Bloods revolution, p.17
Blood's Revolution, page 17
The ginger man was still clawing at his bloody, ripped throat, still holding the heavy horse pistol. And above and to the left, Holcroft could see the coachman, standing up on his bench and peering down at the fight, a squat musket-shaped weapon, probably a blunderbuss, in his hands. He could hear the pattering of running feet and the shouts of the man who had been following him, approaching fast.
He had to get away. He had to leave now.
Holcroft reached out with his left hand and ripped the blood-slick pistol from the ginger man’s slack fingers. The man was falling anyway, breath bubbling and puffing wetly from his frothing throat. The piece was already cocked and Holcroft pointed the weapon with his left hand at the looming black shape of the coachman, aiming for the centre of his dark mass. He pulled the trigger, the flint snapped down.
No misfire this time. The flint ignited the spark in the pan, and fired the charge in the barrel, the pistol boomed, the coachman gave a cry, half turned and tumbled backwards and away, his weapon clattering as it fell into the driving footwell.
Holcroft turned to his right, there was a shape there and a glint of steel. The man who’d been following him. He slashed wildly with his sword, heard a clang, and lunged at the shape. He felt the steel go into flesh, and a curse, and the shape backed away. He could hear other men calling to each other on the other side of the coach.
London voices. Savoyards.
‘Did they get him?’
‘Is he down?’
No, Holcroft was not fucking down. And now he was properly angry. He dropped the empty pistol and stepped to his left, found a footing in the darkness against the side of the coach and swung up to the driver’s seat. The horses were skittish, jerking against the secured reins and the brake on the carriage – the banging of pistols, the angry shouting and the smell of blood was upsetting them. They were close to panic.
Holcroft fumbled for the reins with his left hand, his fingers brushed the warm wood of the blunderbuss stock. He could see two men in the light of the carriage lamps approaching fast to the left of the horses, in the lee of the houses on the Strand.
One called out, ‘Bartie, are you all right?’
There was a shape behind his shoulder, someone nimble climbing over the roof of the carriage. He turned and saw a flash of angry, brown-bearded face speckled with gore. Holcroft slashed overhand, up and across his body, the slim steel blade arcing through the lamplight. The blade thudded into the head of the climbing man above, cutting on down, slicing into his scalp and cutting away a large flap of skin and hair. The fellow howled and rolled away, elbows and knees thumping across the wooden roof and his heavy body splashing down into the mud. The two men in front of Holcroft were shouting, calling their friends, cursing their enemy, Holcroft could see a long glint of steel under the foremost man’s dark cloak . . .
But now Holcroft had the coachman’s blunderbuss in his left hand, lifted free of the footwell. He dropped his small-sword, point first, into the foot rest where it stuck into the wooden board, and holding the blunderbuss in his left hand, he cocked it swiftly with his right. It was an ugly, clumsy gun with a two-foot brass barrel ending in a broad trumpet-shaped mouth. Holding it awkwardly in just his left hand, butt braced against his pelvic bone, he pointed it at the two men, bunched together by the horses’ flanks, no more than two yards away, both armed with knives.
In almost the same moment, he released the brake with his right hand, scooped up the leather reins from the curled metal holder, and pulled the trigger of the blunderbuss. The big gun exploded, jumping wildly and jabbing painfully into his waist as it belched a lethal storm of rusty nails, broken glass, musket balls and small stones in a wide pattern off to his left. The blast swept the two attackers off their feet, knocking them into moaning huddled heaps on the cobbles.
The horses screamed, bucked wildly and lurched forward, terrified by the explosion behind them, the carriage shot away down the Strand, with Holcroft fighting to keep his seat, not making any attempt to control the panic-stricken beasts, glad to be moving away from his enemies and at such a fine speed . . .
*
‘My dearest, what has happened to your face?’ Elizabeth held the candle a little higher and peered at Holcroft’s left cheek, looking over his shoulder into the mirror.
He was in his nightshirt, washing his face with warm water in the porcelain ewer on the stand in his bedroom, preparing to go to bed. The thrown pistol had given him a deep cut and a big, painful bruise under his left eye.
