In the King's Absence Read online

  ‘Yes, indeed, sir. And Madam Walter too, if I address her correctly.’

  ‘Madam or Mistress, young man, and the latter with more certainty, perhaps.’

  The irony soured the conversation. Alan sighed.

  ‘The lady seems to live most moderately, to judge by her establishment and her attendants,’ he said.

  ‘But most immodestly, from the rumours that concern her,’ Sir Edward said severely. ‘And that gives cause for great annoyance to His Majesty, who finds they reflect upon his own present reputation, as you may well understand. Nay, hear me out.’

  For Alan, stung by this exaggerated reference to his own report to Charles, had flushed and opened his mouth to correct the Chancellor’s assessment.

  ‘This man, Thomas Howard, is known to us as the woman’s present protector, after her failure to secure another well-born Englishman in marriage. Master Howard is something of an adventurer and hath been very useful to our cause from time to time. His behaviour towards yourself was typical, cool – a trifle reckless, but effective. He spoke to you about man George Leslie. Did he disclose this fellow shared with him Mistress Lucy’s favours?’

  ‘He did not,’ Alan answered, keeping his temper with an effort. ‘He implied that my half-uncle cultivated the lady with a view to possible knowledge of His Majesty’s plans, or at any rate his intentions. With the purpose of taking information back to England.’

  The Chancellor nodded.

  ‘I have been told of his presence in France and also in the Low Countries,’ he said. ‘I know that he has worked as a Member of Parliament and remains in that body they call “The Rump”. Also that he hath been to Colonel Ogilvy’s house near Paul’s church.’

  ‘Where I narrowly missed a meeting with him after –’

  ‘After parting from your father and most neatly evading your pursuers,’ Hyde finished for him. ‘And where Mistress Leslie, that admirable old loyalist and warm-hearted liberal family friend, helps to preserve sanity among the modern maniac bigots.’

  His controlled passion both astonished and impressed Alan. He had been told that the Chancellor clucked round the Throne like a demented hen with an alien foster-chick. One with webbed feet, some of them said, knowing Charles’s delight in boats and navigation. Hyde’s next words linked with Alan’s information.

  ‘I think you may be of continued service to our cause in England,’ he said. This connection in Paternoster Row could be most valuable to us. On account of the range of visitors invited there in the cause of peace and friendship in the Ogilvy family, of which you are an important member.’

  He held up a restraining hand again as Alan tried to speak.

  ‘Therefore,’ he said with emphasis, ‘you must become a student once more. With His Majesty’s permission and under his direction you will receive a recommendation from Sir Thomas Hobbes, the great mathematician, who is presently instructing the King in the science of navigation, to a similar course with a colleague in Oxford.’

  ‘But they sought to arrest me in Oxford, or rather from Banbury.’

  ‘Sir Thomas’s word will protect you. Learn your mathematics, young man. Lodge, if you will, if they will have you, with your great-uncle Doctor Richard Ogilvy, or his friend Sir Francis Leslie, and discover all you can of George Leslie, how much he knows, with whom he makes contact, how dangerous his presence here or in Holland could be to His Majesty’s plans or even his person.’

  ‘It is a great purpose,’ Alan said, but his eyes gleamed with something other than scholarly interest.

  ‘In which you are but one among very many,’ answered Sir Edward Hyde, with pinched disapproval of such enthusiasm.

  Alan rejoined his friends at Court in a state of confused euphoria.

  ‘How went it?’ they asked him. ‘A wigging for absence without leave?’ For they had missed him from his duties about the bedchamber as a very newly recruited page.

  ‘He talked like a schoolmaster,’ Alan answered, cheerfully. ‘No wonder King Charles seeks gayer company.’

  A week later he was landed from a coal boat on the shores of Studland Bay outside Poole Harbour in Dorset.

  Chapter Nine

  Charles Stuart, as they called him in government, circles in London, was bored. Clearly there was nothing he could do to forward his cause at present. A visit to Paris of his impetuous cousin Rupert, so brilliant in battle and at the same time so disastrous, was no comfort to him, nor even a source of entertainment. But at least his usefulness as a pirate on foreign shipping in the Channel had come to an end, for Cromwell’s Admiral Blake, established in the Scilly Isles to prevent such action, had altogether supplanted him. The final result of his efforts had been less to battle with the Spanish than the Dutch, thus turning that sturdy merchant race against not only the new rulers of England but also their defeated royal house.

