Act of Oblivion, page 24
‘It’s dry at least. You should be safe down there. I’ll return in the morning.’
He gave the lamp to Will, who thanked him and at once began to descend. Ned peered into the shadows – he did not care for the look of it, but he was hardly in a position to complain – and after a brief hesitation followed him down a ladder to a stone floor. Above their heads, the trapdoor dropped.
Part Three
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1662
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE FOLLOWING SPRING – AT eight o’clock on the morning of Sunday 2 March 1662 to be exact – four men in their middle to late fifties, each carrying a Bible and all wearing the sombre dress of a Puritan on the Sabbath, were to be observed walking together through the City of London. There was some defiance in the action: under the laws of Charles II’s government, the maximum number of Puritans permitted to gather at any one time was five; more than that was considered a conventicle, punishable by imprisonment. Their appearance was legal, but only just.
Accompanied by peals of bells from the city’s churches, they made their way north from the river along Coleman Street, turned right into Swan Alley, a lane of merchants’ houses, and stopped before a tall, narrow dwelling that seemed to have been squeezed into the terrace as an afterthought.
Frances Goffe was pouring a glass of water for her Uncle William when she heard their knock. As usual, the old minister was bent over his papers. He said, without looking up, ‘That will most likely be my visitors. Would you let them in? You may find them of interest. They have newly come from America.’
America. ‘Do you think they may have news of Will and Father?’
‘It’s very likely.’
She hurried down the passage, smoothing her skirt and straightening her hair, and opened the door. The most senior of the four men looked at her for a moment, then gave her a grave smile.
‘Do I have the honour of addressing Mrs Goffe? Mrs Frances Goffe?’
She was not so far gone in her excitement as to forget her caution. ‘May I ask who wishes to know?’
‘Forgive me.’ He touched the brim of his flat-crowned hat. ‘I am John Winthrop, governor of the colony of Connecticut. This is Major Robert Thompson of Guilford in New Haven, Captain Scott of Long Island, and Mr Nathaniel Whitefield, also of Guilford. We are here to see Reverend Hooke.’
‘Come in, please. My uncle expects you.’ She stood aside to let them enter, quickly checked the street to see if they had been followed, then showed them into the parlour.
She lingered on the threshold, hoping for the chance to ask some questions, but Uncle William said firmly, ‘Thank you, Frances. You may join your aunt now. Please close the door.’
It was too cruel, she thought, to shut her out from their conversation. Nearly two years had passed since she had last seen Will or her father. In all that while she had received no letter from either, apart from that scribbled note of Will’s. She had been forbidden to write to them, despite her tearful entreaties, even when her mother died: it was considered too great a risk. She tried to overhear what the men were saying, but she could make out nothing, and eventually she went upstairs to Aunt Jane and the children.
Richard was almost two now, the image of his father traced upon his face, and walking so determinedly they had been obliged to put a gate across the top of the stairs to prevent him tumbling. Betty and Nan were still prone to sickness, but Judith was sturdy, and Frankie was a help with the little ones, although it was not much of a life for a girl of ten, cooped up in a borrowed house and wearing cast-off clothes given by members of the church. Not that Frances’s own were any better. People were kind. They didn’t ask questions. Yet she knew they whispered about her behind her back – not just the wife but the daughter of a regicide, fugitives who would be hanged, drawn and quartered if they were caught. It was another reason to keep the children indoors: she wanted to shield them from the truth as long as possible. Money was scarce. She had to take in laundry and work as a seamstress to make ends meet.
Aunt Jane had Dickie on her lap. The Bible was open on the table; she was waiting for Frances to join them before beginning their discussion. Frances held Judith’s hand and tried to concentrate, especially during prayers, but her thoughts kept returning to the men in the parlour, and when, after a couple of hours, she heard the door open and the sound of voices, she excused herself and ran downstairs to intercept them.
