Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

Our spy, Humphrey Hall, was a most diligent fellow, as I have said; and the next day I went to Westminster Hall with him to see if he could identify the man whom he had seen meeting with Sergeant Rohan. But the man was not there; nor the day after that. And it was Friday, September the third, before Mister Hall spied the man he had seen meeting with the Sergeant.

I had a good look at the fellow when we followed him to The Swan with Two Necks in nearby Tuttle Street. About fifty years of age, he was a tall man but bowlegged, with a bull neck, although not powerful, so that his head scarcely protruded from his body, and his abnormally large chin, which was equal in size to the rest of his peculiar face, seemed permanently bowed toward his chest. His eyes were small and quite feral, and his brow as low as his great hat, which darkened an already purplish complexion that was clearly the result of an overfondness of wine. Above one eyebrow was a large wart. His mode of dress was not only clerical but Episcopal, for he wore a cassock and, but for a long rose-coloured scarf and a way of speaking that better suited a costermonger or a Southwark porter — for we heard him speak to the tavern’s landlord in a strident sing-song voice, so that he seemed permanently to complain rather than to speak — we might have taken him for a man of some learning, or even a lawyer, whose presence in the courts of Chancery was upon the instruction of his client, for there were many who attended that were never heard.

We followed the strange Doctor Davies to his place of lodging on the north side of Axe Yard, and collected some facts upon him from Mister Beale, who was the most talkative landlord at The Axe Tavern, farther along the street, and whose family had been in Axe Yard since before the Great Fire. He told us that Doctor Davies was a Cambridge man and the son of an Anabaptist chaplain in Cromwell’s New Model Army; he had been a chaplain in the navy; he had written a book; he had been recently married to a wealthy widow who was away visiting her relations; he enjoyed a government pension; and he was a Baptist minister in Wapping.

Having thanked Mister Beale with five shillings for his information and his silence, it was to Wapping we now went to find out more.

I have never much like Ranters, and Baptists least of all, for what kind of sect is it that follows the precepts of a man as mad as John the Baptist, who lived in the desert and ate locusts? They must surely have been mad at Wapping, for only the Lord’s fools and mad folks would have freely confessed that their minister’s real name was not Paul Davies but Titus Oates, he of that notorious Popish Plot that had fabricated allegations that Jesuit priests were planning to assassinate King Charles II in order to place his Roman Catholic brother, the Duke of York, on the throne.

It was a great shock to Mister Hall and me that a man as malign as Titus Oates was at liberty, let alone that he was preaching the word of God; and Mister Hall was so shaken by this discovery that he felt obliged to go to a church and pray. Before Oates’s vile lies were revealed, some thirty-five innocent men were judicially murdered.

The Duke sued Oates for libel in 1684 and was awarded damages of one hundred thousand pounds; and having no money to pay, Oates was cast into the debtor’s side of the King’s Bench prison. But for him, even worse was to follow. The next year the Duke ascended to the throne and Oates was put on trial for perjury before Mister Justice Jeffreys, whose declared regret was that the Law did not prescribe Jack Ketch himself; and the following day, whipped from Newgate to Tyburn — which is about two miles. He was also sentenced to be imprisoned for life and pilloried once a year — which has killed many a stronger man than he. And this was the last I had heard of Titus Oates until that September’s Friday afternoon.

Wishing to discover how Oates had been set at liberty, I went to visit Mister Jonathan Taylor, a friend of mine who was a barrister in the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster Hall and whose reputation was that he was a veritable almanac of legal matters. And he quickly completed the legal history of Titus Oates until that same date. Taylor told me that when William came to the throne in 1688, Judge Jeffreys was imprisoned in the Tower and Oates petitioned Parliament for redress against his sentence. And it says much about the anti-Catholic sentiments that were once again abroad in the country that, in the face of all the evidence that he had conspired in the death of many innocent men, Oates was given a free pardon and quietly released from prison in December of that same year. According to Taylor, he was even granted ten pounds a week from the Secret Service money — which was no small sum. He then wrote a long account of his treatment that was published under the title A Display of Tyranny . Taylor told me it was a work that was reckoned to be a most villainous and reviling book against King James, by all who read it, which Oates then presumed to present to King William, although the King certainly could not do anything but abhor it, speaking so infamously and untruly of his late Queen’s own father King James as it did.

When I informed Newton that Doctor Davies was none other than Titus Oates, he was as much astonished as Mister Hall and I had been; and yet he quickly declared that it all made perfect if unpalatable sense that Oates should be involved in a plot to massacre London’s Catholics.

“Evidently prison and a whipping have taught Mister Oates very little,” he said.

“Is it possible that milord Ashley does not know the real identity of Doctor Davies?” said I. “For I cannot conceive that milord Ashley would have any dealing with such a devil if he knew who he was.”

“Was it not the Earl of Shaftesbury, Ashley’s own grandfather, that helped promote Oates to inform the Privy Council of the Popish Plot? But for him, Oates would never have been heard of.

“I believe it is significant also,” Newton added thoughtfully, “that this plot should be taking place when the country is trying to end a war. It was the same with the Popish Plot, which took place when King Charles was concluding a peace with the Dutch. There are some men for whom peace is always unwelcome, for peace means an end to lucrative government contracts for the supplying of an army and a navy. Worse still, it means paying off the army, and that means asking the Parliament for money, which always serves to increase its power at the expense of the aristocracy.”

Newton shook his head. “There’s much here that disturbs me greatly,” he admitted. “But you have done well, my young friend. It is certain you have uncovered one of the ringleaders in this conspiracy. And yet I would know still more of their plans. I doubt that Sergeant Rohan or any of these other Frenchies could be persuaded to tell us more. And yet Oates might talk.”

I frowned. “I don’t see how or why,” I said.

“I have met the young milord Ashley,” said Newton. “At The Grecian; and at the Kit Kat Club. I would say he is about your age and build, and a dreadful snob. Which may be another reason why he has not met Titus Oates. But we may exploit that to our advantage. We shall send Oates a coded letter inviting him to meet Lord Ashley at some place we shall appoint. And there Oates will tell us everything.”

“But how? I still don’t understand.”

“Because you will act the part of Lord Ashley, of course,” said Newton.

“I?”

“Who else? I am too old. But I may play the part of your manservant. We shall borrow a handsome coach and six from milord Halifax. And we shall hire you some fine clothes, as might befit the future Earl of Shaftesbury. We will arrange to meet Oates outside the Kit Kat Club in Hampstead where I know him to be a member. And the three of us shall go for a drive about the countryside, as if we were three men with much to hide.”