The Path of the King Part 21

But to anyone looking close it would have seemed that he had more to trouble him than a malarial bout. The man was patently in an extreme terror. His lantern-jaw hung as loose as if it had been broken. His lips moved incessantly. He gripped savagely at his staff, and next moment dropped it. He fussed with the hilt of his sword.... He was a coward, and yet had come out to do murder.

It had taken real panic to bring him to the point. Throughout his tattered life he had run many risks, but never a peril so instant as this. As he had followed his quarry that afternoon his mind had been full of broken memories. Bitter thoughts they were, for luck had not been kind to him. A childhood in cheap lodgings in London and a dozen French towns, wherever there was a gaming-table and pigeons for his father to pluck. Then drunken father and draggletailed mother had faded from the scene, and the boy had been left to a life of odd jobs and fleeting patrons. His name was against him, for long before he reached manhood the King had come back to his own, and his grandfather's bones had jangled on a Tyburn gibbet. There was no hope for one of his family, though Heaven knew his father had been a stout enough Royalist. At eighteen the boy had joined the Roman Church, and at twenty relapsed to the fold of Canterbury. But his bread-and-b.u.t.ter lay with Rome, and in his trade few questions were asked about creed provided the work were done. He had had streaks of fortune, for there had been times when he lay soft and ate delicately and scattered money. But nothing lasted. He had no sooner made purchase with a great man and climbed a little than the scaffolding fell from his feet. He thought meanly of human nature for in his profess he must cringe or snarl, always the undermost dog.

Yet he had some liking for the priests, who had been kind to him, and there was always a glow in his heart for the pale wife who dwelt with his child in the attic in Billingsgate. Under happier circ.u.mstances Mr.

Nicholas Lovel might have shone with the domestic virtues.

Business had been good of late, if that could ever be called good which was undertaken under perpetual fear. He had been given orders which took him into Whig circles, and had made progress among the group of the King's Head Tavern. He had even won an entrance into my Lord Shaftesbury's great house in Aldersgate Street. He was there under false colours, being a spy of the other camp, but something in him found itself at home among the patriots. A resolve had been growing to cut loose from his old employers and settle down among the Whigs in comparative honesty. It was the winning cause, he thought, and he longed to get his head out of the kennels.... But that had happened yesterday which scattered his fine dreams and brought him face to face with terror. G.o.d's curse on that ferrety Justice, Sir Edmund Berry G.o.dfrey.

He had for some time had his eye on the man. The year before he had run across him in Montpelier, being then engaged in a very crooked business, and had fancied that the magistrate had also his eye on him. Taught by long experience to watch potential enemies, he had taken some trouble over the lean high-beaked dignitary. Presently he had found out curious things. The austere Protestant was a friend of the Duke's man, Ned Coleman, and used to meet him at Colonel Weldon's house. This hinted at blackmailable stuff in the magistrate, so Lovel took to haunting his premises in Hartshorn Lane by Charing Cross, but found no evidence which pointed to anything but a prosperous trade in wood and sea-coal.

f.a.ggots, but not the treasonable kind! Try as he might, he could-get no farther with that pillar of the magistracy, my Lord Danly's friend, the beloved of Aldermen. He hated his solemn face, his prim mouth, his condescending stoop. Such a man was encased in proof armour of public esteem, and he heeded Mr. Lovel no more than the rats in the gutter.

But the day before had come a rude awakening. All this talk of a Popish plot, discovered by the Salamanca Doctor, promised a good harvest to Mr. Lovel. He himself had much to tell and more to invent. Could he but manage it discreetly, he might a.s.sure his fortune with the Whigs and get to his feet at last. G.o.d knew it was time, for the household in the Billingsgate attic was pretty threadbare. His busy brain had worked happily on the plan. He would be the innocent, cursed from childhood with undesired companions, who would suddenly awaken in horror to the guilt of things he had not understood. There would be a welcome for a well-informed penitent.... But he must move slowly and at his own time.... And now he was being himself hustled into the dock, perhaps soon to the gallows.

For the afternoon before he had been sent for by G.o.dfrey and most searchingly examined. He had thought himself the spy, when all the while he had been the spied upon. The accursed Justice knew everything. He knew a dozen episodes each enough to hang a poor man. He knew of Mr.

