Act of Oblivion, page 22
Nayler sat in the shade with his head in his hands and listened to their descent – the whinnying of the horses, the scrabble of stones running down the slope, the murmur of their voices – and then the silence of the ridge closed over him and he felt utterly abandoned. It took all his willpower not to go after them.
Very well then – alone.
He stood, checked his pistol, tucked it into his belt, remounted and rode slowly along the ridge, stopping now and again to take out his spyglass and scan the canopy of trees beneath the cliff. He moved cautiously, conscious that if by some extraordinary stroke of luck he found the regicides, the odds had abruptly shifted in their favour. Even so, he was not afraid. Death held no terrors for him: he could imagine that when the moment arrived, he might almost welcome it.
He came to a spring that fed a stream and stopped to let his horse drink. He got down himself and cupped the fresh cold water, gulping it, splashing his face and tipping it over his head. The stream ran a little distance then poured over the lip of the ridge. He walked alongside it to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the wide ledge, some twenty feet below, where the water tumbled into a pool.
After watching it for a few minutes, he tied his horse to one of the stunted oaks and picked his way between the boulders and bushes until he thought he saw a promising spot. He sat, and gently eased himself over the edge until his feet were dangling, then turned and began to descend. A couple of minutes later, he dropped onto the ledge.
He drew his pistol from his belt, cocked it, and moved forwards. There was a cleft in the rock, partly obscured by bushes. At first he walked past it, thinking it no more than a shallow fissure, then he checked himself and went back. It was deeper than he had realised, but narrow – he had to twist to squeeze his body into the gap, and edged along with his head turned to one side, his chest rubbing against the rock. The aperture widened slightly, and he was in a passage. Not that he could make out much. It curved to the right, and once he had moved further from the opening, he could see nothing at all. The roof was high: he reached up but couldn’t touch it. He stood listening. A silence as profound as the darkness.
He brought up his pistol and held it at arm’s length, aiming it into the black emptiness as he ventured towards the interior. Now it seemed limitless. He could no longer feel the walls. He stopped again to listen, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat. Slowly he turned full circle. He felt entirely disorientated, adrift in space. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. I am dead and in my tomb, he thought. Oh Sarah, Sarah, I have gone mad, and this is where my madness has brought me.
Arms flailing, he lurched in a panic towards where he imagined the wall must be. He banged his shoulder against it, clung onto it for a few moments while he recovered his nerve, then felt his way along the rock, around the corner, back towards the narrow entrance and the blinding crack of light.
Behind him, at the far end of the cave, their guns still cocked and pointed, the colonels stood motionless in the absolute dark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IT TOOK NAYLER much longer to climb up from the ledge than it had to clamber down. He had to work his way crabwise across the cliff face in search of footholds, jamming his toecaps into narrow cracks and clutching at protruding roots, some of which came away in his hand. But his strength was all in his upper torso, in those wrestler’s arms and shoulders that compensated for his weakened leg, and eventually, dripping sweat, he reached the clifftop. After sitting a while to recover his breath, he untethered his horse and hauled himself into the saddle. The mare seemed to know her own way back, which was just as well, carrying him along the ridge and down the steep track to the forest floor. He barely registered Sperry’s farmhouse as he passed it, nor the ruined mill. His black dog loped beside him.
By the time he reached New Haven, the sun was sinking; the shadow of the meeting house stretched far across the green. After the disturbances of the morning, the settlement was quiet. A couple strolled by arm in arm, taking the evening air. He asked them for directions to the inn.
As he had anticipated, the men of his searching party were gathered downstairs drinking wine and ale.
‘Mr Nayler,’ cried Captain Kirke, raising his glass, ‘did you have much joy?’ He was smirking.
‘Never mind that. Have you conducted a search of the town?’ Those who knew Nayler of old would have taken notice of his dead-calm tone.
‘We still lack a warrant.’ The captain took another swig of wine.
‘Is that so?’
