’ he said in an icily soft voice after a while. I noticed that he had a slight lisp, which made the impression of the serpent even stronger. “You want to see me, not the other way around.”

“I have come to ask you a favor, sir. On a personal matter.”

“I hope you don’t want instruction.”

“Oh, Lord no.”

“Do not blaspheme in my presence.”

“My apologies, sir. But I’m not certain how to start. I was told you might be able to help.”

“By whom?”

“By Mr. Ken, an MA of this university and…”

“I am aware of Mr. Ken,” Wallis said. “A dissenting priest, is he not?”

“He is trying desperately to be obedient.”

“I wish him well. He no doubt realizes we cannot afford less than total compliance in these days.”

“Yes, sir.” I noticed that “we.” It was only a short while, after all, since Wallis had been a dissenting priest himself, and done handsomely out of it.

Wallis still sat impassively, helping me not at all.

“My father was Sir James Prestcott…”

“I have heard of him.”

“In which case you also know that he was accused of dreadful deeds, which I know he did not commit. I am convinced that his fall was a plot organized by John Thurloe to hide the identity of a real traitor, and I intend to prove it.”

Again, Wallis made no move, either of encouragement or disapproval; rather he sat there, staring at me with his unblinking eyes until I felt a hot flush of foolishness come over me, and I began to sweat and stammer in my embarrassment.

“How do you intend to prove it?” he said after a while.

“Somebody must know the truth,” I said. “I had hoped, that as you were connected with Mr. Thurloe’s office…”

Here Wallis held up his hand. “Say no more, sir. You have an overblown notion of my importance, I think. I deciphered letters for the Commonwealth when I could not avoid doing so, and when I was sure my natural loyalty to His Majesty’s cause would not in any way be compromised.”

“Of course,” I muttered, almost admiring the smooth way the blatant lie dripped from his thin lips. “So my information was wrong, and you cannot help me?”

“I did not say that,” he continued. “I know little, but perhaps can find out much, if I wish. What papers do you have of your father’s from that period?”

“None,” I said. “And I do not think my mother has any either. Why do you want them?”

“No box? No books? No letters? You must find out where he was at all times. For if it was said he was in London, communicating with Thurloe, and in fact you can prove he was elsewhere, then your cause is advanced greatly. Did you not think of such a thing?”

I hung my head like a recalcitrant schoolboy, and confessed I had not. Wallis continued to press me, asking me the most absurd questions about particular books, although I do not recall the details. My way was the more direct one of confrontation, not nit-picking through letters and documents. Perhaps, I thought, Mr. Wood’s skills would turn out to be useful after all.

Dr. Wallis nodded in satisfaction. “Write to your people, and find out what they have. Bring it all to me, and I will examine it. Then perhaps I will be able to connect it with things I know.”

“That is kind of you.”

He shook his head. “It is not. If there is a traitor at court it is best to know of it. But rest assured, Mr. Prestcott, I will not help you unless you can provide proof that you are correct.”

In my mind time was pressing, and my task daily bore in on me, the memory of my father urging me to action. So I began to prepare my travels, and from then on voyaged almost without a break for the next few months, until all was resolved. I was on the move through one of the worst winters I can recall and out again into spring, driven by my duty and my desire for the truth. I traveled on my own, with little more than my cloak and a pack, walking for the most part, trudging up road and tracks, skirting the huge puddles that swamp all byways at that time of year, finding rest where I could in villages and towns or under trees and hedges when there was no alternative. It was a time of the greatest anxiety and fear; until the last I often doubted I could be successful and was concerned that my many enemies would prove impossible to defeat. And yet, I also remember that time fondly, although that is perhaps merely the rosy glow that age always puts on the memory of youth.

Before I set out, I had to honor my promise to help Thomas. Coming across Sarah Blundy was easy, although engaging her in conversation was more difficult. She would leave her lodging at six in the morning to go to the Woods’ in Merton Street, where she worked as a servant every day except Monday, which was devoted to Dr. Grove. Here she stayed until seven in the evening. She was given four hours off every Sunday, and one day every six weeks to herself. Most particularly, on Wednesdays she went to do the marketing for the family at Gloucester Green, a wasteland on the outskirts of town where farmers were allowed to sell their produce. She would buy whatever the family needed and (as Mrs. Wood was a notorious miser) had to carry it back herself as she was not given the money for a hired hand.

This, I decided, would be my best opportunity. I followed her at a discreet distance to the market, waited while she made her purchases, then made sure I encountered her at the very moment she was struggling past with two enormously heavy baskets of goods.

“Miss Blundy, is it not?” I said with a look of pleasure on my face. “You don’t remember me, no doubt. I had the good fortune to consult your mother some months ago.”

She tossed the hair out of her face and looked at me quizzically, then nodded slowly. “That’s right,” she said eventually. “You did. I trust you found the money well spent.”

“It was very helpful, thank you. Most helpful. I’m afraid I did not behave as well as I should have done. I was very concerned and upset at the time, and this no doubt came through in my lapse of manners.”

“That’s right,” she said. “It did.”

“Please,” I said. “Let me make some small amends. Allow me to carry your baskets. They are far too heavy for you.”

Without any pretense of protest, she instantly handed over both of them. “That is kind,” she said with a sigh of relief. “It is the part of the week I like the least. As long as I am not taking you out of your way.”

“Not at all.”

“How do you know where we are going?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said hastily to cover my mistake. “I have nothing at all to do, and I would willingly carry these all the way up Heddington Hill for the pleasure of your company.”

She tossed her head back and laughed. “Then you certainly don’t have much to do. Fortunately I will not impose on your good offices so much. I am heading only for Merton Street.”

They were formidably heavy, and I half-resented the girl for being so willing to hand them both over. One would have been more than sufficient. What was worse, she looked at me with scarcely concealed amusement as I struggled with what she carried as a matter of course.

“Are you treated well there?” I asked as we walked—I panting along, and she walking with a light and easy step.

“Mrs. Wood is a good mistress,” she replied. “I have nothing to complain about. Why? Were you about to offer me a position?”

“Oh, no. I cannot afford a servant.”

“You are a student, is that right?”

I nodded. Considering that my gown was flapping in the sharp wind, and my cap in constant danger of being blown into the gutter, it was not a greatly perceptive remark.

“You aim at the church?”

I laughed. “Dear me, no.”

“Do you disapprove of the church? Am I talking to a secret Catholic, perhaps?”

I flushed with anger at the remark, but remembered in time that I was not passing the morning for my own amusement.

“Far from it,” I said. “Sinner I may be, but not to that extent. My nonconformity comes from a different direction entirely. Although in action I am blameless.”

“I congratulate you.”

I heaved a sigh. “I do not congratulate myself. There is a group of God-fearing people I would like to associate with, but they wouldn’t even consider accepting me. And I cannot say that I blame them.”

“And who is that?”

“I had best not say,” I said.

“At least you could risk telling me why you are so unwelcome.”

“Someone like me?” I said. “Who would have such a person, so steeped in every monstrosity? I know it, I sincerely repent it, but I cannot erase what I have been.”

“I always thought that many groups of people welcomed sinners. There hardly seems much point in only welcoming the pure. They are already saved.”

“That’s the idea they put about, of course,” I said with a great show of bitterness. “In truth they turn from the people who really need them.”

“They told you this?”

“They didn’t need to. I certainly would not accept someone like myself. And if they did I have no doubt they would constantly fear I would disrupt them.”

“Has your life been so wicked? It is difficult to imagine, as you can be little older than myself.”

“You were no doubt brought up in a righteous and pious family, though,” I pointed out. “I, unfortunately, did not have such good fortune.”

“It is true I was blessed in my parents,” she said. “But you can be certain that any group which would turn you away would not be worth belonging to. Come, sir. Tell me whom you have in mind. I might be able to find out something for you. Ask whether you would be welcome, if you are too timid to approach them yourself.”

I looked at her with gratitude and delight. “Would you? I hardly dare ask. It is a man called Tidmarsh. I have heard he is a saintly preacher, and that he has gathered around him the few people left in Oxford who are not corrupted.”

She stopped and stared at me. “But he is a Quaker,” she said quietly. “Are you aware of what you are doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“God’s people they may be, but He is giving them sore trials. If you become associated with them, you will lose whatever protection your birth gives you. You will be jailed, and beaten, and spat on in the street. You may even have to give your life. Even if you are spared, your friends and family will shun you and you will be held in contempt by the world.”

“You will not help me.”

“You must be certain you know what you are doing.”

“Are you one?”

A momentary suspicion passed across her face, then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I am not. I was not brought up to invite troubles. I think that as prideful as gaudy dress.”

I shook my head at the remark. “I do not pretend to understand you. But I am sorely in need of help.”

“Find it elsewhere,” she said. “If God commands it, you must obey. But make sure you know what He wants first. You are a young gentleman, with all the advantages that brings. Don’t throw them away on a whim. Think and pray hard first. Theirs is not the only route to salvation.”

We had been walking awhile down St. Aldates, then along Merton Street, and had paused outside the door of her mistress’s house while she delivered this last injunction. I imagine she was merely trying to shield herself, but even so, her advice struck me as wise. If I had been some impetuous youth on the brink of making a grave mistake, she would have given me pause for thought.

I walked away slightly discomfited, which now I understand. I was deceiving her, and she gave kindness in return. It made me very confused, until I later learned how much greater her trickery was than mine.

8

Itwas not difficult to contrive several chance meetings with her in the few weeks that followed, and I slowly won her friendship. I told her that I had decided to take her advice but my soul was still tormented. All the sermons in the world could not reconcile me to the established church. I had learned that her father had been an extremist of the worst sort, so busy advocating the murder of property owners and the establishment of a republic that he had no time for Christ. Accordingly, I had to modify my approach.

“When I think of the hopes that existed in the world only a few years ago,” I said, “it makes me grieve. What were common aspirations are now cast out and despised, and the world is given over to greed and selfishness.”

She stared at me solemnly as though I had uttered a profound truth and nodded. We were walking down St. Giles, I having managed to meet her as she was coming back from a cookshop with the Woods’ dinner that evening. It smelled delicious, hot and tasty, and the odors made the juices turn in my stomach. I could see that she also was hungry.

“What do you do after you have delivered this?”

“Then I am finished for the day,” she said. It was already dark, and cold in the air.

“Come with me. Let us eat together. I can see you are as hungry as I am, and you would do me a favor to keep me company.”

She shook her head. “That is kind, Jack. But you should not be seen with me. Neither of our reputations will be improved by it.”

“What is your reputation? I know nothing of it. I see only a pretty woman with an empty stomach. But if it concerns you, we can go to a place I know where the clientele make both of us seem like saints.”

“And how do you know such places?”

“I told you I was a sinner.”

She smiled. “I cannot afford it.”

I waved my hand. “We can discuss that at a later stage, once your stomach is filled.”

Still she hesitated. I leaned over the bowl of food she was carrying and sniffed deeply. “Ah, the smell of that gravy, running over the lumps of meat,” I said longingly. “Can’t you just imagine a plate of it before you, with a fresh, crusty loaf and a tankard? A plate piled high, the steam rising into the air, the juices…”

“Stop!” she cried, laughing out loud. “All right. I’ll come, if only you’ll stop talking about food.”

“Good,” I said. “So deliver your meal, and come with me.”

We went to a small place on the very outskirts of the town, past Magdalen College and over the river. No one from the university, not even students, ever ate there, it being too far away in distance, and too low in reputation. The food was execrable as well; Mother Roberts was as bad a cook as she was disgusting a person, and the food was like the woman—larded with fat and giving off a foul smell. Sarah looked uneasy in the little room where she served up the gruel, but ate with the appetite of one who rarely gets enough. The main virtue of Mother Roberts was that the ale she served was strong and cheap, and I regret the passing of those days. Now that men of business make beer and are trying to stop women selling the ale they brew, I believe the great days of this country are over.

The best quality of the brew was that by the time Sarah had drunk a quart of it, she’d become talkative, and susceptible to my questions. As much as I remember it, I set the conversation down here. On my prompting, she told me that she not only worked for the Wood family, but had also found work with Dr. Grove. She did little for him, except clean his room, prepare his fire and a bath once every quarter—for he was fastidiously clean about his person—and he paid generously. The only trouble, she said, was his desire to bring her within the Established Church.

I said that this Grove must be something of a hypocrite to speak so, as he had a reputation for being a hidden papist. If I thought this would draw her out, I was wrong, for she frowned and shook her head fervently. If he was such, she said, she had never seen the slightest sign of it, neither in his room nor in his manner.

“And he works you hard?”

On the contrary, she insisted. He had treated her with the utmost kindness at all times, even though she had seen him be extremely unpleasant with others. Her main concern was that he would get a living out in the country soon. He had told her only a few days before it was a near certainty.

This upset me mightily; I already knew Grove to be blameless in his adherence—in fact he was probably more in conformity with the church than Thomas himself—and it seemed unlikely that my friend’s suspicions about his morals had any substance. Nor could the girl be persuaded to denounce him falsely for money. She had an honest air to her.

“He surely can’t have much skill at running a parish,” I said. “No doubt because he has been in the university for so long. Otherwise he would be wary of having a pretty young woman to clean his rooms. There is bound to be talk.”

“There is nothing to talk about, so why should anyone trouble?”

“I do not know, but lack of substance has never dissuaded a gossip yet, I think. Tell me about this reputation of yours that I should be so wary of,” I said, thinking that if I could prove Grove was willingly taking a sectary to his bosom, this might do just as well. So she told me a little about her father’s career in the wars, and described what to my ears seemed as black a monster as ever lived, a mutineer, atheist and rabble-rouser. Even through her description I perceived that the only thing to be said in his favor was his evident courage. She did not even know where he was buried, as he was too foul even to be allowed a consecrated grave. We shared that misfortune, at least.

She was already casting her spell over me, I think, for I found myself strangely drawn to her despite a freedom about her talk which should have been a warning. We had a strange amount in common; she worked for Grove, I had been in his charge. Both of our fathers had evil reputations, and although that of my own was unjustified, I knew what it was to be cursed in this fashion. And unlike many sectaries, she did not have the burning eyes and humorless demeanor of the fanatic. Nor was she ugly like most of them, their souls drawn to Jesus because no mortal man wants their bodies. She ate with surprising and natural delicacy, and when in drink she behaved well. I had talked little with women in my life, as they were either too protected or too low for proper conversation, and my experience with the whore outside Tunbridge Wells and the way she had laughed at me had begun to rankle.

I was beginning to want her as we left the table, and naturally thought that her willingness to dine alone with me in such a place, and her open conversation, meant she was equally inclined to me. I knew of people such as her, in any case, and had heard tales of their laxity. I was all the more keen because she was of no use—there was no truth in Thomas’s thoughts about Grove, and she would tell no tales. Fool that I was to think in such a fashion, for her trap was about to shut its jaws as it had done, no doubt, many times before. I thought I was being charming and seductive, favoring her with my condescension; instead she was exploiting my youth and trusting nature, leading me into that sin she fully intended to use for her own devilish ends.

It was well past eight when we left, and already dark, so I told her we had best travel back across Christ Church meadow to avoid the patrols. “I was caught a few weeks back by the curfew,” I said. “I cannot afford to be caught again. Come with me; you will be safer.”

She accepted without demur, and we cut past the botanical gardens and into the meadow, at which point I slipped my arm around her waist. She stiffened slightly, but did not protest. When we were in the middle of the field, and I was certain there was no one close by, I stopped, took her in my arms and tried to kiss her. Instantly she began struggling, so I squeezed her tightly to show that, while some resistance was to be expected, she should not overact her part. But she kept on struggling and averting her face, then started hitting me with the flat of her hands, pulling at my hair and making me lose patience. I tripped her up and pushed her to the ground. Still she struggled so, perfectly furious at her behavior, I was forced to slap her.

“How dare you?” I exclaimed indignantly once the struggling had momentarily stopped. “A meal isn’t a high enough price for you? You expect something for nothing? What do you think you are? Do you plan to pay me back some other way?”

She started struggling again, so I pinned her to the cold, damp ground, pulled up her thin skirt and prepared myself. I was hot in blood by now, as her refusal had both angered and excited me, and I gave no quarter. I may have hurt her, I do not know, but if I did it was her own fault. When I had finished I was content, and she was subdued. She rolled away from me and made no more protest, lying on the cold grass.

“There,” I told her. “So what was that noise about? It cannot have been a surprise to someone like you. Or did you think I wanted to feed you for your conversation? Come now, if I had wanted talk I would have gone out with one of my fellows, not a serving girl whose company has to be hidden.”

I shook her playfully, in good humor again. “Don’t make such a fuss. Here’s an extra tuppence. Don’t take it amiss. You’re not some virgin who has lost something of value.”

Then the harpy rolled over and slapped me, full in the face, then scrabbled at my face with her claws and pulled at my hair so hard some of it even came out in her hand. I have never been treated in such a fashion in my life, and the shock took my breath away. She had to be taught a lesson, of course, and I did so, although with little pleasure. I have never liked beating people, not even servants, however deserving. It is one of my greatest weaknesses, and I fear it leads them to hold me in less respect than they ought.

“There,’’ I said when she was crouching on the grass, her head in her hands. “Next time, I won’t want any of this nonsense.” I had to bend down and talk into her ear to make sure she would hear me. I noticed she was not crying. “You will treat me with proper respect in future. Now, to show there are no hard feelings, take this money, and let’s forget all about it.”

As she didn’t want to get up, I left her to show I wasn’t susceptible to such wheedling behavior. The evening had not been as useful as I had imagined, in that the problem of Dr. Grove was not yet solved, but it had had an agreeable ending. I even noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that she had a strange expression, almost a smile, I thought, on her face as I turned to go. That smile stuck in my mind for a long while afterward.

9

I would have left the matter there, had not a dream that very same night disturbed me greatly. I was climbing a staircase and there was a large oak door at the top, which was firmly closed. It frightened me but I summoned all my strength and pushed it open. It should have been the bedroom, but instead I found myself in a gloomy and humid cellar.

The sight inside was a fearful one; my father was lying on a bed, as naked as Noah, and covered in blood. Sarah Blundy, dressed all in white and wearing that same smile, stood over him, knife in hand. As I entered, she turned placidly toward me. “Thus dies a man of honor,” she said in a whisper.

I shook my head, and pointed accusingly at her. “You have murdered him,” I said.

“Oh no.” And she nodded at me. I looked down, and in my hand was the bloody dagger she had been holding herself only a moment before. I tried to let it go, but it would not leave my hand. “You see? You are forever stained now,” she said.

That was the end of the dream, or, if there was more, I cannot recall it. I woke up frightened, and it took some effort to rid my spirit of the pall that it cast over me, which was strange considering that I had never before paid much attention to such phantasms and, indeed, had always laughed at those who placed such store by them.

I asked Thomas what he thought when I encountered him and we went for a drink in a tavern, and he, of course, treated the matter with gravity, as he did everything. Their meaning, he informed me, depended on my constitution. What was the dream exactly?

Naturally, I left out the background to it; he was exceptionally condemnatory of fornication, and I did not wish to dispute with him over trifles.

“Tell me, do you tend to a dominance of the choleric humor?” he asked when I had done.

“No,” I said. “Melancholia, rather.”

“I take it you don’t know much about dreams?”

I admitted the fact.

“You should study them,” he said. “Personally, I find them superstitious nonsense, but there is no doubt that the vulgar believe all sorts of stuff can be read from them. One day, such foolishness may be condemned; certainly no reputable priest should pay any attention to such drivel. However, that age has not yet come, so we must beware.

“You see,” he said warming to his theme and shifting his thin backside in his seat in the way he did when he was settling down for a long discourse, “dreams come from various sources all acting in conjunction. Generally there is a dominant source, and it is that which we must isolate to identify the true nature of the apparition. One source is vapors rising from the stomach to the brain, causing it to overheat; such an occurrence happens when you have overindulged in food or drink. Did you do that before the dreams?”

“Far from it,” I told him, thinking back to my meal at Mother Roberts’s.

“The next is an imbalance of your humoral constitution, but as you tell me that melancholia is dominant in you, we must rule that out as well; this is obviously a dream in which the choleric exerts its influence, the choler tending to produce black dreams, because of its color.

“So that leaves the spiritual influence; a vision, in other words, either inspired by angels as a warning, or by the devil as a torment and temptation. Either way, the dream does not look well; the girl is strongly associated with the death of a man, a father. A dream of murder is a terrible sign; it foretells hardship and imprisonment. Tell me again, what else was there?”

“The knife, the girl, the bed, my father.”

“Again, the knife bodes ill. Was it bright and sharp?”

“Must have been.”

“A knife indicates that many people of ill will are ranged against you.”

“I know that already.”

“It also foretells that if you have a lawsuit pending, you are likely to lose it.”

“The bed?” I asked, becoming more and more miserable at the prospect he was laying out before me.

“Beds, of course, are about your marriage prospects. And for it to be occupied by the corpse of your father again does not signify well at all. As long as he is there, you will not marry; his body prevents it.”

“Which means that no woman of quality would touch the son of a traitor like myself,” I exclaimed. “Again, I hardly need a divine messenger to tell me that.”

Thomas looked forward into his tankard. “And then there is the girl,” he said, “whose presence puzzles me. Because the dream says plain that she is your misfortune and your judge. And that cannot be. Why, you scarcely know her, and I can see no possibility that your current difficulties can be laid at her door. Can you explain this to me?”

Even though I knew more than I could comfortably tell Thomas, I could not explain it. I can do so now, for I have pondered long and hard on the matter. It is clear to me that my initial visitation to Widow Blundy created an imbalance amongst the spirits, a dependency in which I was embroiled, and that by taking my pleasure with the daughter I allowed myself foolishly to fall into a trap. That I was prompted by the urgings of a devil and was seduced into her power is now equally obvious.

The message of the dream was in fact simple, had I only the wit to understand. For it showed clearly that the girl’s entrapment was aimed at deflecting me from my quest, with the result that failing to clear my father’s name would be a form of murder. Once I understood that, I was fortified, and encouraged in my resolve.

Of course, such insight did not come instantly, for I have never claimed to be a cunning thinker in such matters. I learned, as all men must, by experience and from the application of common sense, so that ultimately only one explanation is left which answers all. At that time, my only thought was that the girl might lay some piddling complaint against me to the proctors of the university, who took a poor view of students consorting with the town’s whores, and that the investigation might force me to remain in town. A defense was needed and attack is the best form of it.

When I left Thomas and walked up Carfax, I came on an exceedingly ingenious solution; in brief, I tipped Mary Ful-lerton, a vegetable girl in the market and one of the most dishonest and scurrilous wretches I knew, to confirm the story by telling how she had gone one day to deliver some fruit to Dr. Grove and been mistaken for Sarah. The moment she got in the room (I instructed her to say), Grove had come up behind her and started fondling her breasts. When she protested (here she claimed to be a virtuous girl, which certainly was not the case), Grove said “What, girl? You do not want what you were so eager to have yesterday?’’ Better still, I sought out Wood and told him a story about Dr. Grove and his rutting ways with his servant. It was guaranteed that, within a day or so, the story would spread and soon get back to the Fellows of New College, such was Wood’s ability as a gossip.

So let the slut complain if she will, I thought. No one will believe her and she will do nothing but bring scandal and shame on her own head. Looking back now, I am less sanguine. My cunning did not deliver the living into Thomas’s hands and, though it might have fended off Sarah Blundy’s worldly revenge, it enraged her to ever greater heights of malice.

I knew nothing of that when I left Oxford a few days later—a blessed release, for I always detested the town, and have not revisited it for more than ten years now—and believed rather that I had enjoyed the girl, protected myself and helped my friend at one and the same time. Such contentment did not last long after I crossed the border into Warwickshire and made my way to my mother, although again I ignored the first sign that anything was amiss. I spent money on a carriage to Warwick, planned to walk the last fifteen miles to save money, and set off in good heart, pausing after an hour or so for some water and a bite of bread. It was a lonely spot on the road, and 1 sat down on a grassy verge to rest. After a while, I heard a rustling in the bushes and got up to investigate; I had scarcely walked four paces into the undergrowth than, with a hellish squalling, a polecat sprang up and scratched my hand, causing a deep gash which bled profusely.

I started back in alarm and fright and tripped over a root, but the animal did not press home its advantage. It vanished immediately as though into thin air and, had it not been for the blood dripping from my hand, I would have sworn I’d imagined it. I told myself, of course, that it was my own fault, that I had probably got too near its brood and paid the price. Only later did it occur to me that, in my many years’ acquaintance with that part of the world, I had never heard anyone mention such creatures living there.

Later, of course, I knew better the origins of the beast but then I merely blamed myself, bound up my hand and got on with the journey, arriving after three days’ travel at my mother’s people. Our destitution had left her no choice but to throw herself on their charity and they had taken her back, but not as family ought. My mother had disobliged them mightily by marrying as she pleased, and they did not let her forget for an instant that, in their opinion, her sorrow was punishment for her disobedience.

Accordingly, they made her live little better than a servant. True, she was allowed to eat at the main table—they maintained the old custom, now almost forgotten, of eating with the entire household—but they always made sure she sat at the end and subjected her to almost daily insult. They were the very model of what have since come to be known as Trimmers—they would have got on well with Dr. Wallis, had they ever met. Under Cromwell, the family sang their psalms and praised the Lord. Under Charles they bought the family curate his vestments and read the Book of Common Prayer every evening. The only thing beneath them, I think, was popery, for they were the most fervent haters of Rome and constantly on the lookout for the malign touch of priestcraft.

