A rare summer storm was darkening the late afternoon skies over Essex, as well it might. This, after all, was a county notorious as one of the principal seed-beds of rebellion during the late unhappy civil wars, and one that still contained countless ignorant souls disaffected with the rule of His Majesty the King. Admittedly, the same was true of my native Bedfordshire, but that was smaller, the people more placid. And Bedfordshire, for all its faults, contained rather fewer witches than Essex, despite the best efforts of the self-styled Witchfinder-General to exterminate them all during the late civil wars. A ruined castle lay just off to the south of the road we were taking, its tall, ivy-covered towers standing sentinel over the salt marshes below and the broad estuary of the Thames beyond. It was easy to imagine a coven within its dark walls, casting evil spells and incantations, benighting the prospects of the strange little party that now rode past.
We were on horseback, Musk, Aphra and I, and we were soaked to the skin despite the heavy cloaks we wore. But a coach would have been unsuitable for the play we were now acting out.
The port of Leigh appeared before us. For such a den of sin and treason, it seemed unremarkable enough: a village largely of timber-built, weather-boarded houses, nestling beneath a hill that fell down to the sea, with a fine old church standing amid trees, high above the main street below. Fishing craft and a number of coastal traders, including the broad hulls of several Newcastle colliers, sat on the mud of the tidal flats that flanked the creek. Therein lay the one obvious danger to our mission. Leigh was a port of some eminence, despite its small size and unprepossessing appearance. It had produced many Brethren, even Masters, of Trinity House, and many stout officers and men for the Navy, the Captain Dick Haddock who had taken part in Holmes’ bonfire amongst them. So it was just possible that there might be a man in the town who knew me by sight: a pressed seaman, perhaps, who had served under me in the Merhonour, the Cressy, or the Royal Sceptre, during the two sea-campaigns of the war. But it was deeply unlikely, sufficiently so for it to be worth the risk. Until the fleet paid off in a month or thereabouts, all of the eligible mariners of Leigh were nearly certain to be at sea; and if there were any deserters in these parts, they were unlikely to linger long in a port which could be visited by a pressing tender at any time.
Of course, it was equally possible that Schermer, Goodman and de Wildt might spot and recognise Aphra before we had a chance to put our plan into effect. But she and Charles reasoned that they were unlikely to venture out too brazenly in public in the aftermath of the Rathbone plot and the recent escape of de Wildt from Chelsea College. Besides, the Aphra riding alongside me was a very different creature to the one who had been at Ravensden House – presumably different, too, to the young woman the Horsemen had known in Surinam. The long brown tresses had been cut off, and the remaining unfashionably short and straight hair dyed jet black. In high-necked, grey Puritanical garb and old-fashioned coif, riding sidesaddle, she looked every inch a demure, godly, and above all insignificant, goodwife.
We entered a middling-sized inn at the west end of the High Street. Musk took the landlord to one side and had a whispered conversation with him, during which a purse of coin exchanged hands. Of course, Musk was not playing a part: the role of the slightly dishonest rogue, engaged upon some marginally illegal scheme, had been his since birth.
He returned to where Aphra and I sat, close to the unseasonable coal fire that dried our sodden clothes.
‘The best room in the house for you,’ he said, so quietly that no others in the room could hear. ‘The best room in the entire town, he says. A mattress in the garret for me. No doubt with fleas.’
‘Excellent, Musk,’ said Aphra. ‘And our business?’
‘He’s sent word to a likely man. Says he’ll be here by nightfall.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then let’s dine, and while away the hours.’
We ate an acceptable ham broth, washed down by some Maldon ale. Musk and Mistress Behn talked of the wonders of the Americas, and of the relative merits of the inns of Antwerp. I remained entirely silent throughout. That, after all, was my part in this business, at least at this stage of it. Musk and Aphra Behn were both expert at this game; both had taken part in countless secret missions on behalf of my brother and others, and knew what they were about. But it was new to me, and I was utterly convinced that at any moment, one of the drinkers would point at me and shout, ‘Ha! There’s Sir Matthew Quinton, that notorious cavalier and malignant, pretending to be…’
A man walked up to our table and sat down upon the settle opposite us without introduction or ceremony. He was a rough-shaven, hard-faced fellow with warts on his hands, perhaps sixty or so. He had a cast in his right eye.
