The banner stretching along the warehouse in Freeman’s Yard, Cornhill, read: ‘Gowns for men and women from £7 10s. to 13s. each. The Silk, Stuff and Callicoes bought at Bankrupt Sales. Ladies may be furnish’d with all kinds of Quilted Petticoats and Canvas Hoops and the newest Matted Petticoats.’
But ladies wishing to be so furnished had to use the doorknocker and listen to the withdrawing of bolts and turning of keys before they could come in. Even then, the woman who attended them had no sense of fashion, invariably had a duster in her hand, and puffed anxiously as she displayed the inadequate stock. If her customers asked her about the source of the rumbling coming from the ceiling she blinked hopefully and said, ‘Mice.’ She rarely made a sale.
Having conscientiously barred and locked the door behind her latest visitor, she heaved herself up the open wooden flight of steps leading to the upper storey and knocked on the hatch.
The rumbling stopped. ‘What?’
‘There’s been a gentleman, Dan’l.’
The hatch was unbolted and Mrs Defoe was helped up into the long room above. It was lit from the north by a series of windows and had a waist-high shelf running its length underneath them, all of it covered by piles of paper, quills, sanding pots, ink bottles and wells, candles and sealing-wax. It was served by an inky chair to which castors had been attached. Blots of ink decorated the dusty floorboards and even the bales stacked in the corners, while an untidy laundry of proofs was pegged to overhead lines.
The eye went to the room’s only smartness – an embroidered coat of arms hanging like a battle flag over the shelf-desk; per chevron engrailed, gules and or three griffins counterchanged declaring the owner of the warehouse to be Daniel De Foe, Gent.
Mrs Defoe went over to it, stood on stubby tiptoes and dusted it, annoying her husband by the futility of applying cloth to cloth. ‘What was he? Shoulder-tapper?’
‘I don’t reckon so.’ Mrs Defoe knew the look of creditors and bailiffs. ‘Asking for Claude Guilot. That’s one of your allusses, ain’t it, Dan’l?’
‘Aliases, woman.’
‘Said to meet Mr Brown at his lodgings at eight of the clock tonight.’
Robert Harley. Defoe felt a surge of excitement, mixed with guilt. Since Harley had been dismissed from office, Defoe had been neglectful of the man, devoting himself to the winner of the political battle, Lord Godolphin.
‘I said you would. Was that right, Dan’l?’
‘That was right,’ Defoe said reluctantly; his wife irritated him almost as much when she was right as when she made mistakes.
Mrs Defoe nodded. ‘I’ll be off home now then, Dan’l.’
‘Lock up before you go. I’ll leave the usual way.’ He counted out shillings into her toughened little palm, enough for her to take a hackney to their house in Newington, kissed her and watched her go down the steps, moving at her careful, unaltering pace.
Why didn’t she ask questions? Why, however fashionable the clothes he bought her, did they always look the same once they had been fitted over her short frame? He could never take her anywhere.
Except to funerals. It was a thing he’d noticed, that at times of personal crisis people wanted Mrs Defoe near them. The newly bereaved always touched her, as if absorbing a strength that tapped the roots of earth and reduced death to a phase as natural as winter, promising rebirth in the great cycle’s due course.
When Henry Foe, Daniel’s father, lay dying, it was his daughter-in-law he wanted by his bed. He hadn’t left his son a penny, afraid it would be spent on projects. Instead he’d willed the proceeds of his tallow-chandler business to his grandchildren, ensuring that the Defoe family house in Newington with its orchards and gardens wouldn’t be sold up by creditors.
There were times when Defoe recognized that his wife possessed the dull, deep benchmark of human goodness that he tried so hard to emulate. There were times when he was jealous of it. There were even times when he knew he was jealous of it.
Well, what else did she have to do but be good? Apart from keep house and seven children. And the shop. And bamboozle creditors. Anybody could be a true Christian if they weren’t dragged hither and yon by the expediency of politicians.