  The King’s advisers, those elderly wise men, particularly the ‘schoolmaster’ whose manner Alan Ogilvy had resented, were perfectly right about Cousin Rupert, as they were about most things. But this did not make the prince’s visit more welcome, nor afford any relief to Charles’s position and his dwindling resources.

  ‘But I plan to go farther,’ Rupert announced with all his

  usual optimism and flamboyance.

  ‘Farther?’ Charles asked with irony. ‘Is that possible? Whither, cousin?’

  ‘Have we not secured or at least laid siege to the island of Jamaica? I will go among those Spanish possessions and find treasure to restore Your Majesty’s fortune.’

  If Charles did not share Prince Rupert’s confidence he at least saw a chance of his employment farther afield, where he could do less harm, if not more good, than darting about the confined waters of the Channel, bringing death and destruction to innocent seamen and their cargoes, without benefit to anyone.

  Nevertheless the King could not at any time forget his very real helplessness, his lack of an outlet for his own youthful abundant energy except in the pursuit of women, where his success was all too evident. Except in the matter of advantageous marriage.

  Here even the exiled Queen, his mother, was no help to him.

  ‘La Grande Mademoiselle, apart from her grand aspirations, is no longer a desirable match, my son,’ she told him. ‘For she hath joined the wrong cause in this quarrel of the Fronde; we see her no longer at Court. Put her out of your heart, Charles.’

  ‘She was never in it, madam,’ he answered her. ‘Four years ago she terrified me with her superior learning and seniority and her contempt for my French. Now she wearies me and I her, though I speak good French, do I not?’

  ‘Good enough,’ answered his mother, unwilling as were all her race, to praise any foreigner’s command of her language.

  ‘Whereas the Duchesse de Chatillon,’ Charles went on, ‘though a widow –’

  ‘Is not a fit consort. She could never be received as queen in England.’

  ‘If they will ever take me back, I would persuade them to accept the lovely Isabelle.’

  But it was no good. Queen Henrietta Maria had been accustomed to have her own way except in the early days of her marriage to Charles the First. And over her religion at all times. So as long as Charles the Second depended upon her financially he had to give way, much as he resented it.

  But outwardly and in public he behaved with the dignity and charm he already knew how to exercise and the licence in sexual matters that was considered perfectly normal in France. But it gave great offence to the present rulers of England, who could and did exaggerate his behaviour with all the prurient imagination peculiar to puritan minds and hearts.

  One chief consolation came to Charles, however, brought to him by his friend, the newly created Earl of Rochester, formerly Lord Wilmot. Charles had employed him since his promotion in missions to possible allies and patrons, among such people as the Duke of Lorraine and the Elector of Brandenburg. On most of these missions Colonel Ogilvy had charge of their safety, which pleased both veterans.

 
On his return from one such expedition Lord Rochester was in high spirits.

  ‘There is promise of a subsidy for Your Majesty,’ he proclaimed. ‘Made at Ratisbon.’

  ‘You may give the detail to the Lord Chancellor, Henry,’ Charles told him. ‘Good news indeed, for we go hungry here when our credit flags as it doth all too often of late. But I too have good news. They have released the Princess Henrietta Anne, my little Minette. The Queen expects her before the month is out. Her mother will make her a Catholic but that will do her sweet self no harm.’

  Rochester nodded. His travels had taken him into those free-thinking, independent lands where he had campaigned in the middle years of the late King’s reign. He found they were better informed of events in that unhappy confused country than was the French Court.

  ‘Your Majesty has news from England?’ he asked, cautiously.

  ‘Sparely. Such as my wise Councillors will hand on to me. Oh Henry, I think they send you on these missions to keep you from the Council chamber and from me.’

  ‘No, sire, but because I served with the Dutch and understand the Germanic peoples. From them I have learned that Oliver Cromwell is made Lord Protector of England. From being chief among the generals, but still one of them in their so called Commonwealth, he lifts himself above them. He is a kind of –’

  ‘King,’ said Charles bitterly. ‘Traitorous, unanointed, self-appointed tyrant.’

