The Best of Men (77 page)

“He may yet hang if he does not stick to the terms of the bargain,” Seward put in. “Although His Majesty has given him every incentive to comply.”

“Indeed he has,” agreed Beaumont. “But I still don’t trust Radcliff any further than I could throw him.”

“While this mission has royal approval, Mr. Beaumont,” Falkland said, “His Majesty has told me that any mistakes will be my responsibility.”

“Isn’t that always the way things are,” Beaumont remarked, his voice full of contempt. “My lord, pray tell His Majesty that if there are any mistakes, they will be mine alone and you are not to blame. And if I don’t return, you mustn’t blame yourself, either, because I’ve chosen of my own accord what I’m about to do.”

“Thank you, sir,” murmured Falkland gravely; this was the man he had hesitated to trust.

“I should warn you, though – and His Majesty – that if Radcliff makes one false move, I’m going to kill him. Oh, and before I leave, I’d like to read over those coded letters again,” said Beaumont, with a slight smile.

Having pondered all the dangers ahead, Laurence decided not to visit Isabella before setting out for London, although he swore to himself that if he did come back alive, he would never leave her again for as long as she wanted him.

He rode off with Radcliff the next day under a light rain, and they made fair progress. On the following morning, however, the heavens seemed to conspire against them. An unremitting downpour churned the roads into quagmires, they were soaked to the skin, and Radcliff’s horse cast a shoe in the thick mud. When they stopped to find a blacksmith at an inn on the edge of Hounslow Heath, they were alarmed to encounter a party of Parliamentary soldiers jostling to be served beer, singing psalms as they quaffed their draughts. The men stared so at Laurence that he chose to wait in the stables for the blacksmith to finish.

He and Radcliff spoke infrequently, and when they did, his sole pleasure lay in continuing to goad the man into a silent rage. Sometimes he wished Radcliff would attack, so that he would be justified in killing him.

They took Laurence’s old route as they neared the city by nightfall, stabling their horses with the Chelsea ostler. He wanted to steal a ride on one of the barges again, but Radcliff insisted that they should enter openly. “We’ll take a boat at the nearest dock,” he said, at which Laurence felt immediately nervous, and yet more suspicious of him.

When they reached the river, a crowd of wherrymen were waiting for custom. “Your destination, sirs?” asked a burly fellow, pushing himself forward.

“Whitehall,” Radcliff told him. “How much?”

He named a sum that sounded cheap, until he explained that he had three more passengers going the same way. Radcliff argued to Laurence that they would be delayed, but Laurence quickly paid up the fare. The presence of others offered him a little security; one was a woman nursing her child.

The river stank, as always in high summer: a mixture of sewage, offal, rotting fish and animal carcasses, and the effluent of the tanneries. The night was cloudy, and after a while, as they sailed further from
the shore, everything grew dark. Once they were in open water Laurence relaxed marginally, though he kept a grip on his pistols, and he was still watching Radcliff, who sat perched at the edge of the small vessel.

“So, you must be looking forward to seeing your noble patron,” Laurence remarked. “I wonder what he’ll say when he finds out you’ve betrayed him.”

“My life won’t be worth a damn,” Radcliff whispered back harshly. “Unlike you, I have no Secretary of State to protect me.”

You have more than you deserve, as it is
, Laurence nearly told him.

Radcliff lifted his hand as if to brush off a fly, and a second later Laurence felt an enormous blow to the back of his own head. As he tumbled into the bottom of the boat, he cursed not having trusted his instinct. For that, he was about to die. There came another blow, to the side of his jaw. Through the pain, he heard Radcliff shout, “Tie him up, and attach the rope to that weight.”

His pistols were wrenched out of his hands and his wrists bound hastily in front. He was too stunned to resist. He heard a loud splash and then sensed himself being rolled over the edge. At once he was engulfed. The chill water shook him out of his stupor; he was sinking fast. He must not panic, he urged himself, tugging at the rope around his wrists. At last he managed to free one hand and then the other, keeping well below the surface, knowing that Radcliff would wait to make sure he had drowned. But after a while he was forced to raise his head, gasping for air. He saw black all around except for the glimmer of lights on either shore, a horribly long distance away. His waterlogged clothes and boots were dragging him down again, and as he struggled unsuccessfully to kick off the boots, he could not help swallowing gulps of the foul river. His limbs were becoming leaden, his teeth chattered, and he had started to give up hope when suddenly an even greater darkness burst out of the night like some primeval monster: a barge, bearing straight for him. Either it would hit him, or it would rescue him. He
cried out, his voice so faint against the noise of swirling water that he despaired of anyone hearing him.

