Act of Oblivion, page 8
He had lost them.
He crossed the street and pulled on the bell handle. The door was opened by an elderly porter.
‘Yes?’
‘Good day to you.’ Nayler touched his hat. ‘I’m looking for Mrs Whalley.’
‘She has left.’
From the interior came the sound of music and women’s laughter. There was a crash as something glass fell to the floor and shattered. The porter looked over his shoulder.
‘Can you tell me where she has gone? I’m a friend of the family – a very good friend,’ he added.
A man appeared in the passage behind the porter. His shirt was unbuttoned to the waist. He was holding the neck of a broken bottle. ‘His Majesty needs more wine.’ Nayler recognised the Duke of York.
The porter bowed. ‘Yes, Your Highness.’ He gave Nayler a brief glance of apology and closed the door.
Nayler stepped back into the street. Nothing shocked him; little surprised him. If this was the person God had anointed to be king, who was he to dispute it? But he cursed the man Charles Stuart for his rampant prick. He waited a few minutes and rang the bell again.
This time the old porter was ready for him. After another glance over his shoulder, he said, ‘You are truly a friend of the family?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you are a friend of mine. I was in their service for seven years. Honest, God-fearing people. They have lost everything. Not even a candlestick remains to them.’
‘A cruel business,’ said Nayler, clasping his hands as if in prayer, ‘to punish the wives and children for the sins of the husbands and fathers. Where have they gone?’
The porter lowered his voice. ‘To lodge with Mrs Whalley’s brother-in-law, the Reverend Hooke, at the Savoy Hospital.’
‘He has found them rooms?’
‘They are in his gift. He is the master there.’
‘Porter! Where in the devil’s name are you?’ It was the Duke of York again. The old man gave Nayler a sorrowful look and closed the door once more.
He set off at once, conscious of wearing his best court shoes with the silver buckles and his white silk stockings, which meant he had to keep his eyes on the ground and avoid the stinking piles of shit and pools of piss – equine and human – strewn across his path.
The Savoy Hospital was along the Strand from Essex House, a charitable refuge for the poor and sick that had served as a military hospital for the Roundheads in the Civil War. Nayler had never had cause to set foot in it before, thank God. He passed down a sunless alley, through a gate and into a crowded cemetery filled with crumbling grey slate stones from Tudor times, slanting all ways like rotten teeth. To his right, a chapel; ahead and to his left, a pair of red-brick fortresses, stained black by coal smoke, with tiny windows. The destitute of London, mere bundles of rags, crouched in the shadows of the walls. Wounded veterans, missing limbs and hobbling on crutches, swung themselves between the graves. A fearful, horrid place, it seemed to him, more a prison than a hospital. It reminded him of his long period of sickness after Naseby, and the gaol where he was kept after his wife had died.
He wandered around, through courtyards and a garden high with weeds, keeping an eye out for his quarry, until he encountered a woman with a bunch of keys attached to her belt who pointed him in the direction of the master’s lodgings – an altogether more congenial building, ivy-covered, like a master’s lodge in an Oxford college. He could imagine the Whalleys and the Goffes seeking sanctuary here. He hesitated, wondering if it was wise to show himself, and decided he had no choice. He would tell this Reverend Hooke he had a message for Katherine Whalley, and if she was at home devise some story on the spot. But when he rang the bell and a priest appeared, he saw at once that the regime had changed, for this man wore a surplice and was no Puritan.
‘I am looking for Mr Hooke.’
‘Hooke has gone,’ said the priest, with great satisfaction. ‘He was appointed by Cromwell, but now he has been purged.’
It cost Nayler some effort not to groan aloud. ‘Gone? Gone where?’
The priest shrugged. ‘I know only that he and his family departed a week ago.’
‘How numerous was this family?’
‘With children, I should say seven or eight.’
‘Did they not leave some new address where they could be found?’
