Act of Oblivion, page 38
Intelligence reaches us from His Majesty’s Province of New England of a most singular incident in that late Struggle with the Indians known as the King Philip’s War. The little remote town of Hadley, close by Connecticut River, at a time of public worship in September 1675, was Surpris’d by Natives called the Norwottuck, and thrown into the utmost confusion, and all seemed lost, when there appeared in their midst a grave elderly Person. In his mien and dress he differed from the rest of the People. He did not merely encourage them to defend themselves, but put himself at their head, rallied, instructed, and led them on to encounter the Enemy, who by this means were repulsed with heavy losses to the Heathens and none to the Christians. As suddenly as he had manifested himself, however, the Deliverer of Hadley disappeared, never to be seen again. The People were left in Consternation, utterly unable to account for this Exceptional Phenomenon, except that it be conjured by the Providence of God, and the Stranger himself an Angel, sent from Heaven to confound the Savages.
Nayler set his cognac down on the floor and read the passage a second time, then a third.
Since leaving England, he had managed to forget about the regicides. There was nothing he could do about them. Why torment himself? Now they thrust their way back into his mind. Whalley would be eighty; he could safely be regarded as dead. But Goffe? Goffe, if his memory served, was born in the same year as himself.
He read it a fourth time.
‘By God,’ he muttered, ‘I do believe it’s him.’
He tried to tell himself the notion was ridiculous. There must have been dozens of old soldiers living in obscurity in New England in 1675 who could have put on their uniforms at a moment of crisis and sallied forth to fight. And there might be any number of reasons why they had afterwards ‘disappeared, never to be seen again’.
Also, it had happened nearly four years ago. This ‘grave elderly Person’ might well have since died. And even supposing he was still alive, and it was indeed Goffe, he would scarcely have lingered in Hadley – a place so tiny, Nayler had never even heard of it. If he had broken cover, he would have been obliged to move on at once. He could be anywhere by now.
He sat motionless and brooding in his chair as the day ended and the street lamp was lit beneath his window.
He heard the front door open, Catherine coming in, her voice calling out to him. ‘Es-tu là, mon amour?’ Her tone was unusually soft and affectionate, which generally meant she had just made love to someone else.
Wearily he responded. ‘Oui, ma chérie, je suis là.’
Why did he even hesitate? There had been nothing to keep him in England when Hyde went into exile. There was nothing to keep him in France now.
The trail was warm. The hunt was on again.
He told her the next morning that pressing business demanded his return to London. He assured her he would be away no longer than a couple of months. He gave her all the money he could spare, and his permission, if she started to run short, to sell some of his possessions, beginning with his books. They both suspected he would not be returning, and their farewell was more affecting than either of them had expected, clinging to one another like a pair of survivors before they parted. By the middle of August, he was in London.
He took a room above a tavern in Milford Lane, still as rough as ever, but at least it was familiar. From his window he could see his old chambers in Essex House. He set up his miniature of Sarah on the nightstand, then lay on the bed and studied his thin file on Goffe, which had accompanied him on all his travels – the message he had sent his wife before his departure in 1660, the letter she had written to him that Nokes had intercepted in 1662, his likeness as a young man, the record of his attendance as a judge at the King’s trial – he had attended every session – the report in the London Intelligencer and various notes Nayler had compiled over the years. When he had finished his planning, he took his file and went to see Nokes.
It was an odd sensation to walk his old route along the Strand to Whitehall, and even odder to be stopped at the door of the palace and to have to send up a message that he would like a word. When Nokes came down, he walked straight past him, and Nayler had to call him back. ‘Mr Nokes, I am here.’
Nokes turned and peered at him. ‘Mr Nayler, is it you?’ He could not conceal his shock. ‘I did not recognise you.’
‘Oh come, is it really as bad as that? I am older, stouter and a great deal balder, but not alas any richer or wiser. May I trespass on your time a little?’
‘Of course, sir. I shall always have time for you.’
He led him up the staircase and along the corridor to Nayler’s old office. For a few minutes, they made polite conversation. Nayler asked after Nokes’s wife and children, in whom he had no interest whatsoever, and related a few stories of Hyde in exile, then Nokes asked him how long he proposed to stay in London.