Yet gradually the barge altered course. “Fetch the line!” someone shouted.

The wet rope smacked Laurence hard in the face, but he caught it and clung on with both hands, and slowly he was brought in and fished out by a very amazed bargeman.

“Bless me if you aren’t a strange catch!” the man exclaimed.

Laurence nodded, coughing up mouthfuls of the Thames. “What a drink,” he said afterwards, spitting.

The man handed him a leather bottle. “Here’s a better one.”

Though he gagged at the coarse liquor, it stayed in its rightful place and revived him considerably. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said, and reached out to clasp the man’s hand. “Are you going upriver?”

“We are, sir. What the devil happened to you?”

“Someone tried to drown me,” Laurence replied, accepting another swig from the bottle. “Can you set me down at Whitehall?”

“Aye, sir. Are you a Member of Parliament, perhaps?”

“No. That’s not yet a drowning offence.”

“Should be for some of ’em, sir,” the man said ruefully.

The barge pulled in at the dock nearest to Whitehall. Laurence searched to see if he still had any money in his sodden pockets, which he did. The man protested that it was only his Christian duty to rescue souls in need, but he was not above taking some coin for it; and they said goodbye.

“Fuck you, Radcliff,” Laurence muttered, as he staggered along the dock. Reeking and covered in slime, head aching from the blow, and with another bruise swelling his jaw, he was going to Pembroke’s house.

When he arrived at the high walls that surrounded it, he was overcome by dizziness and had to lean against them for support as he felt
his way to the main entrance. A liveried servant came quickly to demand his business, and a couple of guards bristled their weapons at him. “I am here on behalf of the Secretary of State,” he said, his legs trembling with fatigue. “My name is Laurence Beaumont. I must see his lordship at once.”

The servant admitted him with a revolted sniff, and ordered him to wait behind with the guards. Finally he was summoned, and accompanied by the guards he squelched along a corridor, past canvases and statues as refined in taste as those of his father, and into an elegant carpeted room, where two men stood before him.

“Mr. Beaumont, your lordship,” he said to Pembroke, and bowed, deriving immense satisfaction from the horror on Radcliff’s face.

Pembroke dismissed his guards, closed the door, and turned with infuriated surprise to Radcliff, then to Laurence. “Mr. Beaumont,” he said, “did you come by some accident?”

“Oh no, my lord. It was such a warm night that Sir Bernard encouraged me to go for a dip in the Thames on our way here.”

Pembroke smiled thinly. “I had been looking for you to thank you for the painting you had delivered to me.”

“It was the only means I could think of to show you how badly you had misplaced your trust in Mr. Rose. He’s been a thorn in your flesh for a while, if you’ll forgive the tired metaphor.”

Radcliff opened his mouth but Pembroke silenced him with a curt gesture. “Go on,” he said to Laurence.

“He kept the correspondence that you’d ordered him to destroy.”

“Which correspondence?”

“The most damaging to you, my lord, so he could sell you out if he decided he’d had enough.”

“He is lying, my lord!” Radcliff shouted. “He is William Seward’s accomplice.”

“Which correspondence?” Pembroke repeated, in a frigid tone.

Laurence began to quote, word for word, Pembroke’s letter about the King, and the hunting party at Wilton or wherever else was chosen for the assassination, and what would follow.

“What sort of magic is this?” Pembroke burst in.

“It’s not magic, my lord,” said Laurence. “In fact, the explanation is rather ordinary. As Sir Bernard can attest, he was robbed at a Dutch bawdy house by a friend of mine – robbed of your gold, his sword, and some letters. That’s how I came to have them, and I found more, later, hidden away in a chest of his. All of the correspondence is now in His Majesty’s possession. The sword I gave back to Sir Bernard, as you can see. And as for the money –” He dug from his pockets his few remaining coins and threw them at Pembroke’s feet. “The rest is spent. My apologies.” He sighed, suddenly exhausted. “Oh, and one last thing, my lord. His Majesty wishes you to know that in view of your past relations, he is inclined to treat you mercifully. He expects to hear from you soon. Good night to you both, gentlemen.”

