A Crowning Mercy (36 page)

She nodded. 'I trust God will give time for revenge on the day of resurrection, Mr Perilly.' She turned away, leading her daughters across the ravaged gardens towards the New House.

Upstairs, in Toby's bedroom, Lady Margaret found the doctor bleeding her son. 'Again?'

'It is the best course. Lady Margaret.' Dr Sillery had taken a cupful of blood from Toby's arm and now he pulled blankets over the patient. 'The sweating will help.'

Lady Margaret suppressed a retort that nothing had helped so far. She sat beside her son and put a hand on his forehead. It was hot. He had a fever and she knew that most fevers led to the grave. She looked at Sillery. 'The wounds?'

'The hand is healing well, extremely well.' He shrugged. 'The shoulder...' He did not finish.

Lady Margaret looked back to Toby's sweating, unshaven face. He had been struck in the left shoulder by a musket ball that had mangled the joint and torn itself raggedly free from his armpit. That wound had thrown him to the ground. Then a sword had chopped down and taken two fingers from his left hand. The finger stumps were healing well, the skin pink and free of smell, but the shoulder seemed to fester. Each day Sillery would sniff the wound, frown, and then draw blood to equalize Toby's bodily humours. Each day, too, Mr Perilly said prayers for the sick, and Lady Margaret feared they would become prayers for the dying. In another room of the New House Colonel Washington sat up in bed, his face bandaged where once he had eyes.

'Mother?' Anne looked round the door.

'I'm coming.'

In the long gallery, a room untouched by the victorious troops, the Earl of Fleet waited with a drawn, anxious face. His allegiance was torn between his convictions that looked forward to a Parliamentary victory and his duties towards his wife's family. He nodded heavily. 'Lady Margaret.'

'John? I assume from your face that the news is not good?'

'No.' He spread his hands in a quick gesture of futility. 'I did my best, but we could not offer enough money. Indeed not.'

Lady Margaret's face was as calm and stern as it had been throughout her husband's burial service. 'May I ask who did offer the most money?'

The Earl of Fleet frowned, twisted his body uncomfortably and then walked towards the nearest window. 'Money was not offered.' He held up a hand to ward off a question. 'It seems that the estate will be awarded as compensation in repayment for a loan to Parliament. The amount was unstated.'

'To whom is my house compensation?'

The Earl of Fleet faced her. His hands rubbed uneasily together. 'Sir Grenville Cony.'

'Ah.' Lady Margaret stiffened her back. 'I trust that unspeakable piece of slime is not in the castle now?'

'No.'

'And I assume, too, that the property is confiscated? Not sold?'

Fleet nodded unhappily. 'Confiscated.'

'So I am penniless?'

'No, mother!' Anne protested.

The Earl of Fleet paced uneasily back towards the fireplace. 'Sir George's other properties were not discussed. The Shropshire land.' He stopped, knowing he was giving no comfort.

Lady Margaret sniffed. 'The Shropshire land will have to be sold, and I've no doubt at a laughable price. I suppose I can have no hopes of selling the London house?'

He shook his head. 'The London Committee will doubtless award that.'

'Doubtless. And to Cony, no doubt.'

The Earl put his hands behind his back. 'There is the plate, Lady Margaret. I notice it is all gone, yet I assume Sir George took pains to make it safe?'

Lady Margaret shook her head. The treasures of Lazen were still within the castle, walled up in the cellars, and it had been a small satisfaction to her that the victors had neither found it, nor had they been told where it was by one of the few servants who knew of the treasure's existence. She looked at her son-in-law. 'There is no plate.'

'No plate!' The Earl looked shocked.

'John!' Anne looked at her mother. 'What did father do with it?'

'That is no business of the King's enemies.'

There was an awkward silence, broken by the Earl of Fleet. 'It will be some time before the transaction is completed. You won't have to leave immediately.' He smiled. 'You are, of course, welcome to use our house. We shall be honoured.'

'Thank you, John.' Lady Margaret smiled at her daughter. 'And thank you, Anne. There is one other thing you can do for me.'

