Treason's Daughter Read online

  ‘It’s like they’re dancing with each other, but just with their voices. Oh Sam, I’ve never heard anything so lovely.’

  Sam is sitting on the wall, and he smiles up at her rapt face. ‘I thought you’d like it.’

  They stay for the rest of the song, and the next. Hen realizes she is getting cold, and that the forehead she is pressing against the glass is numb. Sam is now lying on the wall, and she feels his impatience to be off. Reluctantly, she pushes herself back upright. Jumping down, they frighten the rats.

  ‘You have to promise me we can do this again, Sam, that I can hear it again. Or else I can’t bear to leave.’

  ‘I promise. You are a funny one.’

  ‘It’s better when you’re at home, Sam. Just four days until you go back to school. I can’t bear your leaving.’

  ‘Hush, Hen. You must bear it. I’ll write.’

  ‘You always say that, and then your letters stop. Who are your friends? What are you learning? What of the masters? You have all that is novel and exciting thrown at you, and I must sit staring at the walls, waiting for a letter that never comes.’

  ‘You should have been born a boy too, Hen. There was your error. You have the soul of a boy.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’m not one, am I? I’m useless. A pointless thing.’

  They turn a corner and a body hurtles itself from the darkness, pushing Hen over. She is on her knees, staring at Sam’s boots, shocked by the suddenness of it and the cold sliminess of the mud on her hands. Above her there is shouting, and she looks up to see a red-haired man raising bleeding fists, his legs planted wide in the filth.

  A second man, the one who knocked her over, rushes at the fists, swearing in a continuous roar. Hen sees the punch coming, hears the crunch of fist on bone. The roar becomes a splutter of warm blood that falls on her upturned face.

  Sam pulls her upright, back away from it. A small crowd has formed, goading and spitting. God is called upon, Jesus sworn to bear witness. The two men pound each other as Hen steps back against a wall. She has never seen blood gush with such venom and anger before; never seen how vivid it looks on pale skin, how dark it seems pooling on the floor. She watches the big man crumple, the spread of a battered triumph on the redhaired man’s face.

  ‘Come away,’ Sam says, but she shrugs him off. Repulsed? Mesmerized?

  Sam peels her away, holding her by the wrist. As they pass a silversmith’s window, lit by a dozen lamps so that the wares sparkle and beckon in the gloom, she looks down at her shirt. Sam’s shirt. The material stretched across her bound and flattened breasts is spattered with blood and mud, and grimed with coal. She carries the marks of her adventure, of a life lived at the gallop, and she bounces on the balls of her feet like a dancer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE AIR IS HEAVY, FLAT. THE TINKLING OF SUGAR TONGS breaks the silence of Mrs Birch’s richly furnished hall. Hen sits still in the chair, knees pressed together. Her collar and cuffs feel too tight, and her hair is scraped back, pinching at her forehead. The teased ringlets at the front, which still smell a little acrid from the irons, are falling out of their curls and into her eyes. Mrs Birch watches her from above the hand that hovers perpetually over her ruined mouth. Henrietta can hear the crunch of Mrs Birch’s black teeth breaking into a sugared nut.

  Lucy Tompkins is there, of course. Another motherless waif collected by Mrs Birch from among her husband’s business associates. Lucy sits by Hen, with perfect blonde ringlets, smiling sweetly at Mrs Birch. Her eyes only occasionally swivel sideways to find herself reflected in the window.

  There is a strange woman present. Older than Lucy and Hen, nearing twenty, she is pale and plain. Her name is Mrs Price, and she is Lucy’s aunt, apparently. She is clearly godly. Hen notes her plain dress and severe hair.

  ‘Henrietta, do sit straight,’ says Mrs Birch. Hen stiffens her back and lifts her chin, eliciting a smile from the older woman.

  ‘Henrietta’s dear mother died while delivering her,’ Mrs Birch says to Mrs Price. ‘We, her father’s dear friends, do what we can to fill the void. Her grandmother lives with them, but she, poor wretch, is not much use, is she, Henrietta?’

  Hen shifts in her seat, unwilling to agree, too polite to voice her disagreement. She will not betray the grandmother who was once so buoyant, so loving, before the last of her children died and she came to believe that she was one of the damned. Her poor grandmother. To hear, like perpetually pealing bells, the summoning of your demons.