Lovel's dealings with the Jesuits Walsh and Phayre, and of a certain little hovel in Battersea whose annals were not for the public ear.

Above all, he knew of the great Jesuit consult in April at the Duke of York's house. That would have mattered little--indeed the revelation of it was part of Mr. Lovel's plans--but he knew Mr. Lovel's precise connection with it, and had d.a.m.ning evidence to boot. The spy shivered when he remembered the scene in Hartshorn Lane. He had blundered and stuttered and confessed his alarm by his confusion, while the Justice recited what he had fondly believed was known only to the Almighty and some few whose mortal interest it was to be silent.... He had been amazed that he had not been there and then committed to Newgate. He had not gone home that night, but wandered the streets and slept cold under a Marylebone hedge. At first he had thought of flight, but the recollection of his household detained him. He would not go under. One pompous fool alone stood between him and safety--perhaps fortune. Long before morning he had resolved that G.o.dfrey should die.

He had expected a difficult task, but lo! it was unbelievably easy.

About ten o'clock that day he had found Sir Edmund in the Strand. He walked hurriedly as if on urgent business, and Lovel had followed him up through Covent Garden, across the Oxford road, and into the Marylebone fields. There the magistrate's pace had slackened, and he had loitered like a truant schoolboy among the furze and briars. His stoop had deepened, his head was sunk on his breast, his hands twined behind him.

Now was the chance for the murderer lurking in the brambles. It would be easy to slip behind and give him the sword-point. But Mr. Lovel tarried.

It may have been compunction, but more likely it was fear. It was also curiosity, for the magistrate's face, as he pa.s.sed Lovel's hiding-place, was distraught and melancholy. Here was another man with bitter thoughts--perhaps with a deadly secret. For a moment the spy felt a certain kinship.

Whatever the reason he let the morning go by. About two in the afternoon G.o.dfrey left the fields and struck westward by a bridle-path that led through the Paddington Woods to the marshes north of Kensington. He walked slowly, but with an apparent purpose. Lovel stopped for a moment at the White House, a dirty little hedge tavern, to swallow a mouthful of ale, and tell a convincing lie to John Rawson, the innkeeper, in case it should come in handy some day. Then occurred a diversion. Young Mr.

Forset's harriers swept past, a dozen riders attended by a ragged foot following. They checked by the path, and in the confusion of the halt G.o.dfrey seemed to vanish. It was not till close on Paddington village that Mr. Lovel picked him up again. He was waiting for the darkness, for he knew that he could never do what he purposed in cold daylight.

He hoped that the magistrate would make for Kensington, for that was a lonely path.

But Sir Edmund seemed to be possessed of a freakish devil. No sooner was he in Paddington than, after buying a gla.s.s of milk from a milk-woman, he set off citywards again by the Oxford road. Here there were many people, foot travellers and coaches, and Mr. Lovel began to fear for his chance. But at Tyburn G.o.dfrey struck into the fields and presently was in the narrow lane called St. Martin's Hedges, which led to Charing Cross. Now was the occasion. The dusk was falling, and a light mist was creeping up from Westminster. Lovel quickened his steps, for the magistrate was striding at a round pace. Then came mischance. First one, then another of the Marylebone cow-keepers blocked the lane with their driven beasts. The place became as public as Bartholomew's Fair. Before he knew it he was at Charing Cross.

He was now in a foul temper. He cursed his weakness in the morning, when fate had given him every opportunity. He was in despair too. His case was hopeless unless he struck soon. If G.o.dfrey returned to Hartshorn Lane he himself would be in Newgate on the morrow.... Fortunately the strange man did not seem to want to go home. He moved east along the Strand, Lovel a dozen yards behind him.

Out from the dark Savoy entry ran a woman, screaming, and with her hair flying. She seized on G.o.dfrey and clutched his knees. There was a b.l.o.o.d.y fray inside, in which her husband fought against odds. The watch was not to be found. Would he, the great magistrate, intervene? The very sight of his famous face would quell riot.

Sir Edmund looked up and down the street, pinched his chin and peered down the precipitous Savoy causeway. Whatever the burden on his soul he did not forget his duty.

"Show me," he said, and followed her into the gloom.