‘It is nothing, my love, I carelessly walked into the corner of a building in the darkness as I came out of a public house. Sheer clumsiness. Nothing to worry about.’
He finished patting the small, crusted wound, threw down the cloth, and hefted the bowl over to the window, resting it on the sill and pushing up the latch with his elbow, before opening it and pouring the bloody water out on to the cobbles below. His shoulder was paining him, too, where the axe had struck him, and under the thick linen nightshirt was a large angry red bruise but mercifully no laceration.
‘Too much brandy!’ she bellowed. ‘Should have guessed that’s what you were about, Holcroft – carousing! Men, why can’t they stop at home with a dish of tea.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Holcroft, sliding into bed. ‘You are quite right. But it has given me something of a headache. Do you mind if I forgo my marital rights – just for this night? I’d prefer, if you don’t mind it, dearest, merely to go straight to sleep.’
‘Nonsense, Mister Blood, we can’t let a surfeit of French brandy and a little headache hold us back. Buckle to, my bonnie lad. Captain Fowler never let a drop of brandy get in the way of his duty. Come along, Holcroft, we’ve a baby to make . . .’
Chapter Eighteen
15 December 1687: Palace of White Hall
‘They want me to make a commitment,’ said Jack Churchill to his beautiful wife.
They were dining together, à deux, a rare occurrence for a couple who were as sought after as they, eating a simple meal – chicken soup, cold mutton and boiled asparagus, gooseberry fool – in the parlour of their quarters in the Cockpit.
Sarah took a sip of her wine: ‘And what did you say to them?’
‘I prevaricated, of course. I told Lord Danby that, on the one hand, I was a good Protestant Englishman and the avowed enemy of all dictatorial, absolutist French-style government, but, on the other, that I was bound to James by ties of affection, loyalty, duty and – well, gratitude, to put it bluntly. I have served him for nearly twenty years and he had raised me up to be the man I am today. I pointed out – as the Duke of Grafton is so fond of saying – that James would not live for ever, and that Mary of Orange was the heir, and she was Protestant to her marrow.’
‘How did he react?’
‘Danby said that there would come a time, and it would come very soon, when every gentleman of means in England would be required to make a hard choice – a choice between his King and his religion. But, the thing is, Sarah, I don’t want to make a choice – I love them both. And I am determined to try my utmost to steer James into a less confrontational position. I wish I could make him listen to me.’
‘If it does come to a choice, and you love them equally, as you say, then you must choose whichever is more advantageous for us as a family, for you personally.’
Jack moodily speared a thick slice of cold mutton, spread mustard thickly on and popped it in his mouth. ‘I know that, my darling,’ he said, his words muffled.
‘Then ask yourself, which side will help us – which will help our family most.’
‘Can we talk about something else,’ said Jack. ‘I am heartily sick of designs and deceits, plots and politics. Tell me, my love, how fares your princess?’
Anne, Princess of Denmark, the King’s second daughter, was Sarah’s good and intimate friend, and she, her husband George and her retinue occupied most of the private apartments and state rooms in the Cockpit. The Churchills had the rest.
‘Not in the very best of spirits, my darling. I try to cheer her but in truth she is very low. After she gave birth to that poor dead mite two months ago, since then she has got it into her head that she is cursed never to see a child live to adulthood. I tell her it is nonsense and that she and George will surely make another one. But she has lost three children this year, poor soul. Did you know that, dearest? You remember how distraught I was when . . . when our own dear Harriet . . . so I grieve with her. I pray with her daily for their poor little souls.’
Jack swallowed the last of his wine. ‘Is there nothing at all cheerful that we could discuss? Tell me something amusing.’
Sarah, who was sitting opposite her husband at the small table, wiped her damp eye and straightened in her chair. She smiled at her handsome husband – by God she was lucky to have him, and she knew it – and slipped her silk shoe off before sliding her stockinged foot up under the table and thrusting it into her husband’s crotch. Jack sat up with a start and raised his eyebrows.
‘Would your ears be offended by a little salacious gossip, my one true love?’
‘Not in the least,’ said Jack. ‘Tell me everything, the more salacious the better!’