I always loved the house, but I believe it has been remodeled now, reconstructed along modern lines by one of Sir Christopher’s innumerable imitators. Now the rooms are regular and well-proportioned and the light no doubt floods in through the modern sashes, the chimneys draw properly and the drafts are kept to a minimum. For my part I regret this enthusiastic conformity to whatever men of fashion in Europe tell us is elegant. There is something false about all that symmetry. It used to be that a gentleman’s house was the history of his family, and you could see in its lines when they had been in funds and expansive, or when times were hard. Those curling chimney stacks, and corridors and eaves stacked one next to the other, provided the comfort of a sweet disorder. One would have thought, after Cromwell’s attempts to impose uniformity on us all through his armies, that no more was needed. But I am out of harmony with the times, as usual. The old houses are being destroyed one by one, and replaced by gimcrack structures which will probably last no longer than the grasping, arrogant new families who construct them. Built so fast, they can be swept away as quickly, along with all the people they contain.

“How do you stand for such humiliation, madam?” I asked my mother when I visited her in her room one evening. I had been there for some weeks and could stand the mean piety, the arrogant self-importance of these people no more. “To have to endure their superiority every day would try the patience of a saint. Not to mention their insufferable reproaches, and pained kindnesses.”

She shrugged as she looked up from her embroidery. It was her habit to pass time in this way in the evening, making cloths which, she would tell me, would be mine once I had found a wife and an income. “You should not be unfair to them,” she said. “They are more than generous to me. They were under no obligation, after all.”

“Your own brother?” I cried. “Of course he is under an obligation. As your husband would have been had the positions been reversed.”

She did not answer for a while, and concentrated on her labor while I stared once more into the big log fire. “You are wrong, Jack,” she said eventually. “Your father behaved very badly toward my brother.”

“I am sure it was all my uncle’s fault,” I said.

“No. You know how I revered your father, but he could be hot-tempered and rash. This was one of those occasions. He was entirely at fault, but refused either to admit it or make amends.”

“I cannot credit it,” I said.

“You do not know what I am talking about,” she said, still patient. “I will give you a small example. During the war, before your father left to fight abroad, the king sent round collectors to levy an impost on all the great families. The demands on my brother were harsh and unfair. Naturally, he wrote to my husband, asking him to intercede and get the amount reduced. He wrote back a very offensive letter, saying that with so many people giving their lives, he did not intend to help my brother avoid giving his silver. It would have been a small enough service to do for his family. And when Parliament in turn made its levy, my brother had to sell a large parcel of land, he was now so impoverished. He never forgave your father.”

“I would have arrived with a troop of horse to take the money myself,” I said. “The needs of the king’s cause outweighed all others. Had more people seen that, Parliament would have been defeated.”

“The king was fighting to preserve the law, not merely to keep himself on the throne. What point was there in success if everything he was battling for was destroyed thereby? Without the families of the realm, the king was nothing; preserving our fortune and our influence did as much for his cause as fighting for him.”

“How convenient,” I scoffed.

“Yes,” she said. “And when this king returned, your uncle was there to take up his position as magistrate and reestablish order. Without my brother, who would have controlled this part of the world, made sure our people welcomed the king back? Your father was penniless and without influence.”

“I would rather have a penniless hero for a father than a rich coward,” I said.

“Unfortunately you now claim descent from a penniless traitor, and live on the kindness of the rich coward.”

“He was no traitor. You, of all people, cannot believe that.”

“All I know is that he brought ruin on his family, and made his wife a beggar.”

“The king gave him life and honor. What else could he do?”

“Spare me your childishness,” she snapped. “War is not a tale of chivalry. The king took more than he gave. He was a fool and your father was a greater fool for sustaining him. For years I had to juggle with creditors, bribe soldiers and sell our lands, just so he could be the man of honor. I watched our funds dwindle to nothing so he could cut a figure as an equal with noblemen on ten times the income. I watched him reject a settlement with Parliament because the man sent to negotiate with him was not a gentleman. That particular show of honor cost us dear, believe me. And when we were reduced to penury, I had to come with nothing but the clothes on my back to throw myself on my brother’s mercy. He took me in, fed me and housed me while your father dissipated what remained of our fortune. He pays for your education so you can live, and he has promised to set you up in London when you are ready. In return, he gets nothing from you but contempt and childish remarks. You compare his honor with your father’s. Tell me, Jack, where is the honor in a pauper’s grave?”

I sat back, stunned by her vehemence and grievously disappointed. My poor father, betrayed even by the one person who owed him all obedience. My uncle had even managed to subvert her. I did not blame her; how could a woman resist such pressures, when they were constantly applied? It was my uncle I blamed, using my father’s absence to blacken him to the person who should have defended his name to the last.

“You talk as though you are going to say he was a traitor after all,” I said eventually, when my head had stopped spinning. “I cannot believe that.”

“I do not know,” she said. “And so I try to believe the best. In the year or so before he fled I hardly saw him; I do not know what he was doing.”

“You do not care who betrayed him? It does not disturb you that John Thurloe is free though guilty, while your own husband lies dead through betrayal? You do not want revenge for this?”

“No, I do not; it is done and cannot be changed.”

“You must tell me what you know, however little it is. When did you last see him?”

She stared long at the fire that was fading in the grate and letting the cold wrap itself around our bodies; it was always an icy house, and even in the summer you needed a heavy coat if you went out of the main rooms. Now winter was coming in, the leaves falling and the winds beginning to blow, the chill was taking over the house once more.

It took some urging before she answered my questions about papers and letters and documents which might show what took place, for Wallis’s request was still in my mind and I wished to oblige him if I could. Several times she refused, changing the subject and trying to divert me into other matters, but each time I insisted. Eventually she gave way, realizing it would be easier than to resist. But her unwillingness was obvious and I never entirely forgave her for it. I told her that I had above all to know everything possible about what had happened around January of 1660, just before my father fled, and when the plot against him was reaching its climax. Where was he? What had he done or said? Had she even seen him in that period?

She said she had; indeed, it was the last time she had ever seen him. “I received a message through a trusted friend that your father needed me,” she began. “Then he came here unannounced and at night. He had no dealings with your uncle and spent only one night here, then left again.”

“How was he?”

“Very grave, and preoccupied, but in good spirits.”

“And he had a troop with him?”

She shook her head. “Just one man.”

“Which man?”

She waved my question aside. “He stayed the night as I say, but didn’t sleep; just fed himself and his comrade, then came to talk to me. He was very secretive, making sure that no one heard, and making me promise not to reveal a word to my brother. And before you ask, I have not done so.”

I knew at the bottom of my heart that I was on the verge of receiving a message of unparalleled importance, that my father had meant me to hear this, otherwise he would have sworn my mother to complete silence. “Go on,” I said.

“He talked to me very intently. He said he had discovered the worst treason imaginable, which had shocked him so greatly he had initially refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. But now he was convinced, and he was going to act.”

I all but cried out in frustration at this. “What treason? What act? What discoveries?”

My mother shook her head. “He said it was too much to confide in a woman. You must understand that he never told me any secrets, or gave me any confidences at all. You should be surprised he said so much, not that he said so little.”

“And that was all?”

“He said he would uncover and destroy men of the greatest evil; it was dangerous, but he was confident of success. Then he pointed to the man who had been sitting in the corner all the while.”

“His name, madam? What was his name?” At least, I thought, I might have something. But again she shook her head. She did not know.

“He may have been called Ned; I do not know. I think I had met him before, before the war. Your father told me that, ultimately, only your own people were to be trusted, and that this man was such a person. If anything should not take place as planned, then this man would come and give me a packet, which contained everything he knew. I was to guard it well, and use it only when I was sure it was safe to do so.”

“And what else?”

“Nothing,” she said simply. “Shortly after they left, and I never saw him again. I received a message from Deal a few weeks later saying he was having to leave the country for a short while, but would be back. He never did come back, as you know.”

“And this man? This Ned?”

She shook her head.”He never came, and I never received any package.”

However disappointing it was that my mother had nothing to help Dr. Wallis, the information she gave me was an unexpected bonus. I had not expected her to have such knowledge, and had applied to her only as an afterthought. Sad though it is for a son to acknowledge, I found it increasingly hard to maintain my civility with her, so much was she being drawn back to her own family, which had only ever approved of my father while he possessed a good estate.

No; my purpose in going into Warwickshire was quite different, for I wanted to consult the papers concerning my Lincolnshire estate, so that I might know when I could expect to take possession. I knew that the matter had been complicated; my father had told me so on many occasions. By the time the fighting became serious and his confidence in the king began to slacken, he was aware that far more than his own life was at risk, and that the entire family might well be destroyed. Consequently, he drew up a settlement designed to protect it.

In brief, and following the latest practice in the country, he devised the real estate on a trust, for the use of himself and, on his death, of myself. A will drawn up at the same time made my uncle his executor and Sir William Compton my guardian, charged with the proper disposal of both the personal and real estate. It sounds complicated, but nowadays any man of property will understand it all perfectly well, it has become such an ordinary means of protecting a family from danger. Back then, however, such complexities were all but unheard of—there is nothing like civil strife to make men ingenious and lawyers rich.

I could not ask to see the papers, as they were in the keeping of my uncle and it was scarcely likely he would agree to the demand. Nor did I want to warn him of my interest, lest he take steps to destroy them, or alter anything in his own favor. I had no intention of allowing my uncle to cheat me, an activity which came as second nature to him.

So that night, when I was sure everyone was asleep, I made my search. My uncle’s study, where he conducted the estate business and held meetings with his agents, was unchanged from the days when he used to summon me to give me lectures about God-fearing good conduct, and I crept quietly in, remembering without even thinking about it that the door had a squeak that could easily rouse the entire household. Holding up my candle, I could make out the stout oak table where the accounts were laid every Michaelmas, and the iron-banded chests in which the vouchers and accounts were kept.

“Formidably difficult, are they not? Do not worry, when they are your responsibility you will understand them. Just remember the golden rules of property—never trust your managers, and never bear too hard on your tenants. You will lose in the end.” Thus I remember my father talking to me, I suppose when I was five, maybe less. I’d come into his own office at Harland House because the door was open, even though I knew it was forbidden. My father was alone with reams of paper all around, the sand shaker by his elbow, the wax heated for affixing the seals to the documents, the candle smoking in the wind. I half expected to be beaten, but instead he looked up and smiled at me, then gathered me onto his lap and showed me the papers. When he had more time, he would begin my education, he said, for a gentleman had much to learn if he was to prosper.

That day never came, and the thought made my eyes smart with tears as I remembered that room at my own home, the home I might have lost forever and which I had not even seen for more than a decade. Even so, the smell of it came back to me, strong and sure, a mixture of leather and oil, and I stood for some time in sadness before coming to and remembering my task, and the urgency of getting on with it.

My uncle used to keep the keys to the strongbox in the sword cupboard, and it was here that I immediately looked when I recovered myself. Fortunately, his habits had not changed and the big iron key was in the usual place. Opening the box took no time at all, and then I sat down at the big desk, positioned the candle, and began to go through the documents which I took out, one by one.

1 was there for several hours before the candle failed. It was tiresome work, for most of the bundles were of no interest, and were discarded the moment they were opened. But eventually, I found the details of the settlement. I also found twenty pounds which, after some hesitation, I took. Not that 1 wanted to rely on such tainted money, but I reasoned that by rights it was mine in any case, so I should have no qualms about using it.

Words cannot express the full horror of what I discovered, for the documents provided a complete and dispassionate outline of the most despicable and complete fraud. I will put it simply, for no amount of ornamentation will increase the effect—my entire estate was sold by Sir William Compton, the man appointed to guard my interest, to my uncle, the man supposedly entrusted with maintaining the integrity of the land. This foul piece of trickery had been accomplished the moment my poor father was laid into his pauper’s grave, for the final deed of sale was signed and dated not two months after his death.

I had, in short, been utterly, and entirely, dispossessed.

I had never liked my uncle, and had always detested his conceit and his arrogant ways. But I had never suspected he might be capable of such a monstrous betrayal. For him to take advantage of his family’s disarray and turn it to his own profit; to make use of my father’s death and my minority to pursue such a grubby scheme; to coerce my own mother into connivance with the destruction of her son’s interest—all this was far worse than I could ever have imagined. He assumed that my age and lack of funds would prevent me from fighting back. I determined, then and there, that he would shortly learn how very wrong he was.

What I could not understand were the actions of Sir William Compton, my guardian and a man who had always treated me with the greatest of kindness. If he, too, had conspired against me then I was truly alone; but despite the clear evidence I could not believe that a man of whom my father always spoke in the highest terms, to whom, indeed, he was prepared to consign his heir, could have acted with duplicity. A bluff, hearty man, the very backbone of the nation in robust honesty, described even by Cromwell himself as that “godly cavalier,” he must also have been duped to act in this fashion. If I could find out how, then again my cause would advance. I knew I would soon have to question him as well, but recoiled from the task until I could present him with more evidence. For I had been dispatched from his house of Compton Wynyates the moment my father fled—I did not know what reception I would receive, and, I admit, was afraid of his scorn.

I knew, as I closed the casket and locked it, then slipped quietly back to my room, that my task had grown enormously in complexity, and that I was now more alone than I ever dreamed. For I was betrayed in one way or another by everyone, even those closest to me, and had no resources but my own determination. Every step I took, it seemed, my labors grew greater and more difficult, for now I not only had to find the man who betrayed my father, I also had to confound those who so swiftly moved to profit from his disgrace.

It had not yet occurred to me that the two quests might be one and the same, nor even that, in comparison to the other struggle that was about to burst upon me in full flood, these problems were almost trivial.

I soon received some indication of what lay ahead for, about two hours before dawn, I slept. I wish I had not; I should have left the house immediately and been on my way, had I done so I would have avoided the most fearsome experience of a night that was already harrowing. I do not know how long I was asleep, but it was still dark when a voice awoke me. I drew the bed curtain back and saw, in the casement of the window, the clear figure of a woman leaning in, as though standing outside, though it was on the second floor. Although I could not make out the face, the flowing dark hair instantly confirmed my suspicions. It was the Blundy girl. “Boy,” she hissed, time and again, “you will fail. I will ensure it.” Then, with a sigh more like wind than breath, she vanished.

I sat, shivering with cold, for an hour or more until I had convinced myself that what had occurred was no more than the fever of a disordered and tired mind. I told myself that the dream was nothing, just as the earlier one had been nothing. I reminded myself of all the worthy priests who had said that to pay credence to such imaginings was presumptuous. But they were wrong; while I have no doubt that many so-called prophets who interpret their dreams as divine messages are ignorant and hare-brained, mistaking vapors for angels and humors for the Lord, some dreams are indeed spirituous in origin. And not all come from God. As I tried to lie back in the bed and sleep once more, the wind rattling against the window kept me awake and I remembered that I had not opened it before I went to bed. Yet there it was, opened and fixed open, although not by my hand.

I changed my plan when I went down the next morning and left as swiftly as was decent. I said no farewells to my mother, and certainly none to my uncle. I could not bear the sight of them, and was afraid I might let slip some remark and reveal that I had uncovered their plot.

10

I will not describe my turbulent emotions as I made my way to the border which divides the counties of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire; that my soul burned with the desire for revenge must be obvious, and I do not feel the need to put down on paper what any man in my position must have experienced. It is my task to describe what I did, not what I felt on the matter—the transience of emotions makes them a sorry waste of time. In the history of man, it is glorious action which provides all matter of significance, and all lessons for posterity. Do we need to know how Augustus felt when he heard the news that Actium had extended his dominion over the entire globe? Would it magnify the glory of Cato to have a record of his sentiments as the knife plunged into his breast? Emotions are but the tricks of the devil, sent to tempt us into doubt and hesitation, and obscure the deeds committed, whether good or ill. No man of sense, I think, will ever pay them much attention, for they are a distraction, a surrender to womanish sentiment that should be concealed from the world if they cannot be suppressed in the heart. It is our task to overcome the passions, not digress on their intensity.

So I will say merely I was troubled that as fast as I made progress in one sphere, I was assaulted in the other. The more I stalked John Triurloe, the more demons stalked me, for I had not shaken off the concern generated by the succession of dreams and visitations, and my brain was so befuddled that their obvious cause was hidden. Instead, I fruitlessly pondered this disharmony as I trudged southward through the heartland of the wars, taking in, almost every mile, the continued record of destruction that had been meted out to the land. So many buildings, so many fine dwellings were still in disarray, their owners, like my own father, no longer having the money to rebuild. Manor houses burned out or dismantled for their stone, fields still abandoned and overgrown with weeds, for the tenants will not work without a firm hand to keep them in their place. I stopped in Southam in the midst of a fit of that melancholy which has always plagued me, and spent some money on a bleed in the hope that I might be rebalanced and fortified. Then, weakened by the experience, I spent more money on a bed for the night.

It was providential that I did, for I heard at the table that a great magus had passed through that same day, wise in healing and all matters of the spirit. The man who told me—who joked but was frightened within—said he was an Irishman, who had a guardian angel that extended protection over him, that he might never come to harm. He was one of the adepti, who could cure merely by passing his hands over the afflicted spot, and was in constant converse with spirits of all forms, which he could see as ordinary men see each other.

I heard, also, that this man was heading south, intending to make his way to London, for he was intent on offering his services to the king himself. This venture, I understand, came to nothing; his ability to cure by touch (and it was a real skill; I saw it myself, and many others attested to it) was considered presumptuous, for he said he could cure scrofula by this means, knowing full well that this is the prerogative of kings, and has been since time immemorial. Being Irish as well, he was naturally seen as subversive, and was constrained to leave London after only a short stay.

So, the next morning I set off, confident that my youthful legs, and early start, would soon allow me to catch up with this Valentine Greatorex and consult him about my problems. At least I knew I would not have to beg, since the money from my uncle’s chest was still in my belt, and I could afford, for once, whatever was asked of me.

I caught up with him within a few hours at a village just on the Oxfordshire side of the border; he was staying at an inn and once I learned this I hired a room myself, then sent up word of my desire for an interview. I was summoned immediately.

I went to the meeting with some trepidation for, although I might have met a wizard before, I had never encountered an Irishman. I knew, of course, that they were terrible people, wild and disobedient, with a monstrous cruelty. The stories of the massacres they perpetrated on poor Protestants in late years were still fresh in my mind, and the way they continued to battle despite the chastisement meted out to them by Cromwell at Drogheda and other places proved that they were scarcely human in their bloody viciousness. I do believe that the only time Cromwell enjoyed the full and unrestrained support of the English was when he set out to subdue these murderous creatures.

Mr. Greatorex, however, satisfied neither my notion of what a wizard nor of what an Irishman should be like. I imagined him old, stooped, flame-haired and with wild, staring eyes. He was in fact scarcely a dozen years senior to myself, with a gentlemanly bearing, neat and precise movements and a solemnity of expression that would have done credit to a bishop. Until he spoke, he could have passed for a prosperous trader in any small town in the country.

His voice, however, was extraordinary, and I had never heard the like before, although I now know that the softness of expression and musicality of tone is characteristic of these people, who use words of honey to disguise their natures. As he plied me with questions, his words swept gently over me and I relaxed until I was aware of nothing in the room at all except his voice, and the gentleness of expression in his eyes. I understood, I think, how a rabbit must feel when it is frozen by the look of the snake, and how Eve must have felt also, willing to do anything at all to please the serpent, and earn more words of comfort from it.

Who was I? Where had I come from? How had I heard of him? About what did I wish to consult him? All these were necessary questions, and similar to the ones Widow Blundy had put to me to assure herself I was not sent to trap her. I answered fully until we came to my encounter with Sarah Blundy. Then Greatorex leaned forward in his chair.

“Let me tell you, sir,” he said softly, “that it is a very great mistake to tell me lies. I do not take kindly to being deceived. I am not interested in how badly you behaved, although I can see you abused this girl shamefully.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” I protested. “She was willing; she must have been so, and put on the pretense afterwards in order to extract more money from me.”

“Which you did not give her.”

“I was generous enough.”

“And now you fear you are cursed. Tell me your dreams.”

I told him, and about the polecat. He listened quietly as I recounted each piece of evidence.

“It did not occur to you that the daughter of the cunning woman might be able to encompass such attacks?” I said it had not, but the moment he suggested the idea that Sarah Blundy was responsible, I realized that it was obvious and knew also that my inability to see was itself part of the enchantment she had laid on me.

“And have you spoken to her since?” Greatorex continued. “It may offend your dignity, but often the surest way of dealing with such matters is to make amends. If she accepts your apology, she must then remove any curse she has placed on you.”

“And if she does not?”

“Then other measures will be required. But it is the best first step.”

“I believe you are frightened of her. You do not think you can contend with her.”

“I know nothing of the matter. If she truly has such power, then it would indeed be difficult. I see no shame in admitting it. Darkness is strong. But I have contested such people before, and, I think, have had as many victories as defeats. Now, tell me. What does she have of yours?”

I told him I did not understand the question but when he explained, I described the way she had scratched at my face with her nails and pulled some of my hair from my head. I had hardly spoken before he walked across to me. Before I could react in any way, he drew out a knife and grabbed me by the hair, dragging the knife across the back of my hand in one swift movement. Then he simply tore a lock from my head.

I jumped up cursing him with all my strength and inventiveness, the magic of his voice gone in an instant from my mind. Greatorex, however, merely resumed his seat as though nothing of importance had passed, and sat waiting for me to control myself.

“My apologies,” he said when I had calmed. “But I needed blood and hair in the same circumstances in which she took it. The more painful the taking, the more powerful the relic. I believe that may be why such power is attributed to the relics of saints, and why the remains of martyrs who died in great agony are considered the most potent.”

I clutched my head with my bloody hand and glared at him. “Papist nonsense,” I growled. “What now?”

“Now? Now you go away for a few hours. To be certain that you are indeed bewitched, rather than merely believing so, and to discover what are the forces ranged against you, I need to cast your horoscope. It is the surest, indeed it is the only, way of penetrating the darkness. If only the courts would make more use of people like myself, then the process of the law would be that much the surer. But in this foolish age, it is frowned on. So much the worse for the age.”

“I was told no witch has ever been caught by the law. Do you believe that?”

“Some have no doubt been punished by accident. But can the law apprehend such people if they do not wish it? No. I cannot credit it.”

“So these women who have burned of late? They were falsely accused?”

“For the most part. Not deliberately, I am sure. There is too much evidence of the devil’s presence among us for their existence to be gainsaid. Any sensible man must conclude that the powers of evil have been trying to seduce Christian women, taking advantage of the troubles that have so stirred the souls of men. Once authority is broken, Satan sees his chance. Besides, the only sensible argument against witchcraft is that women do not have souls, and therefore have nothing to trade with the devil. But this is flatly contradicted by all authority.”

“Nothing can be done, you think? Such people cannot be stopped?”

“Not by you lawyers.”

“How do you know I am a lawyer?”

He smiled, but ignored the question. “The whole of existence is a contest between light and dark. All the battles that are important for mankind have been waged without most people even knowing they were taking place. God has given special powers to his servants on earth, the magi, white witches, adepti, call them what you will. They are men of secret knowledge charged with contending with Satan from generation to generation.”

“You mean alchemists, people like that?”

He looked scornful. “Once, maybe, I meant such people. But their skill and power is waning. They seek now to explain what is, not to explore its power. Alchemy is now a mechanical trade, full of brews and potions which will be able to explain how things are made, but loses sight of the greater questions, of what they are for.”

“You are an alchemist?”

He shook his head. “No. I am an astrologer and, if you will, a necromancer. I have studied the enemy, and I know his powers. My skills are limited, but I know what I can do. If I can help you, I will. If not, I will tell you so.”

He stood up. “Now, you must give me the information I require, then leave me in peace for a few hours. I need the exact time of your birth, and the place of it. I need the time and place of your conjunction with this girl, and the times of your dreams and encounters with the animals.”

I gave him all that he required, and he dismissed me to walk around the village, which I was quite happy to do, for I knew it had been the scene of one of the battles of the war, in which my father had played a distinguished and noble role by advising the king so well that the day ended with the capture of all the enemy’s cannon and the death of much of his force. Had the king kept my father close to him, rather than relying on the advice of better-born but less experienced men, the result might have been different. But the king came increasingly to rely on cowardly pen-pushers like Clarendon, who wanted merely to surrender, not to fight.

It is low-lying, lush land around the northern part of Oxfordshire, fine countryside for crop and cavalry, and its richness could be seen even when all was dead, the fields brown and still and the trees stripped of their leaves for winter. The hills give some concealment to troops, but do not greatly impede their movement, and the woods are small in scale and easily skirted. I walked out of the village and up the river, imagining in my mind how the two armies had slowly edged their way upstream, the king on one side, General Waller and the rebels on the other, watching each other like cocks in a ring for a slip which would give the slightest advantage. It was my father who gave the advice which turned the day, encouraging the king to move the van forward, and advance the rear at a slower pace, opening up a gap in the middle which he knew a man like Waller would not be able to resist. Sure enough, Waller sent a good portion of his horse and all his cannon over the little bridge at Cro-predy, and they were still in disarray from breaking ranks to cross when the good Earl of Cleveland, warned of the tactic, fell upon them and cut them to ribbons.

It must have been a wonderful sight to have beheld; to have seen the cavalry, so far from their current perfumed dissolution, charging in perfect order, their sabers glistening in the sun, for I remember my father saying that it had been a warm, cloudless day of midsummer.

“Tell me,” I asked of a laborer who passed me by, giving me the downcast look of sullen suspicion which all villagers adopt with foreigners. “Where is the tree the king dined under the day of the battle?”

He scowled at me, and made to sidle past me, but I grabbed him by the arm and insisted. He nodded in the direction of a small lane. “There is an oak tree in the field at the end of that track,” he said. “That is where the tyrant ate.”