  ‘An interesting name. Henrietta.’ The strange woman rolls the word around in her mouth, filling the syllables with venom. Her dark eyes narrow as she looks Hen up and down, trying to place her, to label her correctly.

  ‘I was born as His Majesty was courting the queen. Nearly sixteen years ago. Father named me after Her Majesty.’

  ‘A black day, indeed,’ says Mrs Birch, leaving sufficient ambiguity in the statement to make Hen uncomfortable. Lucy smirks. ‘The marriage, I mean, of course.’

  ‘That Catholic slut.’ Mrs Price spits out the words. Lucy nods.

  How does Lucy manage, wonders Henrietta, to be pompous and simpering at the same time?

  Mrs Birch reaches for another tart. ‘Of course, we all wish that our beloved king had married a good, godly girl. A German princess perhaps. All these years have scarcely blunted the pain of it, and those poor children to be raised by a papist,’ she says, between mouthfuls of burnt sugar. ‘But perhaps your words are a little harsh, Mrs Price?’

  ‘Harsh? My beloved brother, who some people call a great poet, although I leave such matters to God, is much at court, as you know. He tells me that just this January gone she put on a grand masque, dancing and acting the whore with her ladies.’

  ‘The poet?’ asks Hen.

  Mrs Birch leans forward and speaks over her. ‘Tell us more, dear Mrs Price.’

  ‘I hardly like to, with young girls present.’

  Mrs Birch, shifting in her seat with anticipation of the scandalous gossip, says: ‘They must face the horror like all of us. Papists fighting for the soul of our beloved king and his church. Let them hear the worst.’

  ‘Well,’ says Mrs Price, leaning forward, taut with a relished disapproval, ‘my brother, Edmund Waller, tells me that, at this masque, they went beyond the usual evil. The ladies of the court, led by our hussy queen, had a special finale. They bared their breasts to the men of the court.’

  She is rewarded by a sharp inhalation from Mrs Birch and Lucy.

  ‘No! Oh, the papist hussy. She must be damned!’ Mrs Birch’s mouth falls open, revealing the rotting teeth she so assiduously tries to hide.

  ‘Of course she is damned, following the whore in Rome,’ says Mrs Price, eyes shining.

  ‘Mrs Price,’ says Hen, ‘Lucy and I were at the dress rehearsal. Lucy’s father took us – do you remember, Lucy? There were no breasts bared there. Although to be sure the costumes were low cut.’

  ‘And would my brother lie, miss?’

  ‘Would I? Lucy, you were with me.’

  Lucy blushes, and mutters something about not daring to look at the scandals unfolding on stage. Hen remembers her eager, shining eyes at the masque, watching the queen and her ladies dancing, and the king’s grave face.

  Silence settles, and Hen retreats into herself. The windows are covered with drapes, to protect Mrs Birch’s furniture from the evil rays of the sun. Only one sharp beam has found its way into the room, and small flecks of golden dust dance in its light.

  If I could paint the voice of that lady from last night, thinks Hen, it would look like that.

  She lets her mind drift back over the songs, trying to recreate the beauty in her mind. Dimly she is aware that Lucy is talking of embroidery.

  ‘And you, Henrietta?’ says Mrs Birch loudly.

  Hen jumps out of her reverie. ‘Sorry, I . . .’

  ‘I was asking, Henrietta, if you had any little projects on, like dear Lucy.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Hen, eagerly. ‘That i
s, I’ve been working on a new translation of Ovid. In the vernacular, you see. I got the original in St Paul’s churchyard, and I just thought . . .’ She trails off, realizing from the expressions on the faces around her that she has committed yet another solecism she doesn’t understand.

  Down the road, in the Swan, Sam is deep into his pint of wine, encouraged on by the two Birch boys, Robert and Thomas. Oysters are piled high on the table in front of him, wobbling white in their shells.

  Richard Challoner, his father, drinks slowly. Sam watches how he raises his mug and tries to copy the motion. Tompkins and Birch, Challoner’s fellow merchants, are listening quietly to Oliver Chettle, a lawyer known as a rising man, despite his comparative youth.

  ‘I tell you, he has eroded the independence of the judiciary beyond bearing. He may be king but, for time immemorial, the judges and lawyers have been the lions checking the throne. He has made them into lap dogs. Yesterday, I tell you, yet another judge was bought off with a high office and a fat pension.’

  The lawyer sits back in his chair.

