A Conspiracy of Violence (32 page)

‘Has North been talking about leaving London again?’ asked Chaloner gently, suspecting his early departure was not the real
reason for her display of temper.

She nodded miserably. ‘And it is your fault. You frightened him with your nocturnal invasion, and Temperance has been very
outspoken against Preacher Hill over the last week – at your instigation. It is almost as though you
want
them to leave, and me to be destitute again.’

‘I am sorry, Meg. I did not want North to know I was trying to see you the other night.’

There were tears in her eyes. ‘Perhaps we should part company, Tom. We have been in England for months now, and your situation
is as hopeless now as when we arrived.’

He took her hand. ‘I am working as hard as I can. Please do not give up on me yet.’

She gave him a wan smile, then glanced covertly behind her. ‘You see that man in the red hat? He asked whether
I spoke Dutch earlier, and he has been watching me ever since.’

‘Go home. I will make sure he does not follow you.’

‘How will you stop him – you with your lame leg which does not seem to be getting any better? Perhaps you should give up dashing
around dark gardens in the middle of the night.’

He fought down a tart response. ‘I will think of something. I am not entirely useless.’

He watched her walk away, then stepped forward to intercept the man who immediately started to follow her. He pushed his dagger
against the fellow’s ribs, making his captive gasp in alarm.

‘I do not have any money! I am just a weaver.’

The accent was familiar, and Chaloner released him. ‘Where are you from? Amsterdam?’

The man was appalled, eyes full of naked terror. ‘I am Danish – from … from Hamburg.’

‘It is not safe to accost people and demand to know what languages they speak,’ said Chaloner in Dutch. ‘You will be shot
as a spy.’

The man hung his head, and replied in the same tongue. ‘I do not know what to do. My friends shun me and it feels dangerous
here. I was just looking for a sympathetic countryman …’

‘It will get worse,’ warned Chaloner. ‘Your safest option would be to sell all you have, and leave.’

‘Will you give the same advice to that woman you were just talking to? We are all in danger now.’

Chaloner headed towards the Tower, aiming for the street near the Royal Foundation of St Katherine, where Evett had told him
Ingoldsby lived, his thoughts a chaos
of worry for Metje. As he passed the castle, he paused by the blackened heads on poles, placed to gaze across the Thames.
He wondered which was Barkstead’s, and joined the gathering of people who gaped at the spectacle, where someone rather more
familiar with the heads than was nice told him Barkstead’s was the second from the left. The Lieutenant of the Tower had boasted
long hair, watchful eyes and a moustache, and the bald skull with its missing teeth and sagging jaw bore no resemblance to
the dignified man Chaloner had met.

‘What did you want Thurloe to know?’ Chaloner asked him softly. ‘What was your godly golden goose? And did you praise God,
like Hewson, Clarke and Lee? What binds you to the Brotherhood, secrets buried in the Tower and the murder of Thurloe’s spies?’

He stared a while longer, then went in search of the regicide who had managed to do rather well for himself, a feat all the
more remarkable given that Richard Ingoldsby was Oliver Cromwell’s cousin and had made much of that fact when the Lord Protector
was in power. Ingoldsby lived in a fine Tudor mansion that overlooked the hospital gardens. Chaloner was about to knock at
the door when he heard the clatter of hoofs travelling too fast down the narrow road. He turned to see a stallion galloping
towards him, its rider kicking it forward for all he was worth. He saw a chicken disappear in an explosion of feathers, and
heard people yell in alarm. The rider’s hat was pulled over his eyes and his collar was up – given his cavalier progress,
Chaloner was not surprised he did not want to be recognised. He watched him come closer, but it did not occur to him that
he was the fellow’s intended target until the very last moment – by which time, it was almost too late.

The horseman slashed with his sword as he thundered past. Chaloner threw himself to one side, and the blade missed him by
the width of a finger. He scrambled to his feet and watched in disbelief as the rider wheeled around and came at him again.
He ducked behind the gatepost, and the blade missed a second time. When the fellow came for a third pass, Chaloner drew his
own sword, and was bracing himself for the impact, when there was a shout, and several soldiers began to canter towards them.
The horseman glanced at the advancing posse, then spurred his mount in the opposite direction.

‘He was after doing you mischief,’ said a passing merchant. ‘I wondered what he was doing behind that tavern all morning,
swathed and silent. I should have known it was nothing good.’