It was he, Defoe, Gent., who provided the base for her goodness, working all the hours God sent, often putting his life at risk, to say nothing of the risk to his soul. He went back to his chair and gave a push with one of his feet, like a child on a scooter, to send it rumbling along the shelf to where his ‘Essay on Public Credit’ was waiting to be finished.
If I’m assassinated, will she even ask why? Since working for Godolphin he’d been writing fervent Whig propaganda in his Review. And the Tories didn’t like it. They’d already killed that violent old Whig, John Tutchin of Observator, who’d been cudgelled by ruffians in a dark alley, everyone knowing the Tories had paid them. He kept to the populated areas and had his sword always at the ready. He was being followed everywhere. Yet Defoe shall not be silenced.
He shook his pen, added a full stop to Public Credit and scooted himself further down the bench to his half-finished ‘Essay on South Sea Trade’. Here’s a project. Here’s romance. The South Seas. Colonies planted in South America. Settlers in Chile to produce rice, cocoa, wine, sugar and spice and quarry gold. Put natives to work and clothe them in English wool. It was a copper-bottomed certainty, if he only had money to invest in it. If Godolphin would only pay him what he deserved.
He didn’t feel comfortable with Godolphin, who used him with distaste, having a contempt for pamphleteers. Harley now – there was a man who’d appreciated the power of the press. The Union between Scotland and England had been due to the two of them.
The Exchange clock was striking. God bless us; just time to go to Wait’s Coffee Shop and pick up the latest gossip before he kept his appointment with Harley. Defoe flung down his pen, put on his coat and wig, adjusted his cuffs and went to the sack-hoist, a relic from the days when the warehouse had been a corn merchant’s.
Nobody in the yard at the back. He put his foot in the looped chain and attended to the difficult business of holding himself out from the wall while he locked the sack-hoist door. Then, clinging to the slack, he paid it out until he was on the ground. I’m too old for these exploits, he thought. By the age of forty-nine a man should have won the right to walk out through his own front door. And I could have been Lord Mayor.
He swaggered down Cornhill like one who’d never been in its pillory, his nose up, eyes narrowed, hand on sword hilt, ears cocked for the sound of quickening feet behind him, instinct sniffing for danger. Such a fox I am. They’ll not run down Daniel Defoe.
On the front of houses hung the black crêpe of mourning. Malplaquet. Another Marlborough victory. Yet when the French army had drawn off, defeated, they were neither demoralized nor pursued. And the list of allied dead had been dreadful, a butcher’s bill. Old Sims at the ’Change had lost his son, Mistress FitzHarding hers. And for the brave Dutch, 8,000 wounded or killed. So many young men, all our sons. Defoe blinked, drew his kerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. It has gone on too long. The war must be ended. He agreed with the Tories on that much. Mobs in the street were turning against the Whig Parliament.
Wait’s smelled of coffee, new bread and perspiring men. It was the favoured meeting place for Whig writers and lawyers, a talking shop and an excellent barometer of the nation’s political weather. Just now its atmosphere was depressed. The electorate had turned against the Whigs. Defoe joined a group he knew by the fire.
‘Take Malplaquet,’ said one, ‘Four, five years ago the buggers would’ve greeted it as a great victory. Cheering. Hats in the air. And it was a great victory. Lads got killed, lads do get killed. Nature of battles. Marlborough’s spoiled the bloody voters, that’s the trouble. Don’t want mere victories now, want bloody miracles.’
‘And the queen only giving a thanksgiving in her private chapel,’ pointed out another, ‘No more St Paul’s.’
‘That’s Sarah. Dragging the poor old duke down with her. That’s what you get for involving bloody women in politics.’
An optimist said, ‘Well, but we’ve got Louis suing for peace.’
‘But we’re offering him terms he can’t accept.’
And there were the taxes causing the landowning Tories in their shires to yelp in pain at the continuing war, and Tory hacks egging them on to blame Marlborough for it. Tory mobs out on the streets yelling for Godolphin’s blood.
