The King’s List. Peter Ransley

stiff and polite to question them.

      It was when I sold land at Highpoint for Clerkenwell that Anne asked to see me in private. Because the transaction was done by my lawyer, Christopher Newton, she was convinced I had changed my will. I told her the truth. I needed the money. It was clear she did not believe me. Up to that moment I’d had no idea what I was doing, except that I was enjoying myself hugely: I had forgotten what enjoyment was.

      It was during that cold, acrimonious conversation with her that it came to me. I would divide everything between my two sons. Not only would it be fair and equable, but it would divide up Highpoint. I would sell it piecemeal. It was a destructive, malign force. From the moment I was born it had nearly killed me. It had destroyed any chance of a relationship between me and my father, corroded that between me and my wife. I decided I would destroy it.

      ‘I have a right to know if you change your will, sir.’

      ‘The will is in my gift,’ I said in my new, mild tone which infuriated her.

      We met on neutral ground, in the reception room on the ground floor, where I sometimes took a glass of port or sack after supper. There were no prying servants from either side, only satyrs chasing nymphs endlessly round the oval ceiling. She was more than usually modestly dressed, her low neckline covered by a gorget, the opening in her long dress showing only a touch of underskirt. She wore no jewellery and, so far as I could discern, no perfume.

      ‘In your gift to leave to Luke,’ she said.

      ‘He will be provided for.’

      ‘Provided for? What does that mean? You are punishing him for his beliefs?’

      ‘No. He can love his precious King to his heart’s content. But when he lies to me and gets involved in plots behind my back, then I shall punish him.’

      She would not give up. She said Luke had made no undertaking not to take part in the uprising and accused me of turning him into a Royalist because I had set myself against him from the beginning. I had ignored him – when I was ever there to see him – stopped him from becoming a soldier, which he dreamed of –

      ‘To protect him. I know what soldiers are like. With his scarred face, his mannerisms –’

      ‘You know what soldiers are like? Yes,’ she cried bitterly. ‘Do you know what he is like? You made him feel weak. Hopeless. That is why he became a Royalist. Because they would accept him as he is. As he wants to be.’

      I was incredulous. ‘I turned him into a Royalist? If anyone did that it’s you. You’ve become more a Royalist than anyone who was born one.’

      ‘Do you think I want the King back? I want another Cromwell. Order. But if the King returns …’

      ‘Long live the King? I don’t have that option.’

      It was odd. Very curious. We had never discussed it. I had never wanted Highpoint. In fact I had hated the very idea of it. But Anne’s obsession for it had driven her to the point of madness. She would not eat and scarcely drank unless the liquid was forced down her. She was skin and bone that day twelve years ago when Cromwell’s son-in-law, Ireton, called. He was desperate to get people of any stature to sign the King’s death warrant. The staunchest Parliamentarians suddenly had urgent business in their country estates, or were too indisposed to pick up a pen. Ireton offered me the Stonehouse estate in return for signing the death warrant. It was almost as bald as that.

      Anne had come in. It was the first time she had left her bed since her illness. I could see her thin, wasted figure, hear her cracked voice before she collapsed in my arms.

      ‘Mr Ireton … it is good of you to come at last.’

      I signed. That was the day I became Sir Thomas Stonehouse. Had I really been so much, so despairingly, in love with her?

      For the first time, as we stared in silence at one another across the reception room, we acknowledged, without saying a word, that I might have signed my own death warrant.

      In the hall there was the rattle of plates being taken from the dining room. I stared up at the ceiling where, in the candle-lit shadows, even the satyrs seemed to have stopped chasing the nymphs. The raised voice of the ostler passed, complaining to someone about the shortage of fodder for the horses. Everything was short and would get shorter until a new government was formed. If there was a tax strike, as the City threatened, everything would stop altogether.

      ‘Could it happen?’ she asked. ‘The King?’

      Somewhere a door banged, making both of us jump. ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘What does Thurloe think?’

      I did not answer, again because I did not know. She thought I was seeing him every week, or going to the City to sound out the aldermen who mattered. I resolved that the next day I would see Thurloe. The trouble was once I got involved, it would take over the whole of my life, every waking moment and half my sleep. I would have to do it, I thought. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow Sam had a new silica mix for the firing for which he had the highest hopes. Once I had not turned up and he thought I had abandoned the project. I remembered the look on his face. I could not bear that.

      ‘If there is any way I can help …’

      The words came out of her like drawn teeth. But she meant them. Thurloe distrusted her but recognised the value of her contacts and her political flair, and if I asked her to do so, in spite of the gulf between us, she would work tirelessly at it.

      ‘Thank you.’

      I could think of nothing more to say. We continued to sit there, exhausted by argument. It felt as though we had packed twelve years of differences, quarrels and bitter resentments into one short hour. Eventually she spoke.

      ‘Suppose Luke does give you the undertaking not to have anything more to do with the Sealed Knot?’

      She looked at the floor, twisting her hands nervously. There was no sign of that starched remoteness. She had come round. She must have talked to him. I felt a leap of gratitude. If he really had made that promise, she had done more than I ever could.

      ‘I will be very glad to hear what Luke has to say,’ I said warmly.

      She touched the bell for the servant to clear away. As she rose, I stood up awkwardly with her. For a moment we were like two people who had never met before. She raised her head and gave me a half-smile. ‘Thank you.’

      I was wrong that she was not wearing perfume. There was the barest trace of it in the air as I followed her to the door. It was not the usual stronger scent she wore now, but the lighter, transient, barely discernible hint of rosemary and lavender she used when she was younger. A pad bearing it dropped from her bodice but she did not appear to notice. My heart beat painfully. When she had been desperate for a child she had not been averse to the old whore’s trick of making such a signal.

      At the door I touched her arm. As the servant’s footsteps came towards the door, she turned and murmured hurriedly, ‘I have seen Dr Latchford. It is as I feared, sir. He has warned me strongly against having another child.’

9

      I took the pad from her bodice to my room, like a callow youth who keeps a flower his mistress has worn, long after the petals have paled and the leaves withered. The scent seemed to increase until it filled the room. My need was so great, so urgent, it overwhelmed a growing unease I could not put my finger on. I paced about until I heard the sliding of bolts and locking of doors and the house grew quiet, then slipped along the silent corridors, dim with night candles, and up the stairs towards her apartment.

      I stopped. Suppose she was not expecting me? Of course she was! I knew the signs, I knew the rules of this particular game only too well.

      The night porter’s face swam in front of me, a mixture of deference and lewdness that almost, not quite, became a wink. ‘Oh. Good night,