The Best of Men (17 page)

A shout from the near bank caught Laurence’s attention, and he turned to see a man dressed in black waving at him. He disappeared underwater again, hoping to be left in peace, but the second time he poked his head up the man was still there.

“You’re alive!” he yelled at Laurence. “Wait, wait – I shall find a stick, or a branch you can cling onto!”

“I’m not drowning,” Laurence called back.

“Sir, you must get out! The currents could pull you under.”

“What currents?” Laurence asked, amused. He swam closer, until the water reached to his waist as he stood up in it. “It’s all right. I know this river.”

“You live nearby?” the man inquired, staring at the scar on Laurence’s side.

“Yes.”

“The land belongs to Lord Beaumont, does it not?”

“It does.”

“Are you – are you acquainted with his lordship?”

“Yes.”

“As it happens, I have just come from his house.” The man’s eyes had a sharp glint to them; in his sombre garments, with his beaky nose, he looked like an oversized crow hunting for worms. “I wanted to see his lordship’s son, Laurence Beaumont, and a servant directed me to the river,” he said.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Joshua Poole, sir. Are
you
Mr. Beaumont?” Laurence nodded. “I must speak with you about a … a confidential issue, and I
should be most obliged, sir, if you might come out so that I have no need to raise my voice. I would prefer not to be overheard.”

Somewhat uneasy, Laurence plunged through a tangle of reeds and lilies towards the bank. Poole modestly glanced away as he climbed out. He returned the courtesy by pulling on his breeches, and his shirt, to cover the scar. “So, Mr. Poole,” he said, sitting down on the grass and wringing the water from his hair, “how can I help you?”

Poole sat down also, more gingerly. “I have come to make you an offer for some letters in your possession.”

Laurence felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. “Letters?” he queried, when he found his voice.

“Yes. Some months back, they fell into your hands through an unfortunate circumstance. A robbery. Their owner desires their speedy return.”

Laurence feigned polite confusion. “I don’t know anything about them – you must have mistaken me for someone else,” he said smoothly; he had used the line so often in the past.

“Allow me, sir, to refresh your memory. The theft of which I spoke occurred at a tavern in The Hague, one night towards the end of last winter. The thief was a young woman. I believe you would remember her.”

“To be honest, Mr. Poole, whenever I was in The Hague there were always plenty of women, but none of them gave me anything to remember her by, for which I’ve since been truly grateful.”

Poole did not crack a smile. “She was a gypsy. You left with her that same night and travelled together into France.”

Laurence pretended to think back; always better to tell a version of the truth, rather than a total lie. “Oh –
her
. She gave me a song and dance about not being able to protect herself on the road, and I was stupid enough to swallow it.”

“Was it not because of her theft that you quitted the Low Countries with such dispatch?”

“God, no! Someone was out to kill me over a game of cards.”

“You went a long way with her, to the Spanish border, in fact. In all that time, she never spoke of the theft?”

“No. In fact I’d never heard of it until today. Though it doesn’t surprise me,” Laurence went on, affecting scorn. “Those gypsies have thieving in their blood.”

“But she must have confided in you. She was your mistress.”

“Please,” he objected, with a laugh, “I wasn’t
that
desperate.”

“Did she have money with her?”

“Not that I saw. The only money she spent was mine.”

“Are you sure she was not carrying any gold?”

“If she was, she hid it from me.”

“One hundred pounds,” Poole said, with renewed determination. “He will pay you one hundred pounds for the letters.”

Laurence began tugging on his boots. “Really! What are they,
billets doux
?” Poole appeared not to understand. “Love letters?” Poole winced, as if insulted by the idea. “Whoever this man is, you should tell him to save his money and accept that they’re lost. Knowing that girl, she probably used them to wipe her arse,” Laurence concluded, rising.

“Mr. Beaumont,” Poole said, speaking rapidly, “you are fortunate, born to noble estate, loved and esteemed by your family and friends. If you refuse to comply with his request, you might endanger them all.”

“Are you deaf? I haven’t got his letters.”

“Sir, I must warn you that if you decline the offer, the matter will be out of my control entirely,” cried Poole, struggling to his feet. “Please, sir, give them to me and take the money, and let this be the end of it.”

