Pepys’s legs ached. He’d stood on the wheel of a cart for over an hour, waiting to watch Turner the highwayman hang, for stealing £4,500 in jewels. He’d paid the owner of the cart a shilling for the privilege.
It was a popular hanging. Crowds poured into St. Mary Axe. Later it was said fourteen thousand had watched the handsome robber flung off the ladder. Pepys hoped it was Turner who’d robbed him on the Chelsey road that day.
After the execution, Pepys visited with a pretty young merchant, a seller of ribands and gloves. Things got so exceeding merry he forgot the pain in his legs.
Then to the Sun Tavern, to meet with Mr. Warren, timber merchant of Wapping and Rotherhithe. Warren presented Pepys with a fine pair of gloves. Sam wondered if Warren had purchased them from the same pretty merchant.
Warren said the gloves were a gift for Pepys’s wife. They were neatly wrapped in paper, and weighed very heavy, being stuffed with forty pieces of gold. A gesture of gratitude, for his continuing good relationship with the Navy’s chief purchaser of timber.
And so home to Seething Lane.
Pepys waited anxiously for Elizabeth to go see about supper so he could admire his gold in privacy. He dumped the coins onto the table, purring at the sight of them, all lambent in candlelight. He congratulated himself on his good fortune and gave thanks to God Almighty for his blessings. He felt surpassingly happy, which always made him want to take wine and play his lute.
This pleasant idyll was interrupted by knocking on the door. His servant entered with a message. Pepys recognized Downing’s seal. A summons to Whitehall, a matter of “some urgency.” The wine and the lute would have to wait.
On his way out, Pepys’s nostrils filled with the aroma of roasting marrowbones. It was a particular favorite dish of his. He hoped Downing’s matter wouldn’t keep him long.
He reflected anew on the happiness he felt here. How blessed he was! Sated as his exertions with the riband merchant had left him, he felt a surge of concupiscence in his loins. He thought of the wenches he’d recently seen at Ludgate Hill. It wouldn’t be too much of a detour on his way back from Whitehall.
But no, he told himself sternly. One dalliance a day was enough. He would return straight home. He’d go by water, so as to avoid temptation. There were no sirens on the Thames! Then he and his wife would drink wine and suck on marrowbones and he would play his lute for her. His “Gaze Not on Swans” was coming along nicely. The lute often put Elizabeth in the mood for bed—and not for sleep. Pepys’s heart was burstingly full.
* * *
“My lord.”
“Ah. You arrive. I trust this is not too great an inconvenience?”
“Being of service to my lord is never an inconvenience.”
Downing rang a small silver bell on his desk. His scrivener, Fell, entered. Pepys nodded a greeting. They knew each other. Fell sat, dipped a quill in ink, and looked on with the expectant but patient face of one awaiting dictation. Odd, Pepys thought. Downing rarely made a record of their meetings.
“Perhaps you can illuminate a matter for me.”
The scratch of Fell’s quill filled the silence.
“Yes?”
“When did you last see the Earl of Sandwich?”
Pepys’s buttock cheeks clenched. “Sandwich?”
“Your cousin. And patron.”
“Distant cousin. Well . . . let’s see. My Lord Sandwich has not of late been much at Court.”
“No,” Downing said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. “He has been much occupied in Chelsey. What can be keeping him there? I wonder. Perhaps he prefers the tranquility of village life to the cut and thrust of Court.”
Pepys squirmed. “He does, yes, have an affinity for the rustic.”
“Get out there much yourself, do you?”
“Chelsey holds nothing to attract me. The road is a horror. Highwaymen and cutpurses at every turn.”
“Then you have not visited with the Earl of Sandwich in Chelsey?”
The scratch of Fell’s quill sounded like the fire-etched writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s Feast: Mene, mene, tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
Pepys spurred his brain. Better to offer Downing something.
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
Downing leaned back in his chair and cocked his head to the side, resting temple on a finger.
“A most unhappy undertaking,” Pepys said. “But I deemed it my duty.”
“Yes?”
“I had arrived at the melancholy conclusion that my lord’s comportment there was doing him no good at Court. Or with his majesty.”
“Yes. Family relations can be such a burden.”
“I have a great affection for my Lord Sandwich.”
“As you should. After all, look how high his patronage has lifted you.”
“I am indeed fortunate.”
“No wonder, then, you should risk the horrors of the Chelsey road to entreat with him to give up the pastoral life and return to Court. How gallant you are, Pepys.”
“My lord exaggerates my heroism. It was no more than my duty.”
“ ‘Non nobis solum nati sumus.’ Eh?”
“ ‘Not for ourselves alone are we born.’ ” Pepys cleared his throat. “How well the imperishable Cicero puts it.”
“And when did you visit with Lord Sandwich in Chelsey?”
“Well . . . Let’s see. Was it . . . ?”
“Tuesday, perchance?”
“Tuesday? Well, I would have to consult my calendar . . .”
“In the absence of your calendar, let us, arguendo, say it was Tuesday.” Downing’s tempo quickened to a trot. “In which case, your mission to Chelsey must be adjudged a success. You are to be congratulated, Pepys.”
“I am?”
“Yes. It shows you dispose of great powers of persuasion. I must keep you in mind for some embassy in the future. Clearly, the Crown has not availed itself of your full talents.”
“My lord is too kind. Yet I do not know quite why I deserve such . . . garlands.”
“Then I shall explain. Only two days after your . . . let us call it your Chelsey remonstrance, your prodigal cousin sought an audience with his majesty.”
“Ah? Oh.”
“And not merely just to show his face. Far from it! Indeed, from the specificity of his business with the King, one would think Lord Sandwich had spent the previous months immersed in military matters. Instead of Mrs. Becke’s crinkum-crankum.”
“I . . .” —Pepys’s mouth had gone dry—“rejoice to hear that my Lord Sandwich has stayed . . . on top of things.”
“His majesty was most impressed. Not only that the Earl was so well-informed. But that a matter of such great confidentiality had somehow”—Downing walked two fingers across the surface of his desk—“found its way to Chelsey.”
Pepys swallowed. “Did my Lord Sandwich vouchsafe to his majesty how he had come by this intelligence? Whatever it was.”
He braced to hear Downing utter that most dismal of sentences: “Take him to the Tower!”
But Downing said, “No. His majesty did not think it polite to ask.”
Pepys stifled a sigh of relief. “How very gracious is his majesty.”
“Yes,” Downing said. “And how fortunate for whoever provided the information to Sandwich. But no matter. Secrecy is a chrysalis inevitably shed in the fullness of time. The matter will reveal itself soon enough. Out of the shadows, into the sunlight. Nothing like sunlight, eh, Pepys?”
“Quite, my lord.” Pepys was sweating.
“You look pale, Sam. I think you must get some sunlight.”
Downing returned to his papers. Pepys rose and walked to the door.
“Pepys.”
“My lord?”
“Did I ever thank you for delivering those dispatches to Colonel Nicholls in Portsmouth?”
“I . . .”
“I don’t believe I did. Thank you.”
“It was nothing, my lord.”
“Integendeel.”
“My lord?”
“Good night, Sam.”
Pepys went directly home, with no thought of the lusty wenches of Ludgate Hill. Nor was he in the mood for wine or marrowbones or strumming bars of “Gaze Not on Swans” nor for making merry in bed with his wife.
He tossed and turned until three, when, giving up on sleep or breakfast, he dressed and went down Seething Lane to the Navy Office. He found what he sought in the library, in an English-Dutch dictionary and phrase book.
Integendeel meant “on the contrary.” But what did that mean?