I struck him, full in the face, for his impudence. “Mind your tongue,” I warned him. “You will not talk like that in my presence.”

He shrugged, as if my reproof was of no importance to him at all. “I speak the truth,” he said, “as is my duty and right.”

“You have no rights and your sole duty is to obey,” I replied incredulously. “The king was fighting to save us all.”

“And on that day all my crops were trampled, my son killed and my house ransacked by his troops. What cause do I have to love him?”

I moved to hit him again, but he guessed my intention and shrank back like a dog that has been beaten too often, and so I waved the miserable creature to be out of my sight. But he had spoiled my mood; my plan of standing where the king had stood, so I could breathe in the atmosphere of the time, seemed less appealing now, and after a moment’s hesitation, I turned back to the inn in the hope that Greatorex had finished his task.

He had not, and he made me wait a good hour before he came down the stairs bearing the sheets of paper which, supposedly, bore all my past and future on them in his little squiggles. His attitude and mood had changed, no doubt to frighten me and thus put up his fee; whereas before he had been relaxed and, I think, treated my tale with less than complete seriousness, now he had a heavy frown, and an air of the greatest concern.

I had never troubled before, and have troubled little since, with astrology. I care not to know what the future brings for, by and large, I already know. I have my place and in the fullness of time, tomorrow or thirty years hence, I shall die, as God wills. Astrology is of use only to those who do not know their position, or what it will be; its popularity is a mark of a people in distress and a society in torment. No doubt that is why such people as Greatorex were so much in demand during the troubles, for then a man could be a grandee one moment and less than nothing the next. I have no doubt that if the leveling principle prevails amongst us, and more men claim advancement merely for merit, then the fortunetellers will profit the more. Certainly, that was why I needed him then, and why I dismissed such people when I needed them no longer. No man who truly accepts the will of God can attend to astrology, 1 now think, for whatever happens is the goodness of Providence; if we accept that, we should not want to know more.

“Well?” I asked when he had composed his papers before me. “What is the answer?”

“It is disconcerting and worrying,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. “And I hardly know what to make of it. We live in the strangest of times, and the heavens themselves bear witness to great prodigies. I myself know this; there is a great teacher, far greater than I can ever be, who might explain it to me if I can find him; I have traveled from Ireland for that express purpose, but so far with little success.”

“Times are hard indeed,” I said dryly. “But what about my chart?”

“It disturbs me greatly,” he said, peering at me as though I was newly introduced to him, “and I scarcely know how to advise you. It seems you were born for a great purpose.”

Perhaps this is the currency of all soothsayers, I do not know, but I felt that he was saying the truth, and I felt that it was so; what greater purpose was there, after all, than the one I had taken on myself? Greatorex’s confirmation of it bolstered my strength greatly.

“You were born on the day the battle of Edgehill was fought,” he continued, “a strange and frightening day; the skies were in disarray, and portents abounded.”

I did not point out that you hardly needed to be an adept to see that.

“And you were born not greatly distant from the battle,” he continued. “Which means your chart was affected by the events which went on around you. You know, of course, that the chart of the querent intersects with that of the country in which he is born?”

I nodded.

“So, you were born a Scorpio, with your ascendant in Libra. Now, as far as the question you pose is concerned, you asked it at exactly two o’clock, and it was for that time that I prepared the horoscope. The best sign of witchcraft is if the lord of the twelfth house be in the sixth, or if one planet be lord of the ascendant and the twelfth, which may happen when the proper ascendant may be intercepted, then it may be witchcraft. If the converse applies, however, and the lord of the ascendant be in the twelfth or sixth, then it shows that the querent occasioned his problems by his own willfulness.”

I sighed heavily, beginning to regret having placed myself in the hands of a canting magician. Evidently Greatorex perceived my disdain.

“Do not dismiss this, sir,” he said. “You think this is magic, yet it is not. It is the purest of science, the only way man has to penetrate the secrets of the soul and of time itself. Everything is performed through the finest of calculations, and if it is the case that the lowest is joined to the highest, as all Christians must believe, then it is obvious that the study of the one must reveal the truth of the other. Did not the Lord say, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs’? Genesis 1:14. That is all astrology is; reading the signs that God in his providence has given us to guide our way if we will only take notice of them. Simple in theory, though hard in practice.”

“I do not for a moment doubt the truth of it,” I said. “But the details weary me. It is the answers that give me greatest concern. Am I bewitched or not?”

“You must let me answer in full, for a partial answer is no response at all. It is the conjunction of your birth chart with the transitional chart which is of the greatest concern to me; for they are strangely at odds. Indeed, I have never seen the like before.”

“So?”

“The transitional chart indicates clearly that some form of enchantment is present, for Venus, which rules your twelfth house, is most firmly in the sixth.”

“So the answer is yes.”

“Please; be patient. Your birth chart also places the ascendant in the twelfth, which indicates that you are inclined to be the author of your own misfortunes. The opposition of Jupiter and Venus makes you prone to magnify your problems without justification, and the conjunction of the moon in the ninth house and in Pisces means you are liable to fantastical notions that lead you into rash acts.

“Which indicates the need for caution in this matter, and the most cautious move you can make is to acknowledge your fault. For you are at fault, and her anger has the force of justice behind it, whatever she might be. The easiest solution is not to fight it, but to ask forgiveness.”

“And if she refuses?”

“She will not if your contrition is genuine. I will make it the more plain. The indicator of the enchantment is in exact opposition to the conjunction of your troubles caused by Mars in the second house.”

“And what does that mean?”

“That means the two aspects of your life are one and the same. Your fear of bewitchment and what you tell me of your other troubles are intimately connected, so much so that the one is the other.”

I stared at him in astonishment, for he had said the same of my chart as Thomas had said of my dream. “But how can that possibly be? She never knew my father, nor could she possibly have known him. Surely her power is not such that she can intervene in affairs of that importance.”

He shook his head. “I state the situation, I cannot offer an explanation. But I do urge you to take my advice. This girl—this witch as you call her—is more powerful than any I have ever encountered.”

“More than you.”

“Far more than me,” he said solemnly. “And I am not ashamed to admit it. I would no more go against her than I would jump off the tallest cliff. And nor should you, for any victories will be illusory, and defeat will be total. Any counter-magic I can offer is unlikely to be of use, even if it has a temporary effect.”

“Give it to me anyway, so I know what to do.”

He thought for a moment, as if doubting my sudden enthusiasm. “Do you give me your solemn word that you will take my advice and approach the girl first?”

“Of course, whatever you say,” I said hastily. “What is the spell? Give it to me.”

“You have to do it yourself.” He handed me a phial containing the hair and the blood he had so violently taken from me. “This is silver, which is the moon’s metal. It contains a simulacrum of what she has of you. You must either get your own back from her and destroy it, to remove the object of her spells, or failing that, you must take this phial and fill it with her urine or her blood. Bury it when the moon is waning; as long as it is undiscovered, she will have no power over you.”

I took the phial and put it carefully in my bag. “Thank you, sir. I am grateful. Now, what do I owe?”

“I am not finished. There is a matter far more grave.”

“I think I have heard enough, thank you. I have my potion, and want no more of you.”

“Listen, my friend, you are rash and foolish, and you do not listen well to those wiser than yourself. Please do so now, as a great deal is at stake.”

“Oh, very well. Tell me.”

“I repeat again, that the girl who is the focus of your attention is no ordinary witch, if she is one at all. You asked earlier whether I was afraid to contest witches, and the answer is no; generally speaking I am not. But in this case I am indeed very frightened. Do not engage with this creature, I beg you. And there is one other thing as well.”

“And what is that?”

“Others might take your fortune and livelihood, even your life. But your greatest enemy is yourself, for only you have the power to destroy your own soul. Tread carefully. Some people are fated from the moment of their birth, but I hold that nothing is absolutely preordained, and we can choose a different path if we will. I tell you what may be, not what must be.”

“Now you are talking nonsense, to frighten me and get more money.”

“Listen to me,” he said, leaning forward and staring at me intently, using all his powers to bend me to his will. “The conjunction of your birth is strange and frightening, and you should beware. I have seen it only once before. I do not wish to see it again.”

“And that was?”

“In a book I was allowed to see only once. It belonged to Placidus de Tito, and he had it by descent from Julius Maternus himself, the greatest magus of them all, perhaps. In it, there were many horoscopes, drawn from many periods.

It had the birth charts of Augustus and Constantine, of Augustine and many, many popes. There were soldiers and churchmen and politicians and doctors and saints. But only one did I see which was like yours and you must take warning from it, if you can and if you will. I tell you again that if you do not heed my warnings, then far more than your life is at risk.”

“And whose horoscope was it?”

He looked at me gravely, as though afraid to speak. “It belonged to Iscariot,” he said softly.

I am quite prepared to admit that I left that man shaken to the depths of my soul, terrified at what he told me and perfectly under his spell. I will even say that it took some considerable time before I recovered my balance, and was able to dismiss most of what he said as a tissue of nonsensical babblings. I give him full credit for his skill, for he had mixed a little knowledge with a great deal of impudence to forge a weapon of great power, able to command him large sums of money from the credulous. After a while, I was even able to laugh at the way he had imposed himself upon me, for I had quite believed him; he had sensed my fear and concern, and had exploited my worries to enrich himself.

How he did this, how all these people act, is clear after a little thought; his questioning taught him all he needed to know, and he then wrapped up in his magical words what I had already said, mixing it in with the sort of common advice my mother might well have given me. Add all this to obscure references to occult texts, and you have the perfect fraud—it is easy to succumb, and requires great effort of character to resist.

But resist I did, although I considered that there were a few nuggets among the dross I had received. To begin with, the very idea of begging that girl’s pardon disgusted me, but wiser counsels prevailed as I lurched my way back to Oxford. What was my purpose, after all, but to remove the stain on my family and recover what was mine? If this girl was in some way bound up in that, then the sooner her malign influence was removed the better. I had, in fact, little faith in the man’s magic; he had told me little that was remarkable, and much which was clearly wrong. I might have to resort to his spells, but I had little confidence in them and decided that, painful though it might be, an approach to the girl was the most likely, and the most direct, way of removing the problem.

Nonetheless, I decided first to discuss my investigations with Thomas and went to see him immediately on my return to see how his campaign was faring. I did not get around to my own problems for some time, so deep was he in misery. I learned then that my stratagem for helping him had not been as effective as I had desired, for Dr. Grove had dismissed Sarah Blundy when the rumors about his morals began to spread, and his action was seen as a sign of resolute sacrifice rather than an admission of guilt.

“Already they are saying that he is likely to get the living,” Thomas said gloomily. “Of the thirteen senior Fellows, five have already offered their support to him, and some of those 1 counted on do not look me in the eye anymore. Jack, how could this have happened? You know what he is like, more than most people. I asked the warden for reassurance only this morning, but he was stiff and unfriendly to me.”

“It is the changing times,” I said. “Remember, many of Grove’s old friends are in positions of influence close to the government. Even Warden Woodward must beware of displeasing the powerful at such a time. He was put in by Parliament and must give regular signs of conformity himself, lest he be put out again by the king.

“But don’t despair,” I said heartily, for his long face and heavy sighs were beginning to grate upon me, “the battle is not yet lost. You have a few weeks yet. You must keep cheerful, as there is nothing people like less than seeing reproach in a face at every meal. It will harden their hearts against you even more.”

Another heavy sigh greeted these words of wisdom. “You are right, of course,” he said. “I will do my best to look as though poverty was nothing to me, and seeing the lesser man win gave me the greatest of pleasure.”

“Exactly. Just what you must do.”

“So distract me,” he said. “Tell me your progress. I trust you paid my respects to your mother?”

“I did indeed,” I replied, even though I had forgotten, “and although I was not best pleased to see her, I learned much of interest from the trip. I have discovered, for example, that my own guardian, Sir William Compton, was persuaded to connive with my uncle to defraud me.”

I said it with as much levity as I could manage, although bitterness gripped my heart as I explained the situation to him. Typically, he chose to search for a kindly explanation.

“Perhaps he thought it for the best? If, as you say, the estate was indebted, there was a risk you would be thrown into a debtors’ prison the moment you reached your majority, then it was surely a kindness on his part.”

I shook my head vehemently. “There is more to it, I know it,” I said. “Why was he was so willing to believe that my father, his best friend, was guilty of such a crime? What had he been told? Who had told him?”

“Perhaps you should ask him.”

“I intend to do just that, when I am ready. But first I have some other matters to attend to.”

I found Sarah Blundy late that evening after a long wait; I had thought of going to her abode, but decided that I could not face mother and daughter together, and so stood at the end of the alley for upward of an hour before she emerged.

I do not mind admitting that my heart was beating fast as I approached, and that the wait had put me in a foul temper. “Miss Blundy,” I said as I walked up behind her.

She spun round quickly and took a few steps backward, her eyes instantly blazing with the most vicious hatred. “Keep away from me,” she spat, her mouth curled up in an ugly snarl.

“I must talk with you.”

“I have nothing to say to you, nor you to me. Now leave me in peace.”

“I cannot. I must talk to you. Please, I beg you, hear me out.”

She shook her head and made to turn away and continue her journey. Much as I hated to do so, I ran round in front of her to block her path, and assumed the most supplicatory of expressions.

“Miss Blundy, I beseech you. Listen to me.”

Perhaps my expression was more convincing than I thought, for she stopped and, assuming a look of defiance—mingled, I was glad to see, with some fear—waited.

“Well? I am listening. Speak, then leave me in peace.”

I took a deep breath before 1 could bring myself to utter the words. “I have come to beg your pardon.”

“What?”

“I have come to beg your pardon,” I repeated. “I apologize.”

Still she said nothing.

“Do you accept my apology?”

“Should I do so?”

“You must. I insist upon it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You will not refuse. You cannot refuse.”

“I can easily do so.”

“Why?” I cried. “How dare you talk to me in this way? I have come here as a gentleman, though I had no need to do so, and abased myself to acknowledge my fault, and yet you dare to refuse me?”

“You may have been born a gentleman; that is your misfortune. But your actions are those of one far lower than any man I have ever known. You violated me, although I gave you no cause to do so. You then spread foul and malicious rumors about me, so I am dismissed from my place, and jeered at in the streets, and called whore. You have taken my good name, and all you offer in return is your apology, said with no meaning and less sincerity. If you felt it in your soul, I could accept easily, but you do not.”

“How do you know?”

“I see your soul,” she said, her voice suddenly dropping to a whisper which chilled my blood. “I know what it is and what is its shape. 1 can feel it hiss in the night and taste its coldness in the day. I hear it burning, and I touch its hate.”

Did I, or anyone else, need a franker confession? The calm way she confessed to her power frightened me mightily, and I did my best to summon the contrition she wanted. But she was right on one score—I felt little; her devils made her see true.

“You are making me suffer,” I said in desperation. “It must stop.”

“Whatever you suffer is less than you deserve until you have a change of heart.”

She smiled, and my breath caught in my throat as I saw the look on her face, for it confirmed everything I had feared. It was the clearest admission of guilt that any court of law ever heard, and I was only sorry that there was no one else around to witness that moment. The girl saw that I had understood, for she pitched up her face and let out a peal of laughter.

“Leave me be, Jack Prestcott, lest worse befall you. You cannot undo what has been done; it is too late for that, but the good Lord punishes those who transgress and will not repent.”

“You dare speak of the Lord? How can you even utter His name?” I shouted in horror at the blasphemy. “What are you to do with Him? Talk of your own master, you fornicating witch.”

Straightaway, her eyes flashed with the darkest anger, and she stepped forward and struck me on the face, grabbing my wrist and pulling my face to her own. “Never,” she hissed in a dark voice which seemed more like that of a familiar than her own, “never talk to me like that again.”

Then she pushed me away, her breast heaving with emotion, while I too was winded by the shock of the assault. Then, lifting her finger at me in a warning, she walked off, leaving me trembling in the middle of the empty street.

Less than an hour later, I was seized by a powerful griping of the guts which left me curled up on the floor, vomiting out my stomach so violently I could not even cry out in pain. She had renewed her attack.

I could not talk to Thomas about this matter; he could not give me any help at all. I doubt that he even believed in spirits; certainly he was of the opinion that the only proper response was prayer. But I knew that this would be insufficient; I needed a powerful counter-magic fast, and there was no means of getting it. What was I to do, run after Blundy and ask her if she wouldn’t mind pissing in the bottle Greatorex had given me? Unlikely to be successful; nor did I feel like breaking into her cottage and ransacking it for the charm the Irishman said she must be using against me.

I must point out one thing here, which is that my account of my talk with Blundy is accurate in every single detail; it could hardly be other, for her words were engraved on my mind for years after. I say this, because it contained confirmation of everything I knew, and justification of everything that occurred thereafter. There is no room for doubt or misinterpretation—she threatened me with worse and she could hardly do me harm in any other way except through her magic. I do not need to persuade or assert on this matter—she admitted it quite freely when she had no need to do so, and it was only a matter of time before she made good on her promise. From that moment I knew that I was engaged in a battle which would end in the destruction of one or the other. I say this plainly, for it must be understood that I had no choice in what I did—I was desperate.

Instead of Thomas, I went to see Dr. Grove, for I knew that he still believed in the power of exorcism. He had once lectured us about this, when he had heard of an affair of sorcery in nearby Kineton when I was about fifteen. He warned sternly about dabbling with the devil and that evening, most strangely and generously, led us in prayer for the souls of those suspected of compacting with darkness. He told us that the invincibility of the Lord can so easily turn back Satan’s powers, if it is genuinely desired by those who have delivered themselves into His arms, and it was one of his major contentions with the Puritans that, by disparaging the rite of exorcism, they not only lowered the priesthood in the eyes of the population (who continued to believe in spirits whatever their ministers said) but also removed a potent weapon in the never-ending battle.

Apart from catching a glimpse in the distance when once I was walking down the High Street a few months earlier, I hadn’t cast eyes on him for nearly three years and I was surprised when I entered his presence once more. Fate had been kind to him. Whereas I remembered a man barely enough fed, with threadbare clothes a size too big for him and a mournful expression on his face, now here before me was a roly-poly character evidently too eager to make up for lost time in the matter of food and drink. I liked Thomas and wanted only the best for him but I felt then he was wrong in thinking Grove unqualified for the parish of Easton Parva. I could see him already, rolling down to the church after a good dinner and bottle of wine, to lecture his parishioners on the virtues of moderation. How they would love him, as well, for everyone likes a character to fit the part life has allotted him. The parish, I felt, would be a happier place with Grove as its leader than with Thomas, even if it would be less mindful of the awesome fear of the Lord’s chastisement.

“I am glad I find you well, doctor,” I said as he allowed me into his room, as packed with books and as littered with paper as I recall the quarters allotted to him at Compton Wynyates.

“You do indeed, Jack, you do indeed,” he cried, “for I no longer have to teach snotty-nosed youths like yourself. And, if God’s will be so, will shortly no longer have to teach anyone at all.”

“I congratulate you on your escape from servitude,” I replied as he gestured me to move a pile of books and sit down. “You must relish your improved estate. From being a family priest to being a Fellow of New College is a grand recovery for you. Not that we were not all extremely grateful for your earlier misfortune. For how else would we have had such a learned tutor?”

Grove grunted, pleased at the compliment, but half suspecting I was joking at his expense.

“It is indeed a great improvement,” he said. “Although I was grateful to Sir William for his kindness, for if he had not taken me into his household, I would have starved. It was not a happy time for me, I’m sure you realize that. But then, it turned out to be an unhappy period for you as well. I hope that life as an undergraduate is more to your taste.”

“Well enough, thank you. Or at least it was. At present, I am in grave trouble, and I need to beg you for help.”

Grove seemed concerned at this bald statement and earnestly asked what was the matter. So I told him everything.

“And who is this witch?”

“A woman called Sarah Blundy. I see you know the name.”

Grove looked dark and angry at the mere mention, and I thought that perhaps it might have been better had I not said, but in fact I did well.

“She has caused me great grief recently. Very great grief.”

“Ah, yes,” I said vaguely. “I did hear some slanderous talk.”

“Did you indeed? Might I ask from whom?”

“It was nothing, merely tavern gossip. I had it from a man called Wood. I straightaway told him his words were shameful. I came close to boxing his ears, I must say.”

Grove grunted once more, then thanked me for my kindness. “Not many people would have had such an honorable response,” he said curtly.

“But you see,” I continued, pressing my advantage, “she is a dangerous character, in one way or another. Everything she does causes trouble.”

“The witchcraft is confirmed by astrology?”

I nodded. “I do not trust this Greatorex absolutely, but he was adamant that I was bewitched and that she was formidably powerful. And there can be no other source of it. As far as I am aware, no one else has cause to resent me in any way.”

“And you have been attacked in your head and your guts, is that right? By animals, and visited in dreams.”

“On several occasions, yes.”

“But if I remember, you had such headaches when you were a child as well, is that not the case, or is my memory playing false?”

“All people have headaches,” I said. “I was not aware that mine were of any greater intensity.”

Grove nodded. “I feel you are a troubled soul, Jack,’’ he continued in a kindly fashion. “Which distresses me, for you were a happy child, even though wild and untameable. Tell me, what concerns you, that your face is become set in such an angry expression?”

“I am under a curse.”

“Apart from that. You know there is more than this.”

“Do I need to tell you? Surely you know the disasters that have afflicted my family. You must; you were in Sir William Compton’s family long enough.”

“Your father, you mean?”

“Of course. What distresses me most is that my family, my mother in particular, wishes to forget the whole matter. There is my father, his memory weighed down by this accusation, and no one except myself seems concerned to defend him.”

I had misjudged Grove, I think, for I had a childish apprehension of seeing him, half expecting that the passing of years would be as nothing and he would again pull out his rod; it was as well that he was more able to treat me as an adult than I was to think as one. Rather than telling me what to do, or lecturing me, or giving advice I did not wish to hear, he instead said very little, but listened to me as we sat there in his darkening room, without even getting up to light a candle when the evening lengthened. Indeed, until I spoke of my troubles that evening in New College, I had not realized I had so very many of them.

Perhaps it was Grove’s way of religion that made him so quiet, for although no papist, yet he believed in the confessional, and would give absolution in secret for those who truly desired it, and whom he trusted to keep their mouths shut. In fact, it occurred to me that, if I so wished, I could at that very moment blight his chances forever and secure Thomas’s place. All I had to do was beg him to hear me, and then report him to the authorities as a hidden Catholic. Then he would be too dangerous for preferment.

I did not do so, and perhaps it was a mistake. I thought Thomas was young, and another parish would come along in due course. It is natural (so I now know) for youth to be in a hurry, but ambition must be tempered by resignation; enthusiasm by deference. I did not think so then, of course, but I like to believe there was more than simple self-interest in my decision to spare Grove from the disgrace I could have visited upon him so easily.

Self-interest there was, as I shall reveal; in fact I later wondered at the mystery of Providence which led me to him, for my distress led me to my salvation, and turned the curse under which I labored into the agent of my success. It is remarkable how the Lord can take evil and turn it into good, can use a creature like Blundy to reveal a hidden purpose quite the opposite to the intended hurt. In such things, I believe, are the true miracles of the world, now that the age of prodigies is past.

For Grove was teaching me again, in the best disputational fashion, and I never had a better lesson. Had my real tutors been so skilled, I might even have taken to my legal studies with more of a will, for in his hands I understood, if only fleetingly, the heady brew that argument can be; in the past he had confined his instruction to fact, and drilled us ceaselessly in the rules of grammar and suchlike. Now that I was a man and entered into that age when rational thought is possible (a sublime state, given to man alone, and denied by God’s will to children, animals and women), he treated me as such in matter of education. Wisely, he used the dialectic of the rhetor to examine the argument; he ignored the facts, which were too tender in my mind, and concentrated on my presentation to make me think anew.

He pointed out (his arguments were too close for me to remember the precise stages of his reasoning, so I present here only an outline of what he said) that I had presented an argumentum in tres partes; formally correct, he said, but lacking the necessary resolution and thus incomplete in evolution and hence in logic. (As I write this, I realize I must have paid more attention to my lessons than I knew, for the nomenclature of the scholar comes back to me surprisingly easily.) Thus the primum partum was my father’s disgrace. The secundum was my penury through being disinherited. The tertium was the curse I had fallen under. The task of the logician, he pointed out, was to resolve the problem, and unify the parts into a single proposal, which could then be advanced and subjected to examination.

So, he said, consider afresh. Take the first and the second parts of your argument. What are the common threads which link them together?

“There is my father,” I said. “Who is accused and who lost his land.”

Grove nodded, pleased that I could remember the basics of logic, at least, and was prepared to lay out the elements in the correct fashion.

‘ “There is myself, who suffers as a son. There is Sir William Compton, who was executor of the estate and comrade of my father in the Sealed Knot. That is all I can think of at present.”

Grove inclined his head. “Good enough,” he said. “But you must take it further, for you maintained that without the accusation, the first part, your land would not have been lost, the second part. Is that not the case?”

“Yes.”

“Now, was this an indirect, or a direct causation?”

“I don’t know that I understand.”

“You posit a minor accident; that the second was an indirect consequence of the first, without examining the possibility that perhaps the link was the inverse. You cannot argue, of course, that the loss of your land caused your father’s disgrace, for that would be temporally impossible and thus absurd. But you might perhaps argue that the prospect of losing the land led to the accusation, and that in turn led to the actual loss; the idea of alienation generated the reality through the medium of accusation.”

I stared at him in bewilderment as the words hit home, for he had spoken the suspicion that had nagged at me ever since that night I spent in my uncle’s office. Could this possibly be the case? Could the accusation that destroyed my father have been prompted by nothing more than greed?

“Are you saying… ?”