  Birch, who had been nodding his vociferous agreement, breaks in. ‘He’s not called a parliament since he made Laud his archbishop. They are pressing him to call a parliament, the godly peers. But will he listen? He listens to Strafford and that papist wife. A sliver of water between us and the powers of Europe bent on destroying our faith, yet she prances around Whitehall with a phalanx of popish priests.

  ‘He’s trying to fight the Scots with no money, and refusing to call a parliament to listen to the legitimate grievances of his people. Without Parliament’s money, how will he pay for this war? You, Tompkins, you, Challoner – you are men of the City; you know how the money works. Would you set off on a trading voyage with no money, no goods, no credit and a mutinous crew?’

  ‘I would not,’ says Challoner. ‘My Sam was barely breeched when he last called a parliament. Now look at him.’ The older men peer down the length of the table to where the younger three sit, playing an elaborate game of spinning coins. Sam looks up, disconcerted by the stares directed at him.

  ‘It’s all right, boy,’ says his father, smiling at him. ‘And your boys, Birch, were still in dresses. I agree he must call a parliament to raise the funds, but he must fight the Scots. They are rebelling against his authority.’

  ‘With reason,’ Chettle says, slamming the table with an open palm. ‘They are standing up to that papist Laud, and his attempts to corrupt the soul of their church. They show courage that we lack.’

  ‘So he wants them to love their bishops and pray at an altar rail? We may not agree with it, but what if that is the king’s will? Imagine I am back on that hypothetical ship. Imagine I tell the crew to sail past a port they have been longing for, full of doxies and wine. They may not like it, but I’d expect them to do it, and I’d flog the bastards if they refused.’

  The boys, drawn from their game, are listening to the conversation at the other end of the table, wine and fire mingling in their veins.

  ‘Christ save me, and are we ignorant sailors to be flogged and abused?’ asks Birch, his face florid, oyster juice gleaming unnoticed on his chin. ‘Or are we Englishmen, who consent to be governed?’

  ‘Where has this idea come from?’ asks Challoner. ‘This idea that somehow the king needs our consent to govern us? The king’s mandate to be king comes from God, not man.’

  ‘Even more reason, then, for him and his advisors not to abuse that mandate,’ Tompkins says. He is calmer than the rest, and his even temper moderates the passions at the top end of the table.

  Suddenly, at the bottom end, Sam lunges across the table, falling on Robert Birch. They tumble backwards, collapsing onto the floor, the wine following them and splashing the rushes. Sam, pinning his adversary to the ground, lands a punch before he is hauled off by the older men.

  ‘Samuel, you forget yourself!’ shouts his father. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ says the boy, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

  Later, as Sam emerges from his beating, white with pain and the effort of not crying, Hen asks the question.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Robert. He called Father a papist.’

  ‘You were right to hit him.’ She hugs her brother. ‘I’d have hit him if I’d been there, and not shut in that room with those terrible women. Why didn’t you tell Father?’

  ‘Tell him that’s what people think when he defends the king? He’d beat me harder. He’s in there sinking another bottle.’

  When the bottle is gone, Richard Challoner is still furious. The children can hear him through the closed door.

  ‘God damn you, stop your spinning!’ he shouts, waving a fist at the churning fireplace. ‘God damn you to hell! D’you think I don’t know what you’re up to, you fox, you wolf?’

  Harmsworth, his manservant, comes in with a small glass of wine. Hen slips in behind him and watches him bristle and mutter to himself as he hears his master’s words, the blasphemy grating on his ironclad godliness. Harmsworth says nothing as he places the tray at his master’s side, but his simmering anger seems to pierce Challoner’s wine fog.

  ‘Plague take you, Harmsworth. You hate me, don’t you?’ Challoner says, smiling and jabbing his finger at the man. ‘You think I’m a fucking papist. That I’m a Laudian grates on you. You think Archbishop Laud and his evil acolytes are out to get you.’

  Harmsworth says nothing, but his hands shake as he places the glasses on the table.

  ‘’Tis a constant and nagging torment to you that I have the effrontery to breathe the same air as you,’ says Challoner. ‘Because I believe that Laud’s in the right. That a little pomp and a little ceremony are good for the soul.’

  The manservant kneels down to pick up a napkin that has fallen to the floor. With slow, deliberate actions he folds it back along the crease and returns it to his master’s lap. As he bends over, Challoner grabs at his lapel, pulling him in. Their faces are close; Challoner’s red and triumphant, Harmsworth’s white and taut.

