Treason's Daughter (19 page)

Ned thanks him, his thoughts spinning. He does not care about the money, or the house. They are material trappings. A pure soul is above covetousness. What does William Gouge call it? ‘A galling sin, which works in continual vexation.' And yet. Have I not always assumed that I will be rich? Ned wonders. That it will all pass to me, and my soul will be untainted by the pursuit of riches, simply because they will shower on me anyway? Oh Lord, he thinks. Every day you find me more unworthy.

Into his confused thoughts comes Chettle's voice again, this time loud and a little too careless. ‘If you see her, send my regards to your sister,' he says.

‘Of course,' says Ned. It is only afterwards, as he turns into Fetter Lane, that he notes Chettle's words.

The lights are on in the windows, and the house looks big and comfortable in the darkness. A sedan chair pulls up, just as he reaches the steps, and Hen tumbles out, flurried by the sight of him.

‘Ned!' she cries. ‘Ned!'

He kisses her, and then stands back to look at her. What does Chettle see? he wonders. To him, she has always been a funny, adorable freckled thing. She is smiling up at him, green eyes shining in the flickering light from the windows. She is, he realizes, quite beautiful, his little sister. Creamy skin and chestnut hair. Green eyes that shine with life and humour. It is the first time he has ever really noticed it. A strange, but not unwelcome, discovery.

‘Hello, Hen, little one. Where have you been?'

‘At the Birch house. Ned, it was so tedious I could have bashed my head on the wall a thousand times. I was to have stayed, but I begged off with a sore head. But where have you been, why are you here?'

‘We took Reading – did you hear?'

‘Yes! The whole town is talking of it.'

They are still standing on the steps and the sedan chair has trundled off.

‘Come,' he says. ‘We'll go in and I'll tell all.'

Inside, they hear voices from the library. Looking for their father, they turn into the room and stop, disconcerted.

In front of them, frozen in a guilty tableau, stand Challoner and Edmund Waller. The expression on both faces is peculiar, and
the silence that greets Ned and Hen's unexpected arrival spins out across the room. Waller stands to one side of the table, and to the other is a lady. She is dressed in courtly fashion, with a low bodice and a deliberate lack of puritan sobriety. She is about thirty, and handsome. She carries that air of careless elegance that must be worked on and burnished regularly to appear artless.

On the table between the three of them lie piles of golden coins, arranged in stacks and mounds. The gold glitters in the firelight. Ned looks at it, and then back to his father.

Challoner speaks first. ‘Ned, we were not… That is…' He stumbles to a halt.

‘I had business with the Committee for Safety. I thought to see you before returning to Reading in the morning.'

‘Of course, of course. Reading.'

There is an awkward pause.

‘Waller, you both know each other, I believe.'

The poet bows and murmurs: ‘Delighted.'

‘Lady D'Aubigny, allow me to introduce my son, Edward Challoner, and my daughter, Henrietta Challoner.'

Lady d'Aubigny sweeps into a low curtsy. Her hands twist nervously round a lace handkerchief, and her eyes dart from Ned to Waller and back again. Ned, though young, looks the soldier. He wears Essex's orange sash about his waist, and his hand rests lightly on his sword hilt. His doublet is spattered with mud and deeper stains the colour of rust.

Challoner walks forward and, laying a hand on each of their arms, says: ‘Children, we have some business to conclude. Will you wait for me in the kitchen and have some food, and I will come for you?'

Ned shrugs off his father's arm. ‘I will go now, I think, Father. Leave you to your . . . business.'

‘Ned, please.'

Hen and his father both look at him in mute appeal.

Stiffly, he nods.

‘Where is Sam?' Ned asks, as he and Hen walk downstairs to the kitchen.

‘Probably in the counting house at the books, cursing your name. He's wild to be a soldier, Ned, and I'm not sure he'll obey Father for much longer.'

‘Does he know of…' Ned looks for the word. ‘This thing, do you think?'

‘He has said nothing,' says Hen. She notes Ned does not ask her. Just a girl. Just a girl who ferried those gold coins that sit, heavy and accusatory, on Challoner's desk, from houses across the city. Just a girl who knows now to check if she is being followed, to take precautions. A girl who knows which barges defy the ban on travel to Oxford, and who sells the contraband pamphlets. A girl who has perfected an innocent face, and fought with her own conscience and won.

They enter the kitchen. Sally the cook and Nurse look up, startled. They stand and bustle forward, cooing over their Ned, sitting him down at the table. He unbuckles his sword and rests it against the wall. Wayneman, the house's new boy, stands near it. His eyes are like saucers and his fingers twitch in their desire to touch its glinting edge.

‘Look at you, Master Ned!' says Sally.

‘All grown up and a soldier,' says Nurse. ‘I could quite cry at the sight of you.'

‘Do you mind us down here? Father has… guests.'

Hen notices the slight hesitation before the word ‘guests'.

‘Always welcome, Master Ned, always!' Nurse and Cook compete to nod emphatically.

Ned looks around the kitchen and sees Milly in the corner. She is standing by the fire, stirring a pot, and that flush in her cheeks could just be the heat from the flames. He checks her belly. Flat, thank the Lord. She is not looking at him but stares fixedly into the hearth.

‘Milly, child,' says Sally. ‘Leave that pot alone, and let's fatten up Master Ned. I've some cold veal and a lovely cheese. Milly, get back to that stove, girl, and get going on a posset. Look at poor Master Ned's hands, all cold and red, they are.'

Hen sits next to Ned and takes one of his cold hands, rubbing it between her own. She wishes they were alone to talk.

