Most Secret (9 page)

Bygones Abraham rose to his feet.

“I can’t say,” he added, rather wearily. “I’ve heard ’em describe it, including a parcel of men who weren’t there. It was a blazing hot day, with much dust, and my head ached worse than the back-sword cut I took from one of Noll’s Ironsides. But what befell, or how it befell, I can say no more than though it happened in a dream.

“ ’Tis the common feeling of any ranker, the lowest of the low. You’re choked and near blind. You stand holding a sixteen-foot pike elbow to elbow with the next man. Then the charge comes down out of smoke. It may be they’ll trample you, it may be they won’t. There’s naught to be apprehended save confusing and firing. Then you have some dull notion ’tis all over. You walk a-stagger along a road somewhere amid much blood and screaming from those who are left. The trees seem strange; the road is strange too; and your only thought is to wonder how the devil you are come there at all. That, d’ye see, that’s war.”

“M
ISTRUST ME NOT,” PURSUED
Bygones, who had grown more cheerful. “I’ll not say there’s no glory, though it’s small part o’ that a foot soldier ever sees. ‘Close ranks! Stand fast! Here they come!’ Yet ’twould gladden my heart to
remember
a little, or as other than a clout across the noddle inside a smithy. Besides, ayagh!” And he snorted. “Where are all the airy cannon balls a-bouncing harmless, the cupids and gods and goddesses and suchlike, in the heroic pictures? Figgeray voo and je muh demand! What’s the answer?”

“Why, as to that,” replied Kinsmere. “A man of shrewdness would suspect your cupids and gods and goddesses are to be found only in portraits, like the uncommon kind of horse that can stand on its hind legs long enough to be painted so. Or maybe,” says he, “it’s only the generals can see ’em. Let us drink the sack you have so generously poured, and reflect on this matter in all its aspects.”

But Bygones had turned adamant

“We’ll quaff a bumper, and more than one, when it’s meet and fitting we should do so. It is not meet and fitting so soon. The time passes; the clock presses; eel fo proceed to business.”

“Business?”

“Ay, to be sure! There are mighty strange circumstances here, now I think on ’em.”

“As—what circumstances?”

“You are Buck Kinsmere’s son? Well! If you’re Buck Kinsmere’s son, you should have lands. You should have estates. You should have coin and cuffs at the least of it. Yet there’s no air o’ grandeur about you, and small air o’ prosperity either. How came you into
this
trade for your living?”

“What trade?”

“Oh, body o’ Pilate,” roared Bygones. “But where’s the use of this pretence with
me?
Look at this; look well!”

Fumbling inside waistcoat and shirt, he produced a little leather pouch suspended round his neck on a leather thong. From this he took out a gold ring with a blue stone. My grandfather, sitting forward for a closer look, saw that it seemed identical with his own sapphire ring. Then Bygones snatched back the bauble and replaced it inside his shirt.

“You observe, young man? You mark it? ’Tis my ring, the second ring, the
other
ring. Accredited sign of a King’s Messenger, one of the only two messengers employed by old Rowl—employed by His Majesty’s self for devious work beyond the Channel in France. Why, then what o’
your
ring?”

“Now, burn my body and soul, but this is confusion worse confounded.”

“Is it so? What o’
your
ring, I say?” Whereupon Kinsmere told him. He told the truth. But, as he spoke, his companion’s expression changed still more. Bygones stood there with shoulders humped, head forward, an ugly look in his eyes and his hands hanging hooked at his sides.

The bad moment grew worse. My grandfather had just concluded, “It has no meaning, believe me; or, at all events—” when suddenly Bygones was across the table, as quick as a snap of your fingers, and had a dagger at his throat.

“Did I betray myself, rogue? Or did you? Are you in truth Buck Kinsmere’s son? Or are you an impudent, lying coxcomb, come foully to set traps for a true man? God strike me dead!”

“Sir,” said Kinsmere, “it is a most grievous thing to find you behaving in this fashion, since you are a hospitable gentleman to whose company I have taken a fancy—”

“Filch secrets from a King’s Messenger, ecod? It was a jape, a piece of stage-acting, that pretended broil between you and Pem Harker? Strike me dead,” snarled Bygones, almost choking, “but you’ll regret this, rogue, and so will the villain who set you on me. Who was it, knave? What high courtier employed you?”