‘They had only a day to pack and leave. I doubt they knew themselves where they were going. There is nothing left in England for the likes of William Hooke, particularly at his age. He has no hope of finding a living.’
‘Is he old?’
‘Sixty, I believe.’
Nayler sighed and took a step backwards, ‘If by chance you should hear any report of him, perhaps I might trouble you to send me word at the offices of the Privy Council? Richard Nayler is my name.’
The priest nodded, impressed. ‘I shall indeed, Mr Nayler.’ He was more eager to be helpful now he knew he was dealing with a man of power. ‘You might do well to enquire among the Puritan meeting houses around Spitalfields. They look after one another like Jews.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘I suppose it is always possible that Hooke will return to America.’
Nayler, who was just turning away, stopped and swung back to the priest. ‘America?’
‘Most certainly. He lived there nearly twenty years, ministering to some sect of zealots.’
The following afternoon, in his office – a small room directly across the corridor from the Privy Council chamber, overlooking the gardens of Whitehall Palace – Nayler convened a meeting of those most closely associated with the hunt for the regicides. Pinned to a board propped up on an easel was a chart of all the wanted traitors: their names and last known locations.
The usual four men attended: his secretary, Mr Samuel Nokes, a diligent young lawyer trained at Lincoln’s Inn; Dr John Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, the greatest cryptanalyst in England and a supporter of Parliament in the Civil War, who had broken the cipher of the King’s correspondence captured at Naseby, and who now, after some persuasion, was making his skills available to the new regime; Colonel Henry Bishop, the Postmaster General, who ensured the committee had prompt access to every letter that passed through the London sorting office; and Mr William Prynne, the MP for Bath, the most fanatical of the anti-regicides in Parliament, who always wore a black leather cowl to conceal the fact that his ears had been cut off in the pillory twenty years before.
Once Dr Wallis had reported on the latest coded messages intercepted between the fugitives in Holland and their sympathisers in England, Nayler raised the matter of Whalley and Goffe. He recounted how he had gone to the King Street house and learned that the families had left – tactfully he omitted to mention what else he had witnessed – then described his visit to Savoy Hospital and his discovery that they had moved on from there as well. As he spoke, he became aware of young Nokes regarding him with curiosity, and it occurred to him that it must seem odd that he should have undertaken such humdrum work himself. He quickly drew his report to a conclusion. ‘So, to put the matter briefly, gentlemen, it is my belief that if we are to track down these particular traitors, we need to find their families. Goffe has young children. It is most likely that sooner or later he will seek to contact them. Affection is their weak point.’
Colonel Bishop said, ‘Do we believe them still to be together? If so, that is another weakness. Two men travelling as a pair are more conspicuous than one alone.’
‘My feeling is they are together,’ said Nayler. He thought of them that Christmas Day, standing at the altar in Essex House, berating the congregation. ‘They often were when Cromwell was alive.’
‘I must confess I find the completeness of their disappearance a surprise,’ said Wallis. He spoke as usual with a certain scholarly detachment: for him, the manhunt was merely a series of mathematical problems to be solved. ‘None of the encoded messages between the other fugitives and their supporters has so much as mentioned them. They are a void – as if they have vanished from the earth.’
‘I have begun to wonder,’ said Nayler, ‘if they might not have gone to America.’ He had spent half the night turning the matter over in his mind. ‘Colonel Whalley’s sister is married to a Puritan minister named Hooke, who lived among some community of religious extremists over there for many years. If that is the case, it would explain why they seem to be so entirely removed from the rest.’
‘Then they must have sailed before the end of May,’ said Nokes, ‘because we have checked every passenger leaving England since then. Unless they took ship from Holland.’
‘Surely we would have heard of that? Have one of our men go to the Customs House, Mr Nokes, and consult the passenger manifests for vessels sailing to America in April and May. They may have travelled under assumed names.’
Nokes made a note. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And do we have an informer among the Puritan community in Spitalfields?’
‘We have several, Mr Nayler.’