“I am not saying anything at all,” Dr. Grove said. “Except to suggest that you think through your arguments with greater care.”

“You are deceiving me,” I said. “Because you know something of this matter which I do not. You would not direct me to think in this direction if you had not good reason to do so. I know you well, doctor. And your way of argument would also suggest that I must consider the other obvious form of accident.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that the link connecting the two states of accusation and alienation is the fact that my father was indeed guilty.”

Grove beamed. “Excellent, young man. I am pleased with you indeed; you are thinking with the detachment of the true logician. Mow, can you see any other? We may, I think, leave out random misfortune, which is the argument of the atheist.”

I thought long and hard, as I was pleased that I had pleased, and wished to win more praise; I had rarely done so in lessons and I found it a strange and warming experience.

“No,” I said eventually. “Those are the two main categories which must be considered. Everything else must be a sub-class of the two alternative propositions.” I paused for a moment. “I do not wish to diminish this conversation, but even the best of arguments requires some matter of fact to give it ballast. And I have no doubt that at some stage you will indicate that in crucial areas this is lacking.”

“You are beginning to talk like a lawyer, sir,” Grove said. “Not like a philosopher.”

“This is surely a question where law is applicable. Logic can only advance you so far. There must be some way of distinguishing between the two propositions, which are either that my father is guilty or that he is not. And that cannot be accomplished by metaphysics alone. So tell me. You know something of the circumstances.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “There I must disabuse you entirely. I only met your father the once, and while I found him a handsome, robust man I can hardly offer any judgment or even assessment of him. And I heard of his disgrace only incidentally when I overheard—quite by chance—Sir William telling his wife that he felt obliged to tell what he knew.”

“What?” I said, lurching forward in my seat with such violence that I believe I frightened the man. “You heard what?”

Grove queried me with an air of genuine bafflement. “But you must know this, surely?” he said. “That Sir William was the person who made public the accusations? You were in the house at the time. Surely you heard something of what was happening?”

“Not a word. When was this?”

He shook his head. “Early in 1660, I believe. I cannot really remember with any exactness.”

“What happened?”

“I was in the library, searching out a volume, for Sir William gave me free run of his books for as long as I was there. It is not the best of libraries, but it was a small oasis in the desert for me, and I drank there frequently. You remember the room, no doubt; it faces east for the most part, but turns a corner toward the end, and off there is the office in which Sir William conducted all the domestic business of the estate. I never disturbed him in it, because he always got into a fearsome temper when he had anything to do with money; it brought home his reduced state too painfully. Everyone knew to steer clear of him for many hours afterward.

“On this occasion his wife did not, and that is why I know to tell you this. I saw little, and did not hear all, but through a crack in the door as it stood ajar, I saw that good lady on her knees before her husband, imploring him to think carefully about what he was to do.

“My mind is decided,” he said, not unkindly, even though he was unused to having his actions queried. “My trust has been betrayed, and my life sold. That a man could act in such a way is difficult to imagine, that a friend could do so intolerable. It cannot go unpunished.”

“But are you sure?” my lady asked him. “To level such an accusation against a man like Sir James, who has been your friend twenty years, and whose son you have brought up almost as your own, cannot be done in error. And you must bear in mind that he will—he must—challenge you. And such a contest you would lose.”

“I will not fight him,” Sir William replied, more kindly this time, for he could see that his wife was concerned. “I acknowledge my inferiority in arms. Nor do I have the least doubt that my accusations are the absolute truth. Sir John Russell’s warning leaves no doubt of that at all. The letters, the documents, the notes of the meetings he had from Mor-land; I can confirm many of them from my own knowledge. I know his handwriting and I know his cipher.”

“Then the door shut, and I heard no more; but my lady spent the next few days in great distress, and Sir William was more than usually preoccupied. He left for London at the end of the week, in a most secret departure, and I imagined there communicated his suspicions and evidence to others in the king’s circle.”

I almost laughed as I heard this tale, for I remembered those times well. Sir William Compton had indeed left the house and galloped away one morning. The household had been somber indeed the previous few days, as though the body was taking a sickness from the head which rules it, and I remember again Sir William talking to me before he left and telling me that I must soon leave. It was time he said, to return to my own people, as I was old enough to attend to my duties. My childhood was now over.

Three days later, the day after Sir William rode away at dawn, I was put on a cart with all my belongings and sent to my uncle. I had not known anything of the storm that had been brewing under my very nose.

But the way I left Compton Wynyates is far from my story, and I must tell more of my meeting with Dr. Grove. On the matter I had called on him for, he refused to help. He would not perform an exorcism, for Blundy had reached into his soul ahead of me, and made his selfishness such that he was afraid to open himself to criticism at this most delicate moment of his career. Try as I might, I could not persuade him; all he would say was that, if I could provide him with better demonstration of the enchantment, then he would reconsider the matter. Until then, he would only offer that we might pray together. I did not wish to offend him, but I demurred at the prospect of spending an evening on my knees; besides, the news he had given me had galvanized my senses, and I was willing, for a while, to put all superlunary matters aside.

The important thing was that I now had a further connection in my chain of deceit, and I questioned the doctor closely on the matter. Documents he had off Morland via Sir John Russell. Which meant that Sir John had merely forwarded these materials from someone else. He was happy to spread the rumor, it seemed, but had not initiated it. Was that a fair inference? Dr. Grove said it sounded so, although he was sure that Russell had acted in good faith. But he could not help me further about the source. It was infuriating; one word from Russell would have saved me much trouble but I knew, from the way he had behaved in Tunbridge, that I would never hear that word from his lips. As I left Grove’s room in New College, I decided it was time to visit Mr. Wood.

In my haste and excitement, I had forgotten one important detail, and as the heavy studded door of Wood’s house in Merton Street was dragged open I remembered that Sarah Blundy was employed by the family. To my great relief, however, it was not the girl who opened, but Wood’s mother, who looked not at all pleased to see me, even though it was not late.

“Jack Prestcott’s compliments to Mr. Wood, and he would beg the indulgence of an interview,” I said. I could see she was half-minded to tell me to go away, and return only when an appointment was made, but she relented and instead gestured for me to enter. Wood came down to meet me a few moments later, also looking not best pleased. “Mr. Prest-cott,” he said when all the bowing was done, “I am surprised to see you. I wish I could have had more time to prepare for the honor.”

I ignored the rebuke, and told him that it was a matter of urgency. I was in town only for a short while. Wood grumbled like the fusspot he was, pretended that he had so many matters of import to deal with, then gave way and led me to his room.

“I am surprised not to see that Blundy girl here,” I said as we climbed back up the stairs. “She does work as a maid for you, does she not?”

Wood looked uncomfortable. “We discussed the matter,” he said, “and decided it would be best to dismiss her. Probably a sensible decision, and certainly the best for my family’s reputation. But I am not content with it, nonetheless. My mother was very partial to her. Remarkably so, in fact; I could never account for it.”

“Perhaps she was bewitched,” I said as lightly as possible. Wood gave me a look which indicated something of the same had passed through his mind.

“Perhaps,” he replied slowly. “Strange how we all end in thrall to our servants.”

“Some servants,” I said. “Some masters.”

A suspicious, furtive look showed he had seen the criticism but wished to deflect it. “You are not here to talk about the difficulty of hiring reliable maids, I think,” he said.

I told him of my problem, and something of my interview with Dr. Grove. “I know this evidence, presumably the same material Lord Mordaunt told me about, was made known to the world by Sir William. I now know he had them via Sir John Russell from someone called Morland. Now, who is Morland?”

“That, I think,” he said as he scurried around the room like a lost mole, searching through one pile of papers after another until he came onto the pile he needed, “that, I think is not a great mystery. I think this must be Samuel Morland.”

“And he is…?”

“He is now, I understand, Sir Samuel. Which is in itself quite remarkable, and gives much food for thought. He must have rendered a very signal service to be so favored, considering his past. Unmasking a traitor in the king’s ranks might well qualify.”

“Or passing forged documents which purported to do so.”

“Oh, indeed,” Wood said, nodding his head and snuffling. “Indeed, for Morland was noted for what you might call his pensmanship. He worked in Thurloe’s office for some time, I believe, and even tried to succeed him when Thurloe was thrown out in the last days of the Protectorate, if I remember the story properly. Then, I think, he threw in his lot with the Royalists. His timing was impeccable.”

“So the idea of forged documents does not strike you as being absurd.”

Wood shook his head. “Either your father was guilty, or he was not. If he was not then some device must have been employed to create the illusion of culpability. But the only way you will find out, I think, is to tackle Morland himself. He lives somewhere in London, I imagine. I was told by Mr. Boyle that he concerns himself with hydraulic engines for drainage schemes and suchlike. They are said to be most ingenious.”

I almost fell on my knees to thank the silly little man for the information, and had the grace to admit that Thomas had been correct in recommending him to me. As quickly as was decent, I left that house. The next morning, after a night made sleepless by my fevered excitement, I coached to London.

11

I had never been in a large metropolis before; Oxford was by far the grandest town I had ever entered. Most of my life had been spent either on country estates where the largest habitation was a village of a few hundred souls, or small market towns, such as Boston or Warwick, with populations of only a few thousand. London (so I am told, although I do not believe anyone knows for certain) contained then some half million people. It sprawled over the landscape like a vast, bleeding pustule on the face of the earth, sickening the land, and poisoning all who lived in it. I was at first fascinated, as I pulled up the leather to peer out of the coach window, but this amazement turned to disgust as I perceived the shocking meanness of life in such a place. I am not (as must be clear by now) much of a bookman, but there is a line in a poem which I was forced to construe by Dr. Grove in my youth, which has stuck with me. I do not recall the poet, but he was obviously a wise and sober man, for he said, “I cannot live in the city, for I have not learned to lie.” So it always will be; the honesty of the country man is at a disadvantage in the town, where duplicity is prized, and straightforwardness scorned, where all men look after only themselves, and generosity occasions only laughter.

Before I made enquiries for Sir Samuel Morland, I decided I needed as much to collect myself and prepare myself for the interview which lay ahead. So I took my pack and walked across the great thoroughfare which links London with Westminster (although there is so much construction it will soon be completely impossible to discern where one city ends and the other begins) and took myself northward to find a place which sold something to eat and drink. I soon came to a Piazza (as it is called, though square should be good enough for any Englishman) which I am told can stand equal with any in Europe. It did not seem so grand to me; the buildings were ruined by the squalor all around, of women selling vegetables, and dirt and waste trampled underfoot. There were eating houses there, but the prices were such that I removed myself in horror at the audacity of the owners. Round the corner was another street which seemed much calmer, although again I was deceived, for this Drury Lane was accounted one of the most vile and dangerous in the city, full of bawds and cutthroats. All I saw was the theater, shortly to open, and witnessed the actors in the uniforms which won them protection from the law, and mighty ridiculous they looked.

From Covent Garden, I walked to London, diverting only up a squalid alley near St. Paul’s Cathedral to leave my possessions in a dingy little tavern I had been told was both cheap and honest. It was so, but unfortunately did not accompany these virtues by being quiet and clean as well. The blankets were crawling with lice, and such evidence as there was indicated that my future bedmates were less than genteel. But I had lice in my hair anyway, so decided there was little point in spending my money on better. Then I began to make enquiries about Sir Samuel Morland. It did not take long to find his address.

It was an old house in an ancient street near Bow Church and, I don’t doubt, was one of those burned to the ground a few years later in the fire, for it was an ancient construction of wood and thatch which would have been the more attractive had any care been taken on its upkeep. That, of course, is another problem with city life, as when owners are not the same as inhabitants, then no care is taken of buildings, and they molder and decay, casting a distemper on the streets and becoming a breeding ground for vermin. The lane itself was narrow and dark from the overhanging storys above, and a riot of noise from the traders who plied their wares up and down its length. I looked for the sign of an ox as instructed, but it was so discolored that I walked up and down twice before I realized that the tattered and broken piece of wood above one door had once carried such an image on it.

When the door opened, I was not even asked my business but was invited in with no ceremony at all.

“Is your master at home?” I asked the man at the door, who was as disgraceful looking a servant as ever I had come across, covered in dirt and dressed in the foulest of clothes.

“I have no master,” said this creature in surprise.

“Forgive me. I must be at the wrong house. I am looking for Sir Samuel Morland.”

“I am he,” he replied, so that it was now my turn to look astonished. “Who are you?”

“My name is… ah… Grove,” I said.

“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Grove.”

“And I yours, sir. I am sent by my father. We own some marshland in Dorset, and have heard reports of your ingenuity in drainage…”

I could not even finish my lie, for Morland grabbed me by the hand and pumped it up and down. “Excellent,” he said, “Excellent indeed. And you wish to see my engines, do you not? Use them to drain your land?”

“Well…”

“If they work, eh? I see your mind perfectly, young man. What if this inventor is a fraud? Best to spy out the land, so to speak, before committing funds. You are tempted, because you know of the ingenuity of the Dutch, and how they have increased the yield of their land an hundredfold, and turned marsh into the richest pasture, but you do not fully believe it. You have heard of the fen drainage, and the use of pumps there, but do not know if they would be appropriate for you. That is the case, is it not? Do not bother to deny it. It is well for you that I am not a suspicious man, and freely show my designs to all who desire to see them. Come,” he said cheerfully, grabbing my arm once more and pulling me to a door, “come this way.”

In some bemusement at this behavior, I was dragged from the small entrance hall into a large room beyond. I guessed it had once been the house of a woolen merchant, and had been used for storing bales. Certainly it was very much larger than the frontage of the house suggested (these merchants always play poor, and hide their wealth from public view) and sweet and fresh from the wide-open doors at the end, which gave in so much light despite the time of year that I was briefly dazzled.

“What do you think? Impressive, eh?” he said, mistaking the hesitation this caused for astonishment. When I could see clearly again, though, I was indeed astonished, for I had never seen such a collection of bric-a-brac in my life. A dozen desks, and each one overflowing with strange instruments and bottles and casks and tools. Bits of wood and metal were stacked up against the walls, and the floors were covered in shavings and pools of greasy liquid and cuttings of leather. Two or three servants, probably those artisans able to make up engines to his designs, were at work at benches, filing metal and planing wood.

“Extraordinary,” I replied, as he clearly wanted me to express some approbation.

“Look,” he said enthusiastically, again removing the obligation to speak. “What do you think of this?”

We were standing in front of a finely carved oak table, which was empty save for an extraordinary little device, scarcely bigger than a man’s hand, of beautifully wrought and engraved brass. On top were eleven small wheels, each one carved with numbers. Below, in the body of the machine, was a long plate which evidently concealed other dials, for small holes cut in the surface revealed yet more numbers.

“Beautiful,” I said. “But what is it?”

He laughed in delight at my ignorance. “It is a calculating machine,” he said proudly, “the finest in the world. Not, alas, unique, as some little Frenchman has one, but” (he lowered his tone to a confidential whisper) “his doesn’t work very well. Not like mine.”

“What do you do with it?”

“You calculate, of course. The principle is the same as Napier’s bones, but far more ingenious. The two sets of wheelwork registers numbers from one to ten thousands, or from halfpennies up, if you wish it for finance. The handle engages this by a series of cogs, so that they turn over in the correct proportion. Clockwise for addition, anti-clockwise for subtraction. My next machine, which is not yet perfected, will be able to calculate square roots and cubes and even perform trigonometry.”

“Very useful,” I said.

“Indeed. Every counting-house in the world will shortly have one, if I can find a way of telling them of it. It will make me a rich man, and experimental science will advance in leaps and bounds when it is no longer confined to adepts in mathematical calculation. I sent one some time ago to Dr. Wallis at Oxford, as he is the best man in that business this country has.”

“You know Dr. Wallis?” I asked. “I am acquainted with him myself.”

“Oh yes, although I have not seen him of late.’’ He paused and smiled inwardly to himself. “You might say we were by way of being in business together once.”

“I will send your salutations, if you so wish.”

“I do not know that he would greatly welcome them. My thanks for the offer, nonetheless. But it is not what you are here for, I know. Come into the garden.”

So we left his arithmetical engines, thank heavens, and I followed him out into the open air, where he paused in front of what seemed to be a large barrel with a tall tube coming out of the top. This he regarded with a sad, wistful look on his face, then shook his head heavily and sighed.

“Is this what you wished to show me?”

“No,’’ he said regretfully. “This I have reluctantly abandoned.”

“Why is that? Does it not work?”

“Far from it. It works too well. It was an attempt to harness the power of gunpowder to the problem of pumping. You see, it is a great problem in mining. The distance below the earth of mines these days—sometimes four hundred feet or more—means that the effort required to extract water, which means raising it by an equivalent distance, is formidable. Do you know the weight of a tube of water four hundred feet high? Of course not. If you did, you would be astounded at the audacity of man in even thinking of the idea.

Now you see, my conception was to get a sealed container above earth filled with air which descended into the water below ground, with another linked tube coming up into the open.”

I nodded, although he had largely lost me already. “In the container, you explode a small measure of gunpowder, which causes a great rise in tension within. This rushes down the one tube, and forces the water up the other. Repeated often enough, you would get a constant flow of water upward.”

“Sounds splendid.”

“It does. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of a way of ensuring explosions of the right quality and consistency. Either the tube bursts, which is dangerous, or you get a single plume of water fifty feet high which then stops. I have a patent on the idea, so I am in no danger of being overtaken by rivals, but unless I figure out the solution a very good idea may well be wasted. I have considered using heated water, because water turned into vapors demands a much larger space—some two thousand times, did you realize that?—and acquires irresistible strength in the process. Now, if some way could be made to force the vapor down the tube, or into some pumping mechanism, then the strength required to lift the water would be there.”

“And the problem?”

“The problem is making the hot vapors go in the direction required, rather than in any other.”

I understood scarce a word, but his animation and enthusiasm were such that I could imagine no way of shutting off the flow of words from his mouth. Besides, my willingness to listen seemed to endear me to him, and thus rendered him more likely to give me the information I required. So I plied him with questions, and affected the gravest of interest in all those matters which normally would have excited nothing hut my contempt.

“So you do not have a pump which works, is that what you are telling me?” I asked eventually.

“Pumps? Of course. Pumps aplenty. All sorts of pumps. Chain pumps and suction pumps and cylinder pumps. I do not yet have an efficient pump, an elegant pump, which will perform its allotted task with simplicity and grace.”

“So what about these fens? What is used there?”

“Oh, that,” he said almost scornfully. “That is a different matter entirely. Of little interest at all in matter of technique.” He glanced at me, and remembered, again, why I was there. “But, of course, all the better an investment for that, as it requires no novelty. The problem is a simple one, you see, and simple problems should best have simple solutions. Do you not agree?”

I agreed.

“Many areas of fenland,” he said, “lie beneath the level of the sea, and properly should actually be underneath the sea, very much as the greater part of the Low Countries should be, because, if not, they would have to change their name.”

He chuckled at his little joke awhile, and I joined in politely. “You know this, of course. Now, it is easy enough to prevent more water from entering by building dikes; the Hollanders have been doing this for centuries, so it cannot be very difficult. The problem is to evacuate the water that is already there. How is this to be done?”

I confessed my ignorance, which pleased him.

“Rivers are the simplest; you cut a new river, and the water flows away. Pipes are another. Wooden pipes underground which collect the water and allow it to flow off. The problem with that is that it is both expensive and slow. What is more, the land around (you remember) is higher, as is the sea. So where is this water to go?”

I shook my head again. “Nowhere,” he said with vehemence. “It cannot go anywhere, for water will not flow uphill. Everyone knows that. This is why much of the fenland has not been completely drained. With my pumps, you see, the problem can be overcome and in the contest between man’s wishes and nature’s desires, nature can be made to yield a victory. For water will indeed flow uphill, and be carried off, leaving the land useful.”

“Excellent,” I said. “And very profitable.”

“Oh, indeed. Those gentlemen who have formed a company for the drainage of their lands will become prosperous indeed. And I hope to turn a profit myself, for I have some land there, in Harland Wyte. Sir? Are you all right?”

I felt almost as though I had been struck a heavy blow in my stomach, for the mention of Harland Wyte, my family land, the heart of my father’s entire estate, was so unexpected that it left me breathless, and I fear must almost have given myself away by the way I turned pale and gulped for air.

“Forgive me, Sir Samuel,” I said, “I am prone to this momentary light-headedness. It will pass.” I smiled reassuringly, and pretended to be recovered. “Harland Wyte, you say? I do not know it. Have you owned it long?”

He smirked cunningly. “Only a few years. It was a great bargain, for it was going cheap and I saw its value better than those selling it.”

“I’m sure you did. Who was the seller?”

But he brushed my question aside and would not be drawn, preferring to expand on his cleverness than on his turpitude. “Now I will complete the drainage, then sell it on, and pocket a handsome profit. His Grace the Duke of Bedford has already agreed to purchase it, since he already owns most of the land all around.”

“I congratulate you on your good fortune,” I said, giving up the line of enquiry and trying another approach. “Tell me, sir, how you know Dr. Wallis? I ask as he has tutored me on occasion. Does he consult you on his experimentations and mathematics?”

“Good heavens, no,” Morland replied with sudden modesty. “Although I am a mathematician myself I freely admit that he is my superior in all respects. Our connection was very much more worldly, for we both at one stage were employed by John Thurloe. Of course, I was a secret supporter of His Majesty’s cause, whereas Dr. Wallis was a great man for Cromwell in those days.”

“You surprise me,” I said. “He seems a loyal subject now. Besides, what services could a priest and mathematician provide for someone like Thurloe?”

“Many and varied,” Morland said with a smile at my innocence. “Dr. Wallis was the finest maker and breaker of codes in the land. He was never beaten, I think; never yielded to a stronger in cryptographical technique. For years Thurloe used his services; bundles of letters in code would be sent to him in Oxford, and the translations would come back on the next coach. Remarkable. We almost felt like telling the king’s men that they really should not waste their time putting letters into code at all, for if we captured them, Wallis could always read them. If he is your tutor, you should ask to see some; I’m sure he has them still, although he naturally does not advertise such records of his past activities.”

“And you knew Thurloe as well? That must have been extraordinary.”

He was flattered by the compliment, and this goaded him to try and impress me the more. “Indeed. I was almost his right-hand man for three years.”

“You are a family connection of his?”

“Oh, dear me no. I was sent as an envoy to Savoy to plead on behalf of the persecuted Protestants. I was there for several years, and kept my eye on exiles there as well. So I was useful, and became trusted and was offered the post when I returned. Which I kept until I fled when discovered passing intelligence to His Majesty.”

“His Majesty is lucky in his servants, then,” I said, despising the man suddenly for his self-satisfaction.

“Not all of them, by any means. For every loyal man like myself, there was another who would have sold him for a bag of sovereigns. I unmasked the worst of them by making sure that some of the documents Wallis produced were seen by the king.”

I was so close, I knew it. If I could only keep calm so that his suspicions were not aroused, I knew I could tease unheard-of treasures from him.

“You hint that Dr. Wallis and yourself are no longer on good terms. Is it because of what happened in those days?”

He shrugged. “It no longer matters. It is all past now.”

“Tell me,” I said, insisting, and I knew the moment the words were out of my mouth that I had pushed too far. Mor-land’s eyes narrowed, and the air of eccentric good humor drained out of him like sour wine from a bottle.

“Perhaps you have acquired more interests at Oxford than in your studies, young man,” he said quietly. “I would advise you to go back to your Dorset estate, and concern yourself with that, if indeed any such estate exists. It is a dangerous business for any man to occupy himself with matters that are none of his affair.”

He took me by the elbow and tried to guide me to the front door. I shook my arm free scornfully, and turned to confront him. “No,” I said, confident that he would be no match for me, and that I could shake the information out of him if I so wished. “I wish to know…”

The sentence went uncompleted. Morland clapped his hands, and instantly a door opened, and a rough-looking man came into the room, a dagger thrust obtrusively in his belt. He said nothing, but stood awaiting orders.

I do not know whether I could have defeated such a man; it is possible, but it was just as possible that I would not. He had the air of the old soldier about him, and was certainly far more experienced in swordplay than I was myself.

“You must excuse my conduct, Sir Samuel,” I said, controlling myself as best I could. “But your stories are fascinating. It is true I have heard many tales at Oxford, and they interest me greatly, as they must all young men. You must forgive the enthusiasm and curiosity of youth.”

My words did not conciliate him. His suspicion, once aroused, could not be laid to rest. In his years of deceit and duplicity he had no doubt learned the value of silence, and he was not to be tempted into taking any risk. “Show this gentleman out,” he said to the servant. Then he bowed to me politely, and withdrew. I was back on the noisy street outside a few moments later, cursing myself for my stupidity.

It was obvious by this stage that I needed to get back to Oxford. My quest was nearing its end and the answer to my remaining questions lay in that county. But it was too late to leave, as the next coach did not go until the following day. Had I been less exhausted, the constant scratching of the fleas in the straw pallet that was my communal bed would have irritated, and the noise of my companions disgusted, my senses. As it was, they occasioned no dismay at all, once I had securely bound my money bag to my waist, and ostentatiously placed my dagger under my pillow so that all could see that they were to beware of taking advantage of my sleep.

The following morning I dawdled like a true gentleman of leisure, slowly drinking a pint of ale with my bread, and only leaving the place when the sun was well up.

As I had nothing better to do, I played the viewer of sights, visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral—a scandalously run-down pile of stone, quite reduced from its former glory by the depredations of the Puritans, and yet more glorious in its decrepitude than the ill-formed conceit which is now being built to replace it. I watched the booksellers and hawkers of pamphlets who congregated in St. Paul’s yard, and listened to the criers and constables reciting the list of crimes and deceits which had been the previous night’s crop of malice. So many thefts, assaults, riots, it seemed the whole town must have been up all night to have committed them. Then I walked to Westminster and saw the palace and gazed in awe at the very window from which King Charles stepped to his bloody martyrdom, covered now in black crepe to commemorate that evil deed, and reflected awhile on the punishments the nation had endured because of that sinful act.

