The Brotherhood’s shots have missed their mark. Bratchet has been taken to Europe, out of the way. By Effie’s nephew, Millet. With the idiot Scotsman in attendance. Looking for Anne Bonny and Mary Read. They won’t find them there, but it’s a blow. I didn’t relish the Bratchet’s death yet I fear it has become a necessity. The creature that comes into my room at nights is demanding it.
I don’t think it’s the Devil any more. I don’t know what it is, except that it’s female. She came in a nightmare. I was dreaming about the sea. I always dream about the sea, but this time dead hands pulled me down and water filled my nose and mouth. A voice kept saying something of which I could only hear the word ‘Bratchet’. I felt similar panic to what I was in the night the press crew grabbed me and I managed to struggle out of the men’s arms and leap overboard and my petticoats dragged me under until I tore their tapes away and swam out of them.
I woke up, gurgling, in my hot cupboard bed so drenched in sweat I thought my escape had just happened and I must run in my dripping state with the pressmen searching after me. Worse still, the creature that had been dragging me under was still with me. In the room. I could see a shape against the boxes in the corner.
‘Who are you?’ I whimpered.
‘It’s me,’ said Uncle Cofferer outside the door.
I was so afraid of the thing in the corner that I let the old cuff in. He had a candle and I took it and held it up and made him search among the boxes, saying I’d heard a rat. It had been bigger than a rat. There was nothing there. For his pains I had to endure an hour of what Uncle Cofferer calls tickly-tickle but all the time I was aware eyes were watching us and through Uncle Cofferer’s gasps my ears caught a repeating whisper: ‘Kill the Bratchet, kill the Bratchet.’
It was remiss of the Brotherhood not to have finished her, though they swear the girl had the Devil’s own luck in avoiding their attempts. One of them even tried to capture her at sea but was deflected by Her Majesty’s navy.
Well, it is only a matter of time. The Devil’s luck is mine, not the Bratchet’s. You might think, my dear, that in going to Europe she has moved beyond my range. It is not so. My reach is long – and getting longer. I have made a new acquaintance.
It was in the buttery. This is a long refectory so old and beamed it must have belonged to the nuns who were here before King Henry made St James’s his palace. It was a lazar house then. And still is. A strict order of seating keeps lepers like laundry women away from the scribes and the Pharisees.
Not knowing, I’d wandered with my platter to a table at the end furthest away from the serving hatch. There were two clerks sitting by themselves and as I passed them I heard one of them say, ‘…Anne Bard or Bonny, whoever she is…’
He stopped when he saw me. I was about to take a place near them but Uncle Cofferer, the old fumbler, hurried up then. ‘No, no, dear child, this is for higher staff. You must sit further down.’ He apologized to the men as he ushered me away. ‘My niece, gentlemen. She’s new to court.’
The taller one said: ‘I’m sure the court is the happier for it.’ I caught his eye; he meant it.
That night in my cupboard bed, I brought the old Cofferer to the brim quickly. I use a method known to sailors as ‘boxing the Jesuit’, which is messy but safe. All I have to do to reach a swift conclusion is whisper passionately ‘Uncle, oh uncle’. I let him finish, I say, then asked, ‘Who were those two men at the top table today?’
William Greg and Anthony Frobisher, he told me.
‘Which was the tall one?’
‘William Greg, one of Harley’s secretaries.’
‘Will you introduce me to him, uncle?’ He began to baulk. What did I want with the man? What did I want with any man but him? You ask nicely and you get nowhere. I started to shout and cry which terrified him in case Aunt Cofferer should hear. Yes, yes, dear niece, if that’s what I wished. Hush now.
As it turned out, no introduction was necessary. Next day William Greg came into the laundry court. Really, it is no place to dry linen; like most of St James’s it’s airless – only the royal apartments look out on to the garden near the river – and a gale must blow before wind reaches the washing lines. Officials often use it as a cut-through to the Ambassadors’ Court in order to see the maids with their skirts bound up trampling in the washing tubs. I was giving the maids a lash of Brotherhood tongue, which I shouldn’t do, but they are a lazy crew needing encouragement.
It has been a relief to me to discover that as assistant laundress my hands need never touch soap and water. Neither do I dry or iron; that, Mrs Peach told me, is for gofferers, starchers and such rabble. My task is to see clothes properly aired on the racks and folded carefully. When all’s done I accompany one of my minions as she carries the piles to Mrs Peach’s room where it is checked. Mrs Peach then accompanies another minion to the housekeeper’s room who oversees its distribution by yet more minions into the royal linen presses. A process that could be accomplished by half a dozen women thereby employs twenty-eight.