‘Then they should be directed to enquire – discreetly – after the whereabouts of Reverend Hooke. Hooke will lead us to the families, I am sure.’
‘Bait the Hooke and we shall catch our fish,’ said Prynne. His thin mouth twisted in amusement. His hollow cheeks were scarred with the letters ‘SL’, for ‘seditious libeller’, branded there on the orders of the Chief Justice at the same time as his ears had been severed. The letters had broken up over the years, leaving two dark brown jagged ridges, like cankers, and although the punishment had been inflicted under the government of Charles I, by some weird process of his remorseless logic, Prynne had ended up on the Royalist side. ‘I know these men Whalley and Goffe,’ he continued. ‘They stood beside Colonel Pride and his soldiers and stopped me from entering Parliament because they knew I was one of those Members who would not vote for the trial of the King. I was held in a vile dungeon for weeks, and not released until after His Majesty had been murdered. I would dearly like to see them hanged and gutted alive.’
Nayler nodded in agreement but otherwise made no answer; indeed, he looked away, preferring not to glimpse his own reflection in those fanatical eyes.
Two days later, shortly after sunrise on Saturday, Nayler was in his office, composing a memorandum to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, when the door was thrown open and Nokes burst in.
‘Hooke has been found. He has been lent a country house by a wealthy Puritan merchant in the city named Gold.’
Nayler threw down his pen, sat back in his chair and laughed in delight, then checked himself. ‘Can it be true, though? A rich man named Gold? Are you sure this is not a joke?’
‘No, sir,’ said Nokes earnestly. ‘The source is reliable. I had a watch placed on the house last night and this morning received a report that Hooke and his wife are indeed in residence, and others with them, women and children.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Just across the river, in Clapham village.’
‘Were any other men observed?’
‘None reported.’
‘But it must have been dark?’
‘True, sir.’
Nayler fell silent, tapping his forefinger on the table. He was thinking that it was possible – not at all likely, but still just conceivable – that Whalley and Goffe might be hiding with their families. ‘Speak to the Serjeant-at-Arms,’ he said. ‘Explain the circumstances. Tell him we need a dozen armed men to surprise this house in Clapham, today.’
Chapter Seven
THERE WAS NOTHING to be said for the wretched state into which Frances Goffe now found herself plunged at the age of twenty-six, save perhaps that it allowed her no time to brood on the calamity that had engulfed her. In the space of a few months, she had lost her husband and her father, her position in society, her home, possessions, money, servants and all peace of mind, save for her strong and simple faith that God must have willed this for a purpose and that it was her duty to endure it. Had it not been for her devotion, she was sure she would have lost her reason.
She had five children under the age of eight – the middle girls, Betty and Nan, both sickly, were a particular worry – but they were less of a burden to her than her mother, who lay on the bed beside her, eyes open, unmoving, as Frances attempted to spoon some soup into her mouth while at the same time feeding her baby, Richard, who was sucking at her breast. It was just beginning to get light. Upstairs, she could hear Aunt Jane telling Frankie, the eldest, to help her sister Judith get dressed. Uncle William was in the kitchen, studying the Bible: of all of them, he seemed the least perturbed by the meanness of their surroundings.
The house was small, a cottage at the end of a lane half a mile out of the village, with two rooms upstairs. The Hookes had one, the four girls shared the other, while Frances slept downstairs in the parlour on a mattress rolled out each evening onto the damp floor between her mother’s bed and Dickie’s cot. Apart from the beds, and a table and half a dozen wooden chairs in the kitchen, there was no furniture: Mr Gold intended to pull the house down and build a new one on the site. But then they had no need of cupboards, chests and wardrobes, for they had nothing to put in them. They possessed the clothes they stood up in, a few spare shirts and nightgowns, the girls’ dolls, and three family Bibles. The Hookes were better off – their possessions had not been seized – but their belongings were in a warehouse in the city. Uncle William, who had no head for money and who had given most of his savings to Will and Ned on their embarkation, had ten pounds that Mr Gold had loaned him. Aunt Jane took a few shillings and ventured out each day to the village to buy the household food, which she and Frances prepared between them. There was no servant. It was a long way from what Frances had been used to – the apartment in Somerset House, the place in King Street, the deference due to a family in the Protector’s inner circle.