  ‘Hail Mary, eh, Harmsworth? God bless all bishops. God love the Pope in all his purple glory.’

  Harmsworth brings up a hand to wipe away a fleck of his master’s spittle, but still he says nothing. Challoner lets him go. Harmsworth straightens and takes a step backwards, putting some distance between them.

  ‘Will that be all, sir?’

  Cheated by the old man’s refusal to react, Challoner raises a grumpy hand. ‘I’m no God-cursed papist, plague take you,’ he says to his servant’s retreating back. ‘God rot the whore in Rome,’ he says as the door closes behind Harmsworth.

  There is a thud and a whispering from beyond the closed door. Harmsworth has fallen to his knees and is praying for forgiveness. The sound makes Challoner laugh, the ripples of his amusement quivering through his belly. Then he looks up at the walls.

  ‘God damn you. Did I tell you to spin? Did I?’ He ignores the water and reaches for the wine. ‘God damn you!’ he cries again.

  Henrietta crosses the room and slips her hand into his. ‘Why, Hen!’ he says, happy-drunk at once. ‘Oh, my darling, why are you up? ’Tis late.’

  ‘Harmsworth is crying in the hall.’

  ‘Crying, is he? And praying, I’d wager.’

  She nods as she sits on the floor by his chair, then lays her head on his knee. ‘Why do you tease him, Father?’

  ‘Godliness. I hate it. Snivelling cullys. Foolish scabs. So pleased with themselves, the scrubs. I’m elect, they say, long-faced and so smug. What if you’re not, eh? What then? Harmsworth’s been through all the self-loathing, all the repenting. It’s funny, to make yourself so miserable for God. Does He demand that of us, pudding? That we hate ourselves?’

  ‘We’re sinners, Father.’

  ‘What have you ever done, child? I’m a sinner, maybe. At least I had some fun while I sinned.’ He smiles; remembrance trumping repentance. ‘Does the Lord begrudge me that, hey, pudding? But Harmsworth, the goat. Hates m
e, wants to see me burn. Wants to get paid too, and fed. So he squirms and mutters, and I laugh at his dilemma. Otherwise I’d have to fire him, or hit him. Loathing each other on parallel tacks!’

  She puts her arms round his legs, glad that he’s smiling, whatever the cause.

  ‘Does he think I love my God any less than he his?’ her father says quietly, his hand stroking the hair back from her forehead in slow, rhythmic movements.

  ‘Are you a papist?’ She tenses, fearing a slap. But the question is out now.

  ‘No, Hen, I am not.’ He sounds sober suddenly, and subdued. ‘For all that you’re a clever cat, puss, we don’t talk overmuch about these matters. I’d wager you know more about the Niceaen Councils than the current strife. All those ancients bashing each other about the head with theology, hey, Hen, and not so much about the current japes?’

  ‘Tell me then,’ she says, looking up at him.

  ‘Well then, I shall sing, my angel, of the wrath of the godly. Now you know, of course, that across the Channel the papists have been waging a long and nasty war with the true believers. The Spanish and the Holy Emperor set against the various armies of the Palatinate, with the Danish and Swedes swinging in and out as the mood takes the bastards, and the good Protestants of France keeping their king busy with rebellions here and there.’

  Hen nods impatiently. ‘And you were with Sir Horace de Vere in the Palatinate, to support the king’s sister and her husband in their claim to the Bohemian throne.’

  ‘Aye, some twenty years ago now, little one.’

  ‘So it’s history,’ she says with a shrug.

  ‘Well, keep it in your noddle, for you will need it. Without it, the rest makes no sense.’ Challoner stands up, less unsteady than he should be given the quantity of wine he has taken. He pokes at the fire with sharp, vicious actions.

  ‘So to now. When the old queen died, God bless her, we looked to the Scottish king to be ours because he was a good Protestant with healthy Protestant sons. All to the good. One Protestant son died and, between you, me and the walls, Hen, he was the better prince. But here we are with King Charles and he likes his church with bells and whistles. He likes the Latin, and the priest to be one step removed from the people, with an altar rail between them. And Laud, his archbishop these seven years, likes these things even more. And the whiff of incense to the godly is like musk to a maid, little one: drives them to Bedlam and back.’