‘Have you seen him before?’

The man shook his head and lowered his voice. ‘Do not take it personally. None of us like Ingoldsby, and that rider probably
decided to deprive him of a caller – to show the world that we do not want the likes of him as our neighbour.’

‘Why not?’

The merchant regarded him askance. ‘Clearly you have never met the fellow, or you would not ask. We dislike his manners, his
greedy wife and his lies. Cousin Cromwell forced his hand indeed!’

He walked on, leaving Chaloner puzzled. Would someone really kill Ingoldsby’s visitors to make a point? Somehow, he did not
think so. He reviewed the people who knew he had intended to see Ingoldsby. Thurloe did, and Sarah had been listening outside
his door when they had talked about it. Had she sent someone to kill him? Had she hoped Snow might save her the bother,
when Chaloner had so gallantly stepped in to rescue her? Or was Thurloe angry with him, and wanted rid of a man whose loyalty
was no longer assured? Or had Sarah mentioned the matter to Dalton, who did not want anyone interrogating a fellow brother?
And finally, there was Evett, who had given him directions to Ingoldsby’s house. But Evett was in White Hall, asking about
the dagger that had killed Clarke. Chaloner’s thoughts returned to the Daltons, although cold logic told him that the main
reason for choosing them as suspects was that he did not want to believe the culprit was Thurloe.

He waited to see if the rider would return, but the fellow obviously knew there was no point in mounting another assault when
there were soldiers looking for him, so Chaloner knocked on Ingoldsby’s door. The politician was at home, but a series of
wails suggested it was a bad time for callers. Nonetheless, a servant showed Chaloner into a low-ceilinged, wood-panelled
room that was scented with sweet lavender, and asked him to wait. The portraits on the walls were of aloof men on oddly proportioned
horses, as if Ingoldsby wanted to impress people with his Cavalier ancestry.

When he came to greet his guest, Ingoldsby looked even more porcine than he had in Will’s Coffee House. He was chewing something,
clearly having rammed the last of it in his mouth just before he entered the chamber. His cheeks bulged, and when he spoke,
he was incomprehensible.

‘I said my wife is in mourning,’ he repeated irritably when Chaloner looked blank. ‘Can you not hear her shrieks of distress?’

Chaloner cocked his head, but the cries had stopped, and before he could answer, the door opened and a
woman entered. She carried a handkerchief, but her eyes were clear and blue, and he thought that while a good deal of noise
might have been made, very few actual tears had been shed: Ingoldsby’s wife was doing what was expected of her, but without
genuine sorrow. Her face was familiar, and he knew he had seen her before. After a moment, the memory snapped into place:
she had been with the regicides who had escaped to Holland. She had left soon after, when her husband had secured his pardon,
but she had been with them for a while.

‘I am sorry to come at a bad time,’ he said, after she had been introduced as Elizabeth, kin to the wealthy Lees of Hartwell
in Northamptonshire. There was no flicker of recognition when he bowed to her, and he knew she had not associated him with
the silently unobtrusive nephew of the exiled regicide.

‘The deceased is a brother-in-law from my first marriage,’ said Elizabeth, her face crumpling into the obligatory mask of
grief. ‘Some villain shot him with a crossbow.’

‘A crossbow?’ asked Chaloner, not bothering to hide his shock.

Elizabeth nodded. ‘His colleagues from the Treasury came to tell us this morning.’

Chaloner’s thoughts whirled. Robert Lee, murdered while in possession of a document bearing the words ‘seven’ and ‘praise
God’, and who had been digging for treasure in the Tower, was kin to one of the Brotherhood?

‘Did he have enemies?’ he asked. ‘Or was he involved in anything dangerous?’

Ingoldsby glared at him. ‘Ours is a respectable family, and although Robert was not wealthy, he was obviously very well-connected,
since he is related to us.’

‘He would have had money eventually,’ added Elizabeth. ‘A woman with a large dowry.’

‘They said a thief killed him for the five pounds he kept on his window sill,’ said Ingoldsby, more angry than distressed.
‘And a friend in Fetter Lane told me that a prowler fired a great musket at him in his
own garden
the other night! What is becoming of our country?’

Mr North of Fetter Lane is my neighbour,’ said Chaloner. ‘But how do
you
know him, Sir Richard? He seldom engages in social activities outside his chapel.’