‘That rather depends upon you.’
‘Upon me, sir?’ Nokes smiled uneasily. ‘How so?’
‘I rather believe I have located our old friend Colonel Goffe.’
At the mention of the name, Nokes’s smile became somewhat fixed, and when Nayler laid the London Intelligencer on the table before him, open at the appropriate page, it shrivelled to nothing. ‘What is this?’
‘Digest it, Mr Nokes, and tell me if I am wrong to suspect our old quarry has revealed himself at last.’
He sat back and watched with satisfaction as Nokes bent his head over the paragraph. When he had finished reading, he looked up and vaguely shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is a possibility, I suppose.’
‘A possibility? I should say it is closer to a certainty. I am amazed no one in the government has acted upon it.’
Nokes grimaced slightly, as if he had a toothache. ‘Frankly, Mr Nayler, we are no longer keeping much of a lookout for the regicides. Nearly all of them are reckoned to be dead.’
‘This one is not.’
‘Perhaps he is not. But even if he lives, I doubt the Council will sanction another hunt.’
‘I am not proposing the involvement of the Council. I am willing to undertake the task myself.’
‘I am not sure that is wise, sir.’
‘It is not a matter of wisdom, but of honour. I made a vow some years ago, to one who was very dear to me, and I mean to keep it. I require two things only from you – private favours, if you will.’
‘And what might they be?’
‘First I would like to know the address of Mrs Frances Goffe.’
‘We have not kept track of her for years.’
‘But I presume you still have your network of informers amongst the Puritans?’
Nokes nodded. ‘It is possible we can find her. And the other?’
‘The services of your best forger.’
He spent long hours composing the letter, sitting at the table in his room in Milford Lane, Goffe’s note to his wife beside him, the portrait of Sarah propped up against the candlestick. He tried to think what he would say to her if she was still alive, what infinite longing he would try to express, but each draft seemed more hopeless than the last. ‘Dearest heart’ seemed a safe enough beginning – that was how Goffe had addressed Frances in his note. Yet anything he wrote thereafter – I yearn to hear your voice again, I dream of your sweet face, I have longed for your gentle caresses every hour we have been apart – rang false when placed in the mouth of that stern fanatic. Love, he decided, was wasted on the Puritans.
The one thing he could be sure of was that Goffe would mention God, so he went next door, to the chapel of Exeter House, and spent an afternoon leafing through the Bible, looking for some appropriate quotation. He was acutely aware of sitting only a few feet away from where he had last seen Sarah, and that there in front of him was the spot where Whalley and Goffe, in all their arrogant power and bigotry, had directed a company of soldiers to prevent them celebrating Christmas – Christmas! As if it were a festival of the Devil! – and killed the best woman who ever lived. Hatred coiled within him, as sharp-toothed as on the day it had happened, twenty years ago.
He closed the Bible. It was hopeless. Come then, God, he thought, if you exist, show me what to write. He opened it again at random, and there it was.
The forger came to his room – a clerkish, scholarly man, with long white fingers stained with ink, who gave his name as Carby. He sat at the table, took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, studied Goffe’s note and asked for extra candles.
‘An interesting hand,’ he remarked. He made a few attempts at copying it. ‘An intelligent man, but perhaps not well educated – a deficiency he attempts to conceal by over-elaboration. What is it you wish him to say? The shorter the better.’
‘It is short.’ Nayler gave him his composition. He had decided that brevity was the key to authenticity.
Mr Carby made no comment on the content. He worked quickly. Within a couple of hours, he had produced two versions, which he held side by side close to the candle and scrutinised carefully. ‘This one, I think. The hand is freer.’
‘As you wish.’
‘To whom should it be addressed?’
‘Mrs Frances Goffe.’ Nayler spelt it out. ‘Now, Mr Carby, how much do I owe you?’
‘Nothing, sir. Mr Nokes has already paid.’