  ‘But therefore human after all,’ said Rochester, with all his usual gaiety.

  ‘Villain!’ Charles told him with an approving laugh. ‘I’ll have you stay by me, Henry. My lord Chancellor Hyde shall discover to me further news of this Protector and his tyranny. Pray God my sturdy subjects will see his infamy and turn him out.’

  But Sir Edward Hyde was just as depressing as ever in Charles’s estimation. Not only was Cromwell making alterations in the government of the country but these were largely in a liberal direction. ‘More particularly over the minor religious sects,’ he explained. ‘Those strange growths that appeared like toadstools with the suppression of the Anglican church and the removal of the bishops.’

  ‘I will not have you speak against the Quakers. My brave bearer at Fècamp was no toadstool when he put me dry-shod on the French shore. I shall never forget the motive of his faithful service. To earn freedom for his kind when I shall come into my own.’

  ‘The Catholics are still pursued with rigour and enmity,’ the Chancellor went on, ignoring what he considered to be the King’s usual levity. ‘But there are Baptists who preach against war in any form, so-called Seekers, who find all other bodies imperfect and Ranters who preach against all authority other than their own consciences.’

  ‘So these little messiahs together with the Quakers find tolerance under the Protector, do they? I cannot believe they be of as great assistance to him as his generals, but perhaps their freedom may help to keep those rivals to his power fairly occupied.’

  Hyde agreed. Not for the first time the young Charles had shown insight and intelligence while seeming scarcely to listen to what was said to him. Irritated by his own lack of subtlety the Chancellor persisted.

  ‘Even that lunatic band the Fifth Monarchy Men who preach the Second Coming three year hence, no later than 1666, are no longer rebuked or even confined when they show violence to the lawyers and clergy they denounce.’

  ‘They will not threaten Cromwell while they continue to shout their nonsense,’ Charles said. He had tired of his adviser’s list. These people, as the new-made Protector saw without difficulty, were no true menace to his position nor to the new State.

  ‘But there is one indulgence may work in his favour if only from gratitude,’ Sir Edward Hyde said, bringing forward the news he had found the most disturbing, if not shocking. The Jews are allowed once more to enter England if they wish, to trade, to use their perpetual skill in the management of money, even to worship according to their native religion and to build synagogues in which to do so.’

  Charles leaped to his feet, shocked and astonished.

  ‘The puritan tyrant, the Christian purified, self-styled friend and servant of the Almighty, admits the murderers of the Son of God!’ He pampers those slayers of his Master, the King of Heaven! He did not hesitate to murder his Master on earth, the King of England!’

  The Chancellor said nothing. He could not complain that Charles was indifferent to this news, but he was a little embarrassed by the young man’s excessive emotion. He prepared to explain the real significance of Cromwell’s action, but was forestalled.

  Charles returned to his former seat and spoke more quietly but with great scorn.

  ‘It is easy to understand this yeoman’s purpose. Was not his grandfather, or uncle or some such local worthy in Norfolk, of considerable wealth and therefore great repute and respect? I thought as much. So the Jews are admitted in the service of trade, of England’s prosperity, in competition with the welfare of his foreign enemies.’

  ‘Your Majesty has a remarkable grasp of events,’ said Sir Edward, hoping now to be released from yet another baffling interview. His wish was fulfilled almost at once. Charles relapsed into depression, which lasted for a day or two, until Lord Rochester came to him again, bearing a parcel that contained a handsome, leatherbound and gold-tooled book.

  ‘What have you there?’ Charles asked languidly, for literary pursuits were not usual with his lively reckless friend, so boyish in spite of his mature age.

  ‘A volume that has come to me from England, sire,’ Rochester answered, putting it into the King’s outstretched hand, ‘where it hath caused a great stir among all who read or can persuade others to read it out to them.’

  Charles turned the book over, saw its title, Eikon Basilike, and looked up sharply.

  ‘ “Image of a King!” Its provenance?’ he asked, in a strained voice.

