The King’s List. Peter Ransley

the fire that caused it?’ she said. ‘The smoke? Or the riots? But there are always riots.’

      She seemed to ask the question of the glowing, shifting coals, not me. For the first time it occurred to me that, as I had done, she had split herself into two halves. It was the Anne she had once been, a distant, remote figure whom Lady Stonehouse, in that impeccable voice, was questioning.

      It was one of them, or all of them, she answered herself. The riots were the ones that broke up Parliament before Cromwell took over. I had been in the thick of it, while my own house was burning. She turned on me then. It was the old Anne, full of bitterness and contempt, but how I preferred that to Lady Stonehouse’s icy indifference.

      ‘You were never there,’ she kept whispering, as if the incantation expressed our whole story.

      She told me it was not only Luke’s face that was damaged in the fire. She was seven months pregnant. Perhaps eight. She went into labour as she was trying to comfort Luke at her close friend Lucy’s house – the house where she would have been when the fire happened, if I had not forbidden her to go there because I suspected her old friend and mentor Lucy, the Countess of Carlisle, of spying for the King.

      Her face was flushed from the fire, but still she shivered. ‘He was perfect.’

      ‘A boy?’

      ‘A boy.’ Her voice was hollow, a mere wisp of sound.

      ‘But how could I not have known?’

      I shook my head as she turned, the answer coming to me. Arriving late – always too late – that burning afternoon and believing them to be in the house, I had made a futile attempt to rescue them, sustaining injuries from which it took me weeks to recover.

      ‘He was perfect,’ she repeated.

      ‘Was he?’

      She nodded, cradling her arms as if she was still holding him. The warmth of the fire enveloped us, shutting out the rest of the room. I bent over, picturing him as she described him. A mischievous smile crossed her face, a smile from years ago, young, eager, hopeful.

      ‘He was not so much of a Stonehouse.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘Well, the nose, of course. But he had your red hair …’

      ‘Not my terrible red hair!’

      ‘I swear it. He was like you … I kept thinking his eyes would open –’

      Her voice choked off. I held her. She was like a small bird I once held who could not fly, still but constantly trembling. Gradually, in fits and starts, she told me how she would not release the child, refusing to believe he was dead. Only when Dr Latchford and Lucy told her she might lose Luke as well did she let him go. He was buried with Liz. Mr Tooley said prayers over him and christened him.

      ‘What did you call him?’

      ‘Thomas.’

      The servant lighting the candles knocked but I told him to return later. She rubbed her elbows as if they had just borne the weight of a child. The coals had burned down to a dull flickering crimson. One fell on to the tiles.

      ‘Why did you not tell me any of this?’

      She stared at the eddying shreds of smoke from the fallen coal. Only when I snatched it up and flung it into the fire did she answer. ‘Do you think you would have kept it a secret?’

      ‘A secret? Why should I keep it a secret?’

      ‘Exactly!’

      Just as it had been then, she went from an unexpected closeness to sudden acrimonious bitterness.

      ‘You would never have kept it to yourself. When Lord Stonehouse heard, that would have been the end of it.’

      Of course. With a burned child, frail as Luke was then, a stillbirth and no prospects, Lord Stonehouse would have written us off. A pity he didn’t, I thought. Now she did not want any more children because she had what she wanted. She was about to call the maid to see to the fire and the candles, but I stopped her. I wanted the darkness to continue, the closeness to return. I kissed her, gently, tentatively. Her eyes closed and for a while she leaned against me.

      ‘We could try again.’

      ‘Again?’

      She rose, looking around her as if she had just woken in a strange place. In a spurt of light from the fire she caught sight of a smear of coal dust on her cheek. She dabbed at it with a cloth. Like an actor slipping from one role to another, with each touch her reserve seemed to return.

      ‘I am sorry, sir. I told you. I cannot, must not, have another child.’

      I felt the stupid formality that had kept us apart for so long creeping back into my own voice. ‘If that is true, madam, I will of course abide by it. See Dr Latchford again. That is all I ask.’

      She put down the cloth. ‘Very well.’

      I found myself giving her a formal bow. Halfway through it I had a spurt of uncontrollable rage. She had Dr Latchford in her pocket. ‘And I would like another opinion. From a doctor of my choice.’

      She rounded on me. ‘You have a son!’

      ‘Luke?’

      It came out then. All I had been brooding over since Luke and Anne had been in London that winter. The burning of his face, I said, his scars, his damaged childhood, that was my fault. I had always accepted that. I had done everything I could to make amends. He had had the best doctors, tutors and, when I discovered horses were his passion and would draw out those sickly humours, some of the best stables in the country. There was nothing I would not do for him. He stood for everything I despised. Well, that was common enough. The son rebelling against the father. I bore even that. He was entitled to his opinions, obnoxious though I thought they were. How did he repay me? By joining that rebellion. I warned him against it – not because it was Royalist but because I knew it would be a disaster.

      ‘And you expected him to believe you?’

      I retorted that she always took his side. She had made him into a milksop. I should have done what other fathers do and taken the whip to him.

      That would have been better than ignoring him, she said acidly. Most of the time I was never there. When I was I had been cold, distant. What I had given him was money, when what he really wanted was a father.

      And so on. I stopped listening, for it was at that precise moment the thought struck me. Why was I arguing when I had all the power I needed to do exactly what I wanted? No sooner were the words in my head than I spoke them. ‘I intend to change my will so Luke will not inherit.’

7

      I locked myself in my study and would not see anyone, even John Thurloe who wrote that the situation was getting critical. It was remote, but possible that the King might return. I scarcely finished Thurloe’s letter. The situation was always critical.

      What consumed me and kept me awake in the middle of the night was that bizarre outburst when I said I was going to change my will. At first it felt like an explosion of temper. A fit of pique. An empty threat. Anne certainly read it as such. She retorted I could not do it because the estate was entailed to the eldest son. But Cromwell had broken the entail. The estate was mine. I could dispose of it in any way I wished.

      ‘Who would you leave it to?’ she demanded.

      ‘To whom would you leave it?’ I corrected.

      That was the end of the conversation. Her voice and manner were so impeccable, she loathed it when I corrected her grammar. But she was right. To whom would I leave it? A candle-maker?

      It was she who had put the thought into my head. ‘You have a son.’

      Indeed I had. One she knew nothing about. The bastard