“… None the less,” Kinsmere continued, “I am not enamoured of having a knife point against my Great Vein. And if you are not short to remove it, when again I shall ask you civilly—”

He brought up his left arm as the other man lunged across the table; he caught Bygones Abraham’s wrist, and whirled sideways as he rose to his feet. They stood at grips, locked together, looking each other in the eye.

“You’re right surprisingly strong, sir,” pursued my grandfather. “It would be chancy, I think, to bet on a wrestling fall against any such—”

“Have a care, jackanapes!”

“No!
You
have a care!”

They reeled against the table. Several wine bottles clattered over, one of them rolling wide to fall and smash on the floor. Still these two contestants stood locked at grips amid disturbed dust motes. They veered away from the table; my grandfather went on wrenching, with shufflings and crackings and grants, until the sharp point was turned outward from his throat.

“Forbear, now! Put up your dagger!” And Kinsmere released him. “Ay, keep it at hand, if its presence shall comfort you. I desire only to disabuse your mind of certain fancies, and also to offer proof. Will you hear me?”

Bygones Abraham cursed him with some comprehensiveness, gasping for breath as he did so. But his wrath seemed to be cooling into a puzzled stare. He hesitated, returned the dagger to a sheath inside his coat, and fell back a step.

“Well, young man?”

“Rogue I may be; that’s a matter of opinion; though with no plot against you or against anyone else. A Kinsmere of Blackthorn assuredly I am. Come! Here’s my own ring, which you bade me hide away. Will you be good enough to examine this, and to look inside?”

The old soldier stared with protruding eyes.

“Look …
inside
?”

“Faith, yes! The stone in its setting turns upward on a hinge. The king—the late king, that’s to say, whom they are now pleased to call Charles the Martyr—gave it to my father after Newbury fight in the Great Rebellion. On the gold inside the setting, with another dagger point, he scratched the letters C.A. Will it please you to test this?”

“Mr. Kinsmere,” Bygones said abruptly, “almost I am persuaded to believe you.”

“‘Almost’? Faith, at least we make progress!”

“ ’Tis to be hoped so.” Bygones held up his hand. “And now, if I may?”

Kinsmere threw him the ring, which he caught with a flat smack against his palm. Bygones carried it to the left-hand window, through a whole legion of settling dust motes.

“ ’Tis, known—sub rosy, as they say in Latin—two of these rings are in existence. Lingard, that was once the cunningest jeweller in Cheapside, made ’em more than forty years gone. The late king, ere his barbarous murder by the Roundheads, passed ’em both to
our
Charles. Hark’ee, though! I’ve heard report of a third ring, said to ’a’ been lost. True, false; ecod, what can’t we hear? Still! If what you say is true, this is like to be the third ring, the supposed-lost one.
If
what you say is true …”

“Yes?”

“King Charles the First, of glorious memory, had a most distinctive way o’ fashioning the letters C.R. Let’s adventure it!”

Holding up my grandfather’s ring against the light from the window, he opened the sapphire on its hinge, stared long at the inscription inside, and shut it up again.

“The ring
I
carry,” he said through his teeth, “I have long worn next my skin without suspicion the jewel is like a lid: If this should open too …?”

Muttering under his breath, Bygones braced himself. He took his own ring from the leather pouch. He held it up beside my grandfather’s. With gentle fingers he prised at the setting. The stone opened at once.

“Oh, body o’ God!”

“Sir,” said Kinsmere, “will you drink your wine with me now?”

“Drink it?” echoed Bygones, turning round. “I’ll do better than that, ecod! I’ll bid you to dinner at the Devil…”

“Come, damn me no damns. Can’t we make an end of cursing each other?”

“I meant no damns, pray credit me. I am all honest apology, as full of excuses as a man may be. My reference was to the Devil tavern, a haunt of good people. We’ll dine there; we’ll take aboard good cargo of strong waters; we’ll be off in ten minutes. And yet …”

Bygones returned to the table through a pungency of sack fumes, past a great star of spilt wine on the carpet and glass fragments from the smashed bottle. Some of these glass fragments he kicked aside; the rest he ignored. He set upright the tumbled bottles on the table. With great respect he handed back Kinsmere’s ring.

But he did not touch either of the tankards, being far too deeply troubled.

“Oh, this is a parlous thing! Oh, this is a most damned thing!”

“What is?”

