An Instance of the Fingerpost Page 30

  Accordingly, they made her live little better than a servant. True, she was allowed to eat at the main table – they maintained the old custom, now almost forgotten, of eating with the entire household – but they always made sure she sat at the end and subjected her to almost daily insult. They were the very model of what have since come to be known as Trimmers – they would have got on well with Dr Wallis, had they ever met. Under Cromwell, the family sang their psalms and praised the Lord. Under Charles they bought the family curate his vestments and read the Book of Common Prayer every evening. The only thing beneath them, I think, was popery, for they were fervent haters of Rome and constantly on the lookout for the malign touch of priestcraft.

  I always loved the house, but I believe it has been remodelled, reconstructed along modern lines by one of Sir Christopher’s innumerable imitators. Now the rooms are regular and well proportioned and the light no doubt floods in through the modern sashes, the chimneys draw properly and the draughts are kept to a minimum. For my part I regret this enthusiastic conformity to whatever men of fashion in Europe tell us is elegant. There is something false about all that symmetry. It used to be that a gentleman’s house was the history of his family, and you could see in its lines when they had been in funds and expansive, or when times were hard. Those curling chimney stacks, and corridors and eaves stacked one next to the other, provided the comfort of a sweet disorder. One would have thought, after Cromwell’s attempts to impose uniformity on us all through his armies, that no more was needed. But I am out of harmony with the times, as usual. The old houses are being destroyed one by one, and replaced by gimcrack structures which will probably last no longer than the grasping, arrogant new families who construct them. Built so fast, they can be swept away as quickly, along with all the people they contain.

  ‘How do you stand for such humiliation, madam?’ I asked my mother when I visited her in her room one evening. I had been there for some weeks and could stand the mean piety, the arrogant self-importance of these people no more. ‘To have to endure their superiority every day would try the patience of a saint. Not to mention their insufferable reproaches, and pained kindnesses.’

  She shrugged as she looked up from her embroidery. It was her habit to pass time in this way in the evening, making cloths which, she would tell me, would be mine once I had found a wife and an income. ‘You should not be unfair to them,’ she said. ‘They are more than generous to me. They were under no obligation, after all.’

  ‘Your own brother?’ I cried. ‘Of course he is under an obligation. As your husband would have been had the positions been reversed.’

  She did not answer for a while, and concentrated on her labour while I stared once more into the big log fire. ‘You are wrong, Jack,’ she said eventually. ‘Your father behaved very badly towards my brother.’

  ‘I am sure it was all my uncle’s fault,’ I said.

  ‘No. You know how I revered your father, but he could be hot tempered and rash. This was one of those occasions. He was entirely at fault, but refused either to admit it or make amends.’

  ‘I cannot credit it,’ I said.

  ‘You do not know what I am talking about,’ she said, still patient. ‘I will give you a small example. During the war, before your father left to fight abroad, the king sent round collectors to levy an impost on all the great families. The demands on my brother were harsh and unfair. Naturally, he wrote to my husband, asking him to intercede and get the amount reduced. He wrote back a very offensive letter, saying that with so many people giving their lives, he did not intend to help my brother avoid giving his silver. It would have been a small enough service to do for his family. And when Parliament in turn made its levy, your uncle had to sell a large parcel of land, he was now so impoverished. He never forgave your father.’

  ‘I would have arrived with a troop of horse to take the money myself,’ I said. The needs of the king’s cause outweighed all others. Had more people seen that, Parliament would have been defeated.’

  ‘The king was fighting to preserve the law, not merely to keep himself on the throne. What point was there in success if everything he was battling for was destroyed thereby? Without the families of the realm, the king was nothing; preserving our fortune and our influence did as much for his cause as fighting for him.’

  ‘How convenient,’ I scoffed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And when this king returned, your uncle was there to take up his position as magistrate and re-establish order. Without my brother, who would have controlled this part of the world, made sure our people welcomed the king back? Your father was penniless and without influence.’

  ‘I would rather have a penniless hero for a father than a rich coward,’ I said.

  ‘Unfortunately you now claim descent from a penniless traitor, and live on the kindness of the rich coward.’

  ‘He was no traitor. You, of all people, cannot believe that.’

  ‘All I know is that he brought ruin on his family, and made his wife a beggar.’

  ‘The king gave him life and honour. What else could he do?’

  ‘Spare me your childishness,’ she snapped. ‘War is not a tale of chivalry. The king took more than he gave. He was a fool and your father was a greater fool for sustaining him. For years I had to juggle with creditors, bribe soldiers and sell our lands, just so he could be the man of honour. I watched our funds dwindle to nothing so he could cut a figure as an equal with noblemen on ten times the income. I watched him reject a settlement with Parliament because the man sent to negotiate with him was a London chandler, not a gentleman. That particular show of honour cost us dear, believe me. And when we were reduced to penury, I had to come with nothing but the clothes on my back to throw myself on my brother’s mercy. He took me in, fed me and housed me while your father dissipated what remained of our fortune. He pays for your education so you can live, and he has promised to set you up in London when you are ready. In return, he gets nothing from you but contempt and childish remarks. You compare his honour with your father’s. Tell me, Jack, where is the honour in a pauper’s grave?’