‘Jack Crane, yonder, says you’re interested in a passage.’ His voice was a rasp, and although he spoke with the accent of those parts, there was a trace of something else, too: a touch of New England, perhaps, where many of the dissenting kind had once sought to establish the new Zion. ‘A passage into Holland. That’s a dangerous voyage to take in time of war.’
‘We are prepared to pay well for it,’ said Aphra.
‘Reckon you would be, for what you’re asking. So I’ve got to be asking myself, what business is afoot for such a fair lady as yourself to want something that might get us all hanged?’
‘It concerns my husband, here.’ She nodded toward me, and lowered her voice. ‘He is a Dutchman. It is now – well, it has become difficult for him to remain in England.’
‘And why might that be, then?’
‘No need for you to know,’ said Musk, playing the part of the ruffian bodyguard to perfection. ‘Are you interested in the purse you’ve been offered or not?’
‘If I’m risking my life, even for a weighty purse, I want to know what I’m risking it for.’ He turned toward me. ‘So what’s your story, friend?’
‘No English,’ I said, in what I hoped was a passable imitation of my father-in-law uttering the only phrase of my language that he knew.
My father-in-law. The father of Cornelia, from whom I had parted in such bad grace.
‘That right?’ said the fellow. ‘No English. Well, then.’ He was silent for a moment, then looked up at me again, and began to speak in fluent and very rapid Dutch. ‘So let’s try the Netherlandish way shall we, if you’re more comfortable with that? What’s your story, friend? Why do you need to get out of England so damn fast, eh?’
‘My name is Vandervoort,’ I said in Dutch, hoping I had not displayed any hesitation in responding to a ploy clearly meant to catch me out, ‘Adriaan Vandervoort. And I would rather not tell you my story, meinheer. All you need to know is that I have gold, and I can get more once I am landed in Holland.’
The fellow studied me closely. The mention of gold should have piqued his interest, but he seemed too interested in how I was speaking, rather than in what I was saying.
‘You don’t talk like any Dutchman I know,’ he said, ‘and I’ve been in and out of every harbour between Friesland and Zeeland for thirty years and more.’
‘I am not from the coast. I am from Assen, in Drenthe, although I lived in Zeeland and Amsterdam for…’
‘Drenthe? That’s far inland, ain’t it? Some sort of a bog. Poorest part of the entire republic, I heard.’
‘All of that is true, unfortunately. And this is how we talk in Drenthe, the poor bog.’
He was silent, evidently sizing me up. Somehow, I managed to avoid looking at Aphra or Musk. But I was assessing the distance to where my sword and pistols lay, and estimating just how quickly I could reach them.
‘All right, Meinheer Vandervoort, let’s assume for the present that you’re telling the truth. So what I want to know is, how does a Drenthe man like yourself come to be in England in the first place when our two countries are at war, and why does he then want to get out of it so quickly? Because I’ll tell you this, friend. You telling me your story is your only chance of me agreeing to sail you across to Holland.’
And so I launched into the speech that had been written for me by Mistress Aphra Behn. How I wish I had preserved that piece of paper, given what befell her thereafter; Congreve or Vanbrugh would have paid a fortune for it.
‘I serve the banking house of De Hondt,’ I said, hoping I was acting with the degree of boastfulness and indiscretion that we had decided Meinheer Vandervoort ought to display. ‘One of the most reputable in Amsterdam. On its behalf, I have carried out tasks in the likes of Vienna, Madrid and Paris. But this has been the most difficult mission of all, Mister–?’ The fellow made no response, but simply nodded for me to continue. ‘Of course, this war is a decided inconvenience to many in both our countries. To those with moneyed interests in both. You will know, I do not doubt, that many of my nation prosper here in England. We are not far from Colchester, which contains more Dutchmen than my home town of Assen. We may be at war, but there are still countless Dutch in London, and elsewhere in these islands – why, sir, at this very moment, the mayors of your towns of Dublin and Limerick are Dutchmen.’ This was an embellishment of my own; Cornelia had held forth on the matter at our awkward supper. ‘It is important to many of these Dutchmen to continue to have contact with their brothers, cousins and bankers in the United Provinces. For monies to be able to continue to cross the North Sea in both directions, as it were, by means of discreet bills of exchange drawn upon neutral third parties. That has been my part, sir. I have lately been to Ireland, and Bristol, and London, and was bound for Colchester.’
‘Nothing untoward in any of that,’ said the fellow, grudgingly. ‘But why do you need to leave England so fast, then, before you get to all your Dutch friends in Colchester?’