Such entertainments tired me quickly, though, so I bought myself some more bread from a street seller, and walked back through Covent Garden, which was no more agreeable to my senses now than it had been the previous day. I was hungry, and trying to decide whether to spend the vast quantity of money needed for a pint of wine in that place, when I felt a light touch on my arm.

I was not such a bumpkin that I did not realize what was probably about to take place, and I spun round and reached for my knife, then hesitated when I saw a finely dressed young woman standing beside me. She had a good face, but it was so covered in wig and beauty spots and rouge and whitening that God’s gifts to her could scarcely be discerned. Most noticeable of all, I remember, was the stink of perfume which so covered her natural aromas that it was like being in a flowershop.

“Madam?” I said coldly as she raised an eyebrow and smiled at my alarm.

“Jack!” cried the creature. “Do not say you have forgotten me?”

“You have the advantage.”

“Well, you may have forgotten me, but I cannot forget the gallant way you protected me under the stars near Tun-bridge,” said she.

Then I remembered—the young whore. But how changed she was, and though her fortunes had obviously improved, in my eyes she had not changed for the better.

“Kitty,” I said, remembering her name at last. “What a fine lady you have become. You must forgive me for not knowing you, but the transformation is so great you cannot blame me too much.”

“No, indeed,” she said, waving a fan in front of her face in an affected manner. “Although no one calls me lady who knows me truly. Whore I was, and now I am raised a mistress.”

“My congratulations,” I said, for evidently she thought this was in order.

“Thank you. He is a fine man, well connected and extremely generous. Nor is he too repulsive; I am a lucky woman indeed. With fortune, he will give me enough to buy myself a husband before he tires of me. But tell me, what are you doing here, gaping like a yokel in the middle of this street? It is not the place for you.”

“I was looking for some food.”

“There is plenty here.”

“I cannot—will not—afford that.”

She laughed merrily. “But I can and will.”

And with a brazenness which took my breath away, she linked her arm in mine and led me back to the Piazza and a coffee shop called Will’s, where she demanded a room to herself, and for food and drink to be brought. Far from being affronted at such a request, the servant obliged with obsequiousness as though she was indeed a lady of consequence, and a few minutes later we were in a commodious room on the second floor, overlooking the bustle below.

“No one will object?” I asked anxiously, concerned that her lord might send some bravoes around in a fit of jealousy. It took her some moments to work out what I meant by this, but then she laughed again.

“Oh no,” she said. “He knows me too well to think me capable of ruining my prospects by such an indiscretion.”

“May I know the name of your benefactor?”

“Of course. Everyone else does. He is my Lord of Bristol, an entertaining and well-placed favorite of the king’s, if rather old. I caught him at Tunbridge, so you see I have great reason to be grateful to you. I was there scarcely a day before I received a message asking to meet me. I pleased him as best I could, and kept him entertained, and thought that was that. The next thing I know, he wants my company back in London, and offers a handsome incentive.”

“Is he in love with you?”

“Goodness, no. But he is hot-blooded where his wife is an old prune, and he is mortally afraid of disease. It was all her idea; she spotted me in the street first of all and drew his attention to me.”

She wagged her finger at me. “You look about to launch into a sermon, Jack Prestcott. Do desist, I pray you, or you will vex me. You are too virtuous to do anything but disapprove strongly, but what would you have me do? I sell my body for my little bit of wealth and comfort. All around there are priests and ministers who sell their souls for theirs. I am in good company, and one more sinner among such a throng will hardly be noticed. I tell you, Jack, virtue is a lonely state in this age.”

I hardly knew what to say to this frank expression of depravity. I could not approve of her, but I was disinclined to condemn, for that would have meant an end to our acquaintance and, despite everything, her company pleased me. All the more so because, to show off her good fortune, she ordered the best food and wine, and insisted I eat as much as my stomach could hold and my head endure. All the while she talked to me of town gossip, and of her lover’s inexorable rise at court so that (she said) he was a serious rival to Lord Clarendon in the king’s favor.

“Of course, Clarendon is powerful,” she said, affecting to know all the secret dealings of the government. “But all the world knows that his ponderous gravity drives the king to distraction, while the gayness of Lord Bristol keeps His Majesty amused. And this is a king who always sacrifices on the altar of amusement. So Lord Clarendon is vulnerable; it will not take much to eject him, and then I will be the second whore in the kingdom, after Lady Castlemaine. It’s a pity my lord is a papist, as that is a great hindrance to him, but even that can be overcome, perhaps.”

“You think any of this might happen?” I asked, fascinated despite myself. It is odd how gossip of the high and mighty exercises such interest.

“Oh, yes. I hope so. For Lord Clarendon’s sake as much as anything.”

“I hardly think he will thank you for your solicitude.”

“He should,” she said, seriously for a moment. “Truly he should. For I have heard worrying tales. He has annoyed many powerful people and some are less peaceable and generous than my lord. If he does not fall from power, I fear worse may befall him one day.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Fall he will, but he is an old man and that is only natural. But he will always be rich and mighty and favored. Such people as he, who never raise a sword nor put their courage to the test, always survive and prosper while better men fall by the wayside.”

“Oho,” she said. “Spoken from the heart, I would say. Is this why you are in London?”

I had forgotten I had told her of my quest, and nodded. “I was here to enquire after a man called Sir Samuel Mor-land. Have you ever heard of him?”

“I believe I have. Is he not a man who concerns himself with mechanical devices? He often approaches people at court trying to beg influence for some scheme.”

“Does he have any strong patrons?” I asked. It is always well to know what you are dealing with; it would be alarming to discover that the man you wish to attack is defended by someone far more powerful.

“Not that I know of. I believe he is associated in some way with schemes for draining fenland, so he may know the Duke of Bedford, but more than that I could not say. Do you want me to find out? It would be easy enough to do, and a pleasure to oblige.”

“I would be deeply grateful.”

“Then that is all the encouragement I need. It shall be done. Would you care to come to my lodging this evening? I attend my Lady Castlemaine in the morning, and my lord in the afternoon, but the evenings are my own, and I am free to receive whomever I like. That is our understanding, and I must invite people, if only to show that I am keeping him to our agreement.”

“It would be a pleasure.”

“And now, I hope you are refreshed and prepared, as I must leave you.”

I stood up and bowed deeply to thank her for her kindness, and was bold enough to kiss her hand. She laughed with merriment. “Stop, sir,” she said. “You are being deceived by appearances.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You are more a lady than many I have met.”

She blushed and made fun of me to cover her pleasure at the compliment. Then she swept out of the room, accompanied by the little black servant given to her as a present and who had been there throughout our interview. Her lord was easygoing and gracious, she said, but there was no need to risk his displeasure unnecessarily.

Itwas already darkening, and cold, so I passed the hours in a coffee shop near St. Paul’s, reading the journals and listening to the conversation of others, which filled me anew with disgust for the city and its inhabitants. So much bravado, so much bragging, so much time wasted in idle, foolish talk designed for nothing but to impress their fellows and impose on their betters by pretense. Gossip in the town is a commodity, to be bought and sold; if it is not possessed, then it is fabricated, like coiners make specie out of dross. I was at least undisturbed, for no man there sought my company and I was truly glad it was so; while others now habitually frequent these shops, and lower themselves in what they call good company, I shun the vulgar and public places.

The time passed, if only slowly, and eventually the hour of my appointment came. I was apprehensive of the meeting, despite our differing stations in life which should have ensured my comfortable superiority. But London is corrosive to deference. Who you are is less important than what you seem; a fraudster of no family can impose himself on a gentleman from an ancient line simply by being better dressed and having a winning manner. For my part, I would reestablish the rules the great Queen insisted upon; no merchant should be allowed to dress as a gentleman, and should pay the price for any impudent imitation, for it is fraud and should be punished as such, just as it is fraud for whores to disguise their nature.

Vice had brought great rewards in Kitty’s case and, though I was loath to admit that good can come from bad, she lived in a fashion which showed a great deal of what we are now taught to call gout. I am glad, I must say, that we English are still robust enough to need to borrow words from the French for such nonsense. While many of her fellow laborers for Venus would have flaunted the spoils of conquest, she lived simply, with solid oak furniture, rather than the gilded stuff of the foreigner; simple arras on the walls to keep in the warmth, not some gaudy tapestry. The only piece of gross vanity was a portrait of herself on one wall, impudently matched to one of her lord on the opposite, as though they were husband and wife. That, I felt, was insulting, but she assured me when she saw my disapproval, that it was a gift and she could do no other.

“Jack,” she said when we had greeted each other and sat down, “I must talk to you seriously for a moment.”

“By all means.”

“I must ask you for a great courtesy, if you please, in return for giving you the information you require.”

“A courtesy is yours for the asking,” I said, slightly ruffled, “without the need to bargain for it.”

“Thank you. I wish you to promise never to reveal where we met.”

“Of course,” I said.

“It never happened. You may have met a young whore on the road in Kent, but that was not me. I now come from a good, but poor family in Herefordshire, and was brought to London by my lord as a distant relative of his wife’s family. Who I was, and what I was, is unknown, and must remain so.”

“It does not seem to have done you a great deal of harm.”

“No. But it would, when his protection is withdrawn.”

“You think of him so?”

“Of course. He will not be cruel, I think. He will settle an annuity on me and already I have saved a good amount of money. By the time I am too old, I will have the means to support myself. But what then? I must marry, I suppose; but I will not get a good bargain if my past is known.”

I frowned at this. “You propose to marry? Do you have a suitor?”

“Oh, plenty,” she said with a pretty laugh. “Although none has dared to come forward; that would be far too audacious. But a woman of some property, as I will be, who can offer a connection to one of the most influential men in the kingdom? I am a prize, unless someone destroys my chances through careless talk. I cannot say marriage appeals, however.”

“For most women it is a dream.”

“To hand over my hard-earned fortune to my husband? Be unable to do anything without his permission? Risk being disinherited of my own money when he dies? Oh, yes. A wonderful dream.”

“You are making fun of me,” I said gravely.

She laughed again. “I suppose. But my position in my future husband’s household will be stronger if I am Katherine Hannay, daughter of John Hannay, esquire of Hereford, than formerly Kitty the whore.”

I must have looked despondent, for it was not easy to comply. Suppose I heard that she was to marry a gentleman, even if not of my acquaintance? Was it not my duty to warn him? Could I stand by as a man put his name at risk, and lived forever under the threat of exposure?

“I do not ask your approbation, nor your patronage. Merely your silence,” she said softly.

“Well,” I said, “it seems we live in an age where whores become ladies, and ladies play the whore. Family counts for nothing, and appearance is all. I cannot say you would not make as good a wife as many a real lady. And so I give you my word, Miss Hannay of Hereford,”

I gave her a lot with those words, and she appreciated it, and it was with a heavy heart indeed that I felt obliged to go back on them in later years, when I heard that she was to marry Sir John Marshall, a gentleman of some fortune in Hampstead. I anguished greatly over what to do, and with the very greatest of reluctance concluded that my duty could not avoid the necessity of writing to the man and telling him what I knew of the woman who threatened to impose herself on his name.

That, fortunately, was all in the future; for then she was deeply grateful to me, and would not have assisted me otherwise.

“I hope my little discoveries can repay this second kindness you have given me. I doubt it very much, but I will tell you what I have found out, and later I will introduce you to Mr. George Collop, who has agreed to come and take some refreshment.”

“Who is he?”

“He is the receiver-general of the Duke of Bedford. A powerful man, as he has direction of one of the greatest fortunes in the land.”

“I hope he is honest, then.”

“He is. And loyal to a fault. And able as well. Which is why he is paid near a hundred pounds a year in hand, with all his costs and living on top of that.”

I was impressed. My father had always done his own administration, and in any case could not have afforded to pay anything like that to a single servant.

“For all that, there are many people who would willingly pay him double, for he has made the duke even richer than he once was. It is said that His Grace will scarcely buy a new pair of hose without asking Mr. Collop’s opinion first.”

“What is his connection with Sir Samuel Morland?”

“Fens,” she said. “He is in charge of the duke’s involvement in draining the fenland. He knows more about it than anyone, and so knows a great deal about Sir Samuel.”

“I see. What else have you discovered for me?”

“Not so very much. This Morland has acquired some pensions and sinecures since His Majesty returned, but boasted of many more which were not given him. It seems he considered that he did such a service that no reward would be great enough. However, my lord does not think much of this assessment.”

“You must be clearer with me, Kitty,” I said. “This is, or may be, a legal matter. I cannot leave anything bound up in the obscurity of dark words.”

“I had this from my lord this afternoon,” she said. “You know, I am sure, that he was one of the king’s most loyal followers, and endured years in penury and exile for his sake. He does not look favorably on those who switched their allegiance at the last moment. He says that he knows for sure that Morland encountered Lord Mordaunt when both were in Savoy. He was involved in the arrest of Mordaunt and other conspirators and took part in the trial at which Mordaunt was acquitted. My lord also mentioned to me that of Morland’s rewards and pensions, nearly all have been won at the specific request of Lord Mordaunt. A strange courtesy to extend to a man who supposedly tried to hang you. More, indeed, something you would do for a man to whom you were connected by long friendship. So my lord said.”

I looked at her long and hard as she said this, and she nodded seriously at me. “You must draw your own conclusions,” she said. “I questioned my lord, but he would give no direct answer, saying merely that what is obvious is usually also true.”

“What did he mean?”

“He said he could not help more plainly, for it would be seen as an attack on Clarendon if he leveled accusations against Mordaunt—the two are so closely attached criticism on one is an assault on the other. But he wishes you well, and begs you take his advice. If you look hard enough, you will find proof of what he says. Jack, whatever is the matter?”

The relief I felt at those words was so great that I had to lean forward in my chair and hug myself, so near did I feel to exploding from sheerest joy. At last, I had someone who would credit what I always knew to be the truth, and at last I had the pointer I needed. Odd it was indeed to have it from such a source; that the solution, or the near solution, to my troubles should fall from the mouth of a harlot. But thus it transpired, for the angels of the Lord can take as many strange forms as the servants of the devil.

I now knew who had trumped up accusations against my father; I knew who the traitor really was, and now I needed to discover why my father was chosen out of all the possible candidates for such treatment. I was close to the point of being able to confront Thurloe with his own turpitude, and justify his death. I fell to my knee and kissed her hand, again and again and again, until she burst out laughing and pulled it away.

“Come now,” she said merrily, “what have I said that produces such adulation?”

“You have ended years of anguish, and restored the name of my family. With luck you will also have restored my fortune and prospects as well,” I said. “If anything deserves adulation, it is surely that.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said. “Although I cannot consider I have done anything of such merit. All I have done is repeat my lord’s words to you.”

“In which case I thank him through you. He must be the kindest and best master a man—or woman—could have. It may be impertinent on my part, but if the opportunity arises when it can be done without embarrassment, please convey my gratitude, and make sure he is aware that, should he require a service, I will perform it willingly.”

“I will be sure to do so. Are you staying in London long?”

“I must leave tomorrow.”

“A pity. I would like to present you to him. Next time, write to me in advance, and I will make certain you are publicly acknowledged by him as a friend.”

“A friend is too much, I think,” I said. “But I would be grateful to be seen as in his interest.”

“It shall be done. And here,” she said as she heard a heavy clumping of boots up the stairs, “is undoubtedly Mr. George Collop.”

He was a man of low extraction; that was clear from the moment he walked through the door and bowed deeply to what he thought was the lady who greeted him. His movements were awkward, his speech coarse and with a heavy Dorset accent. It seemed he was the son of a tenant farmer, and had forced his way into His Grace’s attention by his skill. All well and good, but the price was heavy, for having to listen to that rolling burr must have been tiresome indeed. It said much for his qualities as a comptroller of finance, for he had none other to recommend him.

Many years in the intimate presence of gentility had done little to soften his manners or refine his talk; he was one of the low who glory in their roughness. It is one thing to despise the effeminacy of city and court; quite another to set your face against the basic qualities of breeding. In the way he collapsed in a chair with enough force to make the legs bend, then pulled out a cloth to wipe his face from the walk up the stairs—for he was a heavy, thickset man with a red face and mottled nose—Collop made it clear he cared naught for politeness.

“This gentleman, Mr, ah, Grove,” Kitty began, with a smile toward me, “is fascinated by the fen project,” she said. “And so I asked you to meet him, as there is no one who knows more of it than you, as you oversee His Grace’s works there.”

“That’s right,” he said, and said no more, thinking it sufficient contribution.

“His father has a very boggy piece of land, and was considering whether the engines of Sir Samuel Morland would be of use. He has heard much of them but cannot tell bombast from true report.”

“Well,” he said, then stopped again, lost in consideration of such a weighty matter.

“My father,” I put in, anxious to relieve Kitty of some of the onerous conversational duty, “is concerned that the machines will involve great expense and might prove to be money put out to waste. He is extremely keen to discover the truth of the matter, but finds Sir Samuel himself less straightforward.”

Collop heaved with a brief, private amusement for a moment. “That he is,” he said eventually. “And I cannot help you, as we do not use his machines.”

“I rather gained the impression he was crucial to the project.”

“He is the sort of man to give himself airs of importance he does not deserve. In fact, he is an investor only. Sir Samuel has some three hundred acres at Harland Wyte, which will be worth ten times its purchase when the land is drained. Of course, it is insignificant compared to His Grace’s interest, which is ninety thousand acres.”

I gasped in astonishment, which Collop observed with satisfaction.

“Yes, it is a mighty undertaking. Some three hundred and sixty thousand acres in all. Barren land, which by the ingenuity of man and the grace of God will yield plenty. Already doing so, in fact.”

“Not so barren, surely? What about the inhabitants already there? There are very many of those, I think.”

He shrugged. “Some, who scratch a living. But they are removed when necessary.”

“It must be hugely expensive.”

“That it is. And many men have put money into the venture, although the reward is so certain it presents little risk, except where villagers or landowners delay the work.”

“So it is not certain, then?”

“All problems can be overcome. If squatters object, they are ejected; if landowners refuse to cooperate, then ways are found round their objections. Some straightforward, others”—here his eyes twinkled with amusement—“others less straightforward.”

“But surely no landowner objects?”

“You’d be surprised. For all sorts of mean and ignorant reasons, people have put obstacles in our way for upward of thirty years. But most are seen to now the Prestcott problem has been solved.”

My heart quickened at the words, and I was hard put not to let out some exclamation. Fortunately, Collop was not an observant man and Kitty, seeing my shock, diverted him for full ten minutes with inconsequential court gossip.

“But I interrupted you, dear sir,” she said brightly after a while. “You were telling us about your battles. Who was the man you mentioned, Prestwick? Was that it?”

“Prestcott,” Collop corrected her. “Sir James Prestcott. A thorn in our side for years.”

“He did not see the advantages of being rich, did he?” Strange how some people require some convincing.”

Collop chuckled. “Oh, no. He knew the advantage of wealth. It was his jealousy that was the problem.”

Kitty looked enquiringly, and Collop was more than happy to oblige, little aware of how he was condemning himself and others with every filthy word he uttered.

“He did not benefit as much from the division of land and feared the arrival of greater men than he in an area his family had dominated for generations. So he incited the local inhabitants to damage our works. We built dikes, the rabble came out at night and drove holes in them, flooding the land again. We brought cases against them and he, as a magistrate, found them all not guilty. It went on for years.

“Then came all the troubles, and this Sir James went into exile. But the war also made the money dry up, and in any case, part of his land cut straight across the line of a river we needed to dig, and he would not sell it to us. Without it, an entire river would have to be diverted, or some fifteen thousand acres abandoned.”

“Surely then it would have been wise to offer more?”

“He would not take it,” Collop wagged his finger with a smirk on his face. “But then the goodness of the Lord shows itself,” he said. “For what do we eventually discover when we are on the point of despair? That all the while good Sir James is in fact a traitor. My lord’s cousin, Sir John Russell, had it from Sir Samuel Morland himself, and he provided all the information we needed to make Prestcott flee abroad once more. The trustee of his property was forced to sell up to avoid bankruptcy, and we had our river dug just where we wanted it.”

I could not bear even to look at his gross, smug face any longer, and was seriously afraid that, if I heard much more, I would run him through on the spot. A red haze spread over my eyes and my head spun with dizziness as I walked to the window. I could barely think, so powerful was the pain that gripped my head, and I felt the beads of sweat running down my forehead and onto my clothes as I fought for breath. To be forced to listen as this dirty man of no name encompassed the downfall of my father to gain a profit made my soul revolt. I had no appetite to exult in the fact that I was so much closer to my goal, for to find motives so mean and tawdry made me tremble with sorrow. Now, at least, I knew why Sir John Russell had refused even to cast eyes on me at Tunbridge Wells; he could not have borne the shame and lived.

“Are you not well, sir?’’ I distantly heard Kitty anxiously enquiring, as she must have seen my face pale as I stood by the window trying to control myself. It was as if she spoke from a great distance; she had to repeat the words several times before I could attend to them.

“Yes, thank you. It is a migraine, to which I am prone. I think it must be the city air, and the heat in your apartment. I am not used to it.”

Collop at least had the grace to offer instantly to withdraw. I heard the ceremonious and courteous way in which she thanked him for calling, and summoned the servant to show him out. It was some considerable time, I think—it could have been minutes but just as easily hours—before I was able to leave that window. She had, by then, produced a cold compress which she placed on my forehead, and a glass of chilled wine to restore my senses. She was, in fact, a naturally kind woman, one of the kindest I have known.

“I must offer you my apologies,” I said eventually. “I fear I must have caused you grave embarrassment.”

“Not at all,” she replied. “You lie there until you feel able to move. I did not understand the import of the words entirely, but I could see they were a grave shock to you.”

“That they were,” I said. “Worse than I imagined. I should have known, of course, that something this mean was behind everything, but I have looked so long that its discovery took me entirely by surprise. I am not, it seems, a man for a real crisis.”

“Would you like to tell me?” she said as she bathed my forehead once more. She was close to me, and her perfume no longer repelled me, but had the precise opposite effect; the warmth of her bosom against my arm similarly excited hidden feelings deep inside me. I held her hand as it rested on my chest and drew it close, but before I could make my desires known further, she stood up and walked back to her seat, giving me a sad, and I think regretful, smile.

“You have had a shock,” she said. “It would be best not to follow it up with a mistake. I think you have more than enough powerful enemies already without seeking to make new ones.”

She was right, of course, although I could have answered that with so many, one more would make little difference. But she was not willing; that would have made no difference with the Kitty I originally knew, but I was as under the spell of the times as much as anyone. Despite everything, I could not but treat her as a woman of standing, and so desisted, even though to continue would have brought much needed release.

“So? Are you going to explain why you turned so pale?”

I hesitated, then shook my head. “No,” I said. “This goes too deep. It is not that I do not wish to confide in you, but I am anxious lest anything be known of my progress. I do not wish to forewarn anyone. But please tell your lord of my gratitude, and my intention to act on his words speedily.”

She agreed to this, and reined in her curiosity with dignity. For my part, my business was done, and I prepared to leave. Again and again, I thanked her for her kindness and her usefulness, and wished her well in her fortune. She kissed me lightly on the cheek on our parting, the first time, I believe, a woman had ever done such a thing to me, for my mother never touched me at all.

12

The journey back to Oxford gave me time to consider everything I had heard and learned, although the malevolence which had dogged me for so long continued to swirl all around. The horses slipped their harness and had to be recovered by the coachman; a sudden and unlikely storm suddenly blew up out of nowhere and turned the road into a sea of mud; most frightening of all, a huge crow flew into the carriage when one of the passengers lifted the blind, and fluttered around in panic, pecking and beating its wings against us—myself most of all—before being strangled and its corpse hurled out again. It was not only myself who saw these mishaps as more than mere accident; a minister also traveling to Oxford was similarly concerned, and even remarked how the ancients viewed such birds as evil portents, and the emissaries of malevolent spirits. I did not tell him he was nearer the truth than he knew.

This reminder of the darkness to which I was returning weighed on my mind, but I put it from me enough to turn over again and again the catalogue of misdeeds that my enquiries had brought to light. By the time I arrived in Oxford, it was all laid out and the case was as clear and lucid as any presented in a court of law. A fine speech, it would have been, although I never had cause to deliver it. I fear that I caused some consternation in the coach as we lumbered toward Oxford, for I became so involved in my thoughts that I must have talked aloud on several occasions, and made dramatic gestures with my arms to emphasize the points I was making to myself.

But for all the bravado of my mind, I knew that I was not yet finished. A perfect argument, flawless in its conception and its development, leading toward a conclusion that is unavoidable in its logical progression, is all very well in disputation where power of structure will carry all before it. It is of less use in the courtroom, whatever the rhetoricians say of their art. No; I needed testimony as well and, what was more, I needed it from someone who would match the standing of those gentlemen I would be accusing. I could hardly, after all, rely on Morland or Lord Mordaunt to speak truth, and Sir John Russell had made his partialities perfectly clear. Thurloe would not speak for me, and Dr. Grove could do me little good.

Which meant I had to see Sir William Compton. He, I was still sure, was as upright and honest a man as could be, and the thought that my suspicions about him were certainly wrong came as the greatest relief. It would have been impossible to persuade him to act dishonorably, and I was certain he consented to the sale of my lands only when he was convinced my father’s sin was so great that no further consideration need be given my family. To consider yourself betrayed by a man you called friend, this would have been a bitter blow indeed. And if he believed my father, his closest comrade, a traitor, then others would as well—that, surely, was why he was chosen to disseminate the information.