The group was just emerging. She could tell at once that harsh words had been exchanged. Major Thompson and Mr Whitfield, the Guilford men, had their backs turned on Mr Winthrop, whose hands were spread helplessly, as if he had been appealing to them and they had rejected whatever he had been saying. ‘Friends, friends,’ said Uncle William plaintively, following them into the hall, ‘we must not fall out among ourselves. Intolerance is the sin that has brought us to our present sorry state.’
‘No, sir,’ said Mr Whitfield, ‘rather it is an excess of toleration that has been our ruin. Plainly there is nothing more to be said. God be with you, Mr Hooke. And Mr Winthrop – may God guide you to a better understanding.’
Whitfield, Thompson and Scott all left. Winthrop stared after them, shaking his head. ‘You see how it is, Mr Hooke – quite hopeless.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I thank you for your efforts. Now we must see how matters play out.’
He was moving towards the door when Frances called from the stairs, ‘Mr Winthrop, before you leave, I beg you – do you have any news of my husband and my father?’
He halted and turned. ‘We have told all we know to your uncle.’
‘But would you tell me, sir? Forgive me, it has been so long without a word.’
Hooke said, ‘I shall tell you later, child.’
‘Have you seen them? Are they in good health?’
‘Frances!’
‘It’s no matter, Mr Hooke,’ said Winthrop pleasantly. ‘Yes, Mrs Goffe, I have seen them. A year ago. They passed through Hartford. And yes, they were well – tired from travelling, but otherwise in good spirits.’
‘And now? Where are they?’
‘Somewhere in the colony of New Haven, I believe. Their exact location is a secret, known only to a handful. It is safer that way.’
‘Are their lives very hard?’
‘They’re among friends, Mrs Goffe, and as far as I know they’re alive. That is something. The rest is in God’s hands.’
‘If you see them, will you tell them I am well, and the children also? That we pray for them every day, and live in hope that we shall be reunited?’
‘If I see them, I’ll be sure to tell them.’ Winthrop smiled and touched the brim of his hat. ‘Good day to you both, and God be with you.’
His smile died as soon as he was in the street. If there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that he would take care never to see the colonels again. The last he had heard, they were said to be living in a cave. If so, how could they have survived the winter? Poor fellows, he thought. Poor fellows, they would be better off dead.
Hooke ordered Frances to join him in the parlour. She started to apologise, but he did not seem to be listening. He sat with his back to her at the small table he used as a desk, where he composed his ‘intelligencers’ – forbidden to preach, he now devoted most of his energy to letters that were really miniature newspapers, full of facts and rumours he had picked up in the city, which he dispatched to Puritan communities outside London, on the Continent and in America. They lived like rebels, underground. He had been working on his latest dispatch all week. His pen moved swiftly across the paper.
‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that your father and your husband have been the cause of grave disagreement among our friends in New England. The men of New Haven, Mr Davenport in particular, have been open – it seems too open – in their hospitality and obstructed the official search. Now the talk is that the colony will be dissolved by the King. In that event, its settlements will most likely be absorbed by Connecticut. The New Haven men seek reassurance from Governor Winthrop that he will not agree the transfer. I was asked to act as honest broker between the two.’
‘And Mr Winthrop will not give such reassurance?’
Hooke shook his head. ‘He will not. He has come to London to arrange a new charter of his own. He says that to refuse to obey the King’s decision will put Connecticut under suspicion.’
‘And what do you say?’
‘I see both sides. It’s an abiding weakness of mine. Now . . .’ he finished writing and blew on the ink to dry it, ‘Mr Thompson tells me that a connection of his, one Samuel Wilson, a merchant, is sailing to Boston tomorrow. He is of our faith and willing to take the risk of carrying messages. I have written a digest of news for Mr Davenport, and just now added a postscript regarding this morning’s meeting – guarded, but he will guess the meaning. Would you be so good as to deliver it to Mr Wilson? He has a house close by the river. I would go myself, but I am often followed, and my legs are not so nimble.’ He folded the pages into a package and sealed it with wax. ‘Here is Wilson’s address. I shall go and give Jane the news of her brother.’