There was miserable nodding. ‘The war’s gone on too long. The Tories will get in for sure. Harley’ll be back within the year.’
At that, Daniel Defoe left them. It would be as well not to keep Britain’s next Prime Minster waiting.
‘…and it is always, always, with regret, my lord, that I have found myself obliged by circumstances to continue in the service of those who have proved themselves your enemies.’
Defoe had been chewing on humble pie for fully ten minutes. Why doesn’t he say something? Does he want me to eat more? He’d forgotten Harley’s terrible silences which allowed the words you’d just uttered to resound in your own ears. What else could I do? You’ve been out of power, Godolphin was in. I’ve a wife and seven children to support. He said, wearily, ‘Such as it is, my pen is at your disposal, my lord.’ I’m tired. Let me sit down. I want a glass of that port.
‘Lodgings’ was an impoverished word for the apartment in Villiers Street which was where Harley was staying while he waited for the next election to put him back into power. It was a bachelor’s hideaway, a rich bachelor’s hideaway, with the cohesive dark-gold untidiness of too many books.
Harley held his glass up so that the flames from his fire glowed through it like a ruby set in crystal. ‘Are you acquainted with a Dr Swift, Master Defoe?’
‘Swift? Swift? I don’t think I know the gentleman,’ lied Defoe.
‘An Irish Protestant churchman recently arrived in London and a promising writer. He has written most excellently on the misbehaviour of the Whigs. Most excellently.’
‘Really?’ He knew what Harley was doing, but screaming, infantile jealousy scorched through him just the same: You never called a piece of mine excellent. Swift’s cleverness was being bruited through the coffee shops, as was his phrase for Defoe: ‘an illiterate hack’.
Panic! I’ve left it too late to crawl back. Harley had found another, better apologist, one who would return him and the Tories to power by blaming Marlborough for the war’s progress.
Despising himself, he said, ‘By coincidence I am myself penning an essay on similar lines. I call it…’ he thought fast ‘…“Reasons why this Nation ought to put a Speedy End to this Expensive War”.’ It sounded crude even to him. But it would probably have to be.
The inclination of Harley’s head indicated he might be pleased to read it. Later. When he had time. But at least he was also indicating a chair. ‘How goes the Agency, Master Defoe? Do you have news of Martin Millet?’
‘None, my lord.’ Defoe sat down. He was worried about Martin.
‘Allow me to enlighten you. He was captured and taken into France.’
‘Captured?’ asked Defoe in distress. ‘Oh, my poor boy.’
‘And taken into France,’ said Harley, ‘along with the girl, Bratchet, and your friend, Livingstone of Kilsyth.’
‘No friend of mine, my lord, as you know. I warned Martin against him. I thought he might be heading for St-Germain to see the Bard grandmother. Did Martin follow him? Is that how he came into France?’ He should have known that Harley, even out of office, would have access to government information.
Harley continued as if Defoe hadn’t spoken. ‘But now, I fear, all three of them have disappeared.’
‘Disappeared, my lord?’
‘Millet had been informed that, should it become necessary for him to escape, he must make for Le Havre and enquire for a boat called L‘Hirondelle which would bring him back home.’
‘The Swallow,’ said Defoe, to show his education.
Harley ignored it. ‘This he did. Unfortunately, he got on the wrong boat, so our agents discovered later. He and the girl and the Scotsman boarded one that was bound for the West Indies where, I fear, little good will befall them.’
‘Oh dear Lord,’ cried Defoe, ‘How shall I tell Mrs Defoe? She loves Martin like another son. So do I.’
Harley got up to pour more port, and this time gave a glass to Defoe. Being out of office had improved the man. He was thinner and there was a keenness back in his eyes which, towards the end of his ministry, had been too frequently dulled by drink. He sat down again.
‘Master Defoe, it became my conviction, while I was in office – and it still is – that an element had taken a hand in the search we initiated for a certain lady at our first meeting.’
Defoe looked around him, in case there were listeners in the shadows. ‘An element?’
