Andrew Swanston - The King's Return

Thomas strained to see the Duchess of York’s gown, sewn and embroidered by Lucy. He was too far away really to appreciate it, and consoled himself with the thought that it would certainly be more beautiful than the duchess herself. The daughter of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hyde, was not renowned for her looks.

When at last it was over, they made their way through the cheering crowds outside the Abbey – Thomas guessed at ten thousand people – and hurried back to Piccadilly, while the king and his bishops and lords set about the feast laid out for them in Westminster Hall. Thomas had seen no sign of any demonstration against the new king. The die-hard Puritans and non-conformists must have wisely stayed at home.

‘Well, Thomas, what did you make of it?’ asked Mary, on their way back.

‘I found it impressive, if a little long.’

‘I do agree. Still, all those fiddlers will be able to tell their grandchildren about the day they played at the king’s coronation.’

‘Let us hope that he proves a more successful king than his father,’ said Charles. ‘Another war we do not need, nor indeed wars against the French or the Dutch or anyone else. Peace and prosperity are what we need now.’

Thomas descended the Carringtons’ staircase for dinner as their long-case clock struck six and an enormous clap of thunder erupted overhead. The gods, it seemed, having blessed the day of the coronation with fine weather, were about to demonstrate their impartiality with a huge storm. He heard laughter from the library. A guest must have arrived early. The library door opened and Charles emerged, grinning broadly, his arm around the guest’s shoulders.

‘Well, Chandle, things seem to be going splendidly. Well done indeed.’ Charles sounded delighted. He looked up and saw Thomas. ‘Ah, Thomas, perfect timing. Allow me to introduce my good friend Chandle Stoner. Chandle, this is Thomas Hill, about whom I have told you.’

Stoner was a man of medium height, with an abundance of black hair, a sharp nose and a neat pointed beard. Thomas noted his dress – silk shirt and trousers and a short velvet coat embroidered with ribbons, all well in keeping with the spirit of the day – and wondered if he might himself be rather underdressed for the occasion. He had thought that a white shirt with black breeches and silk stockings would suffice.

Stoner bowed low and smiled widely. ‘Mr Hill, a pleasure. Charles has indeed told me much about you and I look forward to hearing more.’

Thomas returned the compliment. ‘And he has spoken highly of you, sir. I trust we shall soon be well acquainted.’

Charles was in a jovial mood. ‘Excellent, excellent. Come into the drawing room, gentlemen, and let us take a glass while we wait for the other guests. Mary has taken Louise upstairs to attend to her hair. They will be down shortly.’

Fortified by Charles’s French brandy, the three men talked amiably while they waited. They spoke of the new feeling of hope in London, theatres and taverns reopening, dancing no longer banned, and their new king. They agreed that Charles II showed none of the debilitating lack of confidence of his father and shared the hope that he would soon tire of bloody reprisals. They were optimistic for the future. With Charles in such good humour and Stoner a man of easy charm and wit, conversation flowed and Thomas found himself warming to his fellow guest.

Mary and Louise soon appeared. They could hardly have been more different. While Mary was as striking as ever in pale blue silk and silver slippers, Louise was a plain woman, a little plump, with mousey brown hair and a sallow complexion. Her dress and shoes matched the colour of her hair. When Mary introduced her as Chandle’s sister, Madame Louise d’Entrevaux, Thomas bowed and took the proffered hand with a polite ‘ Enchanté, madame .’ He was favoured in return with the thinnest of smiles and a slight inclination of the head. On first acquaintance it was hard to believe that she was Chandle Stoner’s sister.

When the other two guests arrived, they were both a little bedraggled by the rain now beating down, which must surely have put paid to the fireworks. Joseph Williamson was no more than thirty, tall, with dark eyes and thick eyebrows. He wore a long black wig to his shoulders and a fashionably long silk coat over his shirt. An indoor man, thought Thomas; probably never sits on a horse and seldom sees the sun. It took him a while to realize that Williamson’s left eye did not move as it should, which gave him a disarming way of peering at people. He greeted Thomas and Stoner courteously enough but of Stoner’s natural charm he too had none.

No one could have said the same about his cousin Madeleine Stewart. One look at her and Thomas knew at once what Mary was up to. Slim, with a face too angular to be conventionally pretty – it would take a Rembrandt to do justice to its planes – thick brown hair piled high on her head, china-blue eyes and modestly dressed in cream and pink, Madeleine Stewart would have turned heads in the grandest of circles. Only the fine smile lines at her eyes suggested her age as more than twenty. When she offered her hand to Thomas, she looked directly into his eyes and said something about the pleasure of meeting Mary’s brave friend at last. Thomas’s educated nose caught the fragrance of roses. He managed a feeble bow.

At dinner Chandle Stoner dominated the conversation. He alluded once to his ‘dear late wife’, but offered no information about her. He described himself as a financier and philanthropist and spoke earnestly of the importance of integrity and discretion in business. He was clever and witty, if a little self-important, and vague on what exactly he financed or to whom he was philanthropic. Charles clearly held him in high esteem and when he rose to propose a toast to all those present and ‘even greater prosperity’, it was to Stoner that he raised his glass.

Stoner’s plain sister, however, made no effort to contribute, confining her conversation to monosyllabic replies to Charles’s gallant efforts to draw her out. She said only that she lived in Paris and was married to a Doctor of Theology at the Collège de Sorbonne. Thomas was lucky that Joseph Williamson sat between them, although he too was no Ben Jonson. Other than to confide that he worked in the office of the secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas, on matters of security, Williamson too revealed little about himself. It was only when Mary mentioned Thomas’s skill with codes and ciphers that he became animated. He asked how Thomas had come to have an interest in such matters and what he knew about them. Thomas allowed himself to be drawn on his methods of decrypting intercepted parliamentary despatches when with the late king at Oxford and how he had found a way to break the Vigenère square. And at Mary’s prompting, he confessed to having used his knowledge to decipher a despatch from Sir George Ayscue to Colonel Thomas Modyford, which alerted the governor of Barbados, Lord Willoughby, to Modyford’s intention to desert the cause of the king and join Ayscue’s invading force.

He did not mention that in the one case he had prevented the queen and her unborn child from being captured and held to ransom by Parliament or that in the other he had helped avert what would have been a catastrophic battle on a small island. Williamson listened carefully, then asked about the latest developments in cryptography and whether Thomas had retained his interest in it. When Thomas assured him that ‘once a cryptographer, always a cryptographer’, he nodded wisely.

On the other side of the table Stoner turned his charm on Madeleine Stewart, and in between answering a question from Williamson on the analysis of the relative frequencies with which letters of the alphabet typically appear and another on the use of mis-spellings and nulls, Thomas wished that she would stop smiling at the man and turn her attention to him. Why had Mary placed him beside the educated but dull Williamson and not the lovely Miss Stewart? Was it one of her tricks or had he been mistaken? Cruel woman. He would have words with her later.