  ‘They say it is the collected thoughts of his late Majesty, taken from diaries and sundry papers composed in – in Carisbrooke Castle on Wight and other places of confinement.’

  The King got to his feet and walked across the room to the window. With his back to Rochester he began to turn the pages of the book, reading now and then, breaking off to stare out at the quiet lawns below and the occasional figures sauntering there at ease or hurrying on some errand about the Court.

  At last he clapped the book shut, turned with a look of haggard grief upon his dark face and said hoarsely, near to tears, ‘I think this was not composed by my father. His thoughts were simple where these are subtle; agitated, often severe, where here there is much reasoned argument.’

  ‘Nevertheless it is greatly in demand I am told, and read by rich and poor alike, loyalist and rebel. They continue to print it, edition after edition, and distribute it all over the country.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I know not. It was brought to me by a London merchant at Rotterdam, as I passed by that city recently.’

  ‘I will keep the copy,’ Charles said, his voice returning to normal.

  By the time he sent Rochester from him he seemed to have recovered from the shock the Eikon Basilike had given him. It had reminded him, with overwhelming force and an instant onrush of grief, of the earlier book upon kingship written by his grandfather, King James the First, whose beliefs his own father had held with equal obstinacy but less intelligence and far less tact.

  That night, for once alone in his great bed, he wept for all that misdirected energy, its tragic outcome and his own plight that had resulted as the inevitable sequel. Not for the first time he promised himself that should his fortunes change and the new-styled Protector be no longer able to exercise that spurious position, he would concern himself less with the pursuit of power than the welfare of those loyal subjects who were proclaiming their feelings and beliefs in the purchase of this last supposed link with their murdered lord and master.

  Rochester had been right about the book’s popularity. In London it was the subject of much subdued gossip. Alan Ogilvy cam
e across it at his father’s house in Paternoster Row when he went from Oxford to London to find Sir Thomas Hobbes and deliver to him King Charles’s note of recommendation.

  ‘I was told to find him in Oxford,’ he explained to Mistress Leslie. The Protector’s brother-in-law condescended to read the note and seemed to approve it. As my uncle Ogilvy told us, my father and me, there be many very learned men, philosophers and such, gathered about Master Wilkins.’

  ‘He is Warden of Wadham College, is he not?’ the old lady asked. She laughed. ‘I repeat this name and style like a parrot for I do not have the smallest notion what they mean.’

  ‘I hope they mean I may settle back to my studies,’ Alan said. But he did not explain that he had other work, the King’s work, which was to observe and report upon any loyal gathering in the university town that might plan profitably for a hopeful revolt at some future time.

  Mistress Leslie produced her copy of the Eikon Basilike while Alan was still staying with her. It happened on a day, when Mistress Cynthia Phillips and her daughter Susan had come to call at the house. It was also the day when Alan had at last been able to speak to Sir Thomas Hobbes, who received King Charles’s note with kindness and interest. He thought the young man had a serious disposition, very young, very eager to acquire some scholarship, particularly of a scientific kind. Sir Thomas was perfectly willing to promote Alan’s interest at Oxford with a recommendation to the Warden of Wadham.

  This was highly satisfactory, but the interview lasted all too long for Alan, who knew of the expected visit of the Phillips ladies.

  On this occasion Master Phillips had excused himself. He had always regretted the break in his friendship with George Leslie since his marriage. He had not misunderstood the cause, nor resented it, for he loved his wife very dearly and it, was no surprise to him that others should do the same. But he did regret and even had begun to fear George’s hitherto concealed but now declared hatred of himself and all of his family. The civil war inevitably put opportunity for fake witness, lying accusations and suchlike evil in the conduct of family feuds. George had already attacked those loyalist Oxford members of his family that he considered his enemies. What might he not do now that the Protector’s army had become so powerful in the land that Cromwell himself, though he had taken supreme power, might not be inclined to protect one who was a merchant and manufacturer above all, a Parliamentary party member still serving in the so-called ‘Rump’, liable to be dissolved now at any time. But a religious fanatic, never. It amazed Master Phillips to hear some of the twisted interpretation George put upon certain of his sayings and doings at home. The man must have a very morbid imagination.