Lovel outside stood for a second hesitating. His chance had come. His foe had gone of his own will into the place in all England where murder could be most safely done. But now that the moment had come at last, he was all of a tremble and his breath choked. Only the picture, always horribly clear in his mind, of a gallows dark against a pale sky and the little fire beneath where the entrails of traitors were burned--a nightmare which had long ridden him--nerved him to the next step. "His life or mine," he told himself, as he groped his way into a lane as steep, dank, and black as the sides of a well.

For some twenty yards he stumbled in an air thick with offal and garlic. He heard steps ahead, the boots of the doomed magistrate and the slipshod pattens of the woman. Then they stopped; his quarry seemed to be ascending a stair on the right. It was a wretched tenement of wood, two hundred years old, once a garden house attached to the Savoy palace.

Lovel scrambled up some rickety steps and found himself on the rotten planks of a long pa.s.sage, which was lit by a small window giving to the west. He heard the sound of a man slipping at the other end, and something like an oath. Then a door slammed violently, and the place shook. After that it was quiet. Where was the b.l.o.o.d.y fight that G.o.dfrey had been brought to settle?

It was very dark there; the window in the pa.s.sage was only a square of misty grey. Lovel felt eerie, a strange mood for an a.s.sa.s.sin. Magistrate and woman seemed to have been spirited away.... He plucked up courage and continued, one hand on the wall on his left. Then a sound broke the silence--a scuffle, and the long grate of something heavy dragged on a rough floor. Presently his fingers felt a door. The noise was inside that door. There were big cracks in the panelling through which an eye could look, but all was dark within. There were human beings moving there, and speaking softly. Very gingerly he tried the hasp, but it was fastened firm inside.

Suddenly someone in the room struck a flint and lit a lantern. Lovel set his eyes to a crack and stood very still. The woman had gone, and the room held three men. One lay on the floor with a coa.r.s.e kerchief, such as grooms wear, knotted round his throat. Over him bent a man in a long coat with a cape, a man in a dark peruke, whose face was clear in the lantern's light. Lovel knew him for one Bedloe, a led-captain and cardsharper, whom he had himself employed on occasion. The third man stood apart and appeared from his gesticulations to be speaking rapidly.

He wore his own sandy hair, and every line of his mean freckled face told of excitement and fear. Him also Lovel recognised--Carstairs, a Scotch informer who had once made a handsome living through spying on conventicles, but had now fallen into poverty owing to conducting an affair of Buckingham's with a brutality which that fastidious n.o.bleman had not bargained for.... Lovel rubbed his eyes and looked again. He knew likewise the man on the floor. It was Sir Edmund G.o.dfrey, and Sir Edmund G.o.dfrey was dead.

The men were talking. "No blood-letting," said Bedloe. "This must be a dry job. Though, by G.o.d, I wish I could stick my knife into him--once for Trelawney, once for Frewen, and a dozen times for myself. Through this swine I have festered a twelvemonth in Little Ease."

Lovel's first thought, as he stared, was an immense relief. His business had been done for him, and he had escaped the guilt of it. His second, that here lay a chance of fair profit. G.o.dfrey was a great man, and Bedloe and Carstairs were the seediest of rogues. He might make favor for himself with the Government if he had them caught red-handed. It would help his status in Aldersgate Street.... But he must act at once or the murderers would be gone. He tiptoed back along the pa.s.sage, tumbled down the crazy steps, and ran up the steep entry to where he saw a glimmer of light from the Strand.

At the gate he all but fell into the arms of a man--a powerful fellow, for it was like running against a brick wall. Two strong arms gripped Lovel by the shoulder, and a face looked into his. There was little light in the street, but the glow from the window of a Court perruquier was sufficient to reveal the features. Lovel saw a gigantic face, with a chin so long that the mouth seemed to be only half-way down it. Small eyes, red and fiery, were set deep under a beetling forehead. The skin was a dark purple, and the wig framing it was so white and fleecy that the man had the appearance of a malevolent black-faced sheep.

Lovel gasped, as he recognised the celebrated Salamanca Doctor. He was the man above all others whom he most wished to see.

"Dr. Oates!" he cried. "There's b.l.o.o.d.y work in the Savoy. I was pa.s.sing through a minute agone and I saw that n.o.ble Justice, Sir Edmund Berry G.o.dfrey, lie dead, and his murderers beside the body. Quick, let us get the watch and take them red-handed."