‘It is.’
‘You have drunk enough, I think.’
‘I shall drink as I wish.’
‘Not while I am paying you.’ Nayler stepped forwards and calmly knocked the glass from his hand. Kirke swore and started rising to his feet. Nayler swung his fist and punched him on the side of his head, very hard – hard enough to send him sprawling to the floorboards, where he groaned and tried to sit up and then fell back again.
Sucking his skinned knuckles, Nayler glanced around at the other men, daring them to intervene, and when no one met his gaze, he climbed the stairs to the dormitory and lay down on the first bed he saw. He turned his face to the wall, and there he remained as night fell, until he heard footsteps and Kellond’s voice. ‘Mr Nayler, sir?’ His tone was nervous, respectful. ‘Governor Leete has come to talk to you.’
‘Tell him to go away.’
‘He says he has news of the warrant.’
‘I have retired for the night.’
‘He is most persistent.’
Nayler groaned, rolled over and put his feet to the floor.
Downstairs, Kirke was slumped over a table, apparently asleep, his head resting on his folded arms. Nayler was confident he would have no further trouble from that quarter: even the Scotchmen were sitting well apart from him, as if he had the plague. Leete stood in the doorway.
‘Governor Leete,’ said Nayler. ‘You wish a word?’
‘In private, if you please.’
‘You sing a different song, sir. I thought you had nothing to say to me that couldn’t be said in public?’
‘Even so.’
The two men went outside. The quiet was unearthly. Nayler wondered how they could stand it. No wonder they were all half insane.
‘I wish,’ sighed Leete, ‘that I were the humblest ploughman, that I might be spared these responsibilities.’
‘I’m sure that no one forced them upon you. Do you have the warrant?’
‘I have hopes of obtaining one tomorrow.’
‘In that case, you do not have it.’ Nayler turned to go, but Leete caught his arm.
‘It is not my doing, Mr Nayler. It is the magistrates. Reverend Davenport has them under his influence. Yet I have great hopes that good sense will prevail in the morning – great hopes.’
‘Too late, sir. Too little and too late. I no longer wish to search this place. There is no point to it. The birds have flown. You have played me for a fool, sir.’ He could feel his rage welling up again. ‘And now you shall pay the cost. And of one thing you may be certain. When the royal charters are issued, there will be a state of Massachusetts, and there will be a state of Connecticut, but there will never – never, as long as a king sits on the throne of England – never will there be a state of New Haven. Your little land of Moses here is finished. I bid you goodnight.’
The search party quit the town the following morning – not early, as there now seemed little point, but only when the sun was well up – and rode along the coast to Milford. There, Nayler remained outside the general store while Kellond and Kirke (the captain now mild as a lamb) interrogated its owner, Micah Tomkins. He confirmed that the regicides had stopped by in March, and had bought a few objects and provisions before riding off in the direction of New Amsterdam. He claimed not to have realised who they were until after they had gone. At Nayler’s insistence, despite the lack of a warrant, the store was searched – its outbuildings as well as the nearby house – but nothing was found. He did not expect otherwise: he only ordered it because Tomkins protested his rights so loudly and because he was sure the man was part of the conspiracy; the Scotchmen made sure to break a few items.
After two days’ hard riding, they reached New Amsterdam and went directly to the fort to see its director general, Peter Stuyvesant. He was sixty, ill-tempered – had lost a leg in the Indies to a Spanish cannonball – but lacked the military resources to refuse a request from the English, who far outnumbered the Dutch. He stamped across his office on his wooden peg to greet them, read the royal mandate and Endecott’s letter with a businessman’s thoroughness, and undertook, in his correct but thickly accented English, to have all the vessels in the harbour searched. He also issued an order that anyone travelling under the names of Whalley and Goffe – or Richardson and Stephenson – should be prevented from leaving. More than that he could not do, he added apologetically, without authorisation from his masters in Holland, and as the Dutch government had turned down all requests to arrest those regicides sheltering within its borders, he did not hold out much hope.