A couple of days later, while he was lying on his bed studying a newly purchased second-hand copy of the Bible, a liveried messenger arrived from the office of the Privy Council. He looked appalled to find himself in such mean lodgings. Nayler broke the seal on the note: The person you seek resides at 2 Spital Yard, Bishopsgate. That was all.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘There is no reply.’
He set off at once, along the Thames to London Bridge, then north through the gate into the city. This was the spot where the Great Fire had started, in some wretched baker’s shop. Wide areas of open ground, filled with weeds, shimmered in the afternoon heat. Still, he marvelled at how much had been rebuilt. He pressed on, past Finsbury Fields – where he had arrested Colonel Jones, walking as if he hadn’t a fear in the world – past scaffolding and building sites, until he reached Bishopsgate. Spital Yard was a narrow cobbled alley of terraced houses close to the city wall. Children were playing in the street. Two men in Puritan black strolled towards him and gave him a suspicious glance. This was clearly the district where the vipers had their nest. He walked along the alley quickly. Number two was at the far end – cramped, cracked, the brickwork still scorched from the fire, apparently derelict. He turned the corner and whistled to attract the attention of one of the boys.
‘Here’s sixpence for you if you deliver this letter to the lady in that house. Into her hands only, mind. If she’s not at home, bring it back to me, and if she asks who sent it, say a gentleman gave it you.’ The boy grinned at his good fortune and took the letter. As he turned away, Nayler caught him by the arm. ‘And no tricks, lad.’ He tightened his grip until the boy winced. ‘I’ll be watching you.’ He released him.
The boy ran across the road to the house and knocked on the door. For a while nothing happened, and Nayler feared the worst – the place looked uninhabited: perhaps Nokes’s intelligence was out of date – but then the door opened a crack and a woman’s face appeared. It was impossible at such a distance to tell if it was Frances Goffe – it was eighteen years since he had seen her. She was talking to the boy. She opened the door wider and peered up and down the street. Nayler drew back around the corner, and when he dared to look again, the door was closed. He settled down to wait.
It was a long time since Frances had heard from Will. Something seemed to have happened to make their friends in Boston reluctant to run the risk of handling his letters. Now her uncle was dead, and her only link to America had died with him, and she had been forced to move out of their old house without any means of passing on her new address. But she recognised her husband’s hand well enough.
She took the letter into the tiny parlour and had to sit down to steady her nerves before she could bring herself to break the seal.
Dearest Heart, after many long years, the words so longed for may at last be spoken, as in Leviticus 25, 18–19, & if you have the strength & desire for the undertaking, which I pray you do, I implore you to carry this message to Mr Daniel Gookin in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who will render all assistance.
That was all. She had to read it several times before she grasped the meaning. He was inviting her to join him in America! She fetched her Bible and searched it for Leviticus.
Ye shall dwell in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.
She wept. She laughed. She fell to her knees in prayer. She had given up all hope, but the Lord was good, the Lord was full of mercy. He had made her wait until the time was ripe – until Uncle William was dead, and Frankie married, and Dickie apprenticed and living with his master, and the girls with their widowed Aunt Jane in the country; he had brought her safe through plague and fire until there was nothing left to keep her from joining her husband. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Thanks be to God! Thanks be to God in all His glory!
Nayler watched her leave the house and hurry away from him down the street, walking so quickly it was hard for him to keep up. He noticed that she didn’t look back, or duck into alleyways. Her old instinct for taking precautions was forgotten in the excitement of the moment. He could scarcely believe his luck as he followed her all the way through the city to the river, to the Pool of London, where she walked along the crowded wharf, stopped to ask directions, moved on. Outside the offices of a shipping company, she finally thought to check over her shoulder, then went inside.
He lingered twenty yards from the entrance, pretending to watch the colliers from Newcastle as they were unloaded. If nothing else, her actions showed she believed that Goffe was still alive. After less than half an hour, she emerged and paused in the doorway. He watched her refasten her bonnet. She glanced in his direction, but didn’t seem to see him: smiling so much in the sunshine she was apparently unaware of anything except her own happiness. And even if she had noticed him, he was sure she wouldn’t have recognised him – not from a single meeting so long ago; not if his appearance had changed so much his own former secretary had walked straight past him.