I was encouraging the maids, I say. ‘Stamp, you lubbery frigates. Harder, you fumble-footed sluts, or I’ll hang your skin on tenterhooks.’ The whiteness of the linen has much improved since my arrival. The Duchess of Marlborough was pleased to comment on it.
‘A nautical lady,’ said a voice. William Greg was leaning against the court wall. He’s tall and dresses above his station in what look like Harley’s cast-offs so the coats are rich but his wrists stretch beyond the sleeves. Though very young, barely twenty-one I should guess, he affects a raillery towards inferior women, such as he regards me, and curlicues his hat in the air as he sweeps it in salute.
I bobbed. ‘Your pardon, sir. My father was a seagoing man and I fear I imitate him at times.’
‘No pardon necessary,’ he smiled, ‘I like a girl of spirit.’ That address went out of date when Old Rowley died. He invited me to walk with him in Hyde Park on my next free afternoon. I set on the Negroes to watch him in the meantime. He has access to Robert Harley’s papers, and is therefore worth attaching to my chatelaine.
Who is Harley, dearest? Well, he may or not be the man who had us pressed. True, he was only Speaker of the House of Commons at the time but even then, they tell me, he was keeper of most of the government’s secrets. Now he virtually is the government, an octopus of a man whose tentacles extend everywhere. I shall hang him on a hook in the sun, like they do to octopus in Barbados, until he stops wriggling.
He doesn’t look much; he’s got the face of a cottage loaf, with about as much expression. Only his waistcoats are handsome; you see a fine brocade waistcoat perambulating the corridors and realize there’s Harley inside it.
He’s a Tory. The Duchess of Marlborough, a Whig like her husband, hates him. They would not have got on even had they belonged to the same party, she’s cake, he’s dough; her barbs sink into him without trace, he just bows and goes on about his business – which is to get the queen to do what he wants.
He is my equivalent, I suppose, my lawful equivalent. I have the Brotherhood and the Negroes, he has the network of government and its agents. To put my hand on the Bratchet I shall need access to official reports. So welcome aboard, William Greg.
In the meantime I have begun work on the next stage of the plan. It is to make Uncle Cofferer procure me a place as one of the queen’s bedchamber women. There is no vacancy at the moment but when there is I shall have it. It is as one of the bedchamber women that Abigail Hill began her ascendancy.
Uncle Cofferer fondled and kissed me pityingly. ‘There is no hope of it, my child, so do not aspire. Only women of gentle birth are permitted to the bedchamber.’
I kept my temper and asked him innocently: ‘Is Abigail Hill a gentlewoman then?’
‘She is not. She is a special case put there by Duchess Sarah. In view of Mistress Hill’s ingratitude since, it is doubtful if the duchess will ever again recommend a place to someone of low birth. Will we play tickly-tickle now?’
Still I kept my temper. ‘I wish to serve the queen, uncle.’
‘You are serving her admirably already, little one.’
I didn’t serve him that night but pushed him out and held the bed door against his pleas to get back in. If he can’t be useful, he can damn well be chaste. But oh, Sarah, what a fool you are. Even at the lower end of the buttery they talk of how the duchess is insisting on Queen Ant appointing her son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, as Secretary of State, though she knows the queen abhors him. But he is a Whig and Sarah wants him, as she wants all her family, in power.
Poor Queen Ant. In her naïveté, she thinks she can choose the best men from either party to be in her ministry, and that they will work happily together for the good of the country. She’d have more success employing sharks. Her ‘best men’ spend their time rending each other.
Mrs Danvers told the housekeeper and the housekeeper told Mrs Peach and Mrs Peach told Aunt Cofferer that poor Queen Ant had burst out: ‘Why for God’s sake must I, who have no interest, no end, no thought but for the good of my country, be made so miserable as to be brought into the power of one set of men?’
Sarah, watch out. Better win a war than a battle. Even Calico Jack let a small ship go if by doing so he could have a bigger prize. You may gain Sunderland, but you will lose the queen.
The walk with William Greg in Hyde Park was fruitful. He wanted to take me under the trees immediately but I showed him there was a boarding fee. I blew cold when he talked dalliance and hot when he spoke of politics; he soon picked up that only when he showed how important he was did I become receptive to his advances.