‘Take heart, child,’ said Uncle William whenever he found her crying. ‘The Lord had less, and we still have one another.’
True. But she did not have her husband.
The baby had stopped suckling and had fallen asleep. She laid him in his cot and resumed her efforts to feed her mother. Katherine Whalley was not that old, barely more than forty – she was her stepmother, in fact: Frances’s natural mother had died when she was a baby – but her hair had turned grey and her flesh was no more than a shroud over her bones. She had been ill for years, ever since her last miscarriage; now she seemed to have lost all comprehension, and twisted her head away like a sulky child. The soup trickled off her closed mouth and onto the pillow. Frances dabbed at it with a cloth, then lay down on her mattress and put her hand over her eyes.
Will . . . Will . . . Will . . .
He had set off to America nearly four months ago. She didn’t know if he had arrived. It was too soon for word to have reached her. He hadn’t wanted to go, but she had pleaded with him, for her sake and the children’s, not to surrender to their enemies. The fact that he was with her father gave her some comfort: the old man was practical and cunning where Will was mystical and fatalistic – God forgive her for thinking so, but it was a fact. She had loved him since she was sixteen, had married him at eighteen, knew him better than anyone else in the world.
She sat up and felt around the edge of the mattress for the small cut she had made in the material. She inserted her fingers into the straw and pulled out the only three things she had left of him: a lock of his hair, a miniature portrait, and the last note he had sent her, on the day he took ship. Uncle William had brought it back from Gravesend after he had seen them off:
Dearest Heart, God will protect us, for He makes all things right on Earth. Pray for me, as I pray always for you; the greatest gift He has bestowed upon me. I will come back to you again as soon as I am able.
It was written in Will’s elaborate hand on a small piece of paper torn roughly from a notebook. The ink was smudged. It was unsigned and undated. She read it through again. She smelled his lock of dark hair. She studied his dear face – wide eyes, thin nose, a small and delicate mouth – and kissed it.
She heard her aunt calling her name. She replaced her treasures deep inside the mattress and went upstairs to see what she could do to help.
Several hours later, towards the end of the morning, soon after Aunt Jane had returned from the village with bread and cheese and Frances had drawn water from the well to wash the children’s nightclothes, Uncle William hurried in with apples from the orchard to report that soldiers on horseback were approaching down the lane. Frances saw the fear in his face.
‘You think they’re coming for us?’
‘Ours is the only house. Where else might they be headed?’
She scooped Nan up from the kitchen floor and handed her to Frankie, told her to take her little sister and Judith up to their room, where Betty was still in bed. ‘Stay there till I tell you to come down.’
From the garden came the sound of horses and men’s voices. A pair of soldiers hurried past the kitchen window. The house was being surrounded. An instant later there was a hammering at the door. Uncle William opened it a little and was roughly pushed aside by men armed with pistols and drawn swords, who poured into the house. Some ran into the parlour. Others clumped upstairs. Two soldiers trained muskets on Frances and the Hookes and shouted at them not to move.
A moment later, a short, broad-shouldered man strolled into the kitchen. ‘Reverend William Hooke, I assume?’ He touched his hat politely and turned to Aunt Jane. ‘And you are Mrs Katherine Whalley?’
‘No, sir. My name is Jane Hooke.’
‘Forgive me.’ He looked at Frances. ‘Therefore, you must be Mrs Goffe.’ He studied her for a moment. His eyes were very dark. Something flickered in them, a kind of knowingness or intimacy that made her flesh shrink. ‘Where is Mrs Katherine Whalley?’
