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  ‘It is an idiotic story,’ said Holcroft without hesitation. ‘This one is in love with that one but she can’t be with him because she is to be married off to another. He is in love with her but dare not tell her. Everyone in love with the wrong person. It’s just silly.’

  ‘You think the agony of unfulfilled love is silly?’

  ‘Of course. It makes people stupid; even sensible men and women become fools in love.’

  ‘You may well be right. But perhaps that’s why I find it so interesting: it is an elemental force that turns sensible people into fools. I would venture to guess that you have never been in love, Mister Blood. Is that correct?’

  ‘I have never been in love and I devoutly hope that I am never cursed with such misfortune.’

  ‘What an interesting young man you are, Mister Blood. Almost everybody seems to take for granted that love is a wonderful boon to mankind. You do not. I must confess that I do not agree with you but I have never before heard the counter-argument put so passionately by one so young. Unfortunately, since your master has no more use for me, I must depend for my living on writing these silly plays and I can only hope that others do not find them as objectionable as you. However, I hope that our paths will cross again, sir. I find your directness, as painful as it is to hear, refreshing. Honesty such as yours is a rare quality in this deceitful world.’

  *

  Holcroft rejoined the duke in the dining hall adjacent to the theatre. He fetched the duke a plate of pastries and a glass of iced sack and waited quietly while his master finished his whispered conversation with Sir Thomas Osborne. The actors, many still in their costumes, circulated among the throng, flirting with the King’s guests who were all at this moment standing. The King himself had been provided with a chair and was conversing with his brother James while he fed an overweight black-and-white spaniel that was sitting on his lap from a large bowl of liver pâté.

  The dining room, a long, dark wood-panelled space, was decorated for the feast of Christmas, with holly sprigs and ivy adorning the walls and entwined through the candle sconces that bathed the space in a warm yellow light. Across the other side of the room, over the heads of the other revellers, Holcroft saw his friend Jack Churchill, and flinched. He could barely look at him. The conversation he had had with the Duke of Buckingham the day before echoed in his head, and his cowardly acceptance of the disgusting plan proposed by his master made him feel deeply ashamed. All he could hope for was that the duke would forget his scheme to use Jack to bring down Barbara Villiers. Perhaps, if he did nothing, it would all blow over.

  The duke finished speaking to Osborne, handed his plate to a passing footman and walked over to the King. Holcroft dutifully followed him.

  ‘Ah, Buckingham, there you are,’ said the King, shooing the fat dog from his lap. ‘I must offer you my congratulations on your wonderful success in negotiating the treaty. All has been most satisfactorily agreed, signed and sealed at Dover Castle and I am told by the Treasury that the first tranche of the French money has been delivered. A most dexterous piece of work, upon my soul, most dexterous. I am to make the proclamation of the treaty tomorrow morning – something for our people to celebrate at Christmastide – and I must say, my dear fellow, that you have managed things absolutely marvellously. Bravo! You have my most heartfelt thanks.’

  Buckingham forced a smile onto his lips. ‘You are most gracious, sire. Your appreciation makes all my efforts worthwhile. However, I must warn you that the bulk of the money is already spoken for, to settle outstanding debts and so forth, and I fear the rest will not lie long in the royal coffers.’

  The King frowned. ‘There is no need to spoil a such joyous occasion with your cheese-paring, Buckingham. We have agreed a peace with France and very soon we shall deliver our part of the bargain and take the fight to those contumelious Dutch dogs. You have achieved a notable success, Your Grace, a triumph even, let us try to savour it at little, at least for tonight.’

  He lies so well, Buckingham thought, it comes as a gift of God, I suppose. If I did not know he had played me false I would never know it from his face. He said, ‘Indeed, sire. But while I have your ear, may I tell you that the other financial matter, the delicate affair we discussed yesterday in the blood-red audience chamber—’ At this Buckingham raised his eyebrows meaningfully, and the King nodded, his brow knotted in displeasure. ‘I may tell you that this matter is progressing satisfactorily and I expect to have the agreement of the party involved very shortly.’