Frances went to fetch her coat from the kitchen, and when she returned, her uncle had gone. The thick letter bore the inscription Revd. John Davenport, New Haven. Samuel Wilson’s address was in the parish of St Peter’s and St Paul’s Wharf. She turned the piece of paper over in her hands. Here was a thread, however tenuous, that might link her to her husband. The temptation was irresistible. She sat down at the desk, took another sheet, dipped her uncle’s pen in the inkwell, and let the nib hover over the blankness. It could be no more than the barest whisper of love – no details of their true condition, nothing that might betray where they lived, or who had sent it, or even to whom it might be addressed. On the latter point, she would have to trust to Mr Davenport’s discretion.
My dearest heart, she wrote, God has set us apart, but by His mercy the children are all well, & by His infinite grace I have faith we shall one day be reunited.
She paused and thought of adding a line for her father, giving him the news that her stepmother was dead – it had been a mercy, she wanted to tell him – but she could not find the words, and saw no point in adding to his miseries.
She folded the sheet in four and sealed it with a drop of wax. Then she broke open the letter to Reverend Davenport. Inside was a bill of exchange for twenty pounds, collected from local Puritans. They could have done with that money themselves, though naturally she did not begrudge it. She slipped her own letter into the middle of the eight closely written pages and resealed the packet in four places with her uncle’s signet ring. She scrutinised it carefully. No one could ever tell it had been tampered with.
She heard a sound above. Her uncle was descending the stairs. Quickly she replaced everything on the desk as she had found it, then took the letter and Wilson’s address and went out onto the street.
The merchant’s house was little more than a mile away, close to the river near Blackfriars. She asked directions from the verger at the church of St Peter and St Paul, and half an hour after leaving Hooke’s study, she was knocking on Wilson’s door. He was younger than she had expected, dressed in Puritan black. Behind him she could hear children laughing. For some reason the sound reassured her.
‘My uncle asked me to give you this to carry to America.’
He glanced at the name on the letter and grimaced. ‘I shall need to keep this most particularly hidden.’
‘But you will do it?’
‘I shall. I gave my promise.’
‘God bless you. You are a good man.’
He seemed surprised by the passion with which she spoke. ‘Will you come in for a moment?’
‘No. Thank you, but I must get back to my own children.’
She was nearly halfway home when she realised that the stout woman in a brown dress and dark green bonnet whom she had registered at the end of Wilson’s street was no more than fifty paces behind her. She ducked into the church of St Mary-le-Bow, walked briskly up the nave and out again through the chancel door, along the street and left into Old Jewry. The woman was still trailing her, but further back. Frances turned into a courtyard, ran across the cobbles, found an unlocked door and crouched in the passage behind it. Did it mean that Wilson was being watched? Or was it her uncle they were after? In which case, should she go back to Wilson and warn him she might have led trouble to his door?
She waited for the best part of an hour, until the church bell tolled twelve, then decided to risk emerging. There was no sign of the woman in the narrow lane. She took a long way back to Swan Alley and kept regularly checking over her shoulder, but it seemed she had thrown off her pursuer.
She told Uncle William what had happened as soon as she got home. He seemed unconcerned. He ran great risks to keep the faith alive. He accepted the dangers; so would Wilson. ‘It is in God’s hands,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ON THE SAME Sunday that Hooke met the four men from America, Richard Nayler sailed to Rotterdam.
Four days later, on the evening of Thursday 6 March, he was crouched by the window of an upstairs bedroom in the Dutch town of Delft, his telescope trained on a flat-fronted whitewashed house just across the canal. It was a little after six, the sun just setting, shadows creeping across the damask wall coverings. Seated behind him in a high-backed wainscot chair was Sir George Downing, His Majesty’s ambassador at The Hague. Downstairs were half a dozen English soldiers, armed but in civilian dress, who had arrived surreptitiously at intervals throughout the afternoon from the Blackamoor, a ship of the Royal Africa Company, owned by the Duke of York, that lay moored in Rotterdam harbour about six miles to the south.