“Wait,” cried Pembroke, and called out for his guards. “Detain him in one of the antechambers,” he barked at them.

“My lord, I assure you, I’ve nothing more to say,” Laurence objected, but the guards hustled him off, into a smaller adjoining room, and locked him in.

He slid down the door and knelt by it, listening. There came the sound of Radcliff’s voice and Pembroke’s arguing; then the voices subsided into whispers. He hauled himself to his feet and over to the window. It was a steep drop, but onto grass. Defenestration was becoming a regular habit, he thought, as he unfastened the casement and squeezed through. He hung for a second by the broad ledge before letting go and landing with a bump, rolling some way. Ahead was what appeared to be dense shrubbery. Crawling into the thick of it, he crouched and tried to catch his breath. Shouts issued from the open
window. On all fours, he plunged further into the bushes, hoping to find the wall that surrounded Pembroke’s house, yet he might as well have been blindfolded, for what he could discern in the dark. Recalling the thief Barlow’s advice, he stood up and closed his eyes and stretched his hands out as he pressed forward. They met not stone, but wood, and he bashed his forehead against the branch of a tree. The shouting came nearer. He reached up and hoisted himself over the branch, edging along on his stomach until his feet encountered the girth of the trunk. By turning about and clinging to it, he could balance precariously and feel upwards for another branch thick enough to carry his weight. He got to a fork in which he could sit, propped against the trunk, and rest his shaking arms and wipe the blood from his brow. Lights were now approaching in the blackness, as though carried by invisible beings, to within a yard of his tree. “If you catch him, hold him fast: he’s mine!” someone yelled out.

“He’s mine, you hear!” repeated Radcliff.

The guard nodded, and signalled to the men behind. “Where could he have got to, sir? Could he have scaled the wall yet?”

Radcliff lifted his torch, searching for some glimpse of Beaumont. He saw only the outline of branches and leaves creating sinister shapes above him. “I doubt that. He may have hurt himself when he jumped, and be hiding in the bushes. Spread out and keep looking. Well, get to it, men!” he said, as they hesitated.

“We’re staying here,” the guard said.

Radcliff felt a vague premonition; the torches were circling closer. “What in hell is wrong with you?” he demanded. They did not speak but edged nearer still. “Get after the prisoner, you fools!” he ordered. The same guard let out a low whistle, and the rest stepped forward unsheathing their swords. “By Jesus!” Radcliff exclaimed, unsheathing
his. In the flickering light their faces took on beastly forms. Radcliff stared from one man to the next, in outrage: he was not an animal to be cornered and hunted down. “You bastards! You cowardly bastards – how many are you against one?” he screamed at them. “That yellow dog, Pembroke! Call him out to finish me himself!”

They advanced on him relentlessly, some of them dropping their torches, the better to manoeuvre their weapons. Radcliff could smell their sweat, and hear them grunting in anticipation. He took a thrust in the back, and a second blade pierced his thigh, causing him to stumble. He lifted his sword and began to lash out, but each time he left himself exposed in some part of his body, and they struck home again and again. He wounded a man and saw a spurt of blood; then he became maddened, not knowing where to turn. His arms were tiring, however, the energy leaking out of him. He could not see as well; the flames of the torches were now blurring before his eyes. The sword slipped from his hand, and he fell. A last thrust, fiercely delivered, made his stomach burn.

“We’ll come for his body later,” he heard the guard say. “Let’s grab the other one.”

There was a tramp of boots through undergrowth, then nothing but the rustling of boughs overheard. Shortly afterwards, Radcliff could detect a scrambling sound, then a light thud, and footsteps coming towards him. A hand lifted his head, while another went about his shoulders.

“Christ, they carved you up like a pig,” said a familiar voice.

“Beaumont,” he gasped. “Why are you still here?”

“I want the sword.”

Radcliff struggled to focus, his wounds agonizing. “What for?” he hissed, blood gushing up between his teeth and bubbling out.

“Revenge,” Beaumont answered flatly, as he unbuckled the belt attached to Radcliff’s empty scabbard and slid it from his waist.