Andrew Swanston - The King's Return

Like Mr Smith, Sir Montford Babb was a respectable gentleman, well known in the coffee houses of the city. He had no known enemies and his distraught widow had been unable to shed any light on the matter. With the murderer still at large, gentlemen were advised to take great care on the streets at night.

Thomas put aside the news-sheet and closed his eyes. He pictured a whiskery old face, a soft smile and a Hampshire voice. Montford Babb had been a harmless old gentleman. May his murderer be brought quickly to justice. And may Thomas Hill’s visit to London be a brief one. Already he missed his books, his friends and the Hampshire countryside. Even for a coronation, London was no place for a man who valued his peace.

At the southern end of the bridge the coach pulled up. Thomas alighted, and his bags were handed down. He paid the coachman, tried not to look at the heads impaled on spikes over the gate and, followed by two boys carrying the bags, set off on foot across the bridge. He did not care to take a river wherry up to Westminster Steps, nor was it worth attempting the bridge in a coach – both sides of it were lined by tall buildings which met in the middle and formed a narrow tunnel through which all traffic had to pass. It would be quicker and easier to make the crossing on foot.

As he walked, Thomas thought of the extraordinary man whom he had come to see crowned king and who had ridden across this same bridge almost twelve months earlier. The future Charles II had stood, aged twelve, beside his father when the royal standard was raised at Nottingham, had fled the country in the summer of 1647, had returned to Scotland and marched south, only for his army to be routed at Worcester, had famously escaped again after spending a day hiding in an oak tree on the Boscobel estate, and had returned eight years later to reclaim his throne. And, astonishingly, he had done so without a shot being fired or a drop of blood being spilt in his name. Charles had agreed to an Act of Oblivion, and spoken of peace and reconciliation, of forgiveness and goodwill, and waited for the way to be cleared for his return. No fighting, no army, no invasion.

Mind you, the blood was flowing now. If his own father had been unjustly executed, Thomas wondered, would he have taken his revenge by promising his enemies clemency, only to hunt them down and execute them with single-minded ferocity? Would that not make martyrs of the executed and increase the risk of a backlash? Or would it terrify the malcontents into submission? Old comrades were now sitting in judgement on each other, condemning each other to death and hoping the king would not turn his wrath on them. The country’s politics were every bit as complex as one of the mathematical problems with which Thomas liked to wrestle, and a good deal more dangerous.

A hundred thousand people, it was said, had lined the route from Dover to Canterbury and thence to London. A hundred thousand men and women, many of whom had supported, even fought for the cause of Parliament, but now wanted nothing more than the return of their monarch. The Black Boy, some people called him, for his dark complexion. A clever boy, too, to have survived eight years of exile and to have returned in triumph.

At the north end of the bridge, Thomas agreed a fare for the journey to Piccadilly and climbed into a hackney coach while the jarvey loaded his bags. The coach lurched forward and they were off, along the north bank of the river, up to Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street and the Strand to Charing Cross, the very place where a number of the king’s enemies had died under the executioner’s axe, their entrails extracted and burned before their eyes, their heads sliced off and their bodies quartered and displayed around London. The stench had been so bad that the local people asked for the executions to be moved to their traditional place at Tyburn.

The further west they travelled, the wider and cleaner the streets and the grander the buildings. Both sides of Piccadilly were lined with elegant, brick-built town houses – a different world to the narrow, dark alleyways no more than a mile to the east, where thieves and whores plied their trade and rotting beasts and dung heaps assailed the senses. Mounds of filth and reeking drains were not fit for prosperous merchants and landowners. Their money bought space and comfort.

Outside one of the finest houses on the south side of Piccadilly, they pulled up and the jarvey jumped down to open the door. Thomas stepped out. It was a lovely April day, the chestnuts in St James’s Fields were coming into leaf and there was neither a severed head nor a dangling corpse in sight. His spirits restored, Thomas breathed deeply and knocked on the imposing door. It was opened immediately by a liveried servant.

‘Thomas Hill, sometime bookseller, indentured servant and cryptographer, and devoted admirer of Mrs Carrington.’ He announced himself with a broad grin.

The servant returned the grin. ‘Good morning, sir. I am John Smythe, Mr and Mrs Carrington’s steward. They are expecting you in the sitting room. This way, if you please.’

Thomas was shown into a large, sunlit room where a tall man, his thick black hair lightly streaked with grey and his waist only a little thicker than Thomas remembered, stood beside his elegant wife, their backs to the window. Before Thomas could say a word, Mary Carrington rushed forward and engulfed him in an embrace. When she eventually released him and stepped back, he could see that she was every bit as beautiful as he remembered. Her green eyes shone and her skin, unblemished by the Caribbean sun, glowed. In a flowing emerald gown with white lace at the neck and cuffs and with her black hair tied back with a matching ribbon, Mary was still ravishing.

‘Thomas Hill,’ she said, hands on his shoulders, ‘what a delight. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you for months. A little greyer at the temples, perhaps, but just as handsome and not a pound heavier. Are you as well and prosperous as you look?’

‘Apart from occasional gout, both, happily. As are you, I hope,’ replied Thomas, delighted that Mary had taken such trouble with her appearance, although she was a woman who would look beautiful in an old sack.

‘I too have been looking forward to seeing you, Thomas,’ interrupted Charles Carrington, hand outstretched, ‘and if my wife would be good enough to release you, I would like to make my own inspection.’ Charles looked Thomas up and down. ‘Well, my friend, you seem to have cleaned up rather well. Very well, in fact. Bright of eye and clear of skin. Come and sit and tell us how you’ve managed it. Alas, plantain juice is not to be found in London. Would you care for a glass of Madeira instead?’ While in Barbados, Thomas had become fond of the juice of the plantain mixed with a little sugar, which had sustained him through many a long day of torment. Now he much preferred Madeira.

Having filled three glasses from the bottle on a side table, Charles proposed a toast. ‘To Thomas Hill, without whom I might still be a miserable bachelor.’

‘To you both, without whom I might still be miserably indentured to the brothers Gibbes,’ replied Thomas, raising his glass. For nearly three years the barbaric Samuel and John Gibbes had been his masters in Barbados.

Despite the warmth of the day a fire had been lit in the grate. For a minute the three friends sat unspeaking around it. Mary broke the silence. ‘Well now, this is a fine thing. We haven’t seen you for nine years and none of us can think of a thing to say. You first, Thomas. Tell us everything you didn’t put in your letters. Everything, mind. Warts and all, as the late Lord Protector would have said.’

‘Did say, by all accounts,’ replied Thomas, ‘and I really haven’t much to tell you. As you know, my sister Margaret died of a fever at Christmas two years ago. It was a sad time and I miss her terribly. My nieces are well. Polly has just turned twenty-two, she’s married – happily, I think – and, as I mentioned in my letter, Lucy is two years younger, and here in London at the behest of the Duchess of York. She is a guest of Lady Richmond in Whitehall.’