Sarah began sliding the small silk-clad foot over Jack’s groin and upper thigh.
‘You know that young Foot Guards officer, Ensign Richard Campion, the very handsome one with the green eyes?’
‘Ye-es. I know him, Sidney Godolphin wanted me to take him on as an aide, he’s a Cornish relative, I gather. Pretty as a petal but no cleverer than a clod of earth.’
‘Well, he has taken up with Lady Dorothy Whipple, the Countess of Sligo’s youngest daughter. Quite head over heels in love with her. Or so Lady Dorothy believes. They say she has already been most generous to him with her favours.’
Sarah’s silk foot was now rubbing at Jack’s parts with a steady insistent stroke.
‘Hmmm,’ he said, ‘do go on, my dear . . .’
‘But she may be in for a rude awakening,’ Sarah continued.
Jack abruptly got up from the table. He walked round and seized Sarah by the wrist, pulling her up from her chair, embracing her hard and kissing her deeply.
As Jack began to caress her back through the silk of her bodice and gently kiss the side of her neck, he mumbled, ‘Rude awakening, yes, go on . . .’
‘Because . . . oh darling, Jack . . . Because, handsome, green-eyed Richard Campion – darling, shall we go into the bedchamber, yes? Now? – because Ensign Campion was seen yesterday morning, before dawn, coming out of the apartments of that Major du Clos fellow, who’s attached to the French Embassy, and looking quite disgracefully deshabillé, shall we say, tucking his shirt into his breeches – aagghh, oh, hmmm, darling – or at least that is what my little spies tell me.’
‘Really?’ Jack looked up from his work. They had reached the bedroom and were both half out of their clothes. ‘That’s Major du Clos’s line of country, is it?’
‘Oh yes, all the ladies tell me so. Some of the pages, too.’
For a long while neither of them uttered a recognisable word. Then, when they were finished, panting, glowing with joyous perspiration and lying side by side on top of the embroidered covers of the four-poster bed, Jack drawled: ‘And so tell me, my dove, did your little spies have any other juicy morsels to share?’
‘I do have one more item, yes.’
Jack levered himself up on one elbow and looked down at his flushed wife’s lovely face: ‘Another pretty boy who is sadly indiscriminate with his affections?’
‘No, I had this from one of Anne’s chamber maids, who has a girl-cousin who serves Queen Mary over in the royal apartments. Apparently, they sometimes meet up in the laundry for a gossip to pass the time while the bed linens are boiling.’
Jack sat up. Mary of Modena was an Italian princess who had married the King in the year 1673, after the death of James’s first wife Anne Hyde – who had given him his two daughters, Mary of Orange and Anne of Denmark. The Italian lady was a shy, unhappy woman disliked by the public for her Catholicism, with no living children, who kept to herself in her apartments and was seldom seen about the court.
‘Go on, my love.’
‘Mary’s maid told Anne’s girl that the Queen had not had her womanly bleeding for two months in a row now.’
Jack stared at her. Neither said a word for a several long heartbeats.
‘And she is not yet thirty,’ said Sarah. ‘Still quite young enough.’
‘It could mean nothing,’ said Jack. ‘A few missed months. There could be several explanations. Anyway, even if she is with child, she could miscarry. Or the baby could be stillborn. It might be a girl. It most probably changes nothing at all.’
‘Or,’ said Sarah, ‘it just might possibly change everything.’
Chapter Nineteen
17 December 1687: The Strand
Holcroft did not often dwell in the past. He did not like to rake over things that he had done badly – or that he had done well, for that matter. He found dealing with the present, the brightly coloured, shimmering, fast-moving, unpredictable now, quite difficult enough without going into hypothetical questions of what might have been, if a particular set of circumstances had been different.
On the other hand, unfinished things, uncompleted tasks irked him. They gave him an uncomfortable sense that the hidden forces of chaos in the world were in the ascendant, that order was quietly slipping away and the universe as he knew it would very soon be plunged into darkness. Mysteries made him feel uncomfortable. Puzzles needed to be solved, if he was to have peace of mind. And as he walked along the Strand on a cold December morning six days after the attempt on his life in this very street, he contemplated the attack and tried to solve the puzzle that lay behind it.
