The King’s List. Peter Ransley

City merchants and the like. Luke was perfectly mannered and scrupulously polite, but remained at a distance. At first Anne did her best. She sparkled and drew the best out of me. But whereas her table at Highpoint was the most sought after in the county, full of wit and life, this was hard work.

      Everyone knew Luke was there under duress. It was impossible to ignore and equally impossible to talk about it without the risk of an explosion or a penetrating silence. Gradually Anne’s sparkle died and she became as mechanical as Luke. I felt that, with her growing desire to return to Highpoint, tacitly she was taking his side, but would not give up. More and more guests found excuses not to come; others were reluctant to go out as the nights drew in and the disturbances increased.

      Often the table was reduced to the three of us, as it was on the evening after the confrontation with Sir Lewis Challoner. Conversation ran out during the grouse soup, with stewed carp, ox tongues, fricassee of rabbits, lobsters, a choice lamprey pie, tarts and sweetmeats to come. I ate and drank well, both to cover the growing silences and because, although out of office, with Thurloe I was keeping my hand in, preparing – perhaps plotting would be a better word – for the next government. I had fallen into the bad habit of taking documents to the table, as I did when I lived alone. I finished my soup and began to glance through the documents.

      Anne, who had scarcely had a mouthful of soup, dropped her spoon. A servant scuttled from the wall to give her another. She gripped it as if she was about to fling it at me. ‘I cannot stand this place!’

      She stared directly at me, as if she meant it was me she could not stand. The servants were as still as the hunters woven into the tapestry behind them. Luke gazed at the piece of lamprey pie embedded on his fork. It was so quiet I could hear a candle gutter, and the rustle of silk as her bodice rose and fell. Side ringlets of her hair, normally carefully arranged, were in disarray. Among them a bead of sweat gleamed. Disconcertingly, at that moment, I wanted her. It was extraordinary how familiarity had stopped me seeing how young she still looked. She had avoided the constant ravages of childbirth that aged most women at thirty. The guttering candle went out, snatching away the ringlets and the tightly laced bodice, sketching there the lines of the haughty, scornful, but in some strange way vulnerable, girl I had first met.

      A servant sprang to replace the candle. With it came back the ringlets, the sumptuous dark green of her dress and the measured voice of Lady Stonehouse.

      ‘I mean, sir, it is so dark and gloomy.’

      I picked up her manner with relief, mingled with a lingering regret. ‘We are not spending money on Highpoint, madam. Why not employ your talents here?’

      She took a sip of soup. ‘He would not approve.’

      She indicated another portrait of Lord Stonehouse, which hung over our proceedings. When I dined alone, if I noticed him at all, I always saw him as a stern but comforting presence for, in spite of our differences, we were alike in one thing: we both hated extremes, and struggled to keep things together rather than let them fall apart.

      ‘He is not here to stop you.’

      ‘His ghost is.’

      ‘Nonsense.’

      ‘He haunts the place. He does not want us here. When his wife died he spent all his time here. As you do.’

      She began calmly, almost flippantly, but again her voice shook and the implication of what she had said only seemed to strike her when she had spoken. She dabbed her lips, her hands trembling, said she was out of sorts and begged to be excused. Luke and I finished our meal in silence. I went up to her apartment to enquire after her. Her maid, Agnes, told me she was not well and had retired for the night. Agnes had come from Highpoint and I sensed her disapproval as she put away Anne’s dress. The crackle and sheen of the silk, black then sharp green as it caught the light, aroused me again. I took a step towards her room. The maid turned to me enquiringly. I felt my cheeks burning like a schoolboy as I brought out some stilted phrase about wishing her ladyship a good night, and almost walked into a chair on the way out. Her ladyship! For the first time it struck me that what had kept us together had also kept us apart.

      I tried to work. I had a report for Thurloe on the City I must finish. Together with the generals, money would decide the next government. Everything was in the balance. I knew the hidden vices of every alderman in the City: who might be bought, sold or persuaded. But every time I began writing, the crackle of the paper brought back the lustre and sheen of her dress. Her ladyship! She was a printer’s daughter from Farringdon. I saw the rain gleam again on the twisting rump of the Quaker woman. That was how it had started. Of course. A good whore was all I needed. I had not been to Southwark for a long time.

      The lantern clock in the hall showed midnight. Was it really that time? It was too late and too dangerous. And the servants would know. They knew, or sensed, everything. Somehow I could not bear it reaching her. The indecision raged around in my head. Normally I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but that night I slept little.

      Up late, stupefied from lack of sleep, I enquired after her again. She was still indisposed. Indisposed! Far from going away, my sudden, inexplicable desire for her had grown during the night. It was absurd, laughable, to have a wife and not have her if I chose. I pushed past the maid. As well as brightening the place, she had altered the layout of the rooms. I found myself in the changing room next to the bedroom. It was full of the smell of her, herbs which I fleetingly recognised, like lavender and sage, intensified by some aromatic oil. A shift of voluminous white linen lay ready to be stepped into. Crimson-faced, the maid snatched up a linen cloth. The sharp, acrid odour reached me before I caught sight of the blood staining it. The maid thrust it among the dirty washing.

      It was the time of her flux, her flowers as the delicate put it. I turned away, muttering apologies, covering my nose. I did not, like the uneducated, believe that the woman’s flux turned wine sour and sugar black; but, being nature’s device to upset her humours, it might affect mine.

      On the landing I saw Luke, who was going in to see her, and told him she was still not well. ‘She is missing Highpoint, sir,’ he said. ‘As am I.’

      For a moment I was tempted. Highpoint was probably safer than London. I longed for the even tenor of what had been virtually my bachelor life. I could concentrate my energies on trying to influence what the next government would be. But I saw the hope and expectation in Luke’s face and dismissed the thought. He might get up to anything near Oxford with his Royalist friends. I told him curtly it was better if we stayed together.

      He bowed his head. ‘Then can I go out alone, sir?’

      ‘If I have your assurance that you will have nothing more to do with the Sealed Knot.’

      He tightened his lips stubbornly. ‘Then can I have a guard other than Scogman?’

      ‘He is not your guard. He is your companion.’

      ‘He is not respectful, sir.’

      ‘Enough! You will do as he says.’

      Nevertheless, a day or two later, I told Scogman to be more respectful. He looked astonished and said no one could possibly give Luke more respect. ‘Even when I’m insulted I turns the other cheek.’

      ‘He insults you?’

      ‘He calls me a bilker and a leather-mouthed prig.’

      I was shocked that Luke knew such thieves’ cant, let alone used it. Perhaps he picked it up in his short stay in prison. I took a guilty pleasure in enjoying the thought that Luke might be less of a gentleman than he appeared. The fact that there was some truth in Luke’s allegation started to bring a smile to my lips, but Scogman was displaying such righteous indignation I bit my cheeks and looked at him sternly.

      ‘A bilker. When was this?’

      ‘At the Moor in Watling Street. He told me to wait outside, sir, while he had a coffee. When I told him I would follow him casual-like, as if we did not know one another, he said I was like a pair of frigging darbies round his ankles.’

      This time I could not prevent a smile