‘Someone we did not know. Someone unconnected with the usual politics. Someone who did not wish us to find the lady and was prepared to go to great lengths to stop us doing so. That conviction has now become a certainty.’
Better. Oh, how much better. He’d wager the excellent Dr Swift wasn’t this deeply in Harley’s confidence.
‘You will remember the unhappy business of my secretary, William Greg.’
‘Er, yes, my lord.’ Defoe wondered if Harley felt himself to be partly responsible through the laxity with which he’d left secret papers lying around for minions to read.
‘Among the information which Greg passed to France there was a letter or letters sent to St-Germain-en-Laye.’
‘Where Francesca Bard is in residence.’ Defoe was excited.
‘No longer. She is dead. We only know of those letters’ existence because among the documents sent from France to Greg, and which our agents intercepted, there was a reply.’
Defoe envied Harley’s contacts. With spies like his I could rule the world. Perhaps Harley was ruling it. Even out of office. I need his patronage. I was wrong to neglect it.
‘The reply was on St-Germain headed writing paper,’ Harley went on, ‘It promised that the writer would see to “the disposal of the goods”. I fear that the disposal has been carried out. I fear that the “goods” were Master Millet and Miss Bratchet.’
Defoe put his head in his hands. The poor young people. After a while he said, ‘But why would Greg want them disposed of?’
‘I do not think he did. I believe him merely to have been the post office, as it were. I think the original letter which ordered the disposal was written by somebody else. I think that all along the writer’s intended victim was the girl Bratchet. Did you not tell me that Martin Millet had said he thought somebody was trying to kill her?’
Defoe nodded.
‘Then I think we can safely assume that the maid recognized the person who killed her mistress, Effie Sly. Through some distorted loyalty she kept her silence at the time. Such trulls have a natural disinclination to assist the law. However, the knowledge has proved dangerous to her. Somebody thinks it worthwhile to go to considerable trouble to make sure she never disseminates it.’
‘A Jacobite plot, my lord!’ Jacobites were Defoe’s favourite enemy. ‘They stole Anne Bonny Bard’s papers from Effie Sly to ensure that she could not prove her right to the throne. Now they are eliminating anyone who can implicate them.’
‘It may be. But I do not think so. In my view we are dealing not so much with plotters as with a devious, ruthless and ambitious individual with considerable resources. I think it is a woman. And I think she is at court.’
‘At court?’
Harley said, ‘Poor Greg was unwise enough to keep a diary. It proves that he was in thrall to some female at Court whom he refers to throughout the diary as “Circe”.’
‘Circe?’ And Circe changed men into swine.
Harley’s eyes twitched. ‘We shall proceed faster, Master Defoe, if you do not repeat every statement I make. He refers to the woman as Circe. There are entries such as “Saw Circe today when I went to the household quarters.” And “Sexual recreation with Circe”. There was a particularly interesting entry which said that Circe wished him to include a letter to St-Germain among some information which he was sending to France. I must conclude that it was this letter which requested the disposal of our poor friends.’
‘Who is this Circe?’
‘We do not know. Obviously a woman in Her Majesty’s household. Obviously the person who, all along, had been trying to dispose of the Bratchet, since it is too great a coincidence that the girl attracted the attention of two different assassins. And, since the attempts on the Bratchet’s life began after Effie Sly was murdered and the papers stolen, we can safely assume that Circe is involved in the matter of Anne Bard, otherwise known as Bonny.’
Daniel, staring into the fire, saw in its blaze a pockmarked, anguished little face and heard a whisper: ‘They ain’t dead. They ain’t.’
‘Oh my God,’ he said.
All at once Harley was brisk and appeared to change the subject. ‘How do you read the political situation, Master Defoe?’
Defoe blinked himself into the present. ‘I have no doubt the next election will bring in a Tory Parliament.’
And God help England.
‘Yet if I read you aright in the Review, you, Master Defoe, have been doing everything in your power to urge the country to keep the Tories out.’
