The Best of Men (56 page)

“That’s not good enough, I’m afraid. Mr. Beaumont, Pembroke has been in correspondence with Falkland, and Waller is Falkland’s close friend. Tell me what they are scheming at, and we can protect him from any repercussions.”

“
Scheming at?
” repeated Laurence. “Sir, I’m sure if you address Lord Falkland, he’ll be happy to show you whatever Pembroke wrote to him and answer any questions you might have, and you’ll find nothing to support your ludicrous theory.”

Hoare let out a frustrated breath; he must not have any damaging evidence against Falkland yet, Laurence realised, with some relief, and he had not asked at all about what had been supposed to happen on the night of Laurence’s arrest. “Let us move on to another issue: the conspiracy to regicide,” Hoare said next. “I am driven to conclude that you found out these traitors already, but decided to subvert me by reporting your intelligence directly to Falkland.” Laurence made no reaction; he had expected this. “Let me state clearly, sir, that I no longer report to him myself but to the King,
on the King’s own order
! I want the names of the conspirators. I want to know everything, indeed, that you have withheld from me.”

“I don’t know any more than you do. Why don’t you let me go after them, instead of holding me back? You’re wasting my time and Falkland’s –
and
His Majesty’s,” Laurence concluded scornfully.

Hoare flared up at once. “You think because of your father’s title that you are nearer to the King’s confidence than I am? Well, you are not! And my opinion of you hasn’t changed. To me you are still a parasite, used to sailing through life on the strength of a name, while those of us less fortunately born must prove our worth through diligence and hard work!”

“You’re quite the democrat, sir,” Laurence remarked. “Given your views, perhaps you should be fighting on the other side in this war.”

“May I remind you,” Hoare said, colouring, “that my loyalties are not in doubt, but yours most definitely are. I have been patient with you. I could have strung you up the same night I brought you in, and beaten you within an inch of your life.”

“Then why didn’t you? Because you’ve no right to, that’s why. And you had no right to detain me in the first place.”

He caught the truth of his assumption in Hoare’s eyes, but only for a moment. “His Majesty has granted me the power to do whatever I can to persuade you to talk,” Hoare snapped at him. “And believe me, I shall.”

“Take me before the King,” Laurence retorted. “I’ll answer any question he may put to me, to the best of my ability. But I won’t answer to you.”

Hoare went to the door and called for his guards, to whom he muttered a few quiet words. Two of them picked Laurence out of his chair and held him up while the others pummelled him in the ribs several times, then in the small of his back, and in the belly. He crumpled, choking. When he raised his head again, Hoare punched him hard on the cheek, leaving the familiar taste of blood in his mouth. His eyes watered, but he forced himself not to cry out. Instead, he spat a thick thread of red-flecked saliva across the polished toes of Colonel Hoare’s boots.

“You’ll be sorry you did that,” Hoare said, “just as you will regret your childish instinct to defy me. All right, boys.”

As the guards hauled Laurence back to his cell, he felt reassured on one score, even if his own circumstances remained uncertain: Hoare could not have learnt of the planned meeting on Christmas Eve, or else he would have wanted information about it. The double arrest had merely been a stroke of luck for him. And now that Isabella was at liberty, she might yet prove resourceful enough to set up another rendezvous between Falkland and Captain Milne.

Kneeling alone before the altar in Magdalen College chapel, Digby found his mind veering more to the profane than the sacred, so excited was he about the imminent release of the first issue of
Mercurius Aulicus
. At length, unable to concentrate on his prayers, he got up from the pew, brushing dust from his breeches; he should consider leaving a bequest in his will for the better maintenance of his old college, he mused. On his way out, he paused at a monument in the antechapel to view the inscription, and as he was reading about the unfortunate brothers, John and Thomas Lyttleton, both drowned seven years ago while one was trying to rescue the other, he heard Isabella call his name.

“Your servant told me you were at prayers here,” she said, walking along the aisle towards him. He thought she looked tired and downcast, though beautifully dressed as always. “Digby, I shall come to the point. You were such a saviour, in rescuing me from Colonel Hoare. Could you not at least –”

“My dear friend,” he interrupted, with a shade of exasperation, “how often must I repeat myself? It is not the same for Mr. Beaumont. His Majesty has allowed Hoare to question him, and though he may grow a hermit’s beard and waste away a bit on his prison diet, Hoare can’t do any more to him than that. His rank will protect him.”