She stepped onto the quayside and headed back the way she had come. He tried to imagine her slim figure beneath her dowdy gown as she wove through the crowds. It was strange how often he had thought of her.
He went to find the shipping clerk in his tiny cubicle. A bribe of ten shillings bought him a look at the passenger manifest, where she had registered herself as Frances Stephenson. A further five pounds secured him the last berth on the same ship – the Blessing, sailing from Gravesend to Boston three days hence, on Thursday 21 August.
Chapter Thirty-Five
SHE BARELY HAD time to say her goodbyes, trailing on foot from one child to another – to Frankie and her children (two of them now, a boy and a girl) living in Clerkenwell; to Dickie, apprenticed to be a grocer in Shoreditch, lodging with his master; to Nan and Judith, looking after Aunt Jane, close to the common in Clapham. She swore each of them to secrecy, showed them the message from their father, and announced she would be leaving before the end of the week. To their appalled objections, she replied that there wasn’t another boat to Boston for a month, that if she didn’t take the Blessing, she would risk sailing into the start of the winter storms, and besides, that she had waited so long to see Will again, she couldn’t bear to prolong their separation by another day.
It was Frankie, always the sensible, cautious one, who made the most determined effort to dissuade her.
‘This is madness, Mother – for a woman to travel alone to the other side of the world at your age.’
‘Forty-five I may be, but I’m as strong as any man – I’ve had to be, to raise you all without a father.’
‘But we shan’t ever see you again!’
She clasped her daughter’s hand. ‘Dear Frankie, if there’s no longer any danger as your father says, you shall join us – all of you. America is a better place for people of our faith than England. “The land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.”.’ She had the verses off by heart. The idea that after all these years of waiting she might refuse Will’s summons was unthinkable. ‘It is our Promised Land.’
They argued for an hour, until eventually Frankie surrendered. She knew her mother’s stubbornness too well. ‘Then go with our blessing. I can see that you’ve made up your mind, and nothing any of us can say will change it.’
Frances gathered her grandchildren in her arms and kissed them, tried hard not to cry – she wanted their last memory of her to be joyful – hugged her daughter, and hurried out of the house before she broke down completely.
God would reunite them, she was sure of it, either on earth or in Heaven.
She spent Wednesday morning packing – warm clothes for New England, a bowl and cup and cutlery, some biscuits and cheese, her Bible. It did not take long. She had not much in the way of worldly possessions. The children could have what remained. She told none of the members of her church of her plans. That afternoon, she walked down to the pier next to London Bridge and hired a boatman to row her to Gravesend, and by dusk she was aboard the Blessing, in the cramped communal cabin below decks, its timbers creaking on the rising tide.
Nayler passed the night before the Blessing sailed at an inn close to the quayside. He knew from experience what the voyage would be like. He wanted to spend as little time on board as possible. He had brought a pair of pistols, bullets and powder, wrapped up in a spare shirt. In his pocket he had a razor-sharp knife, protected by a leather sheath. At first light, he walked down to the harbour.
He was dressed in dark, drab clothes. He had dispensed with his wig and wore the flat-crowned hat favoured by the Puritans. In one hand he carried his leather bag and in the other his battered second-hand Bible. He showed his ticket to the purser – he was listed on the manifest under his usual pseudonym of Richard Foster – surrendered the larger of his two bags to be taken to the hold, and was directed to his hammock. This time he did not have a cabin to himself. Instead he was crammed into a space beneath the main deck with roughly a hundred others. The ceiling was only five feet high. He had to crouch like a hunchback and push his way through the press of bodies – old and young, men and women (some heavily pregnant), children of all ages, mothers and babies, pet dogs – until he found an empty hammock. From the hold below came the grunts and squawks of livestock – pigs, goats, chickens. He placed his Bible, his hat and his smaller bag onto the canvas to secure it, then peered around for Frances. If he could not see her – if, at the last minute, she had become suspicious or had been persuaded not to travel – then he promised himself he would disembark. Indeed, such was his dread of the ordeal ahead, he found himself almost hoping she had changed her mind.