In no time he was boasting of knowing all that Harley knows. He says he is Harley’s confidant though I doubt it, that gentleman being too secretive to have any confidant but himself.
‘We are against the appointment of young Sunderland,’ he said, grandly. He uses a constant ‘we’ when he talks of Harley. ‘We do not want a party man. We are for moderation as the queen is. Being Tory, we are closer to her liking than anyone else in the cabinet.’
It was the Devil’s own work to speed him on to the more important subject; I dared not mention the names of Anne Bonny or Mary Read but with the Devil my helper I flattered him to greater and greater indiscretion until at last he whispered, ‘We may even turn the succession on its head.’
At that I clasped his arm in amazed admiration and let him begin to lead me to the trees. ‘But isn’t it settled on the Hanovers? How can any mortal overturn that?’
‘We can. We may. My lips are sealed.’
So were mine, against his, until he told me more. At last he said, ‘There is a personage who may have greater right than German George. We have set matters in train to procure her.’
It appears that Martin Millet has been designated to hunt down Mary Read who, they think, may in all likelihood be Anne Bonny herself. He is to send reports of his progress to the embassy in The Hague, who will send them on to London. And William Greg, bless his aspirations, is the man who decodes them.
As soon as I decently could, or indecently could, I terminated the dalliance for the day and made him escort me back, promising him more and better next week when he may have further information.
So they want Anne Bonny for the throne, do they? She wouldn’t sit on it now for all the gold in Davy Jones’s locker. I’ve seen how they keep their queen in a closet to make her swell bigger and bigger. When they trundle her out for occasions she’s so trussed with jewels she staggers. No woman who’s watched seagulls swing against a storm, or taken a helm, or boarded a ship with a knife in her teeth, can submit to chains again, not even when they’re studded with diamonds.
No, my dear. If you please, instead we’ll have the revenge we planned in that stinking cell in St Jago de la Vega.
Next day the Negroes reported that on his free nights William Greg goes to the Rummer tavern in Charing Cross where he gambles beyond his means. He would. They also report that he is being watched there by someone other than themselves, a man with a foreign accent, who has twice now followed him home.
Who is that, I wonder? It could be the French. Or the Jacobites. I may not be the only one who realizes Greg’s wonderful possibilities. Would he spy for the enemies of his country? He might. Government clerks, even those attached to the first minister’s office, are miserably paid. If they offered enough for his information, he might.
So far, mine has cost me kisses and a bit of unlacing. My skirt shall stay in place as long as possible. Calico Jack would have called me a cock-chafer, permitting all intimacies but the greatest. My apparent primness has merely strengthened Greg’s ardour and he’s promised to take me to Vauxhall Gardens next, which will prove expensive to his indiscretion and his pocket.
I am ever amazed by how I attract men. It was always the case; I only have to set my sights long enough on one of them that can be useful and he falls at my feet and stays there. Certainly, I’m good-looking, but so are many women who have less success with the opposite sex. And the truth is I do not like men. I have to force myself to permit their liberties and only do it to gain advantage. Perhaps that is my secret; they sense my hidden antagonism and are driven to try and overcome it, in the same way that other men risk their own destruction by trying to conquer mountains, or the sea.
Greg has begun to call me ‘Circe’. He says he sees danger in the depth of my eyes yet cannot resist their lure. Such twaddle. How easily men are led around by their gooseberries. I should be grateful for it, but where’s the enjoyment?
I only escaped from the press smack because one of the kidnappers freed my bonds in order to fondle me and I took the opportunity to dive overboard and swim ashore. I am haunted that in doing so I left her, my only love, behind. But I thought the shore was nearer than it proved to be. I hoped to get help for her rescue, but she was out of reach before that could happen.
I knew one thing, though. One of the men had joked as they bundled us aboard from that quayside. ‘You’ll like Jamaica, girls,’ he said. At least I knew where she had gone. And I swore to God or the Devil that I would find her. And after dreary years in the search, thank God, I did at the last.
Oh my dear and only love, will we be allowed into heaven? Or was it such sin we will be sent to hell? If they will guarantee we go there together, I shan’t mind burning.
The thing in the corner has returned and is watching me this minute. It gains delineation each time it appears but there is weed over it so I cannot see its face. Its voice is clearer, though it still sounds like pounding waves, but I can make out all the words now. It gives me no sleep. It is saying, ‘Kill the Bratchet.’