“I’ll say it one last time: I don’t have them. And I don’t appreciate your threats. Now please leave this property at once.” Laurence strode towards the meadow; he could hear Poole behind him, panting to keep up.

“I shan’t trouble you any more today, sir. You can find me in Aylesbury at an inn called the Black Bull. I’ll give you a couple of days
to reconsider.” Laurence continued to ignore him. “You will not be left alone, sir, until you bring me the letters,” gasped Poole. “Don’t delay, or he will strike you where it hurts most!”

The sunlight dimmed abruptly, so that Laurence peered upwards. Storm clouds, heavy with rain, were massing in the sky; a fitting change in the weather, he thought, as he quickened his pace again.

“The Black Bull, sir!” Poole shouted after him.

Laurence made no response and indeed hardly noticed which direction he took, for his mind was careening from one disastrous possibility to another. He or someone close to him must know the conspirators. How else could Poole have found out so much about him? Or could that evil-eyed servant somehow have picked up his trail again, after all these months? It seemed inconceivable.

He ran back into the courtyard, determined to grab the letters, fetch his horse, and leave for Oxford immediately. Heavy raindrops had begun to fall and a flash of lightening split the sky as he darted indoors, only to be cornered again by Geoffrey, who appeared almost as agitated as he. “Sir, her ladyship’s guest arrived over an hour ago. They have been waiting for you.”

“Not now, not now,” Laurence muttered, brushing past him to go upstairs.

Then his mother’s voice rang out from the hall. “Laurence, come here, if you please.”

With a grimace at Geoffrey, he entered to find his parents and sisters in the company of a woman he did not recognise. She was fanning herself against the heat.

“Laurence,” said his mother stiffly, a pained look on her face as she examined his damp, rumpled clothes, “may I present to you Lady Morecombe.”

Lady Morecombe rose and curtseyed, as he bowed. “Well, sir,” she said, “if you are to be betrothed to my daughter Alice, should we not
become acquainted? Do please sit.” She indicated the chair beside hers with her ivory-handled fan. He did as she asked, his knees weak. What had he brought upon his family? And here they were, in perfect ignorance, merrily arranging his future. “You are nearly twice Alice’s age,” Lady Morecombe was saying, “although I would not guess it. You have decided rather late to marry, given your position in society. Were you too set in your bachelor habits?”

“To which habits do you refer?” he asked, inspecting her; her gown was low cut, and ill advisedly so, from what he could see.

“What I mean, sir, is this,” she said, reddening under his gaze. “Her ladyship has addressed the matter, yet I should like to hear from your own mouth why you have not chosen to marry before.”

“I haven’t cared to,” he said.

“Most men are delighted to relinquish their freedom, once they discover the advantages of a loving and obedient wife.” Since he made no response to this, she was forced eventually to turn to Lord and Lady Beaumont. “It would be most distressing to me were there to be any delay in the wedding plans as a consequence of our political troubles.”

“Few armies campaign over Christmastide,” Lady Beaumont said. “Elizabeth and Mr. Ormiston are to be married then. If necessary, we can hold the weddings together.”

“But it permits him such a short time to know his bride, or for her to know him,” Lord Beaumont interjected.

“There is time enough,” she told him firmly.

“Oh yes,” agreed Lady Morecombe, scanning the hall as though estimating its worth. “A single meeting between them may suffice. Alice will make him a perfect helpmeet. I have taught her the arts of household management. She is expert in the preparation of sweets and light repasts. She has a fine hand at needlework. Her health has never failed her. She is even-tempered and devout, very devout. What more could a man ask?” she said, to Laurence.

“I can’t possibly imagine,” he replied, resisting an impulse to drag her from her chair and boot her out.

“My dear Lady Morecombe,” said Lord Beaumont, as a clap of thunder rattled the windowpanes, “you should stay until the storm abates.”

“She is to pass the night here,” his wife informed him.

“Ah. In that case, might I steal Laurence away for an hour or so? He has promised to assist me with a translation.”

“Of course,” Laurence said, and jumped up.