‘It is lovely to see you, Sally, and you, Nurse, and Milly. I have dreamt about this kitchen and the smell of it, lying on wet grass eating stale bread for my supper.'

‘Stale bread,' says Cook, outraged. She stands from the table and bustles some more, stoking the fire and chivvying Milly, until at last the table is laden with food, and a steaming posset cup is laid ceremoniously in front of Ned. He drinks it up quickly, feeling its warmth. He will never take such a thing for granted, not since the field at Edgehill.

Don't think on it now, Ned, he tells himself. Not now. In his mind's eye a grey corpse lolls in an obscene pose. He closes his
eyes, but it takes on Milly's frightened face and leers at him.

Harmsworth comes into the kitchen, and Ned rises, thankful to be distracted from his thoughts.

Harmsworth greets Ned with grave formality. ‘We think of you often here, Master Ned,' he says, ‘fighting in our Lord's name.'

‘Thank you,' says Ned, wondering what the pious and serious Harmsworth would make of the godly soldiers now, as they puke and pillage their way around Reading. ‘I brought you something,' he says, fumbling in his bag. He pulls out a small, charred piece of wood. ‘Part of an altar rail we burned in a popish church. A token of our works, if you like.'

Harmsworth takes it and turns it over in his hands. He almost smiles.

‘I envy you, Master Ned. Out there, protecting the true faith. Smiting the Lord's enemies. While I . . .' He waves a hand around the kitchen.

‘I carry your words with me,' says Ned. He reaches for some bread and then hacks a chunk of cheese into his plate. He feels strange, vibrant: the same sensation he gets before a fight. There is an added roaring in his head, a Milly-shaped shame tugging at him. It is fogging his thoughts, distracting him. He looks over to where she stands in the corner, her face in the shadows. He is mortified to find his eyes resting on her body, lit by the firelight. He wrenches his eyes away. His blood thickens at the thought of her naked.

As casually as he can manage, he asks Harmsworth: ‘Waller, and the lady with Father. Are they here much?'

‘Waller, more and more. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Tompkins, in the main. None that you would wish to be
here, I am sure. As for
her…'
He spits the word. ‘It is the first time.'

‘Did you see the bezoms on her?' says Nurse.

‘You could not miss them,' says Sally. ‘I crept up to have a look,' she says in an aside to Hen. ‘I could scarce credit how low her bodice is cut.'

‘I had to clasp my hands behind my back to save me going over and wrenching it upwards, a little nearer God and decency,' says Nurse.

‘I thought she looked lovely,' says Hen, belligerent.

Nurse frowns. Only Ned's presence makes her hold her tongue, and Hen takes a petty pleasure from the knowledge that Nurse will be bubbling with fury inside.

‘So elegant,' Hen continues. ‘Such poise and grace.'

The door to the kitchen opens and Challoner stands in the doorway, filling it. Not looking at Ned, Henrietta stands. She walks over to her father and kisses his cheek.

‘Mrs Birch bids me to send her love. I came home early. With a headache.' She knows his eyes are not on her but look above her head to where Ned sits, glowering and quiet in the corner.

‘I smell a posset,' he says.

Milly quickly moves to dole some out of the pot.

‘Ned, Henrietta. Come and drink this with me by the fire in the library.'

In the library, empty of its visitors, Challoner pokes at the logs, setting a fresh flame ablaze. He sits in his great chair, leaning back. Hen kneels at his feet, her arms folded. Ned stands, waiting.

‘A fine posset, this,' says Challoner.

Ned grunts, impatient. He is still keyed-up, close to boiling over. ‘Are we not to mention what we saw?'

‘And what did you see?'

‘Gold, and guilt.'

‘Guilt?' Challoner speaks the word as if he is testing the sound in his mouth. He rolls it around. ‘Guilt?' he says again, the interrogative stronger this time.

‘Pudding cat,' he says to Hen. ‘What did you see?'

‘Just Waller. And a lady.'

‘Just so.' He turns to Ned.

Ned gestures angrily. He paces the floor, but it does not take the edge off the furious energy rising in him. ‘Do not play me for a fool, Father. We know that merchants are smuggling gold out of the city to Oxford. That woman in her whore's weeds had courtier writ large on her. And Waller – we know where he lies.'

‘And if you are right, Ned? What then?'

‘You are paying for the guns which point at me, and my fellows. What would you have me do?'

‘I would have you at home, in peace, in a land which is no longer sliding towards chaos. I left you free to follow your conscience, yet I am not free to follow mine?'

Hen watches the sparks fly between them. Challoner is growing angry, his face red and his knuckles white where his hands grip the side of the chair.

‘I fight with honour,' shouts Ned. ‘Sword in hand. I do not skulk inside, dealing in Judas coins with fops and whores.'

‘You have said enough, boy. Enough.'

‘And so, sir, have you.'

Ned turns to leave and, as an afterthought, holds his hands to Hen. She jumps up and kisses him.

‘Ned,' says Challoner. They turn to look at him. ‘Go, then.
But do not speak of this. It is between us.'

Ned doesn't reply; he can't. He thinks he might be sick, all the nervous tension and the fury spewing onto the floor. This breach feels irreparable. A chasm has opened up between them, too wide to cross. Hen is crying quietly into his shoulder. He grasps the hilt of his sword for courage. He looks at the old man's face and can see only a traitor's mask.

‘Father,' he says quietly, ‘the devil is talking to you. He is in your heart, and in your head, and in those piles of gold. He is in Waller's tongue and that woman's eyes.'