Aphra feigned alarm, and put her hand on my arm.
‘You do not need to know all,’ she said to our visitor in English. ‘You know now that my husband can afford to pay you well for sailing us to Holland. Will you take the voyage, or should we seek some other man who will?’
‘I thank you, mistress,’ said the fellow, ‘but this is a matter between me, here, and your husband, there.’ He turned back to me, and resumed in Dutch. ‘So, friend, your answer? Why do you need to get out of England, eh?’
I exchanged glances with Aphra, who was a more accomplished actor than I. It was easy to see why she had proved so useful to my brother, in his role as Lord Percival.
‘You will know,’ I said, ‘that the Dutch are not only in England to trade. Lord Arlington, your King’s great minister of state, is married to a Dutch lady. Lord Ossory, one of your King’s favourites, is married to that lady’s sister.’
‘Not my King,’ said the fellow, although he had raised an eyebrow at the mention of Arlington. As well he might: at that very moment, the King’s principal spymaster might be poring over this villain’s name on one of his many lists of malcontents.
‘My apologies, sir. I, too, am no lover of kings. My bank is staunch for the True Freedom, and the cause of Grand Pensionary de Witt, and against…’
‘Yes, yes… But Arlington and Ossory, and their wives? What of them?’
I feigned reluctance.
‘Sir, it is a matter of confidence…’
‘If you want me to get you out of England, friend, you’ll share that confidence. And if you’ve got Arlington after you, I think you’ll need to leave this shore as swiftly as possible.’
I gave a show of considering the matter intently, casting glances at Aphra and Musk (who was lost in a bottle of modest wine), and sighing deeply.
‘Very well,’ I said.
‘Do you think he believes it?’ I asked.
Aphra seemed more interested in inspecting the small, low-timbered room we had been allotted. If it truly was the best room in Leigh, then the place evidently received precious few visitors.
‘It is an irresistible story, Sir Matthew. Mark my words, he believes it, which is why he has promised to find us a ship within five tides. And, God willing, it will draw out Schermer, Goodman and de Wildt, too. A Dutch banker, able to find them limitless credit on the Amsterdam bourse? A Dutch banker with damning evidence against Arlington and Ossory? Yes, they will believe it all, and they will come to us.’
I was yet to be convinced, although my still-anonymous companion of earlier in the evening had seemed impressed enough by the web Aphra Behn had spun. A tale of scandalously large debts being run up by Ladies Arlington and Ossory at a card table presided over by the Queen, debts that could only be paid off by recourse to assets the two ladies still held in their native Netherlands, sounded utterly implausible to me. But then, I knew the two ladies in question – indeed, Aemilia, Countess of Ossory, was a friend of my wife – and knew them to be dutiful, modest, matrons of virtue. I knew the Queen, too: an insignificant, innocuous creature whose only mark to date upon the history of England had been, not the appropriate, necessary, and politically providential production of a Prince of Wales, but instead the introduction of tea-drinking.
But as Aphra had said, it would all seem very different through the suspicious eyes of the ever-febrile malcontents. To men like the creature to whom I had spoken that evening, Ladies Arlington and Ossory were unknown quantities, notable only and hated only because they were married to two of the leading lights in the notoriously debauched court and government of the licentious, Popishly-inclined whoremaster Charles Stuart. The very fact that they were wed to two such reprobates would make it possible to believe anything of them. Arlington, of course, was especially hated for his part in driving forward the persecution of those who regarded themselves as the pure, godly body of the divinely elected; or rather, as we cavaliers knew them to be, deluded, canting hypocrites. As for the poor, blameless Queen: she was, of course, a Catholic, and thus by the inexorable logic of the disaffected, she must therefore be one of the principal agents in England of Popery and the Jesuits, who spent day and night conspiring how to slit the throats of all true Englishmen and burn their children upon spits.
Whereupon, presumably, they would be basted with tea.
Whether Mistress Behn’s assumptions were correct, and whether her script really would flush out the surviving Horsemen of the Apocalypse, remained to be seen. In the meantime, we had effectively made ourselves prisoners of our enemies, in a place full of hostile and rebellious spirits, with our proposed method of extracting ourselves depending upon…
‘One bed,’ said Aphra, diverting me from my thoughts by suddenly looking up at me in a smiling, questioning way that I found markedly disconcerting. ‘And we are supposed to be a married couple. How do you propose to negotiate that matter, Sir Matthew?’