“I have been indiscreet,” roared Bygones, striking a fine attitude in spite of himself. “I have not stood on my guard; I have fallen a-ranting; I have discoursed of things best kept dark. It would go very ill with me, lad, were you to repeat what you’ve heard in this room. Nor is that all, though it’s the worst part.

“This night I am pledged to a duel with Pem Harker; ay, come to think on it, so are you! Harker marked down your ring; past doubt he thinks, as I thought, you’re a King’s messenger too. Is this even worse than its seeming? D’ye see the unrolling of a design? Come what may I am committed to fight Pem Harker, and you’re committed as well.”

“Why, so I am!” Kinsmere admitted.

“Now, sir,” he went on, when both of them had pondered hard for a moment, “I have no more curiosity than most folk. But you have stated it with exactness. I am committed to fight a man I don’t know, for a reason I can’t fathom, in what seems a mere dance of lunacy. Perhaps there’s no harm in what we do. It may be your own notion of wholesome sport. And yet my curiosity has come near a mania. I would give a pouchful of guineas for some intimation as to what, by the sixty-eight bonfires of hell, may be the meaning of all this.”

“Statecraft!” said Bygones, looking still more portentous and shutting up one eye. “These may well be matters o’ statecraft. Even could I guess at ’em, lad, would you understand?”

“Faith, then why not try me?”

“Try you?”

“Yes; why not speak plain? Must those versed in statecraft always be so squint-eyed mysterious, like parents instructing their children in things appertaining to the lusts of the flesh?”

“Matters of statecraft, for the most part, are not complex at all.”

“I rejoice to hear it.”

“Some people would persuade other people to spend money, and call ’em clods or traitors if they say it’s too much. That’s for the most part, certes, and in general of the great hocus-pocus. But this—oh body o’ Pilatel—this is different.”

“Different how?”

“This is secret. This is gunpowder. This relates to foreign affairs. The king … I’ll not call him old Rowley, as others do; that’s too much of disrespect … the king, God bless
him,
walks devious ways with designs kept dark from his ministers of the Cabal. To this end he employs two messengers. Shall any minister of state, even the most important like my Lord Arlington or His Grace of Bucks, be acquainted with who these messengers are, or where old Rowley sends ’em? Well, then!” pursued Bygones, lowering his voice, “ontry noo and all in confidence, where
are
they sent?”

“Yes? Under favour, where?”

“To France; where else? And to whom are they sent? To His Majesty’s sister, called Madame, who dwells at the court of Versailles and hath the ear of the French king. And what do they carry? Dispatches, writ in cipher and torn in two halves, each half carried by a King’s Messenger so that none shall be the wiser should either half miscarry. Come, lad! I would not be indiscreet, you apprehend …”

“No, no, for God’s sake don’t be indiscreet. All the same!” says Kinsmere, who was growing more excited as he grew more uneasy. “Since you have been a
little
open in this matter, let’s study it. There are two King’s Messengers for foreign service, of whom you are one. So be it; but who’s the other?”

“I can’t say; I never learned; I mislike to guess. Still! There are grim things a-brewing. As you say in your innocence, and as I myself made pronouncement some while ago, we’ll study the business and sift it for truth. To that end …”

Bygones Abraham hitched up his sword belt. He lumbered to the sideboard between the windows. Taking his peruke from the wig block, he fitted it back on again and skewered his hat to the wig with a long pin.

“Lad, lad! You are newly come to London, as I construe it. Are you familiar with players and play-acting?”

“I have seen strolling players at an inn in Bath. But no such spectacle as is said to exist here. Two companies of players, are there not?”

“Ay,” the other said grandly, “of most excellent good skill. The King’s Company and the Duke’s Company. Wherefore, since ’tis time for our departure …?”

“Friend Bygones, what have you a mind to do?”

“Why! After dining at the Devil, well padded with drink and comfort, we’ll take ourselves to the play at the King’s House. Not for the play, mark’ee, though it’s a sight you must see. We go beyond it and behind it, to the tiring room where the actresses dress ’emselves. And we’ll hope for speech with Dolly Landis.”

“We’ll hope for speech with …?”

“Dolly Landis, ecod!” Bygones spread out both hands. “Mistress Dorothy Landis, an actress of the King’s Company. Born in Coal Yard, ’tis true; but under teaching by Hart and Mohun she can ape a lady with the best of ’em. A pretty girl, and pleasant and fetching too; though not, as she could scarce be, so fine a woman as my Lady Castlemaine.”