  I sat back, stunned by her vehemence and grievously disappointed. My poor father, betrayed even by the one person who owed him all obedience. My uncle had even managed to subvert her. I did not blame her; how could a woman resist such pressures when they were constantly applied? It was my uncle I blamed, using my father’s absence to blacken him to the person who should have defended his name to the last.

  ‘You talk as though you are going to say he was a traitor after all,’ I said eventually, when my head had stopped spinning. ‘I cannot believe that.’

  ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘And so I try to believe the best. In the year or so before he fled I hardly saw him; I do not know what he was doing.’

  ‘You do not care who betrayed him? It does not disturb you that John Thurloe is free though guilty, while your own husband lies dead through betrayal? You do not want revenge for this?’

  ‘No, I do not; it is done and cannot be changed.’

  ‘You must tell me what you know, however little it is. When did you last see him?’

  She stared long at the fire that was fading in the grate and letting the cold wrap itself around our bodies; it was always an icy house, and even in the summer you needed a heavy topcoat if you went out of the main rooms. Now winter was in, the leaves fallen and the winds beginning to blow, the chill was taking over the house once more.

  It took some urging before she answered my questions about papers and letters and documents which might show what took place, for Wallis’s request was still in my mind and I wished to oblige him if I could. Several times she refused, changing the subject and trying to divert me into other matters, but each time I insisted. Eventually she gave way, realising it would be easier than to resist. But her unwillingness was obvious and I never entirely forgave her for it. I told her that I had above all to know everything possible about what had happened around January of 1660, just bef
ore my father fled, and when the plot against him was reaching its climax. Where was he? What had he done or said? Had she even seen him in that period?

  She said she had; indeed, it was the last time she had ever seen him. ‘I received a message through a trusted friend that your father needed me,’ she began. ‘Then he came here unannounced and at night. He had no dealings with your uncle and spent only one night here, then left again.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Very grave, and preoccupied, but in good spirits.’

  ‘And he had a troop with him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just one man.’

  ‘Which man?’

  She waved my questions aside. ‘He stayed the night as I say, but didn’t sleep; just fed himself and his comrade, then came to talk to me. He was very secretive, making sure that no one heard, and making me promise not to reveal a word to my brother. And, before you ask, I have not done so.’

  I knew at the bottom of my heart that I was on the verge of receiving a message of unparalleled importance, that my father had meant me to hear this, otherwise he would have sworn my mother to complete silence. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘He talked to me very intently. He said he had discovered the worst treason imaginable, which had shocked him so greatly he had initially refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes. But now he was convinced, and he was going to act.’

  I all but cried out in frustration at this. ‘What treason? What act? What discoveries?’

  My mother shook her head. ‘He said it was too much to confide in a woman. You must understand that he never told me any secrets, or gave me any confidences at all. You should be surprised he said so much, not that he said so little.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  ‘He said he would uncover and destroy men of the greatest evil; it was dangerous, but he was confident of success. Then he pointed to the man who had been sitting in the corner all the while.’

  ‘His name, Madam? What was his name?’ At least, I thought, I might have something. But again she shook her head. She did not know.

  ‘He may have been called Ned; I do not know. I think I had met him before, before the war. Your father told me that, ultimately, only your own people were to be trusted, and that this man was such a person. If anything should not take place as planned, then this man would come and give me a packet, which contained everything he knew. I was to guard it well, and use it only when I was sure it was safe to do so.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said simply. ‘Shortly after they left, and I never saw him again. I received a message from Deal a few weeks later saying he was having to leave the country for a short while, but would be back. He never did come back, as you know.’

  ‘And this man? This Ned?’

  She shook her head. ‘He never came, and I never received any package.’

  However disappointing it was that my mother had nothing to help Dr Wallis, the information she gave me was an unexpected bonus. I had not expected her to have such knowledge, and had applied to her only as an afterthought. Sad though it is for a son to acknowledge, I found it increasingly hard to maintain my civility with her, so much was she being drawn back to her own family, who had only ever approved of my father while he possessed a good estate.

  No; my purpose in going into Warwickshire was quite different, for I wanted to consult the papers concerning my Lincolnshire estate, so that I might know when I could expect to take possession. I knew that the matter had been complicated; my father had told me so on many occasions. By the time the fighting became serious and his confidence in the king began to slacken, he was aware that far more than his own life was at risk, and that the entire family might well be destroyed. Consequently, he drew up a settlement designed to protect it.