I could not go to see him directly as the weather was so bad the roads were all but impassable and, in any case, my obligations at the university were pressing. I had missed much of the term, and was forced to make amends like a sniveling schoolboy before I could go off once more. Not much was required other than my presence, but there was little I could do about it. And a week or two of quiet reflection was no bad thing, I think, even though at the time my fiery temperament naturally wanted to bring the matter to an end as soon as possible.

My few friends, by this stage, were abandoning me, so preoccupied were they by their own petty affairs. It grieved me greatly, and saddest of all was the distraction of Thomas who, when I called on him, neither asked me how I was nor how my quest was progressing. I was barely in the room before he launched into bitter complaints, revealing such a violence of soul that the ultimate outcome should not have surprised me as much as it did.

In short, it was becoming clear to him that his claims on the living were to be shunted aside in favor of Dr. Grove. The times were changing faster than he had reckoned. The new laws on conformity which the government had introduced made almost any deviation from the steady orthodoxy of the Anglican church punishable. Independents, Presbyterians, everyone but virtual Catholics (in my friend’s opinion) were to be crushed and starved, denied any possibility of preferment.

Personally, I welcomed such legislation as long overdue. The sectaries had done well under Cromwell and I could see no reason why they should be allowed to continue in prosperity now. For twenty years or more we had endured these arrogant presumptives, who had expelled and tormented those who disagreed with them while they had the power to do so; why should they now complain when such power was turned with just vengeance on themselves?

Thomas did not see the matter in such a way, of course. In his opinion, the health of the land depended on his gaining eighty pounds a year and the state of marital bliss this would bring in its train. He could not see the danger he posed, and the more it seemed his ambition would be denied him, the more it fed his antagonism for Dr. Grove, subtly metamorphosing it from disagreement to dislike and, ultimately, to a burning and violent hatred.

“It is the college,” he said. “And in particular the warden. They are so cautious; so determined not to give offense or attract the least degree of criticism from anyone that they are prepared to subsume the interests of the parish and install a man such as Grove.”

“Are you sure of this?” I asked. “Has the warden actually said so to you?”

“He does not need to,” Thomas said in disgust. “Indeed, he is too crafty a man ever to say anything directly at all.”

“Perhaps the matter is beyond his control,” I suggested. “The living is not in the warden’s gift.”

“His influence will be decisive. Lord Maynard has asked the college’s opinion before he bestows the parish on someone, and that opinion will be communicated through the warden,” Thomas said. “Lord Maynard is coming to the college soon and we must all dine together, then the senior Fellows will give their verdict. Jack,” he said desperately, “I do not know what to do. I have no other possible patron. I am not like Grove who could count on the favor of many a great family, if he would but ask.”

“Now, now,” I said cheerfully, although I was becoming irritated with him for his selfishness. “It is not as bad as that. You are still a Fellow of this college, and a man of learning and probity must always find a place for himself in the world. You must cultivate the mighty with the same enthusiasm that you apply to your studies, for the one is useless without the other. You know as well as I that association with those who can advance you is the sole means that men of worth have of gaining a place in the world. And you, if I may say so, have too much neglected this world in favor of the other.”

I meant no criticism, although perhaps it was there. Certainly Thomas bridled at my words, so delicate was his spirit and so tender to just reproach.

“Are you saying it is my own fault that I am to be defrauded in this manner? It is my responsibility that my warden advances another at my expense?”

“No,” I replied. “Not at all. Though more elegance of address might have persuaded more fellows to support your cause. What I am saying is that you have made no effort whatever to cultivate others. You must frequently hear of those with livings in their gift. Have you written to them? Taken up opportunities to give their sons tuition when they come to this town? Have you published any of your sermons and offered the dedication of them to any men of influence? Have you made the gifts and performed the attentions that create an obligation? No. You have not. In your pride you have studied and thought that enough.”

“It should be. I should not have to bow and scrape. I am a minister of the Lord, not a courtier.”

“And that is your arrogance and conceit. Why should you be so different from everyone else? Do you think your qualities so great, your virtue so large, and your learning so extensive that you can scorn to beg like ordinary men? And if your purity and loftiness do not come from unreasoning pride, be assured that that is how they must appear to others.”

It was a harsh reply, but it was necessary and, if I was aware of injuring him, I did it with the best of intentions. Thomas was a good man but not a worldly one, and therefore quite unsuited for the Church of England. I do not say this in jest; for the church is the best reflection of God’s intentions on earth, and it was He who ordered man according to His will. Thomas was obliged to apply to others for support, as those beneath him must apply to him in turn. How else can any civil society continue to work, without a constant flow of gratuity from one to the other, high to low? Did he think that the mighty would apply for the honor of giving him patronage? His refusal not only indicated his lack of humility; it was, at bottom, Godless.

Perhaps I was in error in saying what I did; certainly I was wrong to continue to drive the point home, for I am sure that it helped Thomas on to the catastrophe which played such a part in Mr. Cola’s narrative. But it is often the way with conversation, that people, having caused a hurt, try to reassure themselves by making it worse.

“Thomas,’’ I said kindly, because I thought that the sooner he was aware of the truth the better, “Grove is older than you and has a superior claim. The thirteen men who run this college have known him for years, while you are a relative newcomer. He has taken care to be pleasant to Lord May-nard, while you have not. And he has offered the college a proportion of the living, which you cannot do. I wish it were otherwise, but you must face the fact—you will not get this place as long as Grove is alive and wants it for himself.”

Had I known the outcome, of course I would not have spoken, but his mildness of manner was such that I never for a moment considered that the realization might drive him into such evil action. Moreover, had I remained in close association with him, I do not believe Dr. Grove would have died.

It is known that a resentment unexpressed grows in the soul; I certainly had experienced such a malady myself. With my counsel and restraint, Thomas’s breast would not have filled with so immoderate a hatred that he took the steps he did. Or at least, I might have discerned his mind and stopped him. But I was in prison at the time, and could do nothing to stay his hand.

I see that I have scarcely mentioned Dr. Wallis since I recounted my visit to his house in Merton Street, and I must do so briefly now to indicate the man’s bad faith. For according to Morland he had known at least something about the plot against my father, and therefore he had lied outright to me on the subject. He asked me to find him documents in my father’s possession, when he had all he needed already in his desk. I determined to confront him with this duplicity, and so wrote him a polite letter, presenting my compliments and enquiring delicately for an interview. I received a dismissive reply. So, a few days later, I decided to pay him a visit.

He was, at that stage, lodged in New College, for building works had encumbered his house and his own college had no accommodation which would match his rank. His wife had been dispatched to London, to which city Wallis intended to fly as soon as the end of term permitted. I noted with some amusement that he was now a close neighbor of Dr. Grove, as I could not imagine two gentlemen less likely to be on civil terms.

Wallis was in an ill humor, as he was a man who clearly did not relish any form of inconvenience. Being turfed out of his own lodging, virtually deprived of his servants and forced into unwanted society through having to eat in college when he could not prevail on the kitchen to send his meals up had no good effect on his mood. This I could see the moment I entered the door, and I was accordingly prepared to be maltreated at his hands. He was brutally unkind, offensive and threatening by turns, so much so that I regretted approaching him in the first place.

In brief, he upbraided me for writing to him and told me I had no claim on him at all. That he had undertaken reluctantly to oblige if I would provide him with the necessary materials, but resented mightily being harried in such a way.

“I have already told you I have nothing,” I said. “Whatever my father may have had was lost. It seems, in fact, that you possess more papers than I do, as I am told that you deciphered the documents which incriminated my father.”

“I?” he said in mock surprise. “What makes you think that?”

“Sir Samuel Morland took some letters you worked on, and passed them on to the king. They supposedly demonstrated my father was a traitor. I believe that those coded letters were forged on Thurloe’s instructions. I would like to see them so I can demonstrate this.”

“Samuel told you all this?”

“He told me a pack of lies. It is a truth I discovered on my own.”

“In that case I congratulate you,” he said, suddenly friendly. “It seems you have been cleverer than myself, for I never suspected that I was in any way duped by either Thurloe or Samuel.”

“Will you give them to me?”

“Alas, I cannot, young man. I don’t have them.”

“You must. Morland said…”

“Samuel is a great romancer. It is possible that what you say is true and that Samuel imposed himself on me in this fashion. But I have none of the originals.”

“So where would they be?”

He shrugged, and I knew from the way he moved and the way his eyes would not meet mine that he was lying. “If they still exist, I imagine Mr. Thurloe would have them. If you can find sufficient patience, I will make discreet enquiries for you…”

With great expressions of thanks on my part, and an equally hypocritical expression of admiration on his side, I left his room soon after, as convinced as I could be that Dr. Wallis had those letters close by him somewhere.

I was laid low in my bed for several days after this meeting, which distressed me. However, I knew the cause of the infirmity, and also knew well that summoning a physician would be throwing good money after bad, so I lay and suffered until the worst of the affliction was passed and my head had cleared enough for me to move. Much of the time I spent in prayer, and I found that blessed exercise a great comfort to me, calming my soul and filling me with a strange and powerful strength, enough to complete the task my father had set me.

It was the second day of March before I set out for Comp-ton Wynyates, slipping from my tutor’s bed before dawn, dressing on the landing so as not to disturb the other students slumbering within, and wrapping myself up with the thickest and warmest clothes I had. I took one of my fellow students’ pair of boots, having tried them on in secret a few days before. My need was very great. The cold was dreadful, worse than anything for many years, and without stout high leather my suffering would have been intolerable. Then I prevailed on a tradesman heading north with a consignment of gloves and other goods for Yorkshire to let me sit in the back of his wagon until Banbury, in exchange for which I pushed when the cart bogged down in the road, and took a turn driving the horses when he wearied.

From Banbury I walked, and arrived at Compton Wynyates late in the evening, well after darkness had fallen. I clapped my hands as I walked through the great front door to summon the servant that my arrival could be announced. I did so with bravado, but I was highly nervous, for I had no idea whether I would be well received. In the back of my mind all the time was the reception I had received from Sir John Russell; I could not bear to be so rejected by Sir William also.

But I was swiftly reassured, for he soon descended to greet me himself, and made a great show of welcoming me to the house. Whatever resentment he may have harbored for my name did not rise to the surface.

“I am astonished to see you, Jack,” he said cordially. “What brings you here? Surely term is on at the university and you are still a student? I am surprised you were given permission to leave the town. Such laxity never existed in my day.”

“This was a special dispensation, and I have an indulgent tutor,” I said.

“Well, I am pleased you are here,” he said. “It has been too long. We have a fine fire in the parlor, so come and warm yourself immediately. This hall is as cold as charity itself.”

I was dumbfounded with relief by this reception, and upbraided myself for doubting his kindness. Amiability was Sir William’s natural demeanor and he was very much the country gentleman in that regard. Thickset, and with a florid complexion, he had a simple directness that made him devotedly loyal to such causes and people as he clasped to his heart.

I was too cold and tired to pursue that question at that moment; rather, I allowed him to lead me through to the great fire, and sit me down within the aura of its warmth, which made such a delightful contrast with the chill of the room beyond the flames’ influence. There I was served hot wine and food by a servant, and left alone in peace until I had finished my meal. Sir William excused himself, saying he had small business that would not wait, but that he would be back in a half hour.

I was almost asleep when he returned; not that he took such a long time, but the heat and the drink drugged my mind and made me realize how dreadfully weary I was. I was also saddened as I sat there, so warm and comfortable. Not long ago, this had been my home and I found that, despite everything that had happened, I still felt it to be such. I had spent more time in the company of his family than I had in that of my own; this house I knew better than that abode which was no longer mine even in name. In a conflict of slumbering emotions I sat quietly by the fire drinking my wine, pondering such strangeness until the return of Sir William forced me back into some semblance of alertness.

It is at this point that I must return to one essential purpose of my narrative, or at least to that matter which caused me to reach for pen and paper to start with. I must discuss my dealings with Signor Marco da Cola and the worth of his narrative. As I said much earlier in this account, I find his memory a strange one indeed, for he discourses at length on the trivial, and ignores studiously matters of much greater import. I do not know and, at this great distance, I care less, why this is; my only concern here is to correct his account in those passages where I am directly concerned.

The first was that evening at Sir William’s house, for by his side when he returned to the fire was Marco da Cola.

I must assume that he had some good reason for falsifying the story of his arrival in England, for I can attest that it is erroneous. He cannot have arrived as he said; he did not come to London, then proceed more or less directly to Oxford. He was in this country many days beforehand. A strange little fellow I found him, too; his clothes, all lavender and purple with the strangest of cuts, were such as would draw attention in such a place, and the aroma of perfume that entered the room long before he did was quite unforgettable. Later, when he saw me in prison in the company of Lower, I could almost tell who my visitor was long before the jailer opened the cell door, so strong was the smell he gave off.

But I took to him, odd though he was, and only later discerned that there was more to him than instant appraisal suggested. To meet, he was short and stout, with merry eyes and an easy laugh. Everything amused him, and everything attracted his interest. He said little, not being greatly proficient in English (though much better than I at first imagined) but sat quietly, bobbing his head and chuckling with appreciation at our conversation, as though he was hearing the best jokes in the world, and the wittiest of conversations.

Only once, during that first encounter, did I even have half a suspicion there might be more to him; when Sir William and I were talking, I saw a flash in his eyes, and the most fleeting glimpse of cunning passed across that chubby, harmless-looking face. But who pays attention to such details, when all else indicates the opposite? It was a trick of the light only; a reflection of the flames in the dimness of the room, and nothing more.

As he was unwilling, or unable, to play any manful part in the conversation, Sir William and I talked instead, and gradually almost forgot the presence of the foreigner in our midst. Sir William introduced him as a man with whom he had dealings in trade, for as Master of the Ordnance (his paltry reward for his labors on behalf of the king) he was thrown in contact with many foreign traders, and Cola’s father was, it seemed, a man of great power in such matters. Moreover, said Sir William, he and his family had been good friends to the great cause over the years, and now naturally wanted to supply some of those goods His Majesty needed.

I wished them well, and hoped they would both profit from the association for, if Sir William’s position gave him little standing, it held out instead the probability of considerable wealth. A dedicated Master of the Ordnance, taking what bribes and profits came his way, could amass a considerable fortune in a short time by controlling the army’s supplies, and Sir William was not wholly discontented with his position. He had, it must be said, greater need of money than honor at that time.

I suppose I can see why the presence of such a man would need to be kept discreetly quiet, although Cola’s delicacy in hiding such matters so long after the event strikes me as being excessively fine. For Sir William (as I have mentioned) was in dispute with my Lord Clarendon, and any man who angered the Lord Chancellor had to tread very carefully in the execution of his office. It mattered not that Clarendon had so joyously looted the treasury himself since the moment the king returned; his enemies had to beware, for what was encouraged in Clarendon’s friends was used to tear down his enemies. The more isolated he became, the more the attacks on those who wished to be rid of him grew in violence. The most ordinary behavior could be turned into a weapon, for Clarendon was not a lawyer for nothing. Taking the fruits of office could, in a twinkling of an eye, become bribery and corruption, and such matters have swept many an honest person from office.

“And now, Jack,” said Sir William after we had talked awhile, “you must allow me to say something in all seriousness. And do please listen until I have finished.”

I nodded.

“You are, no doubt, all too aware of the great matter that passed between your father and myself. I would like to make it as clear that I in no wise associate you with those events, even though you are his son. You will always be welcome in this house and my acquaintance.”

Partisan of my father though I was, I was aware of the deep goodness of that statement, if it came from true sincerity. I was inclined to believe that it did, for he had not the guile to dissimulate well, nor the hardness of heart to toy so cruelly with another. This made him a loyal friend, and a bad conspirator. The simplicity of his own soul made him unsuspecting of base motives in others, and so made him the perfect instrument for those wishing to bend the truth to their own ends.

“I thank you for those words,” I replied. “I did not expect such a welcome from you. I was afraid that circumstances had engendered some bitterness between us.”

“So they had,” he replied seriously. “But that was an error on my part. I wanted you out of my sight, because I could not stand the reminder your presence brought me. I now see this was cruel. You have never done me harm, and have suffered more than anyone.”

His statement brought a tear of gratitude to my eyes, as it had been a long time since anyone had talked to me with such kindness. I knew the limits of his generosity, for he believed absolutely in my father’s guilt, and, oddly, found I honored him the more for it. It is no easy business to embrace the child of a man who you think has done you such injury.

“That is certainly true,” I replied. “And I think I have been imposed on far more than was just. This is the cause of my visit. You were the trustee of my inheritance, and yet I have no inheritance. My lands are now in other hands, and my position is ruined. You may have considered that all bonds of loyalty between you and my father were dissolved, but your trust continued in that matter. So how is it that I am penniless now? I see from your face that this question disturbs you, and I do not in any way wish to level an accusation, but you must admit it is a fair question to ask.”

He nodded soberly. “It is, although my wonder is not that you ask, but that you do not know the answer already.”

“It is my understanding that I have been left with nothing at all. Is that correct?”

“Your fortune has been much diminished, it is true, but it has not been extinguished entirely. There is enough for you to rebuild, if you are industrious. And there is no place better for making a name than the Inns of Court, and no profession more suited for amassing wealth than the law. My Lord Clarendon,” he said with a smile of contempt, “has demonstrated that beyond contention.”

“But the estate was sold, even though entailed. How could that be?”

“Because your father insisted on assigning it as guarantee for his debts.”

“He could not do that.”

“No. But I could.”

I stared at him as he admitted this, and he looked uncomfortable at feeling my gaze rest on him.

“I had no choice. Your father came to me and begged. He said it was my duty as a friend and a comrade to help him. Having tied up his lands so they could not be confiscated if he should come into misfortune, he discovered that he could not use them to raise money either. He absolutely insisted that I act on his behalf, and authorize the loan. All I was required to do was sign the papers.”

“And you did.”

“I did. And later discovered he had not played absolutely fair with me. Or with his creditors, for he had raised several loans at the same time, pledging the estate many times over. After the debacle, I found myself liable for the debts as trustee. Had I been a rich man myself, I perhaps could have assisted, but you know, I think, something of my situation. And, I must be frank, I was not in the humor to be generous at that time.”

“So the estate was dissolved.”

“No. Even so we did our best to keep it in your family. Your uncle bought it and I insisted on a clause that, should you ever be in a position to pay cash down, he would sell the land back to you. We also reached a settlement with the creditors; a generous settlement, I must say, for they accepted much less than they were owed; only some land was sold out of the family entire.”

“Including Harland Wyte, which will be the most valuable of all the land when it is drained. How come that was sold to the man who accused my father in the first place?”

Sir William looked surprised at the depth of my knowledge, and paused before he spoke again. “No,” he said after a short while. “Sir Samuel did not act with great generosity of spirit, I must say, but we had little choice. You must remember that the revelations about your father were initially known to only a very few people and it was imperative to keep it so. The moment his creditors heard a whiff of the matter, they would have swooped immediately. We needed time, and needed Morland to keep quiet. I regret to say that his consent was expensive. The sale of Harland Wyte at an advantageous price to him bought us eight weeks in which to act.”

I bowed my head in the greatest of sadness, for I did not doubt that he was telling me the absolute truth as he saw it. I was heartily glad of it; I had encountered so much duplicity in the past few months that I no longer expected to meet an honest man and, I fear, was overinclined to harbor suspicions. In his way Sir William was betrayed every bit as much as my father had been, for his goodness had been perverted to evil ends. I knew that sooner or later I would have to tell him so, lay bare the whole scandalous history and confront him with what he had done in all innocence and with the very best of intentions. It concerned me, for I was afraid it would break his heart. And I also knew that I, as much as those evil men, would have to stoke up the fires of his wrath so that he would fight to correct the injustices in which he had participated.

It was not to my advantage to pursue the conversation much further that night; I did not wish to seem overanxious and, in any case, I was desperately tired. Shortly after, then, I put on my cloak, picked up a candle and made my way from the warmth of the fire to the chamber I had always used. Presumably Sir William had roused out a servant when I arrived, for the room was already prepared for me; there was even a small fire burning in the grate, although it gave out more consolation than warmth. I shivered in that cramped little room, but nonetheless gave thanks as I knelt down to pray that I was not in one of the great, cavernous chambers more honored guests received. The Italian gentleman, I thought, would be suffering mightily that night. My devotions finished, and in that calm frame of mind which habitually comes over men of faith when they give thanks in true humility, I was in half a mind to wrap myself up as much as I could and get straight into the bed. But I was grimy from the journey and reluctantly decided to wipe my face first. A bowl of water had been placed on the chest by the great window and, after I had shuttered the casements tight, I cracked the thin layer of ice, then plunged my face into the bitterly cold water.

Then I received a rude reminder of the hydra-headed nature of my woes. Even after so many years I cannot bring myself to write down the obscene images that were conjured up in that bowl of water, illuminated solely by the flickering candle on the chest. The lubricious and foul torments presented to me were such that only the most devoted slave of Lucifer could have imagined them; to send them forth to anguish the soul of a Christian after prayer was an act of the most profound evil. The noises that reverberated through my head as I found myself leaning heavily over that bowl, desperate to tear away my eyes yet unable to move a single muscle, made me cry out with horror and terror. And yet (I confess) I was fascinated by the scenes I witnessed. Even the spirits of the pure and innocent were subjected to most violent depravity, and made to enjoy the abuse. I saw the image of my father—not he indeed, but a devil in his guise—stretched out as Sarah Blundy pleasured him in the most disgusting fashion imaginable. All sorts of demons cavorted lewdly in my sight, sure I was watching and relishing the torture they imposed. I could not speak, and could not move to take myself away from the foulness, because I was not prepared for it any more. I had grown weak, and believed that perhaps the assault was over, that perhaps the Blundy girl had relented, or given up her revenge. I now had all the evidence I needed that she had been merely preparing an ever more vicious attack. Nor, it seemed, did it involve only myself, if her diabolical master’s reach could torment those who should be beyond harm and impervious to pain.

It took the mightiest of efforts to tear myself away from that monstrous sight, to cast the bowl onto the floor and fling myself into the corner of the room, where I lay panting, unable to believe that it was all over. I lay there much of the night, I think, cowering in sheer terror lest it start again, and remained motionless until my limbs were stiff and my body icy with the cold. When I could stand it no more, and the pain overwhelmed my fear, I rose from my hiding place and spent some considerable time checking that the windows were firmly closed, and pulling the chest across the room so that the door was barred so tightly even the devil himself would have trouble gaining entry. Then I tried to sleep, afraid of the moment when the candle would finally gutter out. I had never been afraid of the dark before then. That night it terrified me.

13

I was still shaky from fear and lack of sleep when Marco da Cola engaged me in conversation the next morning. I was not greatly responsive, as I was very much preoccupied with the attack on me, but his persistent efforts eventually forced me to be as civil as possible. Looking at me with his twinkling eyes and smiling quite vacuously, he began by saying he understood that my father was Sir James Prestcott.

I fully expected that he was going to examine me on my father’s fall, so answered in the coldest manner I could. But, rather than adopting a grave and distressed face, typical of those who intend to patronize with their commiseration, he brightened considerably at my response.

“That is excellent, indeed,” he said in an accent so thick he was barely comprehensible. “Truly excellent.”

He beamed with pleasure at me.

“Might I enquire why you say so? It is not a response I have been used to, of late.”

“Because I knew your most admirable father well, a few years ago. I was greatly saddened to hear of his misfortunes. You must allow me to offer you my most sincere condolences on the loss of a man who must have been a perfect father.”

“That he was, and I thank you,” I said. I had taken a dislike to the foppish little foreigner, for such people are highly distasteful to me in ordinary circumstances. In this case, I was aware that my opinion needed revision. There were few people kind enough even to acknowledge an acquaintance with my father, let alone to praise him.

“You must tell me how you met him,” I said. “I know nothing of that time when he was out of the country, except that he was forced to sell his services as a soldier.”

“He sold them to Venice,” Cola replied, “which was grateful for them, for he was a brave man. If more people were like him then the Ottoman would not be threatening the very heart of Europe.”

“So he was valued by your state? I am glad of it.”

“Highly. And he was as popular with the officers as he was with the men; he was gallant but never foolhardy. When he decided to return to his home those of us who wished your king well consoled ourselves that our loss would be your sovereign’s gain. I find it difficult to believe that the man I knew could act meanly in any way.”

“You must not believe all the information you hear,” I assured him. “I am persuaded that my father was the victim of an abominable crime. With luck, I will soon have the proof of it.”

“I am glad,” Cola said. “Truly glad. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

“You were a soldier yourself?”

He hesitated a moment before replying to my question. “I have trained in medicine in recent years, among other things,” he said. “A most unmilitary occupation. And I occupy myself mainly with questions of curiosity. I admired your father greatly, but have never had much affection for his profession.”

And the little man walked off, leaving me to give thanks that my father’s character was such that it invariably left a favorable impression on those who encountered him, when they were unaffected by the poison of rumor.

Sir William had already left the house; he was an assiduous governor of his estate, believing firmly that it was his obligation to see to such matters himself. Besides, he always enjoyed it and would have been the happier had he devoted himself entirely to country pursuits. The profits of the court, however, could not be resisted, and at least tour times a year he had to go to London to oversee his office. But the rest of the time he was in Warwickshire and nearly every day, whatever the weather, he would collect one or two of his favorite hounds and leave the house early in the morning, to pay calls, give advice and issue orders. Around noon he would return, red-faced from the exercise, radiating contentment and satisfaction before eating and taking a nap. In the evening he would see to the paperwork which any estate of size generates, and check his wife’s governance of the household. This routine he repeated without variation every day, and I believe that every day he went to bed and slept soundly, confident of having blamelessly fulfilled all his many obligations. His life was, in my opinion, most completely admirable and content, as long as no unwelcome intrusion disturbed its placid rhythm.