“It has not so far.” She seemed about to continue in this vein, then said abruptly, “I thought we both wanted Hoare destroyed.”

“Nothing would delight me as much. We have been hampered, however, by the Secretary of State’s ill-conceived chit-chat with Parliament.”

“How can you believe Hoare has any evidence of that! You have probed Falkland endlessly, trying to make him admit something of the sort, and he has proved himself loyal to the King.”

“Yes, but I think he has his moments of doubt.” Digby began to imitate Falkland’s high-pitched, squeaky voice. “‘We must put an end to the violence! This country is being torn apart, the earth soaked in English blood!’ How many times have I had to listen to him vent his moral indignation – and how it bores me,” he concluded, in a tone that would usually make her laugh.

“Falkland is an honest man,” she said, almost angrily. “That is why you must stand up for him – and get rid of his enemy.”

“My dear, you are so staunch in his defence, and yet I have an idea that it is not
his
fate that most concerns you,” Digby said, watching her face. “Are you by any chance smitten with Mr. Beaumont? Was I wise to leave you alone together in Wilmot’s quarters last October?”

“How trivial you can be! If Falkland goes, you and Prince Rupert will be open rivals in Council with no one to keep the peace between you, and after the Prince’s glittering record in this past campaign, you will lose out. Moreover, Hoare will only gain in status, as one of the Prince’s most devoted and experienced officers.”

“Not necessarily; his fate will depend on who might succeed Falkland as Secretary.”

“If Rupert has the King’s ear, that would certainly not be you.”

Digby conceded with a nod. “Well, what of Mr. Beaumont?
Have
you fallen for him?”

“Are you jealous, Digby?” she inquired, her eyes flashing at him. “You are never jealous.”

“I have always been content for you to take whomsoever you desire to your bed,” he replied, with complete honesty, although for the first time he felt a trifle insecure in his influence over her. He knew what passion could inspire in a woman’s heart, as in a man’s. “You are not about to marry him, for God’s sake,” he went on, rather vindictively. “Lord and Lady Beaumont would take a fit, in their Palladian mansion! I can just imagine them.” He started to giggle but stopped on seeing her expression, which had grown closed and cold.

“Who
shall
I marry?” she said. “I am twenty-six years of age, far from virgin, and in all likelihood barren. My face and body have been my fortune, but they cannot last forever.”

“I’ll find you someone, as soon as you wish to surrender the title of Mistress and call yourself a wife. Though, of course, you can be both wife, and mistress to whom you choose, if we find an agreeable husband.” Digby saw her mouth tighten and was instantly full of remorse. “Please forgive me, Isabella,” he said. “You know how much I love you. I shall always look after you as I would my own sister.”

“Yes, I do know that.” Isabella gave him a kiss on the cheek and turned to leave.

“Where are you going now, my dear?” he asked.

“Oh, nowhere you should follow,” she told him, and let herself out of the chapel before he realised that she had not answered his question about Beaumont.

F
or three days after Laurence’s preliminary interrogation, Danvers visited the cell regularly, squatting outside with a handkerchief pressed to his mouth. He claimed that he had gone to Falkland begging him to intercede, and that Falkland had said he could do nothing for Laurence. This seemed hard to believe, but if it were true, Laurence did not like the consequences for himself. He was utterly furious still to be in captivity.

On the fourth day, Danvers condescended to move closer to him, braving the stench. “What’s the point of you rotting away here, Beaumont?” he exclaimed. “Don’t you see how futile it is? Think of what Hoare might inflict on you if you keep being so pigheaded.”

“I won’t let him take Falkland down,” Laurence said. “And he’d be a fool to try and extort a confession from me. I don’t even think he has the authority to hold me here.”

“Then why hasn’t Falkland come to your aid by now?” Laurence had no reply to this. “Besides, Falkland won’t come to any grief if he’s demoted,” Danvers went on. “He hates his office, as I’m sure he must have told you. Everyone says he’s not suited to it –”

“What are you, Hoare’s parrot?” Laurence interrupted coldly.