Ingoldsby was not about to admit to being a member of the Brotherhood. ‘We are both patrons of the Royal Foundation,’ he replied
a little defensively. ‘I donate money to thank God for destroying the Commonwealth, and he does it to praise God.’

‘To praise God?’ asked Chaloner, more sharply than he had intended.

Ingoldsby regarded him oddly. ‘Most of us do it on Sundays, but he does it with every breath. It is all very laudable, but
I could never be a Puritan. I would forget myself and have some fun.’

Was that the meaning of praise God: the way Puritans lived? But Clarke had not been a Puritan, and neither had Hewson, as
far as Chaloner knew. Meanwhile, Ingoldsby was waiting for him to say why he had come.

‘I am acting on behalf of the Lord Chancellor, regarding Sir John Barkstead’s—’

Ingoldsby interrupted in alarm. ‘Barkstead was a traitor, so I seldom had occasion to speak to
him
! I know nothing about his evil deeds. I am devoted to the King, and—’

‘Your loyalty is not in question, sir. My enquiries do
not relate to Barkstead’s politics, but to the dispersal of his estate after his death.’

‘Oh,’ said Ingoldsby, relieved. ‘However, I still cannot help you. He was wealthy, but he did not give any of his money to
me – not that I would have accepted it, of course, him being a Parliamentarian.’

‘Of course,’ said Chaloner. ‘It seems he spirited some of it out of the country.’

Ingoldsby nodded. ‘Most regicides did – they had to. Barkstead smuggled his out on a fishing boat. Old Chaloner routed a cache
through Scotland, but spent most of it on high living and died a pauper. Hewson put his hoard inside bales of wool, but the
Dutch got wind of it and confiscated it all.’

‘Did you see Barkstead with his gold?’

It was Elizabeth who answered. ‘My husband was busy persuading the King of his loyalty at the time, but I saw it – in The
Hague, when I was waiting to hear whether it was safe to come home. It was packed into butter firkins, and needed
three
carts to transport it. There were bags of money, beautiful jewellery, precious stones, silver plate, crosses … It was
a fabulous sight.’

‘How much do you think it was worth?’

‘In excess of thirteen thousand pounds! I know that for a fact, because it was taken to the Jews for investing, and I saw
the receipts.’

‘How did you come to do that?’ asked Chaloner, puzzled.

‘Because after Barkstead was arrested, Downing went through his house looking for plunder. He had decided Barkstead should
pay for his own transport to London, you see.’

‘He said that?’ This was low, even for Downing.

She nodded. ‘But Barkstead’s wealth was with the money-lenders and therefore inaccessible to him. Downing toted up the receipts
and showed us how they amounted to more than thirteen thousand pounds – a fabulous sum. Barkstead was laughing, because he
had outwitted him.’

‘What about Sir Michael Livesay?’ asked Chaloner. ‘Did he send money overseas?’

‘Why do you ask about him?’ asked Ingoldsby suspiciously.

Chaloner shrugged. ‘No reason, other than the fact that he has disappeared and no one knows where. If he is dead, then the
Crown would like to liquidate his estate.’

‘He is dead,’ said Ingoldsby. His tone was wary. ‘He was escaping from England on a ship, but there was an explosion. Everyone
onboard was blown to pieces.’

‘Was the explosion a deliberate act aimed against Livesay, or an accident?’

Ingoldsby effected an attitude of studied carelessness. ‘I have no idea – I was not there.’

Every fibre in Chaloner’s being knew he was lying. ‘Very well,’ he said, picking up his hat. ‘If you are unwilling to cooperate
here, then the Lord Chancellor can talk to you in the Tower instead.’

Ingoldsby was appalled, and reached out to stop him from leaving. ‘Wait! All right. I will tell you what I know, but you
must
explain to Clarendon that my role was innocent.’

‘Someone seized your hand and signed your name?’ asked Chaloner insolently, freeing his wrist.

Ingoldsby glowered at him. ‘I was to have travelled on that boat, too, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I am a poor
sailor and the forecast was stormy. I saw the
ship leave the harbour, and I heard the blast. Livesay did not stand a chance.’

Only if Livesay
was
on the vessel, Chaloner thought. Perhaps he was a poor sailor, too. Or perhaps he had seen a warning in Ingoldsby’s abrupt
disembarkation, and it had saved his life. Or did it mean Ingoldsby had killed his ‘brother’ and fellow regicide, by putting
gunpowder on his ship?