  That rattled Old Rowley’s gilded cage, Buckingham thought, and serve the dissembling old spendthrift right.

  The King leaned forward in his chair. He suddenly looked cold and very angry. ‘I do not require to be appraised of the proceedings of that matter every time we meet, Your Grace, in fact I will thank you not to mention it to me again until the affair is concluded. Do you understand me?’

  Before Buckingham could reply, a voice rang out behind him: ‘You, sir, my Lord Buckingham. I would speak with you!’ The duke turned to see Lord Ossory’s sharp and furious face emerging from the chattering throng of players and courtiers.

  The young man stopped three yards from Buckingham, who was now standing behind the King’s chair. Ossory put his right hand on the stock of the duelling pistol thrust into his belt. The left he pointed at Buckingham, a long index finger extended as if it were an unsheathed rapier.

  ‘My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this late attempt upon my father Ormonde’s life. And therefore I give you fair warning: if my father comes to a violent end by sword or pistol, or if he dies by the hand of some paid ruffian, or by the more secret way of poison, I shall not be at a loss to know the first author of it. I shall consider you the assassin. I shall treat you as such and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you – even though you stand behind the King’s chair.’

  Buckingham could see big men in the red-and-blue colours of the King’s Foot Guards, and the young ensign, Churchill, converging on Lord Ossory at speed, shoving their way brutally through the crowd.

  But the angry nobleman was still speaking: ‘I tell you this in His Majesty’s presence that you may be sure I shall keep my word.’

  As the Earl of Ossory was bundled out of the dinning room by a trio of powerful soldiers, he was still shouting: ‘Do not forget my words, my lord. I meant them, every one!’ Holcroft looked at the Duke of Buckingham’s face. He saw that its normally healthy ruddy hue had turned quite grey.

  Saturday 24 December, 1670

  Sir Thomas Osborne sat beside the fire in the Bull’s Head tavern in Charing Cross and sipped a pint of port wine. He had heard the bells of St Martin’s chime for noon, a quarter past the hour and half past. He’s deliberately late, he thought, how typical of the man. He has to show that he is not ruled by any other – a childish notion. We all have masters; the trick of life is to choose them, not have them imposed on us. I’m his master, even if he will not own it, mine is Buckingham, for the moment anyway. The duke serves the King, the King answers only to God. But no man is truly masterless.

  He heard Blood come though the door but did not look up from the fire. He heard his jaunty confident step, the rap-a-tap-tap of his silver-topped cane on the counter, the awful badinage with the foul-tempered Matthew Pretty, a bawdy jest aimed at his hideous wife and, finally, the weight of a big man sinking into the leather armchair to his left and the words: ‘Good day, Sir Thomas. What joy to see your shining face once again!’

  He looked at Blood, his coat rain-damp and mud-splattered from the ride down from Romford, tankard in his hand, his cheeks rosy – he guessed the man had fortified himself more than once during the sixteen-mile ride.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘what have you to say for yourself?’

  If Sir Thomas Osborne had hoped to put Blood out of countenance with his schoolmasterish opening, he was to be sorely disappointed.

  ‘Oh, I always have plenty to say for myself, Tommy-boy. Was there any topic in particular th
at you wanted to discuss?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I want to discuss,’ growled Osborne. ‘Ormonde – what have you to say on that matter?’

  ‘Oh that. Well, what can I say? We failed. It was a bold effort though sadly unsuccessful.’

  ‘I know that, fool. Why did it fail? I heard you stopped the coach. You had him out in the dark street, alone, unarmed: three of your murderous ruffians all about him, all well furnished with sharp blades and loaded pistols and – what? What happened?’

  ‘The thing is, Tommy-boy, whatever you think of me, I’m not such a straightforward villain as you might imagine. I’m not really an ice-hearted murderer, at least not by nature. I’m an ordinary man seeking justice for the wrongs that have been done to me. Ormonde stole my lands; he and his cronies in the government in Dublin dispossessed me, and many of my friends, when the King returned, and for no other crime than backing the wrong side in the damn wars. He stole my lands, my livelihood and he deserved to be properly punished. I deemed it right that he should hang like a common thief at Tyburn – it came to me just like that, when my pistol was pointed at his fat head. Not murder, but justice – that was what I wanted. It would have made no odds to you – he’d still be dead – but it would have made all the world of difference to me. Unfortunately, the slippery old bugger managed to wriggle free as we were carrying him off to Tyburn.’