  In brief, and following the latest practice in the country, he devised the real estate on a trust, for the use of himself and, on his death, of myself. A will drawn up at the same time made my uncle his executor and Sir William Compton my guardian, charged with the proper disposal of both the personal and real estate. It sounds complicated, but nowadays any man of property will understand it all perfectly well, it has become such an ordinary means of protecting a family from danger. Back then, however, such complexities were all but unheard of: there is nothing like civil strife to make men ingenious and lawyers rich.

  I could not ask to see the papers, as they were in the keeping of my uncle and it was scarcely likely he would agree to the demand. Nor did I want to warn him of my interest, lest he take steps to destroy them, or alter anything in his own favour. I had no intention of allowing my uncle to cheat me, an activity which came as second nature to him.

  So that night, when I was sure everyone was asleep, I made my search. My uncle’s study, where he conducted the estate business and held meetings with his agents, was unchanged from the days when he used to summon me to give me lectures about God-fearing good conduct, and I crept quietly in, remembering without even thinking about it that the door had a squeak that could easily rouse the entire household. Holding up my candle, I could make out the stout oak table where the accounts were laid every Michaelmas, and the iron-banded chests in which the vouchers and accounts were kept.

  ‘Formidably difficult, are they not? Do not worry, when they are your responsibility you will understand them. Just remember the golden rules of property: never trust your managers, and never bear too hard on your tenants. You will lose in the end.’ Thus I remember my father talking to me, I suppose when I was five, maybe less. I’d come into his own office at Harland House because the door was open, even though I knew it was forbidden. My father was alone with reams of paper all around, the sand-shaker by his elbow, the wax heated for affixing the seals to the documents, the candle smoking in the wind. I half-expected to be beaten, but instead he looked up and smiled at me, then gathered me on to his lap, and showed me the papers. When he had more time, he would begin my education, he said, for a gentleman had much to learn if he was to prosper.

  That day never came, and the thought made my eyes smart with tears as I remembered that room at my own home, the home I might have lost for ever and which I had not even seen for more than a decade. Even so, the smell of it came back to me, strong and sure, a mixture of leather and oil, and I stood for some time in sadness before coming to and remembering my task, and the urgency of getting on with it.

  My uncle used to keep the keys to the strong box in the sword cupboard, and it was here that I immediately looked when I recovered myself. Fortunately, his habits had not changed and the big iron key was in the usual place. Opening the box took no time at all, and then I sat down at the big desk, positioned the candle, and began to go through the documents, which I took out one by one.

  I was there for several hours before the candle failed. It was tiresome work, for most of the bundles were of no interest, and were discarded the moment they were opened. But eventually I found the details of the settlement. I also found twenty pounds which, after some hesitation, I took. Not that I wanted to rely on such tainted money, but I reasoned that by rights it was mine in any case, so I should have no qualms about using it.

  Words cannot express the full horror of what I discovered, for the documents provided a complete and dispassionate outline of the most despicable and complete fraud. I will put it simply, for no amount of ornamentation will increase the effect: my entire estate was sold by Sir William Compton, the man appointed to guard my interest, to my uncle, the man supposedly entrusted with maintaining the integrity of the land. This foul piece of trickery had been accomplished the moment my poor father was laid into his pauper’s grave, for the final deed of sale was signed and dated not two months after his death.

  I had, in short, been utterly, and entirely, dispossessed.

  I had never liked my uncle, and had always detested his conceit and his arrogant ways. But I had never suspected he might be capable of such a monstrous betrayal. For him to take advantage of his family’s
disarray and turn it to his own profit; to make use of my father’s death and my minority to pursue such a grubby scheme; to coerce my own mother into connivance with the destruction of her son’s interest – all this was far worse than I could ever have imagined. He assumed that my age and lack of funds would prevent me from fighting back. I determined, then and there, that he would shortly learn how very wrong he was.

  What I could not understand were the actions of Sir William Compton, my guardian and a man who had always treated me with the greatest of kindness. If he, too, had conspired against me then I was truly alone; but despite the clear evidence I could not believe that a man of whom my father always spoke in the highest terms, to whom, indeed, he was prepared to consign his heir, could have acted with duplicity. A bluff, hearty man, the very backbone of the nation in robust honesty, described even by Cromwell himself as that ‘godly cavalier’, he must also have been duped to act in this fashion. If I could find out how, then again my cause would advance. I knew soon I would have to question him as well, but recoiled from the task until I could present him with more evidence. For I had been dispatched from his house of Compton Wynyates the moment my father fled: I did not know what reception I would receive, and, I admit, was afraid of his scorn.

  I knew, as I closed the casket and locked it, then slipped quietly back to my room, that my task had grown enormously in complexity, and that I was now more alone than I ever dreamed. For I was betrayed in one way or another by everyone, even those closest to me, and had no resources but my own determination. Every step I took, it seemed, my labours grew greater and more difficult, for now I not only had to find the man who betrayed my father, I also had to confound those who so swiftly moved to profit from his disgrace.

  It had not yet occurred to me that the two quests might be one and the same, nor even that, in comparison to the other struggle that was about to burst upon me in full flood, these problems were almost trivial.