The Beckoning Dream

“What, in this Alsatian get-up?” mocked Stair, referring to the London district where the City’s criminals congregated. “I doubt me whether she could have recognised the King himself if he were dressed in these woundy hand-me-downs.”

“Well suited for your errand in the Netherlands, Stair. None there would take you for the King’s friend, rather the King’s prisoner.”

“Or the friend of m’lord Arlington who turned the Seigneur de Buat away from the Grand Pensionary and towards the Peace party—which cost Buat his head,” riposted Stair.

Arlington’s reply to his friend was a dry one. “His fault, Stair. He was careless, and handed the Pensionary a letter from me, not meant for the Pensionary’s eyes. Do you take care, man. No careless heroics—nor careful ones, either.”

Stair Cameron bowed low, sweeping the floor with his plumed hat that had been sitting by his feet.

“An old soldier heeds thee, m’lord. My only worry is the lady. She may, once she knows what her part in this is, take against Grahame and refuse to enchant him. Furthermore, playing the heroine at the Duke of York’s Theatre is no great matter, and coolness shown on the boards might not mean coolness on life’s stage when one’s head might be loose on one’s shoulders. We shall see.”

Arlington dropped his jocular mode and flung an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “If aught goes amiss, Stair, and the heavens begin to fall on thee, then abandon all, and come home. Abandon Grahame to the Netherlanders if you have cause to suspect his honesty. Let the wolves have the wolf—we owe him nothing.”

“And the lady?”

Arlington looked at Sir Thomas Gower, who shrugged his shoulders. “Deal with her as common sense suggests. She is there not only to seduce Grahame, but to help you with your supposed insufficient Dutch and to give an air of truth to your claim to be a one-time solder turned merchant. You will both claim to have Republican leanings and in consequence are happy to spend some time in God’s own Republic—which is the way in which the Netherlanders speak of Holland.”

Stair toasted Arlington with an upraised goblet. “Well said, friend, and I swear to you that I shall try to persuade the Hollanders that I am God’s own soldier—however unlikely that is in truth.”

Arlington ended the session with a clap of laughter. “The age of miracles is back on earth, Stair, if thou and God may be mentioned in the same breath. Forget that—and come home safely with Grahame and the lady in thy pocket. Great shall be thy reward—on earth, if not in heaven.”

Stair Cameron bowed low again. “Oh, I beg leave to doubt that, Hal. From what I know of our revered King Charles and his empty Treasury, I shall have to wait for heaven. What I do I do for you, and our friendship. Let that be enough.”

Sir Thomas Gower, who had poured a drink for himself and Arlington, had the final word. “Long live friendship, then. A toast to that, and to the King’s Majesty.”

Chapter Two

Catherine Wood, posing as Mistress Tom Trenchard, hung over the packet boat’s side, vomiting her heart up. A spring crossing from London to Ostend was frequently unpleasant, and this one was no exception.

Nothing seemed to have gone right since the afternoon on which Tom Trenchard had called at her door to escort her to the docks. His appearance was as fly-by-night as it had been forty-eight hours before in Sir Thomas Gower’s office. Behind him stood an equally ill-dressed manservant who had been pulling a little wagon on which Tom’s two battered trunks rested.

The day was cold and a light drizzle had begun to fall. Tom was sporting a much darned cloak about his shoulders: it suitably matched his shabby lace. He leaned a familiar shoulder on the door post, grinning down at her from his great height.

“Well, mistress, do you intend to keep me standing in the rain forever? A true wife would invite her husband in.”

“I am not your true wife, sir,” Catherine riposted coldly, “but natheless you may come in.” As Tom removed his hat in order to enter, she added, “Do you intend your man to remain outside growing wet whilst his master enjoys the fireside indoors? He may sit with my serving maid in the kitchen.”

Tom was nothing put out. “Ah, a kind wife, I see, who considers the welfare of her husband’s servants, as well as her husband. Do as the mistress bids, Geordie.”

Geordie doffed a much-creased hat whose broad brim drooped to his shoulders. “And the trunks, Mistress Trenchard, may they come in, too?” He was so ill-shaven that it was difficult to tell whether he was as poorly favoured as his master.

Catherine nodded assent and followed Tom in. He was already seated before the hearth, and was pulling off his beautiful boots.

“You have made yourself at home, I see.” Catherine could not help being acid. He was here on sufferance, solely because she was being blackmailed into doing something which she had no wish to do, in order to save her silly brother’s life, and Tom was already behaving like the master of the house.

He must learn—and learn soon—that he could take no liberties with her. Alas, his next words simply went to prove that he had every intention of doing so. “Look you, Mistress Wood, or rather, Mistress Trenchard, from this moment on you are my wife, and what is a wife’s is her husband’s for him to do as he pleases with. If you are to pass as my wife without attracting comment, then I suggest that you remember that. A tankard of ale would not come amiss, wife.”