'Yes?' The Earl sounded eager, glad to be moving on from the bad news he had delivered.

'There was a girl here, a Dorcas Slythe, who has disappeared. I want to know where she is.'

'Mother!' Anne, who had been longer in the castle since its fall than her husband, frowned. It was Anne's belief that Campion's presence had brought this ruin on her parents, and she had tried to persuade Lady Margaret, from the evidence of the blood in the bedroom, that the girl was wounded and probably dead by now.

Lady Margaret quietened her daughter. 'I want news of the girl. The soldiers say she was taken to London. Can I rely on you, John?'

He nodded. 'Yes, of course.' Then he glanced at his wife. 'I think Anne is right, Lady Margaret. The girl has caused endless trouble.'

Lady Margaret's voice was cold. 'Would you like to explain that to Sir Toby when he recovers?'

The Countess of Fleet frowned. 'Toby will get over it, mother.'

Lady Margaret sniffed. 'I hope not. If Lazen's downfall was brought about so that my enemies could destroy that girl, then I wish to save her. I wish to deny them that victory.'

The Earl of Fleet stood beside his wife. 'Even if we find her, Lady Margaret, I doubt if there is a thing we can do now.'

'You mean your influence in the councils of my enemies is declining?'

Fleet frowned. 'It was never great.'

Lady Margaret turned back towards her son's sickroom. She feared, if he should come out of the fever, telling him of Campion's unknown fate. 'Find her, John! Let me know, and then we shall see how helpless we are. I want the girl found!'

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

Campion was in the place of the ravens; the Tower. The river swept its southern wall, while a moat, as filthy and stinking as the sewer it was, guarded its other three sides. On the hill to the north-west London's crowds gathered for public executions.

The Tower of London was a royal palace, an armoury, a garrison, a zoo, and the strongest prison in the city. In its cells were priests and noblemen, soldiers and civilians, all of them deemed to be enemies of the Lord's anointed. The prisoners here were not the common prisoners, not the murderers and thieves, but the enemies of the revolution. William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, upholder of the Divine Right of Kings, was the most notorious.

At nightfall, when Campion came beneath the outer gates for the first time, the Tower's Parliamentary governor had been puzzled, even irate. 'Who is she?'

'Dorcas Slythe.'

'So?' He reluctantly took the warrant given him by a trooper. He grunted when he saw the seal of the Committee of Safety. 'Charge?'

'Witchcraft and murder.'

The governor sneered. 'Put her in the clink.'

The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was not overawed by the Tower's governor. 'She may be a Papist spy.'

'Ah.' The governor frowned at the warrant. 'It says nothing about that here.'

'You may argue with the Committee of Safety. If you prefer, I can ask Sir Grenville Cony to explain.'

The governor glanced up. 'Sir Grenville? That's different.' He climbed on to the step of the coach and looked inside. 'Is she to have privileges?'

'None.'

The governor, who was annoyed at being summoned from his quarters by the captain of the guard to deal with the unexpected prisoner, bawled at the captain to do the paperwork. Campion was taken from the coach, the hooves of the horses were loud as they turned the cumbersome vehicle about and then the gates clashed shut. She was a prisoner.

There was no window in Campion's cell. The only light, feeble at best, came from the tallow candles that lit the tunnel beyond the door's grille.

The cell floor was stone. In one corner was a heap of old, stale straw. There was no furniture. She was given one blanket, ridden with lice, but it was hopeless against the cold. As there was no day or night in this place, so there was no season but winter.

She shivered. She moaned to herself, and sometimes she sang in a small voice that was thin in the dank gloom. She rocked herself in the straw corner, huddled with the blanket, and the cell reeked with the stench of sewage. Rats scuttled about, their claws loud on the stone.

She lost count of time, lost count of the number of pots of thin gruel that were pushed through the door. The bread was rock hard. She stank. Her hair was matted, her body bitten by lice, and her sleep was broken by the clanging of doors and the scraping of bolts that told her other prisoners were somewhere in these cells.