Downing yawned. ‘What if they do not come?’
‘They will come,’ said Nayler, adjusting the focus slightly so that he could scan the street. ‘I have read their letters. Affection is their weakness, believe me.’ It was an article of faith for him.
‘Imagine missing your wife so much you would be willing to risk your life to see her.’ Downing’s voice was incredulous. He started to laugh.
Nayler hated him.
He had returned to London from Boston at the end of July, resolved to intensify his enquiries into those regicides still at liberty on the Continent: if Whalley and Goffe were among them, he would hear of them soon enough. When he made his report to Hyde – now Earl of Clarendon – on the failure of his mission in America, and raised the possibility that his quarry might have fled to Holland, Hyde told him of Downing’s recent reappointment as ambassador. ‘Write to him. You will find him anxious to assist.’
‘Downing is at The Hague?’ Nayler was astonished. ‘But he was Cromwell’s man in Holland.’
‘Exactly. And now he is ours. Between you and me, he came over to us secretly while the King was still in exile, and proved a most useful spy. He is another of those former Parliament men now anxious to show his zeal. Don’t look so shocked, Mr Nayler. Scruples do not suit you.’
And Downing did indeed prove effective in tracking down the regicides – there was no denying it – precisely because of his history. Reared in Salem, Massachusetts, one of the first to graduate from Harvard, a chaplain in the New Model Army before entering government service, he had maintained friendly contact with his exiled former colleagues, who still trusted him. His reports, passed on to Nayler’s intelligence committee, teemed with names and places. Of the thirteen signatories of the King’s death warrant still at liberty, he gathered reliable news of six. John Hewson, a former cobbler, who had lost an eye fighting with Cromwell’s army in Ireland, had recently died in Amsterdam: he could be crossed off the list. Miles Corbet, an elderly lawyer, was living in Holland between Zwolle and Kampen. The other four – Valentine Walton, Cromwell’s brother-in-law; Sir John Barkstead, former Lieutenant of the Tower of London; John Dixwell, and Colonel John Okey, who had been Downing’s commanding officer – were all in the town of Hanau, near Frankfurt.
In Germany they were out of reach. But if they could be lured to Holland, they might be captured.
Downing provided the names; it was Nayler who devised the trap. There was a merchant in Delft he knew named Abraham Kicke, who acted as postmaster for the regicides, passing letters between Barkstead and Okey and their wives in England. Nayler read the letters before they were delivered and was struck by the tenderness of their tone. At his suggestion, Downing offered Kicke a bounty of two hundred pounds a head if he would propose that the two men came to his house to meet their womenfolk in secret. ‘The promise of seeing their wives again will lure them, gentlemen,’ Nayler assured his committee. To bait the trap further, Downing also promised Okey safe passage across Holland.
The rendezvous was fixed for the first week of March, although Mrs Okey and Lady Barkstead knew nothing of it and remained in England.
At seven, the bells of Delft rang out in graceful tinkling chimes and by half past, Kicke’s house was fading into the darkness, save for a lamp in a downstairs window. Perhaps they would not come, suggested Downing. In which case, said Nayler, he would return the next night, and the next, for as long as it took. Behind him, the ambassador shifted in his chair and sighed.
Suddenly, from around the corner to the right, two shadows appeared – close together, walking quickly, bulky figures, doubtless armed. They passed in front of the lighted window and stopped. A few moments later, an oblong yellow glow briefly showed their outline. They stepped over the threshold, and the door closed.
Nayler, squinting through his telescope, said, ‘They’re here. They’ve gone inside.’
‘How many?’
‘Two.’
Downing came and stood next to him, resting his hand on Nayler’s shoulder. He had a jowly face and a heavy body; his clothes smelled of roast mutton. It took Nayler an effort not to shudder. A few minutes later, a candle appeared in a top-floor window.