“A most obedient son,” Lady Morecombe remarked to Lady Beaumont, who coughed discreetly into her hand.

“Oh dear, oh dear!” exclaimed Lord Beaumont, as he and Laurence mounted the stairs. “I knew we had sprung this on you too fast. I did say as much to your mother, but I had not expected your reaction – such shock and dismay! Is the idea so awful to you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The idea of marrying Alice Morecombe! Laurence, you haven’t heard a word I said. There must be something else troubling you.”

“No, no.”

“Then you would be prepared to meet the girl?”

“Why not,” Laurence said, to put an end to the subject.

His father beamed at him. “Your mother will be so gratified, as am I. The Morecombes are old Gloucestershire stock, as you might remember. Her ladyship’s late husband was active in Parliament, though poor health forced him to resign his duties some years ago.” Once in the library he regarded Laurence again with consternation. “Why so hagridden, my boy? What is on your mind?”

“I have to go back to Oxford.” Laurence attempted a more cheerful demeanour. “I promised to meet up with some friends of mine from the other war.”

“When will you leave?”

He hesitated, incapable of producing any decent excuse to rush off to Oxford in the middle of a blinding storm. “In the morning, I hope.”

“Good. You can take with you my response to Earle’s letter. You promised to help me write it in a new cipher. We may as well go to it now.”

“Can’t we wait until I return?” Laurence asked hopefully; at present he felt that he could not have designed a cipher if his life depended on it.

“Now don’t disappoint me, sir. I have chosen to transcribe a passage from Aristotle on kingship, rather fitting for the tutor of a prince. And I want to challenge Earle, so you must make me an ingenious device.”

The passage from Aristotle unsettled Laurence in its irony, given how the King had been so much on his mind. Most of the words he encoded with a cipher that he had used before, but in his state even this process was arduous, and he had to keep putting down his quill to wipe the sweat from his hand.

“I’m not quite satisfied,” Lord Beaumont said critically, at the end. “Add a hook to it. Something truly brilliant that will outfox Earle.”

Laurence thought again, and an idea came to him. For one crucial line he would use the conspirators’ cipher, which he had memorised, removing its more obscure mathematical digressions. But as the missive was sealed with the family crest, he pondered if he had tempted fate in borrowing from those other, deadly letters; and he also wondered who might be lying in wait for him on the road to Oxford tomorrow. He decided, as a precaution, not to take the originals with him. He would make copies that he could easily destroy if he were followed.

The day after he and Juana had set out from The Hague, he asked her, “Who is it that’s tracking us?”

“I haven’t seen anyone.”

“You lie worse than you sit a horse. He’s the lone rider I pointed out to you this afternoon.”

“It must be Saint-Etienne.”

“He wouldn’t be fool enough to come without friends, and he would have confronted us by now. He’s had ample opportunity.”

“Then how should I know who it is?” she said, shivering.

They travelled on south, past abandoned cottages, ransacked churches, barren fields, and remains of the dead quarrelled over by carrion birds. They were continuously soaked to the skin by rain or sleet, and their supply of food dwindled, for there was nothing to purchase or steal: with the countryside pillaged by one army after another, the local people were reduced to eating roots and vermin. Meanwhile they had to hide themselves and their horses from roaming bands of marauders, a rabble of beggars and cutthroats. And although he did not mention it to Juana, Laurence also feared that he might come across some party of soldiers who would recognise him and drag him back to face a hanging.

Throughout, Juana stayed true to her word: tireless, resourceful, quick to sense danger, she did not slow him down, and though she must have been aching from saddle sores, she never complained. He felt a growing admiration for her, tempered by a desire to be free of her as soon as he could.

Just north of the border with France, they stopped one evening to camp as darkness fell. With her usual resourcefulness, Juana coaxed a smoky fire from a handful of twigs and dried grass, and they sat warming their numbed hands, their stomachs growling.

“You are very quiet, Monsieur,” she remarked to him. “What is it that you are thinking about?”

“That I’m hungry,” he answered, tersely.

“No. You are worrying that you may be captured, by the army. Cecilia told me once, after she’d had too much wine, that you were a deserter.” Laurence kept silent. “Why did you desert, Monsieur?”