The big paws, like a gorilla's, were withdrawn from his shoulders. The purple complexion seemed to go nearly black, and the wide mouth opened as if to bellow. But the sound which emerged was only a whisper.

"By the maircy of Gaad we will have 'em!... A maist haarrid and unnaitural craime. I will take 'em with my own haands. Here is one who will help." And he turned to a man who had come up and who looked like a city tradesman. "Lead on, honest fellow, and we will see justice done.

'Tis pairt of the b.l.o.o.d.y Plaat.... I foresaw it. I warned Sir Edmund, but he flouted me. Ah, poor soul, he has paid for his unbelief."

Lovel, followed by Oates and the other whom he called Prance, dived again into the darkness. Now he had no fears. He saw himself acclaimed with the Doctor as the saviour of the nation, and the door of Aldersgate Street open at his knocking. The man Prance produced a lantern, and lighted them up the steps and into the tumbledown pa.s.sage. Fired with a sudden valour, Lovel drew his sword and led the way to the sinister room. The door was open, and the place lay empty, save for the dead body.

Oates stood beside it, looking, with his bandy legs great shoulders, and bull neck, like some forest baboon.

"Oh, maist haunourable and n.o.ble victim!" he cried. "England will maarn you, and the sp.a.w.n of Raam will maarn you, for by this deed they have rigged for thaimselves the gallows. Maark ye, Sir Edmund is the proto-martyr of this new fight for the Praatestant faith. He has died that the people may live, and by his death Gaad has given England the sign she required.... Ah, Prance, how little Tony Shaston will exult in our news! 'Twill be to him like a bone to a cur-dog to take his ainemies thus red-haanded."

"By your leave, sir," said Lovel, "those same enemies have escaped us. I saw them here five minutes since, but they have gone to earth. What say you to a hue-and-cry--though this Savoy is a snug warren to hide vermin."

Oates seemed to be in no hurry. He took the lantern from Prance and scrutinised Lovel's face with savage intensity.

"Ye saw them, ye say.... I think, friend, I have seen ye before, and I doubt in no good quaarter. There's a Paapist air about you."

"If you have seen me, 'twas in the house of my Lord Shaftesbury, whom I have the honour to serve," said Lovel stoutly.

"Whoy, that is an haanest house enough. Whaat like were the villains, then? Jaisuits, I'll warrant? Foxes from St. Omer's airth?"

"They were two common cutthroats whose names I know."

"Tools, belike. Fingers of the Paape's hand.... Ye seem to have a good acquaintance among rogues, Mr. Whaat's-you-name."

The man Prance had disappeared, and Lovel suddenly saw his prospects less bright. The murderers were being given a chance to escape, and to his surprise he found himself in a fret to get after them. Oates had clearly no desire for their capture, and the reason flashed on his mind.

The murder had come most opportunely for him, and he sought to lay it at Jesuit doors. It would ill suit his plans if only two common rascals were to swing for it. Far better let it remain a mystery open to awful guesses. Omne ignotum pro horrifico.... Lovel's temper was getting the better of his prudence, and the sight of this monstrous baboon with his mincing speech stirred in him a strange abhorrence.

"I can bear witness that the men who did the deed were no more Jesuits than you. One is just out of Newgate, and the other is a blackguard Scot late dismissed the Duke of Buckingham's service."

"Ye lie," and Oates' rasping voice was close to his ear. "'Tis an incraidible tale. Will ye outface me, who alone discovered the Plaat, and dispute with me on high poalicy?... Now I come to look at it, ye have a true Jaisuit face. I maind of ye at St. Omer. I judge ye an accoamplice..."

At that moment Prance returned and with him another, a man in a dark peruke, wearing a long coat with a cape. Lovel's breath went from him as he recognised Bedloe.

"There is the murderer," he cried in a sudden fury "I saw him handle the body. I charge you to hold him."

Bedloe halted and looked at Oates, who nodded. Then he strode up to Lovel and took him by the throat.

"Withdraw your words, you dog," he said, "or I will cut your throat. I have but this moment landed at the river stairs and heard of this horrid business. If you say you have ever seen me before you lie most foully.

Quick, you ferret. Will Bedloe suffers no man to charge his honour."

The strong hands on his neck, the fierce eyes of the bravo, brought back Lovel's fear and with it his prudence. He saw very plainly the game, and he realised that he must a.s.sent to it. His contrition was deep and voluble.