The man with the scarred face and the silly wig, who had overheard him talking to Fitch in the Grapes, had gathered his friends and attacked him an hour or two later, obviously trying to kill him. Why? Robbery he could understand – he was likely to be carrying a purse, and his clothes, boots and sword would have been worth something. But murder made no sense. It was risky. Holcroft was a large, strong, armed man – and a soldier by profession. And even if he were killed, and the murderer could shelter from the law in the Liberty, the victim’s friends or relatives might seek private vengeance. A soldier’s commander, his fellow officers and some of the enlisted men would be unlikely to let it lie. Anyway, what would be the point of murdering him? What advantage did it give?
On his way here, he had passed the spot in Fleet Street where he had jumped from the carriage – the horses had been tiring of their headlong panic and the vehicle was slowing – and he had landed safely and sprinted away into the dark side streets, still clutching the empty blunderbuss and its pouch of powder and shot, cutting down Salisbury Court, only pausing at the Queen’s Theatre in Dorset Gardens by the river, trying to stifle his panting, listen for any pursuit, and reload the firearm – all at the same time. But there had been nobody following him. He waited fifteen minutes in the darkness and then stepped calmly on to the wharf at Dorset Stairs, tucking the blunderbuss inside his coat, and hailed a passing wherry to take him homewards.
As the boatman rowed him downstream, it was the sight of the theatre, tall, black and deserted on a grim Sunday night, that gave him an idea of how he might unravel the puzzle of the murderous Savoyard with the badly scarred face.
Now, six days later, on this cold, bright, Saturday morning, as he headed back along the Strand – the pavement thronging with strollers and shoppers, loud-crying food vendors, running urchins, pedestrians of all sorts and the thoroughfare filled with scores of high-stepping horse-riders, puffing chairmen and fine carriages clattering past – he felt that he were in a different and more benign city all together.
Nevertheless, he had taken some necessary precautions. As well as his officers’ small-sword, the right hand pocket of his big blue coat held the comforting weight of the fully loaded Lorenzoni repeating pistol. And a dozen yards behind him, sauntering along in a bright green civilian coat and pulled-down black felt hat adorned with an emerald plume, was a slyly grinning Sergeant Miller, who carried a veritable arsenal – two pistols in his broad leather belt at the front, only half hidden by his swinging green coat, a third pistol wedged in the small of his back, a pair of small steel pistols, one in each coat pocket, and one tucked up his left sleeve; a thick-bladed cutlass hung from a baldric at his left side, a razor-like skinning knife sat in the top of his right riding boot and a final steel pocket pistol shoved into his left boot.
He swaggered – and clanked a little – as he walked and, while he might have looked like some diminutive buccaneer, Miller was the finest pistol shot in the Royal Fusiliers, regularly winning prizes at regiment’s annual shooting competitions.
On the far side of the Strand, a disreputable old man, hatless and as bald and brown as a boiled egg on top, was shambling along, roughly but not exactly at the same rate as Holcroft. Master Gunner Enoch Jackson wore a voluminous blue cloak that covered his body to his knees – but if that garment had been lifted it would have revealed that the veteran was also unusually heavily armed, with pistols and a cutlass at his waist, and in one hand a coachman’s blunderbuss loaded with a full charge of two drams of Number Three black powder and a dozen half-ounce pistol balls.
Holcroft did not expect to be attacked again – not in broad daylight – but he was not prepared to take the chance of an encounter without the means of striking back. He recalled that he had not expected to be attacked the last time either. The presence of Jackson and Miller, both of whom had been delighted to be asked to act as paid guards, was a precaution. Holcroft was a cautious man. He had been lucky last Sunday night, and he knew that, if ginger man’s pistol had not misfired, he would now be a dead man. So he had spent a little of his own money, squared it with their commanding officers, and privately hired the two men in the Ordnance that he trusted most. Between them, he reckoned, he, Miller and Jackson could successfully fight off an attack by any force smaller than a dozen armed men.