Sometimes the grille of her door would darken and she would look up to see a face pressed against the small opening. Eyes looked white at her. Sometimes there would be laughter; sometimes the hiss of hatred: 'Witch! Papist! Whore!'

She did not descend into the abyss of madness. Two things saved her. She did not know if Toby was alive or dead, yet she imagined him alive. She forced herself to imagine him alive, and she would rock in her corner, arms clutching her knees, and imagine the life they would one day have. She saw Toby avenging her on her enemies, she saw him strike down Sir Grenville, the sword blade opening up that world of which they had dared dream. She imagined the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey whining for mercy. She saw her brother on his knees, and she imagined the sweetness of offering him a sister's forgiveness, more terrible than the sword's swift revenge.

When she was not in her dream world, living among the fields of eternal summer beside cool streams, she forced herself to recite aloud. She tried to remember the whole of the Song of Solomon, and she would weep sometimes as the words sounded in her head: 'His banner over me was love.' She recited psalms, remembered from the long hours of childhood, but most of all she spoke aloud the words of a poem she had read so often in Lazen Castle. She could only remember the first verse, and of that she was not certain that her memory was correct, but she loved the words. Lady Margaret had said that the poem mocked love's intensity, but Donne's words were like music in her stinking, cold, rat-running cell:

Go, and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me, where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil's foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

She had never seen the sea, the closest she had been was when she had met Mrs Swan in the inn yard at Southampton, but she imagined it as full of mermaids' singing, and she saw herself and Toby listening to the songs and knowing peace.

At other times she came close to despair. She remembered the week of travel from Lazen Castle, a week in which Goodwife had spat out a vituperative stream at her, dredging from the past every small sin, every disobedience, and flaying Campion with her envy and malice. In her cell, day after indistinguishable day, Campion was determined to live, yet there were moments when it seemed so futile. When the water ran on her cell walls, when her mouth and throat were sour with the stink of urine, when the rats woke her in the darkness, when she shivered uncontrollably and could not even be bothered to pick off the lice that she could see on her skin, then, at those moments, she sometimes wished she was no more. At those moments, she was sure Toby was dead and she wished only to be with him. Perhaps, she thought, the mermaids only sang to the dead.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

'Magnificent! Magnificent! Your men will clear the gardens?' It was posed as a question, but Colonel Fuller knew better than to treat it as anything but an order.

'Of course, Sir Grenville.'

'With haste, Colonel, with haste. Ah! A loggia! A pity the guns damaged it. See if you have masons.'

'Yes, Sir Grenville.'

Sir Grenville climbed the single step into the loggia's arcaded shadow. He looked at the vine, trailing where round shot had smashed its supports. 'You say, Colonel, that the plate wasn't found?'

'No, Sir Grenville. I believe it was sold for the enemy's cause.'

'No doubt, no doubt. Or melted down. A pity, a pity.' He did not sound disappointed, nor, he reflected, should he be. Sir Grenville's cup flowed over with success. True, the castle had fallen earlier than he had expected, but Ebenezer Slythe had not done anything so foolish as to run away with the seal. It had been delivered to Sir Grenville in Winchester when he had met Ebenezer returning with his sister to London. Sir Grenville now had two seals. No one, but no one, could now assemble three of the four except for him. The Covenant was safe.

Dorcas Slythe, of course, would die. At Winchester, in the tavern in Jewry Street where Sir Grenville had spoken with Ebenezer, he had given the younger man the warrant charging her with witchcraft and murder. Ebenezer, quietly pleased with himself, had read the words. 'We could add heresy.'

'Heresy, dear boy? Do you not think the pie has enough plums already?'

Ebenezer gave his secret, slow smile. 'The seal has a crucifix inside.'

'Indeed?'

Ebenezer showed the small, silver figure to Sir Grenville. 'I don't think Parliament will like that.'

'I'm sure they will not.' Sir Grenville smiled and poured himself wine. 'But I would like it even less, Ebenezer, if we were to draw attention to the seals. No, dear boy. But by all means spread the rumour that she's Romish. It will only whip up London against her.' He put the Seal of St Matthew into his pocket. 'You know what to do?'