Oh, it was plain that the next few weeks—pray God that they were not months—were going to be difficult ones, if the start of this misbegotten venture was a sample of her future! Unwillingly, Catherine bobbed a mocking curtsy at him in a broad parody of a stage serving maid before bustling into the kitchen to do as she was bid. She could hear him laughing as she stage-exited right, as it were.

Once in the kitchen, she found that Geordie had made himself at home also, and was not only drinking her good ale, but was eating a large slice from a freshmade loaf, liberally spread with new-churned butter. At least he showed a little gratitude, pulling a greasy forelock and offering her a bobbing bow.

The whole effect was spoiled a little by his bulging cheeks and eyes as he stuffed more bread into his mouth. Plainly Master Tom Trenchard did not feed his servant well.

Tom accepted the ale she handed him as his due—waving her to a seat by her own fireside as though the house were already his. From what pigsty had he graduated to arrive at King Charles’s court? If he were from the court, that was. His rank and standing seemed dubious to say the least.

By his clothes he was virtually penniless, some sort of hireling, called in to serve the nation’s spymaster—for that was surely Sir Thomas Gower’s office. Yet Sir Thomas had treated him almost as an equal, and he had not hesitated to mock at Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas had said that they would pose as merchants. He seemed an unlikely merchant.

So, was he a gentleman down on his luck? And what matter if he were not? These days gentlemen were as nastily rapacious where women were concerned as their supposed inferiors, and at Whitehall the courtiers, led by such debauchees as m’lord Rochester, were the nastiest of all. No woman was safe with them. It would be as well to remember that.

“You are very quiet, wife? What ails you? A silent woman is a lusus naturae—almost against nature.”

“I mislike sentences which assume that all women are the same woman. Men would not care to be told that because some men are dissolute rakes, then all must be so.”

“Oh, wittily spoken—good enough for Master Wagstaffe, I vow. Tell me, my dear wife, does reciting the well-found words of learned playwrights result in your own lines in real life becoming as witty as theirs?”

Catherine widened her eyes. “La, sir, your intelligence quite overthrows me! Let me try to enlighten you. Am I, then, to suppose that Sir Thomas Gower and Lord Arlington’s wisdom must transfer itself to you when you frequent their company?

“I see little sign of that; on the contrary, you maintain your usual coarse mode of speech. From this I deduce that my wit is therefore my own, and not the consequence of mixing with the geniuses who frequent the Duke’s Theatre, be they actors or scribblers.”

Tom was laughing as she finished, and before she could stop him he had put a large arm around her waist and hefted her on to his knee. “Shrew!” he hissed affably into her ear. “It is a good thing that you are not my true wife or you might earn a lesson in civility. As it is, let this serve.”

He tipped her backwards and began to kiss her without so much as a by your leave, just like the rapacious gentlemen whose conduct she had just been silently lamenting. First he saluted each cheek, and then her mouth became his target.

The devil of it was that she would have expected him to be fierce and brutal in such forced loving, but no such thing. His mouth was as soft and gentle as a man’s could be, stroking and teasing, rather than assaulting her, so that her treacherous body began to respond to him!

Fortunately, just when Catherine’s senses were beginning to betray her, he loosed her a little to free his right hand, and her common sense immediately reasserted itself. Wrestling away from him, she broke free—to slide from his lap to the ground, and found herself facing his man Geordie, who wandered in still chewing as though he had not eaten for a week.

“I gave you no leave to do that, sir,” she told him severely.

“Oho, that were quick work, master,” Geordie announced, spewing crumbs around him, “not that one expects slow work when an actress is your doxy.”

Catherine picked herself up from the floor and slapped the face, not of her unwanted would-be lover, but of his servant.

“Fie and for shame,” she cried, “after I have warmed and fed you. I gave him no leave to kiss me, nor you to call me doxy.”

“Bonaroba, rather,” suggested Tom from behind her, using Alsatian slang to describe a whore.

Enraged, Catherine swung round and boxed his ears, too. “We might as well start as we mean to go on,” she announced. “I will not allow liberties to my person at your hands, nor liberties about my person from his tongue. You, sir, are a hedge captain, and your servant is naught but a cullion who needs to acquire a wash as well as manners.”

Tom was openly laughing at her defiance. “Well, I at least am clean,” he told her smugly. And, yes, that at least was true as she had discovered when trapped on his knee. His clothes might be shabby but his body smelled of yellow soap and lemon mixed.

“Oh, you are impossible, both of you,” she raged. “Like master, like man. How am I to endure this ill-begotten enterprise in such unwanted company?”

“By accepting that, for the duration of it, we are man and wife, and Geordie is our only servant.” Tom’s tone was suddenly grave.

“I may not take my woman with me, then?”

“Indeed, not. The fewer who know anything of us, the better.”