Danvers flushed. “You have to change your mind, Beaumont, before
it’s too late. Don’t you remember, in the other war, that fellow who got his prick shot off in battle? We both agreed we’d rather be dead than be unable to fuck any more, and to have to make water through a straw. You’ll suffer if you don’t talk. Hoare could hurt you badly – perhaps beyond repair.”

Just as he finished speaking, Private Wright leant in through the cell door and beckoned to him. They muttered together in subdued tones, then he returned with a panicked look on his face. “Beaumont, I have to go. We must say goodbye.” He put out his right hand but Laurence would not take it.

Soon after his departure, the clump of boots echoed up the stairwell. The bolt was shot, and the door swung wide. “Mr. Beaumont,” called out Hoare, “my patience with you has not been rewarded as I’d hoped. It is now time for me to change tactics.”

The guards wrestled Laurence downstairs and through a low corridor, dark except for a few guttering torches, into a chamber as evil-smelling as his cell. Inside, neatly arranged, were a vertical rack, a barrel full of water, and a selection of whips and stout wooden sticks. They tied Laurence to the rack with his arms in front, and hoisted him aloft. The wrenching on his shoulders and the bonds cutting into his wrists made him gasp with pain.

“You have no right to do this to me!” he yelled at Hoare.

“I can do as I please,” Hoare said, smiling. “For you are now like one of those poor souls wandering in limbo: everyone has washed their hands of you. Even my Lord Falkland is staying away, anxious not to compromise himself. I shall give you one more chance, sir.” He ordered the rack to be lowered, so that he and Laurence were face to face. “I want the truth about your exchange with Falkland that night, and I want the names of the regicides. That is all. I am not attempting to unseat his lordship. In fact, I am protecting him. If you also desire to protect him, you will answer me.”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“Not about the regicides.” Laurence stared him in the eye, as he had on their very first meeting, and again Hoare looked away. “Go ahead, lads,” he ordered the guards, and Laurence was hoisted up once more.

He took a deep breath, knowing that he must feign yet greater distress than he felt. After a series of blows to the chest, stomach, and groin, however, he was no longer pretending. One of his ribs cracked, and he cried out so loudly that Hoare called off the guards, drew a cup of water from the barrel and approached to hold it to Laurence’s lips, but Laurence would not drink.

“Who are the conspirators?” Hoare demanded.

“I’ve told you all I know,” Laurence repeated, between gritted teeth.

“Stubborn, aren’t you,” Hoare said. “We’ll see how long you can last.”

He signalled to the guards, and as the beating started again, Laurence felt the crack of a second rib, and burning in his chest. He forced himself to relax in the bonds, although they were eating into his skin, and let his head flop down and his eyes close. The tension on his wrists and shoulders lessened suddenly as he was lowered from the rack; then the guards dunked him head-first, up to the waist, in the barrel, sending liquid coursing up his nose and down his throat. Plunged into this aqueous hell, he seemed to see red, as if his brain had become suffused with blood. At length, he was pulled out and thrown to the floor. He did not move or make a sound, though he was dying to rid his lungs of water. Then came a pressure on his stomach and chest that made the fluid surge up out of him; and he tried not to choke or open his eyes, for if he did, the torture would continue.

“Not a touch of the whip,” he heard Hoare say, “and he’s fainted like a girl with the green sickness. That’s it for now, boys. Put him back in the cell.”

Laurence bit his tongue to keep himself from groaning as they lifted him up, and he must indeed have fainted then, for he knew no more.

Diana had reached her fifth month of pregnancy without incident, which delighted Sir Robert, and he was in even greater transports of joy when he received an invitation, for the sixteenth of January, to pledge his services in person to His Majesty at a banquet at Christ Church College for all the most important Oxfordshire gentry.

“You shall accompany me, my dear,” he told Diana, “for you are not so big with child as to appear ugly yet.”

As she and Robert queued to perform their obeisance before the High Table, where the royal party was seated, he distracted her with an exclamation. At one end of the long board was Isabella Savage, conversing with the man to her left. “My Lord Digby,” Robert whispered in Diana’s ear. “And that is my Lord Falkland on her right. Yet what is
she
doing here?” he added, as though Isabella were some cheap dross masquerading as gold.