  ‘So he escaped, free and clear with nothing but a few bruises.’

  ‘We’ll get him next time, don’t you worry. Keep the faith, Tommy-boy, and we’ll all come up smiling yet!’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘We will, Tommy-boy, just you get the rest of that promised pile of gold together and in a few weeks we’ll do the complete business for you.’

  ‘You won’t, because that arrangement is null and void. Ormonde is barricaded in Clarendon House and is not likely to venture out any time soon. You have botched it once again. So there will be no more money for you, not for this business, at least. And if you dare to call me Tommy-boy one more time, I will use that promised gold to pay someone with even fewer scruples than you, and who is far less of a cack-handed bungler, to make a slow and painful end of you.’

  Blood looked at him sorrowfully. ‘I’m hurt. How could you? I thought I was the only unscrupulous cack-handed bungler that you loved! No? Ah well, I can see that you are not in a festive mood, T— I mean, Sir Thomas. It is Christmas Eve. Are you not looking forward to celebrating the birth of Our Saviour with the customary orgy of food, drink and jollity?’

  ‘I just want to complete my tiresome business with you and go home to Yorkshire.’

  ‘So go, then. I’ve had my scolding; I’m a naughty boy. And it’s hands off Ormonde for now. I understand. Go home to your wife and bairns and don’t keep me any longer from my own Christmas carouse.’

  ‘I wish it were that simple. But, entirely against my advice, our master wants you to undertake another task for him. This one being a little more complicated than the last. I told the duke it was a bad idea, that you would doubtless make your usual God-awful cock-up of it again, but he insisted. He says that you have proved capable in the past and will do so again.’

  ‘I’m gratified to hear I have the duke’s confidence – if not yours. So what is it that His Grace wants me to cock up God-awfully this time?’

  Sunday 25 December, 1670

  Colonel Thomas Blood stood up at the head of the groaning table in the snug of the Lamb Inn, Romford, a dripping goose leg in his right hand, a brimming glass of wine in his left. Before him sat the remains of the noble bird, still majestic even half demolished and glistening with its own grease, and platters of bread and butter and turnips, carrots and cabbage, a herring pie, a veal pie, mince pies, round yellow cheeses, bowls of fruit, jugs of gravy and many bottles of wine. Around the table sat his nearest and dearest: his two elder sons; Holcroft, in a finely cut new black wool coat and Thomas, in sombre grey; his lady-friend Jenny Blaine, ravishing in a new blue-green taffeta dress dripping with lace; and his old comrades from the war, scarred, squint-eyed William Hunt in plain fustian and huge, bald-headed Joshua Parrot in his customary leather jerkin.

  The feast had been lavish, even by Blood’s extravagant standards, for a sudden and unexpected influx of bright gold had made any stinting in the celebration of Our Lord’s nativity seem like unchristian parsimony. The food sat comfortably in his extended stomach, the wine sang in his veins, his face glowed with seasonal joy; he looked benevolently and a little tipsily at all those gathered around him, all of whom he loved so very much.

  He raised his wine glass, burped softly, and said, ‘My good lady and honoured gentlemen, friends and family, on this blessed day I give you a toast: to the Crown Jewels – may they bring us fame and fortune! May God Almighty, and his son Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit all bless us and guide us in the bold endeavour upon which we must soon embark.’

  Part Two

  Tuesday 21 March, 1671

  It was the first day of spring and, like the sun, Talbot Edwards, Assistant Keeper of the Jewels, had decided to show his shining countenance abroad that day – something he liked to do less frequently now that he had attained the grand age of seventy-seven. However, after weeks of rain-bound inactivity in his home in the Irish Tower in the northeast corner of the Tower of London, he felt he owed himself an excursion. And, since his wife’s fiftieth birthday was approaching, he had decided to take himself to the Royal Exchange in Cornhill to purchase a gift for her.