Because of this I was unable to engage him in further conversation until that evening, when, his business done, he became once more the genial host. It was Cola, once Lady Compton had withdrawn, who brought up the subject of my father’s innocence. Sir William instantly looked very distressed indeed at the remark.

“I beg you, Jack,” he said sadly, “put this matter behind you. You should know that it was I who received the evidence of your father’s guilt, and I can assure you on my life that I would not have acted had I not been totally convinced. It was the worst day of my life; I would have been a happier man had I died before I discovered that secret.”

Again, I felt no anger rising in my breast as I had on so many previous occasions. I knew that this kind man spoke with the most complete sincerity. I also knew that he had been an innocent dupe, as betrayed as my father, for he had been tricked into plunging the knife into his best comrade. It was with the greatest regret, therefore, that I replied to his words.

“I fear, sir, that I will shortly require you to bear yet more distress. Because I am within a whisker of proving what I say. I am convinced that the evidence which convinced you was forged and had been concocted by Samuel Morland to protect the true traitor. It was given to you because your honesty was so unquestioned that an accusation from your lips would be the more easily believed.”

Sir William turned deathly somber at these words, and the silence in that room when I had finished was total.

“You have proof?” he asked incredulously. “I cannot believe it; to accept that a man could so coldly plot such a thing is incredible.”

“At the moment my proof is incomplete. But I am certain that when it is presented properly I will induce John Thurloe to confirm it. And if that happens I do not doubt that Morland will sell his partner in deceit to save his own neck. But I will also need you to confirm some parts of the story. I believe my father was chosen as the victim so the Russell family could remove my father’s objection to their profiteering. You are the only one who can say the information came from Sir John Russell to begin with, and that he had it from Morland. Will you say that?”

“With all my heart,” he said vehemently. “And more. If what you say is true, I will kill them both with my own hands. But please do not think badly of Sir John unless you must. I saw his face when he told me of the news, and the distress was obvious.”

“He is a good actor, then.”

“And he also pledged himself, through his family, with your father’s creditors for a while, so the estate could be sold at the best possible price. Had he not done so, you would now be in very dire straits indeed.”

That, of all things, made me angry; the idea that I was meant to be grateful to such a man was infuriating, and the cunning way he had hidden his depredations under the appearance of selfless virtue and kindness sickened me beyond belief. It was desperately hard for me to resist jumping up there and then, denouncing all the Russell family, and upbraiding Sir William himself for his foolishly trusting blindness.

But I succeeded, although I let Cola converse with him for upward of half an hour before I was confident enough to speak again. Then I merely told him that I was sure, absolutely sure, that what I said was correct. And that in due course I would prove it to him.

“What evidence do you have so far?” he asked.

“Some,” I said, unwilling to go into further details and dismay him by the fact that my case was not yet complete. “But not enough. I do not have the forged letters; when I have them I will be able to confront Thurloe directly.”

“And where are they?”

I shook my head.

“You do not trust me?”

“I trust you completely. You are the nearest thing I have on this earth to a father, now that my own is no more. I honor and reverence you for all you have done for me. And I would not for the world burden you with the knowledge I possess. I am proud to place myself in danger of assault from these men, for they know that I am on their trail. I will not place others in danger without good reason.”

This pleased him, and he told me that if my father was as guiltless as I believed, then I was a worthy son to him. Then the conversation diverted onto other paths with the Italian, a man most eager to learn about foreign lands, earnestly plying Sir William and myself with questions about the country and the way it was governed. Sir William told him much and I learned a great deal also, for although I knew that he did not like Lord Clarendon, I had thought that their dislike was mainly personal. Instead, I received my first great lesson in the politics of the land, for he told me how Clarendon, a man of little background, was so extending himself from his country estate nearby, that he was pushing his interest deep into the land usually controlled by the Compton family, up through Oxfordshire and across Warwickshire.

“He had the presumption to insist, absolutely insist, that one of the Warwick county Members of Parliament at the last election be one of his men, because he said it was vital there should be sympathetic men in the Commons to do the king’s business. As if my family does not know, has not always known, where its duties lie. He has reached an understanding with the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, and is now handing out bribes to the gentlemen of Warwickshire.”

“I understand he is in ill health,” Cola said. “If so, he cannot remain in his position for long.”

“I can only hope not,” replied my guardian. “He is out to destroy my family.”

“That is not surprising,” I said sadly. “His friends have already destroyed mine.”

We talked no more of this, as Sir William showed signs of distress at the thought, and Cola kindly began to ask about the late wars. Sir William reminisced about the battles and the heroic deeds he had seen; Marco da Cola talked of his country’s war on Crete, and its brave resistance to the brutality of the Turk. I, having no stories of daring to contribute, listened to their tales, basking in their acceptance of my presence and feeling myself a man among equals. If only, I thought, it could always be like this. Then I would be happy, and want for nothing. A fire, a glass and amiable companionship is all any man needs for true contentment. I have them all now, and the future I glimpsed that evening is every bit as good as I imagined.

I could have stayed in that house for a long time, and I was most reluctant to tear myself away; the tasks that lay before me were daunting and the prospect of renewing the struggle brought no pleasure. But I resolved that the sooner I began the better so, when Cola had retired to his chamber and Sir William went back to his office to attend to business, I slipped softly down the stairs and out of the great door.

It was entirely dark, with no moon and not even a star visible in the sky as I walked; it was only because I knew the house so well that I managed to find the track which led to the road; the small torch I had brought with me from the fire scarcely gave enough light to see more than a few yards ahead of me. It was cold as well, and my feet crunched on the frost that lay thick on the frozen ground. All around the night-birds fluttered, and the animals patrolled their nocturnal domain, searching for their prey, or trying to escape their fate.

I was not frightened, nor was I even apprehensive. I am told that this is unusual, for often we are given to know of impending danger, and our necks prickle or our scalp itches as the peril approaches. Not so in my case; I was concerned merely with finding the gate and the road to Banbury, and I had to concentrate so much to keep my feet on the path, and avoid the ditches which I remembered on either side, that I had no thought for anything else.

It was only the noise which broke that caution, and even then I did not react immediately, thinking—if I thought at all—that it was some fox or badger crossing in front of me, just out of reach of my torch’s light. Only at the very last moment did all my senses scream out that I was in mortal peril, and force me to leap bodily out of the way of the hideous fiend which rose up out of the earth and blocked my path.

It had taken the form of a man, but such apparitions are never perfect, and the careful eye can always see where the imitation fails. In this case it was the movement, all jerky and irregular, that betrayed the fact that here was a monster, not a human being. It had tried to take the form of an old gentleman, but it was covered in rancid pustules and hideous deformities, with bent back and irregular gait. And its eyes—strange this, and I never understood how it could be—were dark as pitch, but burned brightly in the dark, and I could see the flames of hell itself deep within. The noise it made as it wheedled and cajoled and tried to fascinate me into its trust was the most revolting of all. Indeed, I believe it did not speak; rather, I heard its entreaties like the hissing of a snake and the squeaking of a bat as they sounded in my head, but not in my ears. “No, Jack,” it hissed, “you must not leave yet. Please stay with me. Come with me.”

I remembered the visions I had seen the previous night, and shuddered at the implication of the words, and willed myself to ignore its importuning. I tried crossing my fingers and holding them up to its face, but this symbol of Our Lord’s suffering occasioned no more than a snigger of dismissal. I began to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but my dry mouth and parched lips allowed no sound to escape.

And so, in blind terror, I retreated back up the path, keeping my eyes on the beast stalking me and fearing that it might at any moment grab hold of me and tear my soul out of my body.

I told it to leave me in peace, but there was no response except a hideous laugh and a sucking sound like that of a bog pulling a sheep under the surface, and I felt a cold, clammy sensation on my arm as it reached out a skinny hand to grip me. I leaped back, and swung my dagger round, more in the hope of indicating my intention of resisting than with any expectation of mounting an adequate defense. But my stout-heartedness and immunity to the creature’s blandishments seemed to have an effect, for the devil relies on willing submission, and cannot easily force those who genuinely repudiate his blandishments. The monster fell back, gurgling with surprise at my forthright movement, leaving an opening. Using the same hand to push it farther away from me—an error, for it had a foul, putrid smell which was hard to wash off—I ran past, up the path to the gate.

I do not know where I ran, I was simply concerned with putting as much distance between myself and the hideous deformity as I could. Eventually, I came to the river that runs nearby, and walked down to the water’s edge to bathe my hand and clean it of the smell that still filled my nostrils. I was panting hard from terror and the running, and must have stayed there, crouched down and huddled against a boat drawn up on the shore for the night, looking at the water for upward of an hour or more. Then, eventually, I roused myself, convinced that the danger must surely be past, and began to walk once more, calm but on the alert for more attacks.

I heard the dogs some half an hour later. They caught up with me shortly after that and, after I was manhandled to the ground, kicked and abused, I was informed to my absolute astonishment and disbelief that Sir William Compton had been brutally attacked, and that I was being held responsible for the deed.

14

I need not, I think, dwell too much on these events. My treatment was abominable, and the accusations leveled against me a disgrace. While it is necessary and reasonable that criminals be treated in such a fashion, to incarcerate and humiliate gentlemen in such a brutal manner is beyond comprehension. The period I spent awaiting trial was one of the deepest distress and, in my weakened state, the Blundy girl sensed her opportunity, and I was driven near mad by the constant pains and visions that she sent to me, night and day.

I had been ready for the witch to launch another attack, but did not realize she had such strength and evil purpose. It took some thought to grasp the full cunning of what had happened, and once understood the explanation is straightforward. It cannot be doubted that Sir William heard me leave the house and came to investigate, and at that moment his form was taken over by a demon so effectively that my eyes could not penetrate the disguise; after I stabbed it with my dagger, the spell dissolved and the fiendish cloak evaporated. It was a devilishly evil attack, for the witch must have realized by then that she could not destroy me. So she thought instead to have others act for her—having me hanged would accomplish the task perfectly.

When I was thrown into the jail cell, and shackled with chains to its wall, I quickly came to realize that, without extraordinary fortune, she would succeed. For I had indeed stabbed Sir William and brought him near to death and, what was more, he had survived and would undoubtedly say that I attacked without warning. My defense was no defense at all, for who would believe me if I told the truth?

And for many days, I could do little but sit in my loathsome cell and wait. I was not without visitors and messages, but they were of little comfort. My dear uncle wrote to say that he washed his hands of me entirely, and would not help my cause in any way. Thomas tried his best, although I could see his disapproval very clearly on his face. But he tried, at least, when he could tear his mind off the fact that the final contest with Grove for the living was nearing, and would take place when Lord Maynard came to dine in the college.

Then came Lower, accompanied by Marco da Cola.

I will not repeat a description of Lower’s impudent (and premature) demands for my corpse; Cola’s account is accurate enough. On that first occasion, the Italian did not acknowledge me, and I pretended also not to know him as he clearly wished it. But he returned, alone, that same afternoon on the pretext of bringing me some wine, and we had a conversation in which he told me of what had transpired that terrible night.

For himself, he said, he spoke from hearsay alone; he had heard and seen nothing of importance. It was only the sudden commotion, of people shouting, women wailing and dogs barking that aroused him and brought him from his bed to investigate. From then on his whole occupation was with Sir William and his wound, for he had labored hard throughout the night and was alone responsible for the fact that he had not died. He assured me that Sir William would recover, and had already made so much progress that he felt free to leave him in the care of his wife.

I told him my heart was glad. Although I knew it would not yet be welcome, I begged him to deliver a message assuring Sir William of my joy at his safety, telling him of my total innocence, and asking whether he was conscious of the fraud perpetrated on his body. This he undertook to do, and then (having formed my plan for escape) I urgently repeated my request that Dr. Grove come to see me as soon as possible.

I was astonished when Wallis turned up in his stead the next evening, but my mind quickly saw that this happy chance presented fresh opportunities. He questioned me about Sir William, and asked a huge raft of inane and pointless questions about Marco da Cola which were so imbecilic I will not trouble to record them here. Naturally, I told him as little as possible, but subtly kept the conversation going with little hints and suggestions until I was sure the jailer would be too drunk to pay much attention. Then I overpowered him, trussed him up—I confess I tied the knots tighter than I would have done for Grove—and left. He was so surprised and indignant, I almost burst out laughing with pleasure. It was so very simple, I could scarcely believe my good fortune.

Knowing that Wallis was safe and sound gave me an opportunity I could scarcely dared have hoped for, as I knew that his room would be open to my attentions. So I crossed the town to New College, and used his key to get through the main gate. Again, the simplicity of the task made me believe that I was under special protection—the door to his room was unlocked, the bureau was easily opened, and the folio of documents—even labeled “Sr Ja—Prestcott”—was in the second drawer; half a dozen sheets of papers all so incomprehensible I assumed they must be the coded missives I sought. These I stuffed under my shirt for safekeeping, and prepared to leave, delighted with my success.

I heard the low but horrible scream when I was on the landing about to descend. Instantly I froze, convinced first that the devils had come for me once again and, when I was reassured on that point, worried that my luck had changed, and that the noise would draw attention and lead to my discovery. Hardly daring to move, I held my breath and waited; but the quadrangle remained as quiet and deserted as it had been before.

I was also perplexed; it was a noise of great pain, and clearly came from Dr. Grove’s room immediately opposite Wallis’s. With some trepidation, I knocked on the inner door—the great outer door was not closed—then quietly pushed it open and peered inside.

Grove was still alive, but only barely so, and the sight tore at my heart and drew anguished protest from my mouth. His face was contorted with the most excruciating pain, his limbs twitching and fluttering, as he thrashed about on the floor like a madman in the throes of an attack. He looked at me as I lit a candle in the grate and held it over him, but I do not think he recognized me. Rather, with an unsteady hand he indicated something on the table in the corner, then, with froth and spittle gurgling from his gaping mouth, he fell back on the floor and expired.

I had never witnessed such an agony, and pray with fervor that such a sight should never again assault my eyes. I was petrified by the sight, and dared not move, half afraid he was dead, and half that he would come back to life again. It was only with the greatest of effort that I stirred myself and looked to see what he had pointed at in that last, pathetic gesture. The bottle and glass on the table still contained a great deal of liquid. I sniffed cautiously and it gave no hint of mortal danger, but it seemed at the very least likely that poison lay behind what I had just witnessed.

Then I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs, and terror gripped my heart as tightly as my hand gripped a knife I saw on Grove’s desk.

Louder and louder they grew, up one pair, pausing on the landing, then the other. It could not be Wallis, surely, I thought. He could not have escaped. And I knew that if any man came into this room, I would have to kill him.

The steps grew louder, and stopped on the landing, and there was a long pause before the thunderous knocking came on the door to Grove’s room. Perhaps it was not; perhaps it was simply the lightest of tapping, but it seemed to me loud enough to waken the dead from their graves. I stood there in darkness, and prayed desperately that the visitor would think that Grove was not there, and go away. But in my nervousness and efforts to be quiet I accomplished the opposite, for I brushed against a book on his table, and sent it crashing to the ground.

All my prayers and wishes were of no avail then; there was a pause, and then I heard the latch of the door moving, the unmistakable sound of the door itself creaking open, then a footfall on one of the loose and creaking oak floorplanks.

When I saw that the visitor had a lantern, and would soon see both myself and Grove’s body, I knew I could hide no longer, so I reached forward and grabbed him by the neck, and pushed him backward out of the room.

My antagonist had little strength, and put up almost no resistance to me in his surprise and terror. It took scarce a second or two to wrestle him to the ground on the landing, stop the lantern from setting fire to the entire building, and then see who he was.

“Thomas!” I cried in the greatest surprise when the feeble light played across his ashen, frightened face.

“Jack?” he whispered hoarsely with even greater astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

I released him quickly, and brushed him down, and apologized for manhandling him. “What I am doing is very simple,” I said. “I am escaping. But I think maybe you have some explaining to do.”

His head fell when I said that, and he looked as though he was about to burst into tears. It was very strange, all this conversation—a priest and a fugitive, huddled close together on the landing, talking in whispers while in the next-door room only feet away there lay a still-warm corpse.

The look on his face, I may say, would have hanged him in any courtroom in the land even had the jury not known the long and bitter story which had led up to this event. “Oh, dear God, help me,” he cried. “What am I to do? You know what I have done?”

“Keep your voice down,” I said testily. “I have not gone to all the trouble of escaping just to be caught by the sound of your wails. What’s done is done. You have been stupid beyond belief, but there is no going back. You cannot undo it now.”

“Why did I do it? I saw the warden standing there, and even before I knew it, I had accosted him, and told him a complete pack of lies about that servant of his.”

“What? Thomas, what are you talking about?”

“Blundy. That girl. I told the warden that Grove had gone back on his word, and that I’d seen her sneaking into his room tonight. Then I realized…”

“Yes, yes. Let’s not get into that. What did you come here for, anyway?”

“I wanted to see him before it was too late.”

“It is too late.”

“But surely, there must be something I can do?”

“Stop being childish,” I snapped back at him. “Of course there isn’t. Neither of us have any choice. I must run; you must go back to your room and sleep.”

Still he sat there on the floor, clutching his knees. “Thomas, do as I say,” I commanded. “Leave it to me.”

“It was his fault,” he moaned. “I couldn’t stand it any more. The way he treated me…”

“He’ll not make that mistake again,” I replied. “And if you keep calm, we’ll both survive to see you with a bishop’s miter. But not if you panic, and not unless you learn how to keep your mouth shut.”

I could not bear to remain there any longer, so I pulled him to his feet. Together we crept down the stairs and at the bottom I pointed him in the direction of his room.

“You go back to your room and sleep as best you can, my friend. Give me your word you will say nothing and do nothing without discussing it with me first.”

Again, the wretch just hung his head like a schoolboy.

“Thomas? Are you listening?”

“Yes,” he said, finally raising his eyes to look at me.

“Repeat after me, and swear you will never mention anything of this evening. Or you will hang us both.”

“I swear,” he said in a dull voice. “But Jack…”

“Enough. Leave everything to me. I know exactly how to deal with this. Do you believe me?”

He nodded.

“You will do as I say?”

Another nod.

“Good. Go away, then. Good-bye, my friend.”

And I pushed him in the back to get him walking, and waited until he was halfway across the quad. Then I went back up to Grove’s room, where I took his key, so I could lock the door, and his signet ring.

The plan that had leaped, fully formed, into my mind was so simple and complete that it must have been due to some inspiration, for I must modestly admit that I could hardly have devised such a perfect solution unaided. What had happened was perfectly clear, and Cola’s document confirms it. For that was the day Lord Maynard had dined, and the great contest for his favor had taken place between Grove and Thomas. As might be expected, Thomas was outwitted, out-thought and humiliated. He had never been one for public dispute, but had prepared himself so much, and worked himself into such a fit of anxiety about the encounter, that he was barely capable of speech. Grove, instead, was ready, for he had encountered Cola and knew that the Italian would be the perfect foil for demonstrating his orthodoxy and robust defense of the church.

So the Italian sat there, thinking he was engaged in a conversation about philosophy, while all the time Grove was showing his fitness for a parish by disagreeing with everything he said. Easily enough done, since Grove removed Thomas from the contest by ignoring him and battering him with insults until Thomas despaired at being constantly interrupted and walked out, I suspect so that no man might see his tears. I believe he went mad from despair, and denounced Grove to the warden shortly after in some half-thought-out act of desperation. Then he realized that it would soon be exposed as a lie, and a malicious one at that, so he went one, fatal, step further.

Not a goodness for a man of God, and yet I knew that Thomas had much good in him; he had shown me that time and again. And even had that not been the case, I was bound to him and owed him my assistance, for he was not only a friend, he was quite incapable of looking after himself. The loyalties of Lincolnshire I have mentioned before.

It was the possibility of aiding myself at the same time which indicated that some guardian angel must be about, whispering into my mind.

I should return to my narrative, however, and say that by the time I left Grove’s room with his signet in my pocket it was nine o’clock by St. Mary’s, and I knew that I had eight hours before the jailer would come to my cell in the castle and discover my escape. My movements were unconstrained and I was at total liberty to do whatever I wished. What I wished to do at that moment was kill Sarah Blundy, as it had long been clear to me that only through the death of one or the other of us would this diabolical contest be brought to an end.

I knew, of course, that this was impossible. I could no more kill her with my own hands than she could kill me. Others had to do that and, just as she had laid a trap for me, that I should be hanged, so I could do the same to her.

It was slightly before midnight, I think, that I made my way through the fortifications that still surrounded the town and avoided the night watch. Certainly I heard the great bells of the city making their mournful toll as I walked swiftly across the fields parallel to the London road, which I dared not use until I was past Heddington Village. Dawn was beginning to come over the horizon by the time I approached the village of Great Milton.

15

I waited until the morning was well advanced, spending my time observing the house unseen to see how many people there were and what might be my best means of escape should that be necessary. Then, my heart thudding in my chest, I prepared myself, walked up to the door and knocked. It was pleasantly warm in the hallway, which was surprisingly far from opulent. I knew, of course, that Thurloe had made himself as rich as Croesus during his years of power as Cromwell’s henchman and was disconcerted to see him in such modest accommodation. I only saw one servant in all the time I was there, and although the house was comfortable, it was not of the size and splendor I expected. But I assumed that this was another example of the arrogant humility of the Puritans, who make such a show of their piety and disdain for worldly possessions. Personally, I always detested them for that, grabbing with one hand and praying with the other. It is the duty of men of rank to live in a suitable state, even if they have no inclination.

The servant, an old fellow who blinked like an owl brought suddenly into the light, told me that his master was busy at his books, and that I should wait in the main parlor. Mr. Thurloe would be glad of a visitor to divert him, he said. Not this one, I thought to myself as I followed his instructions and walked in the commodious, warm room at the eastern end of the house. Not this one.

He came in a few minutes later, a gaunt man with long, thin hair around a high-domed forehead. His skin was pale, almost translucent and, apart from heavy lines around his eyes, he seemed younger than I knew he must be. Now I knew what had transpired, and how he had manipulated men, good and bad, to his will, I was half minded simply to run him through then and there, without wasting further time. He’d find out who his assailant was soon enough, I thought, when the flames began to lick around his soul.

I was determined, but felt my resolution ebb with every step he took toward me. For months now, lying awake at night, I had imagined myself whipping out my father’s sword and thrusting it into his heart, intoning some suitable words as he expired with a look of cowardly terror on his face, crying for mercy, slobbering with fear, while I stood implacable over him. I had no sword, but Grove’s knife would do as well.

Easy to imagine, harder to accomplish. Killing a man in battle when the blood is hot is one thing; dispatching one in a peaceful parlor, with the fire crackling comfortably in the grate and the smell of burning apple logs in the air, is quite another. Doubt assailed me for the first time—Would killing a man unable to defend himself not suddenly lower me to his level? Would not my great act be demeaned if it was performed in an unseemly manner?

I suspect I would not be so bothered now, although as it is unlikely that I will ever be in such a situation again (the Lord having smiled on me) it is easy to say and difficult to prove. Perhaps, indeed, it was my doubt and my hesitation which earned me that divine forbearance.

“Good morning, sir, you are welcome,” he said quietly, examining me curiously all the while. “I see you are cold; pray let me get you some refreshment.”

I wanted to spit at him, and say I would not drink with a man like him. But the words stuck in my throat, and in my weakness and confusion I stood there mute while he clapped his hands and asked the servant to bring some ale.

“Do sit, sir,” he said, after another long silence when he had again examined me carefully, for I had, with my normal politeness, jumped up to bow to him when he entered. “And please be careful you do not impale yourself on your dagger.”

All this he said with a wry smile, and I blushed and stammered like a schoolchild caught throwing things in class.

“What is your name? I believe I know your face, although I see so few people now that I trick myself into recognizing total strangers.” He had a soft, gentle and educated voice, quite unlike anything I had expected.

“You do not know me. My name is Prestcott.”

“Ah. And you have come to kill me, is that right?”

“It is,” I said stiffly, feeling more and more confused.

There was another long pause, as Thurloe sat, marked the page in his book, closed it and laid it neatly on the table. Then he placed his hands in his lap and looked at me once more.

“Well? Go ahead. I would hate to detain you unnecessarily.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

He seemed almost puzzled at the question, and shook his head. “Only if you wish to tell me. As far as I am concerned, compared with meeting the Lord and His standing in judgment of me, of what importance is the why or the wherefore of men? Do take some ale,” he added, pouring out a glass from the broad earthenware pot the servant had brought.

I shrugged the glass aside. “It’s very important,” I said petulantly, realizing as I spoke that I was drifting further and further away from my imagined behavior.

“In that case I am listening,” he said. “Although 1 cannot understand what injury I may have done you. You are surely too young to be my enemy?”

“You killed my father.”

He looked worried at the statement. “Did I? I don’t recall it.”

At last he was talking in a way which angered me, which I knew was necessary if I was going to accomplish my aim.

“You damnable liar. Of course you do. Sir James Prestcott, my father.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Yes. Of course I remember him. But I thought you must have meant someone else—I never harmed your father. I tried to at one stage, of course; he was one of the handful of the king’s servants who was not a fool.”

“That was why you destroyed him. You couldn’t catch him, or do battle with him, so you poisoned men’s minds against him with lies and clawed him down that way.”

“You hold me responsible?”

“You were.”

“Very well, then. If you say so,” he said calmly, and lapsed into silence.

Again he had wrong-footed me. I don’t know what I expected—either a vehement denial or an outrageous justification of his deeds. I certainly did not anticipate him not seeming to care one way or the other.