‘And have you heard reports of Whalley and Goffe,’ asked Nayler, ‘or anyone who might be them in disguise, coming into your territory?’
‘No, sir, I have not.’
‘You see?’ said Nayler, turning to Kellond and Kirke with a smile of bitter triumph. ‘It was a false trail.’
After the meeting, they rode down from the fort to the Monhatoes docks, with a letter of authorisation signed by Stuyvesant, and while the others went from ship to ship to interview their captains, Nayler – who regarded these formalities as a waste of time – sat on a capstan on the harbourfront, smoking his pipe, half listening to the gruff Dutch voices all around him. It was a warm afternoon – a clear blue sky, seagulls crying over the water, the buoys riding high on the choppy tide. Beyond the ships anchored in the channel he could see the flat grey ribbon of Long Island, a few houses and a windmill outlined against the sky. The fort was very lightly defended, he noticed, compared to Boston. No more than twenty cannon. He must remember to report that.
The noise of the gulls and the play of the light reminded him of his arrival in America, when he had been so full of misplaced hope. What a fool he had been. He thought with sudden longing of London and its fine buildings, and of his chambers in Essex House and his office in Whitehall Palace; of the familiar English countryside of tightly clustered villages and stone churches and small fields narrowly hedged. He even recalled with fondness the stink of the Thames at low tide and the sewage along the Strand.
A few minutes later, Kellond and Kirke appeared, the younger man carrying a ledger. To his surprise, their expressions were triumphant. ‘You have made a discovery?’
‘We have,’ said Kirke. ‘Perhaps it was not such a false trail after all.’
Kellond handed Nayler the leather-bound volume. He clamped the pipe between his teeth and balanced the book on his knee. He opened it at a page marked with a sheet of paper.
‘What is this?’
‘The cargo manifest of the Vleigende Draeck – the Flying Dragon. The customs master allowed us to borrow his record book to show you. She sailed on April the third for Rotterdam, carrying tobacco mostly, and twelve passengers. The seventh and eighth names are of interest.’
Nayler looked down the list.
Edw. Richardson.
Wm. Stephenson.
He grunted, cocked his head. ‘But this is too neat, surely?’ Even so, he held on to the ledger and frowned at the names.
Kirke said, ‘True. But then what evidence do we have that they did not take ship on the Flying Dragon but instead returned to New Haven? Nothing, save the word of Dennis Crampton, the only man who claims to have seen them – a proven rogue with a grudge against the town. And where is Crampton? He vanished as soon as Leete arrived in New Haven.’
‘Yet Leete and the magistrates did not behave like men with nothing to hide.’
‘They had very much to hide,’ said Kellond. ‘Their involvement in the escape is plain. Maybe they wished to make sure all trace of the regicides had been removed before we searched. Or perhaps they were not sure that Whalley and Goffe had got away, and wanted to give them more time.’
Nayler thought this over. ‘It is possible,’ he conceded. He handed back the ledger. ‘But I am not convinced. The whole thing is most likely a trick designed to persuade us to give up the search.’
‘You mean to continue?’
‘Most certainly. I shan’t rest till I have them in my hands or I know for certain they are dead.’
Kellond and Kirke exchanged glances. ‘Forgive us, Mr Nayler,’ said Kellond, ‘but there is a ship in harbour, sailing to Boston tomorrow.’
‘What of it?’
‘We had it in our minds that we might join her, in preference to travelling home by land – there seems little left for us to do here.’
Nayler thought how shifty Kellond looked. He had an inspiration. ‘And would this ship, by any chance, be named the Charles?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
‘The same name as your family’s vessel? Well, there is another neat coincidence. Now I understand your keenness to reach New Amsterdam.’ He tapped his pipe on the side of the capstan and blew down the stem to clear it. He recognised defeat. ‘I agree, the trail here has run out. We might as well abandon it. But on one condition: you say nothing of this manifest. I do not wish to give those Puritan governors any fresh excuse to do nothing. You agree?’