And God help me if I have offended this bland, terrible little man who will lead them. ‘Only the extremists, my lord, the High Tories red in tooth and claw, ready to appease France merely in order to stop taxation, intolerant towards Dissenters, hating the financiers who run the City, a disaster to the country’s credit.’
Harley nodded. ‘We are moderate men, are we not, Master Defoe?’
I’ve come full circle. Here he was again, promising his soul away in order to keep in favour. ‘We are, we are, my lord.’
‘I shall be pleased to see you employ your Review to urging the cause of moderation in future.’
It was a warning. ‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Listen to me, Daniel.’ For once Harley lost his blandness. He leaned forward with the jutting jaw of his tough, Radnorshire farming ancestors. ‘The hand I shall have to play in the next few years is difficult beyond belief. The peace negotiations with King Louis will be difficult enough, yet they are as nothing to the question of the succession. The queen is a sick woman. How much longer she’ll last is anybody’s guess. Already the country is beginning to divide on who should succeed her. The High Tories are not the only ones who feel that the Pretender is the rightful heir. But the Whigs will not countenance him.’
Daringly, Daniel asked, ‘And which do you favour, my lord. James? Or Hanover?’
The glass in Harley’s hand shook, sending a quiver over its blood-red liquid. Afraid. The great manipulator was afraid. And suddenly Daniel Defoe was afraid too.
‘It’s not a question of whom I favour,’ said Harley, ‘It’s a question of avoiding civil war.’
Like a dread, silence came over the room except for the crackling of the fire. Civil War. Not again. Daniel had been born while they were still picking up the pieces from the last one. A torn country where the graves were still settling on torn bodies. Please God, not again.
Harley leaned forward. ‘I’ll need to hold all the cards, Daniel, all of them. Especially the court cards. I’ll need your pen and your soul. I shall also need your agency, that gang of rogues and villains who go everywhere and know everything. Do you understand?’
‘I’m to continue the search for Anne Bonny?’
Harley sat back, his mask reinstated. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘You are also to conduct a very secret enquiry into the lives of the women who surround our queen. This “Circe” endangers us all. She has some design of her own. Search for her while you search for Anne Bonny. I think you may find they are one and the same person.’
That night Defoe dreamed that a succubus sat on his loins, showing long white teeth between red lips as she screamed in victory before leaning down to suck out his tongue. He woke up wet, afraid and embarrassed, and had to lie still, suppressing his gasps, in case Mrs Defoe beside him had been disturbed. She had not; she snored on.
Picking up his robe, he got up and went downstairs to the kitchen and poured himself some porter, ducking under the clothes that hung from the drying rack. Anne Bonny still inhabited Defoe’s mental garden, gentle and wronged. He had difficulty crediting Harley’s conviction that she had returned in the transformation of a vengeful harpy. Yet Harley was so sure, and he was once again Harley’s creature.
Circe changed men into swine.
Women. What malignancy when they went to the bad. Such power for evil if they ranged free. Educate them, certainly. To a point. But contain them. What blessedness if they were all like Mrs Defoe, meek, loving helpmeets. Such white, clenching thighs the succubus had. Defoe fell on his knees and prayed that he might be delivered from lust and Woman rampant. The uneven flags of the kitchen floor hurt.
He had been hunting an elusive doe only to discover he was on the trail of a tigress – a tigress, moreover, that was lurking nearby, hidden in the gentle, English shade of his queen’s court, its topaz eyes narrowed and watchful. Watchful for what? If he found her, would she be a queen? Or a murderess? Which was she?
In the end it didn’t matter. If England could be saved from tearing herself apart by finding an heir to the throne that was neither the Pretender nor the Hanoverian, an heir that was acceptable to both Whig and Tory, she was acceptable whatever she was. It was England that mattered.
He felt the damp from the floor seeping into his bruised knees. ‘Oh Lord,’ he prayed, ‘guide my country through its difficulties. Protect my soul. And Lord, if it is within Your power, keep Martin Millet and his Bratchet from harm.’