  He walked out of the Byward Tower gate, in the southwest corner of the fortress, across the wooden bridge over the stinking moat, turned right and began to walk up the gentle hill along the left flank of the Tower. He did not notice a figure of a small, lean man in a fustian coat with an old hat pulled down low over his scarred face, who emerged from the row of thronging public houses that lined the other side of the street and sauntered along about forty paces behind him.

  Edwards walked slowly along Tower Street and continued on into the crowded market at Little Eastcheap. There he stopped at one of the many butchers’ stalls and briefly examined a brace of hanging hares, conversing in a familiar fashion with the stall-holder. He continued his journey west and north, lifting his hat to a pair of fine ladies, their faces covered by blank golden vizards. He still had no notion that he was being shadowed when he turned right up Gracechurch Street, past the meeting house of the Society of Friends, where a lay preacher, bravely flouting the laws on uniformity of religion, was haranguing a sparse crowd gathered outside the doorway. He made a left on Lombard Street – and today some of the goldsmiths, in honour of a day of actual sunshine, had set out their benches outside their shops. He nodded to an Italian money-lender bent over his table with its charming little stacks of golden guineas on offer, then turned right, cutting through Birchin Lane past several humming coffee shops and up to Cornhill.

  Edwards paused next to the empty pillory on the south side of the road to admire the new Royal Exchange. It had been destroyed in the Great Fire and was now rebuilt as a huge block-like stone building with a majestic archway at the main entrance, noble columns, and topped with a tall square belfry with clock faces on all four sides and a gilded grasshopper winking in the sunlight from the tip of the spire. The fire, following on as it did from the devastating outbreak of Black Death the year before, had seemed like the coming of the End of Days to many Londoners and, indeed, vast swathes of the City had been totally destroyed in the conflagration. Some said it was surely a judgment of God on the many sins of the City: but, chiefly, greed. Yet a mere five years after the holocaust almost all the City had been rebuilt as good as new and, in some cases, such as the Royal Exchange, rather better. The new building pleased Edwards enormously. It had a sense of optimism, of energy and confidence: a grand bazaar in the heart of his city where anything from peppercorns to priceless jewels, from sacks of coffee beans to joint-stock in the East India Company, could be bought and sold by men speaking a score of langu
ages from a hundred diverse nations.

  After a last admiring look, Edwards crossed the street, nimbly avoiding a coach and four and plunging into the bustle of the Exchange.

  Talbot Edwards had been a soldier in his youth, serving in the regiment of Sir John Talbot at several bloody engagements during the late wars. Since those conflicts he had been in service in the household of Sir Gilbert Talbot, another Royalist soldier of the same illustrious family, and it was this gentleman who, on being appointed master of the Jewel House after the King’s restoration, had secured the post of assistant keeper for the ageing family retainer. Edwards was immensely proud that his only living son Wythe had been serving under his old colonel in Flanders these past ten years and had managed at last to purchase himself a captaincy in the regiment.

  Edwards might once have been a solider, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, as the playwright put it, but his post as assistant keeper did not demand much in the way of either suddenness or quickness. He made sure that the Crown Jewels were kept securely behind their bars in the ground-floor room in the Irish Tower, checking them at dawn and dusk, and once a month he unlocked the grille and brought them out and carefully gave the precious metal and the jewels a light polish with a cloth and a little sweet oil. It was not a well-remunerated employment: his cramped rooms above the Jewel House were in a disgraceful state of disrepair and his monthly stipend barely covered his bills for meat and drink. However, one of its perquisites was the showing of the jewels to gentlemanly visitors to the Tower for a small fee. In this way, Edwards was able to supplement his meagre income and to be accorded a measure of respect that he believed his long years of service to the Talbot family – after whom he had been named – more than warranted. It also gave him the means, perhaps, to purchase the gift he had in mind for his wife Sarah.