‘We agree.’
The following afternoon, leaving Chapin and the Scotch to make their own way home with the horses, the three men sailed for Boston.
You have eluded me this time, thought Nayler, as he stood at the gunwale and watched the shoreline recede. But I have raised such a hue and cry against you that if you are still here, I believe your lives will be quite wretched. You cannot hide for ever. I shall have you one day.
Already in his restless mind he was plotting a visit to Holland, and if that failed, another expedition to New England.
Nayler was correct. From the time of their near encounter in the cave, the colonels’ lives had indeed become quite wretched, almost as if a curse had been put upon them.
Because of their fear that the intruder might be lurking outside and could pick them off with a pistol as they emerged, they stayed in the darkness, risking the occasional whisper.
‘How many were there?’
‘Only one, I think . . .’
‘Has he gone?’
‘I’m not sure . . .’
‘There might be others close by . . .’
‘He could have heard us and gone for help . . .’
By the time they decided to risk squeezing back through the crevice into the open air, it was dusk. If Sperry’s son had tried to bring food, they had missed him. The pool at the base of the higher waterfall at least gave them plenty to drink. Searching for firewood in the fading light, Ned found a small axe – Indian, by the look of it – and in its honour they called their refuge Hatchet Harbour and gave thanks to God for their deliverance. But their relief was short-lived. They decided they dared not light a fire lest it be seen from the town, glowing in the night sky like a comet. And the narrowness of the entrance made the cave feel like a trap, so they slept out under the stars.
Sperry’s son appeared as promised on their second afternoon and called up to the ledge in a piping voice. They lowered the rope and hauled up a basket, but when they opened it, they discovered only a meagre portion of bread and cheese, which they devoured at once. On the third morning, they heard a man’s shout. They let down the rope, and Sperry scaled the rock face. His first question was whether anyone had passed by, and they told him about the man who had come into the cave and stood listening in the darkness. Will said he could not have been more than twenty paces from them. They could even hear his breathing.
‘Doubtless that would be Nayler,’ said Sperry, ‘come all the way from London to find you, or so it’s claimed.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A terror, I can tell you that. He put the fear of God into my wife.’
‘Is he still in the town?’
‘He’s taken his search party towards New Amsterdam. But Mr Jones says he’s made the whole of New England unsafe for you by his threats of punishment and the posting of reward notices. Jones asks me to tell you that you must keep away from the towns until he advises otherwise.’
‘But we cannot stay here for ever,’ protested Ned.
‘Not here. I know a better spot.’
They gathered their possessions and followed him along the ledge until he found the place he was looking for, where they adopted the same procedure as before – Sperry climbed the cliff, threw down the rope, hauled up their bags and then helped each of them ascend in turn.
The second place offered some improvement on the first. It was not so much a cave as a heap of half a dozen massive rocks – like a pagan temple, thought Ned, a natural Stonehenge – that formed a shelter roughly forty feet square and twenty high, with a tunnel between two of the giant boulders and a ledge high above the ground on which they might sleep. It was well screened by surrounding trees, yet when they scrambled to the top, they found it offered an even more commanding view than the last, not only of the town and the sea but of the sweep of forest to the north.
Sperry said, ‘There is a stream further down you may fish, and plenty of wood for a fire – so long as you light it on the other side, it cannot be seen from the town. The Indians call this Dead Man’s Rock and believe it to be a place of evil spirits, so they will not disturb you. You have your pistols?’
Ned patted his pocket.
‘I advise you keep them by you. There are wolves and bears and mountain lions that might disturb you – a shot should scare them off. I’ll send my boy with food when I can. He’ll leave a basket you may empty after he has gone and which you may then put out again for him to collect. Keep out of sight. Mr Jones promises he will come and fetch you when it’s safe to move.’