“Defend yourself,” I said hotly.

“With what? I do not have your knife or your strength, so if you want to kill me, you will not find it a difficult task.”

“I mean defend what you did.”

“Why? You have already decided that I am guilty, so I fear that my feeble replies will not sway you.”

“That’s not fair,” I cried, realizing as I spoke that this was the sort of childish remark a man like my father would never have made.

“Few things are,” he said.

“My father was no traitor,” I said.

“That may be the case.”

“Are you saying you didn’t destroy him? You expect me to believe that?”

“I haven’t said anything. But since you ask, no. I did not. Of course, I have little influence over whether you believe me.”

Later in life—too late to be of use to me then—I understood how John Thurloe had risen to such an eminence that he was the one person in the land who dared contradict Cromwell. You punched, Thurloe rose up again, sweetly reasonable and soft-voiced. You kept on punching, he kept on getting up, always gentle and never losing his temper, until you felt ashamed of yourself and listened to him instead. Then, when you were off balance, he simply persuaded you around to his point of view. He never thrust himself forward, never forced his opinions on you but, sooner or later, the anger and opposition exhausted themselves by dashing against his persistence.

“You did it to others, and you expect me to believe that you didn’t to my father?”

“Which others?”

“You didn’t say he was innocent. You had the chance.”

“It was not my job to ensure that my enemies were strong and unified. Besides, who would have believed me? Do you think a certificate of honesty from me would have cleared his reputation? If the king’s party wished to tear into themselves and chase ghosts, what was that to me? The weaker they were, the better.”

“So weak that the king is on his throne and you are here in obscurity,” I sneered, conscious not only that his arguments were good, but also that I had never even considered them before, so clear and obvious had his guilt appeared to me.

“Only because the Protector died, and he thought…Well, no matter,” he said softly. “There was a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum. Charles didn’t win his throne back; he was sucked back by forces far greater than he could have mustered on his own. And it remains to be seen whether he is strong enough to keep his seat.”

“You must have been delighted,” I said with heavy sarcasm.

“Delighted?” he repeated thoughtfully. “No; of course not. I had worked for ten years to make England stable and free from tyranny and it was no pleasure to see that blown away on the winds. But I was not as upset as you might imagine. The armies were on the march, and the factions only Cromwell could have controlled were forming again. It was the king or war. I did not oppose Charles. And I could have done so, you know. Had I so wished, Charles would have been in his grave for years by now.”

He said it in such a calm and matter-of-fact way that for a moment I didn’t grasp the full horror of what he was saying. Then I gasped. This little man had gravely decided, as a matter of policy, whether his rightful monarch, anointed by God, would live or die. Charles, by grace of Thurloe, King of England. And I knew that he was saying nothing more than the truth—I was sure that he and the Protector had considered such a course. If they had rejected it, it was not because they recoiled from such a crime—they had committed so many already—but because it was not to their convenience.

“But you didn’t.”

“No. The Commonwealth acted within the law; and suffered gravely as a result. How much easier it would have been if the elder Charles had succumbed to a mysterious illness and died, with our hands clean in public, however shamefully we had behaved in secret. But we tried him, and executed him…”

“Murdered him, you mean.”

“…and executed him in full public view, never once seeking to hide what we were doing. The same goes with the other traitors—loyal patriots, I suppose they now are—who were caught. Name me one who was murdered in secret, without being publicly tried.”

Everyone knew there had been thousands; but as they had been done away with secretly, naturally I did not know their names, and I told him so.

“I see. So I killed countless people, but you cannot name a single one. Are you intended for the law, Mr. Prestcott?”

I said that, due to the family misfortunes, I was indeed.

“I wondered. I was a lawyer myself, you know, before I took to public service. I very much hope your family fortunes mend, as I do not think you will be a great adornment to the profession. You do not present a very good case.”

“We are not in a court of law here.”

“No,” he agreed. “You are in my parlor. But if you wish, you may turn it into a courtroom, and you may make your first speech. I will answer, and you can then make up your mind. Come now; it is a handsome offer. You get to be prosecution, judge, jury and (if you win your case) executioner. Such an opportunity comes very infrequently to a man of your age.”

For some reason, I didn’t even question him anymore. It was too late now for the bold action I had originally intended. I now wanted him to acknowledge I was right, and hear him admit that he deserved my punishment. That was why I fell in with him—and why I still think that he was wrong. I would have made a good lawyer, even though I am profoundly grateful I was not reduced to such a state.

“Well,” I began, “the thing is…”

“No, no, no,” he interrupted me gently. “We are in a court, sir. Your presentation is a disgrace. Never begin a speech with, ‘Well, the thing is…’ Do they not teach rhetoric in the university anymore? Now, begin properly, always making sure you address the judge respectfully—even when he’s an old fool—and the jury as though you are sure they are a benchful of Solomons, even if you’ve spent the morning bribing them. Start again. And don’t be shy; you can’t be shy if you want to win.”

“My lord, members of the jury,” I began. Even after all these years, I am still amazed by the way I meekly did as instructed.

“Much better,” he said. “Go on. But try to pitch your voice a little more effectively.”

“My lord, members of the jury,” I said heavily and with some irony, for I did not wish it thought that I gave way to this play-acting without some resentment. “You sit here to judge one of the most evil crimes in the history of mankind; for the defendant before you is charged not with simple theft or the murder of a man committed in hot blood, but with the cold and calculating destruction of a gentleman, too good and too honorable to be harmed in any other way.

“This gentleman, Sir James Prestcott, cannot speak to tell you of the injuries done to him. His family must do that for him in the traditional manner, so that his cries for justice from beyond the grave can be assuaged, and his soul can sleep in peace.”

“Very good,” said Thurloe. “A handsome start.”

“As the judge, I must request the defendant to keep his silence. If this is a law court, the proper forms must be maintained.”

“My apologies.”

“I do not ask you to condemn this man without laying out the full facts of the case; that is all I need to do to make you to realize, without a shadow of a doubt, that this man is guilty. I shall state the case and stop—no high-flown rhetorical persuasion is needed.

“The goodness, the loyalty and the courage of Sir James Prestcott were such that he gave everything in the king’s cause, and was prepared to give still more. When most had given up, he returned from exile to work for the blessed Restoration which we now all enjoy. Some joined him in this struggle, but few as wholeheartedly, and some did so merely out of consideration for their own gain. Some betrayed their friends and their cause for their own advancement, and whenever John Thurloe came across such people, he used them, then protected them by ensuring the blame for the damage they caused fell on the shoulders of others. His main informant, and the man who should have been punished for the deeds which destroyed my father, was John Mordaunt.”

I paused here to see whether revealing the depths of my knowledge so suddenly shocked him. It did not; rather he merely sat there, entirely without movement and with no sign even of interest.

“Let me explain. Mordaunt was the youngest son of a noble family, which was keen not to take sides in the war and instead wished to profit whoever might triumph. Mordaunt was supposedly inclined to the king but was too young to take an active part in the fighting and so was sent away, like many others, to travel abroad where he could be safe. In particular he went to Savoy, and there he met Samuel Morland, a man already in the service of the Commonwealth.

“Mordaunt was already linked to the king’s cause, Morland to Cromwell’s. When exactly the two of them entered into a partnership to advance themselves is uncertain, but I think that in all essentials it was a done deed by the time Sir Samuel returned to England in 1656. Mordaunt also returned and began to gain a reputation among the Royalists, his skill, intelligence and reputation for acumen considerably aided, I believe, by the constant information which Morland gave him. But the price the Royalists paid for his reputation was high indeed, for Mordaunt bought it by betraying every single plot the king’s men developed.

“At one stage, the traitors made a bad mistake and in 1658 Mordaunt was arrested in a general roundup of Royalist sympathizers. It is inconceivable that a man as ruthless as John Thurloe would let someone so important escape had he truly been in the king’s cause. But was he led to the gallows like his associates? Was he tied to a chair and tortured to discover his valuable hidden knowledge? Was he at the very least kept in close custody? Not at all. He was released within six weeks, it was said because the jury was bribed by his wife.

“It would, I believe, have taken a very large bribe indeed to persuade a juror to run the risk of releasing the most dangerous man in England, and incurring Thurloe’s wrath. But, in fact, no bribe was needed; the jurors were instructed how to vote, and followed those instructions without payment. Mordaunt returned to the fray, his fame for audacity and courage enhanced, and his position unquestioned.

“By this stage it was clear to the Royalists that a traitor did exist, and must be unmasked. Thurloe, accordingly, began to hatch a plan to deflect attention onto others and protect his source of information. So he had a series of documents concocted to protect the true traitor. They used a cipher my father used, contained information he would have known. But why pick on him, rather than any of the other Royalists, who would have served just as well?

“Perhaps Mr. Thurloe can be acquitted in this respect, for I believe that Samuel Morland’s greed played a part here, as he profited hugely from my father’s disgrace, knowing that the family of his associate John Russell would reward him well if he helped them sweep aside obstacles to their plans for the fenlands. So Morland approached that family, and told them that Sir James Prestcott could be removed if it was made worth his while. Sir John Russell leaped on the information Morland provided and began to disseminate it widely, and his passionate advocacy deceived Sir William Compton into denouncing and destroying his closest friend.

“Thus, the second aspect of the plan, which joined the destruction of my father’s reputation to that of his estate, was brought into being. I do not know whether he ever imagined that so many powerful people desired, indeed required, his fall. Thurloe, protecting the government; Mordaunt and Morland, whose future rested on his shouldering the blame for their deeds; and the might of the Russell family, which gained the freedom it needed to exploit the fenlands. Everybody profited handsomely from the arrangement, and the cost was small. Only the life and honor of a single man needed to be sacrificed.

“It is impossible to counter accusations made in such a way; there were no charges, so how could they be refuted? No evidence was produced, so how could it be shown to be forged? My father withdrew with a dignity that was mistaken for cowardice. He fled to avoid calumny, false imprisonment and even the assassin’s knife, and this was mistaken for guilt. And all along Thurloe, the author of his misfortunes and the one man who could have cleansed his honor, said not a word. Who else could have conceived of such a scheme? And who else had the means to put it into operation? Only John Thurloe, who knew everything, saw everything, and was the moving force behind all occult activities.

“And I, members of the jury, am reduced to the sorry state which you behold. I have no resources, no connections and no influence except that of argument and my unquenching belief in the justice of my case, and the goodness of this court. I am sure it will be more than enough.”

Is this what I said, word for word? No; of course it is not; I am sure that my youth tripped my tongue and that the speech was not half as assured as I like to remember it. My friends who read books tell me this is the way of history. Even great historians write down what the actors should say, rather than what they did. So it is with myself, and if I have improved and polished over the years, then I do not apologize for it. I remember the occasion, though, as if I did speak in this way, restrained but passionate, zealous but controlled, standing before him, fixed upon his countenance, strangely concerned to convince him that what I said was true but realizing that I was as concerned to convince myself He did not reply at once, that I remember clearly. Rather, he continued to sit impassively, his book folded on his lap, nodding quietly. After a short while, when there was no sound but the crackling and hissing of the logs in the grate, he began to reply, still maintaining the fiction of the drama.

“I will not condescend to my learned prosecutor by complimenting him on a fine speech, sincerely delivered as only a son could manage. The honesty of the words I do not doubt; the courage and zeal for justice is also beyond question, and it is honorable in one so young to take such a weighty task on his shoulders unsupported.

“But this is a court of law, and cannot admit of sentiment. So, I must point out that the case for my guilt is thin, and the proof offered is insubstantial. The word of a father carries weight with a son, but not with a court. If you are to translate your own convictions into accepted fact, you must rest your case on much more than the protestations of a man under accusation. That I destroyed an innocent is a grave charge, and cannot be allowed to stand by mere assertion.

“Sir James Prestcott was accused of treachery, and he was destroyed—I admit I am the obvious person to suspect. For long years I was responsible for the safety of the government, and I do not deny that the methods I used were many and various. This was necessary, for there were indeed plots against us; so numerous that I can no longer recall them all. Time and again agitators tried to return the country to the horrors of war and civil strife. It was my job to prevent this, and 1 performed the task to the best of my abilities.

“Was there an informer, a traitor, in the ranks of the king’s men? Of course; not one, but very many. There are always people willing to sell their friends for money, but often I did not need the wares they tried to peddle. The Royalists were always the most foolish of conspirators. The proposed risings involved so many people with loose tongues that we would have been deaf indeed not to have heard of them. The satanic skill attributed to me was flattering, but wrong—for the most part my success was due solely to the stupidity of those who pitted themselves against me.

“As for Samuel Morland, he was not without ability, but his greed and faithlessness made him less than useful and I had long wanted to dismiss him from my office. I could not do so, because he held in his hands our most useful informer on the doings of the king’s men, whom he called Mr. Barrett.

“Of all the government’s sources of information, this Mr. Barrett was by far the best. We merely had to ask and Mr. Barrett provided the answer through Samuel. And Samuel refused to say who this man was. If I disposed of Samuel’s services, I also lost Mr. Barrett, and Samuel was clever enough to realize this was the only reason I tolerated his presence. I often wondered whether he was passing information as well as receiving it, and took care that he knew as little as possible about our office’s operations. As long as this trade did not become too disadvantageous, I did not discourage it.

“Who was Mr. Barrett? You are quite right; I also concluded it was John Mordaunt, and had him arrested so I could interview him personally and try to establish a direct connection that would eliminate the need for Samuel. But Mordaunt denied everything; either he suspected a trap, or he was indeed innocent, or his loyalty to Samuel was too great. Either way, I got nothing from him.

“It was a mistake on my part, for my action made clear my enmity to Samuel, and when his opportunity came he conspired against me, and caused my temporary ejection from office. When I recovered my position, he then went over to the king’s party for fear of my revenge and denounced your father to win acceptance.

“So you see I do not wish here to dispute your case, that the traitor was John Mordaunt and that your father was sacrificed to protect him, although I would dispute some details if there was leisure to do so.

“I dispute one assertion only, however, and do so because your case against me rests entirely on it, and I can prove it wrong. You say I caused your father’s disgrace, that I organized the forgeries and their dissemination, and I say plainly that not only did I not do so, I could not have done so, for when this happened I no longer had any place or influence in the government.

“I was dismissed from the Republic’s service late in 1659, when Richard Cromwell decided he could no longer survive as Protector and gave up the struggle. A pity; he was not without ability. I fell from power with him, and was without influence for many months. It was in this period that the material relating to your father was created and it was passed to Sir John Russell, and thence to Sir William Compton. This is a matter of simple fact. I said there was a grave flaw in your reasoning, and this is that flaw. However true your general case might be, I cannot have been responsible for it.”

Such a simple mistake I made, and it hit me as a hammer blow. With all my earnest inquisition, I had never stopped for a single moment to consider the chaos that attended the dying days of the Commonwealth, the incessant struggling for position and treachery amongst old partners as they strove to save themselves and their corrupt edifice from destruction. Cromwell died, his son took over, fell from power and was replaced by cabals of fanatics in Parliament. And in all this, Thurloe lost his grip, for a while. I knew that, and had not considered it important; had not checked the facts and the dates. And from the moment I had started talking, Thurloe had sat there calmly waiting for all my eloquence to end, knowing that with a simple puff he could blow over my entire case against him.

“You are telling me that Morland alone brought about the destruction of my father?”

“That would be one interpretation,” Thurloe said gravely. “Indeed, from the evidence you have presented it would be the obvious one.”

“What am I to do?”

“I thought you had come here to kill me, not to ask my advice.”

He knew he had escaped. In effect he had told me that, on two occasions, when I had seen Mordaunt and later Morland, I had had the guilty ones in my grasp. One I had left with my thanks and best wishes. The other I had considered a mere instrument, a greedy little wretch perhaps, but essentially a source of information and nothing more. I felt a fool, and was ashamed that this man should see my stupidity, and lay it out so calmly.

“It is time to draw this to an end,” Thurloe resumed. “Do you find me guilty, or not. I have said you have the decision. I will abide by your verdict.”

I shook my head, tears of frustration and shame welling up in my eyes.

“Not good enough, sir,” he pressed. “You must pronounce.”

“Not guilty,” I mumbled.

“Pardon? I am afraid I did not hear.”

“Not guilty,” I shouted at him. “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Do you hear now?”

“Perfectly, thank you. Now, as you have shown your devotion to justice—and I appreciate how much it has cost you—I will show mine. If you want my advice, I will give it. Tell me everything you have done, read, said, thought and seen. Then I will see if there is any way I can help you.”

He clapped his hands again, and again the servant appeared, this time to be asked for some food, and more fuel for the fire. And then I began to talk and explain, starting at the very beginning and leaving out only the help and assistance given to me by Lord Bristol. I had promised to say nothing, and did not wish to anger a future patron by going back on my word. I even told him of my enchantment by Sarah Blundy and my determination to bring our contest to an end once and for all. But this topic I dropped; it was none of his business and I could see from his face that he did not believe in such matters.

“You have a gift to offer in your ability to accuse Mor-daunt, for many people dislike him, and he is closely associated with Lord Clarendon. You must sell your goods to the right people, and you will get a high price.”

“To whom?”

“Sir William Compton, I imagine, will be understandably anxious to prosecute you for your attack. As he also detests Lord Clarendon, he might consider it worthwhile waiving his suit if you contributed to the downfall of his greater enemy. And if Clarendon’s friend Mordaunt is weakened, then Clarendon will be gravely weakened. More people than Sir William Compton would thank you generously for that. You must approach them, and see what they offer in return.”

“That is all very well,” I said, scarcely daring to hope for so much after so many frustrations. “But I am a fugitive. I cannot go to London, nor even to Oxford, without being arrested. How can I approach anyone?”

The majesty of the king’s justice, however, he shrugged off. People like Thurloe, I was learning, did not consider the law a matter of great importance. If his enemies wished to destroy him, innocence at law would not save his life; if he had sufficient strength, no amount of guilt would bring him into danger. The law was an instrument of power, no more. And he offered me a dangerous bargain, a terrible choice. I wanted justice, but Thurloe told me there was no such thing, that all motion was the conflict of power. If I wanted to reestablish myself, I had to drag down the enemies of others in the same way they had dragged down my father. I could achieve my aim, but only by abandoning the purpose of it. It took many days of thought and prayer before I accepted.

When I had done so, Thurloe made the journey into Oxford during which he discussed the matter with Dr. Wallis after their encounter at the play. Although I had strong misgivings, he told me that Wallis was by far the easiest way of communicating with those men in government who might assist. Despite the way I had abused him in the jail, Thurloe did not seem to think it would be hard to win Wallis’s cooperation, although he never troubled to explain to me why this should be so.

“Well?” I asked eagerly when at last I was summoned on Thurloe’s return. “Will Wallis help?”

Thurloe smiled. “Perhaps if there is an exchange of information. You mentioned an Italian gentleman at Sir William Compton’s.”

“Da Cola, yes. A most civil man, for a foreigner.”

“Yes. Cola. Dr. Wallis is most interested in your opinion of him.”

“I know that. He has asked me before, although I have no idea why he was so fascinated.”

“That need not concern you in the slightest. Will you say on oath what you know of this man? And answer any other questions he might pose, freely and frankly?”

“If he will help me, then of course I will. It is harmless enough. What do I get in return?”

“Dr. Wallis is able, I understand, to give you crucial information about the package your father had intended to send to your mother. That package contained everything he knew of Mordaunt and his activities. Whom he saw, what he said, and all the consequences. With that in your possession, your case will be easily won.”

“He knew this all along? And did not say so?”

“He does not have it himself, and he is a dark and deep man. He never gives something for nothing. Fortunately you now have something to offer. But he can tell you whom you must approach to obtain it. Now, do you agree to this bargain?”

“Yes,” I said enthusiastically. “Of course. With all my heart. Particularly if he only wants information in return. For a prize like that he could have my life, and willingly too.”

“Good,” Thurloe said, smiling with pleasure. “That is settled. Now we have to remove the threat of the law, and renew your freedom of movement. I mentioned your concern about this woman Sarah Blundy, and of the ring that you have from Dr. Grove’s body. The woman has now been placed under arrest for his murder.”

“I am glad to hear it,” I said, more exultation gripping my heart. “I have told you how I know she killed him.”

“You will testify against her, your sense of justice will be noted and the charges against you dropped. Do you give me your word that this girl actually killed Grove?”

“I do.” It was a lie, I know, and even as I spoke I resented bitterly the need to speak it.

“In that case all will be well. But only, I repeat, if you answer all questions Dr. Wallis poses.”

My heart was close to bursting with delight as I contemplated how I was triumphing in every single sphere. Truly, I thought, I was blessed, that so much should be given to me so swiftly. I was all enthusiasm for a moment, but then my spirit deflated. “It is a trap,” I said. “Wallis will not help me. It is just a lure to get me to go back to Oxford. I will be thrown back into jail and hanged.”

“That is a risk, but Wallis is after bigger game than yourself, I think.”

I snorted. It was easy, I thought, to be calm and detached at the thought of someone’s else’s neck being stretched. I would have liked to see how he contemplated a march to the hanging tree himself.

The next move came a few days later. I had reluctantly come to accept that I would have to take the risk and place myself in Wallis’s hands, but my courage had failed me, and I was in this state of indecision when Thurloe came softly into the room where I was spending my time, and announced that I had a visitor.

“A Signor Marco da Cola,” he said with a faint smile. “It is strange how that man shows up in the most unexpected places.”

“He is here?” I said, standing up with astonishment. “Why?”

“Because I invited him. He is staying nearby and when I was told, I thought I really must meet the gentleman. He is most charming.”

I insisted on seeing Cola, for I wanted to hear everything. It was Thurloe who suggested that he might prove ideal as the intermediary for approaching the magistrate in Oxford, for I think even he did not trust Wallis as much as he said.

I do not need to justify, I hope, what I told him. I have given enough evidence to show how I had to escape the curse upon me and how limited my resources were. I had begged for release from Sarah Blundy’s curse, but had been rebuffed. She had tricked me into attacking my own guardian; the efforts of magicians, priests and wise men to repulse her had all failed, and—though I have not mentioned it in my story as much as I could have done—almost daily I was assaulted by strange happenings, and my nights were a torment of fervid visitations, so that I had no peaceful sleep. She attacked me mercilessly, perhaps with the hope that I would be sent insane. I now had the possibility of striking back, once and for all. I could not possibly afford to let that chance slip through my fingers. And I also had my loyalty to Thomas.

So I told Cola that I had visited her cottage on my escape, and had seen her as she came in, wild and excited. I told him that I had found Grove’s ring in her dress, and how I had instantly recognized it and taken it from her. How she had turned pale when I demanded how she had come by it. And how I would testify to all of this at her trial. I almost believed it myself by the time I had finished.

Cola agreed to relay this to the magistrate, and even reassured me by saying he was sure that my willingness to come forward in the name of justice, even though I was placing myself at risk, would stand me in good stead for the future.

I thanked him and, indeed, felt so warmly toward him that I could not forbear from giving him some information of my own.

“Tell me,” I said, “why is it that Dr. Wallis concerns himself with you? Are you friends?”

“No, indeed,” he said. “I have only met him once and he was very uncivil.”

“He wishes to talk to me about you. I do not know why.”

Cola repeated he had no understanding of it, then brushed the matter aside and asked me when I proposed to come to Oxford.

“I think it would be best to wait until just before the trial. I hope the magistrate will grant me bail, but I am in a mood not to be overtrusting.”

“So you will see Dr. Wallis then?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Good. I would like to offer you hospitality afterward, to celebrate your good fortune.”

And he went. I mention it only to demonstrate that there was much which Cola does not include even when he gives an account of conversations. Much of the rest of what he says is more or less correct, however. The magistrate arrived in high dudgeon and was all for arresting both Thurloe and myself until he heard of my evidence against Blundy; then he was all sweetness and accommodation—although I suspect Dr. Wallis may have already intervened and told him of the probability that Sir William would withdraw his suit, as indeed he did a few days later. Then I waited until word came that the trial was to begin and journeyed back into Oxford.

I did not have to give evidence, as it turned out, as the woman confessed to the crime—a surprising thing for, as I say, on this she was innocent. But the evidence against her was strong, and perhaps she realized that it was all over. I did not care; I was merely glad that she was to die, and that I did not have to perjure myself.

She hanged the next day, and instantly I felt her malign presence lifting from my spirit, like the first breath of cool, clear wind after a thunderstorm has removed the oppression from the air. It was only then that I realized how much she had tormented me, and how constant had been the drain on my soul.

In effect, there ends my story as well, for the rest is outside the scope of Cola’s account, and much of my own triumph is already well enough known. I never saw Cola again, for he left Oxford shortly afterward, but Wallis was highly satisfied with what I told him and gave me all the information I required. Within a month my name was restored and, although it was considered impolitic to proceed directly against Mordaunt, his rise was forever blocked. The man who, at one stage, was going to be the most powerful politician in the country ended his days in grubby obscurity, shunned by his old friends, enough of whom knew the truth about him. The favor of many men in high places, in contrast, won me the rewards my birth and position merited, and I exploited my good fortune so successfully I was soon able to begin rebuilding my estates. And, in the fullness of time I built my mansion just outside London, where my detested uncle comes to pay court to me, in the futile hope that I will pass some goodness on to him. Needless to say, he goes away empty-handed.

I have done much in my life which I regret and, if I had the opportunity, there is much I would now do differently. But my task was all important, and I feel reassured that I am acquitted of any serious offense. The Lord has been good, and though no man deserves it, my salvation has been no injustice. I would not have so much, and such a tranquillity of mind, had I not been blessed by His merciful providence. In Him I place all my trust, and have endeavored only to serve as best I can. My vindication is my assurance of His favor.