Marie Brennan: In Ashes Lie

He twisted to curse the man who made him stagger, but swallowed it at the last moment. “Sorry,” Thomas Soame said, recovering his balance. “God’s blood—everyone and his brother is packing in here. My foot snagged another fellow’s, I fear.”

“No harm done,” Antony said, reassuring the glass merchant with a calming hand. “I did not see you.”

“Nor hear me, it seems. Come, let’s away, before someone else jostles me and disaster ensues. What is that?”

Antony sighed as he collected the scattered sheets, marked with damp patches where he had clutched them in his sweating hand. “A petition.”

“For what?”

“No idea; I have not read it yet.”

“Might be wiser to keep it that way. We could paper the walls of the Guildhall with the petitions that get shoved at us.” Soame wasted no time, but turned and bulled his way carefully through the corridor outside. Following in his broad-shouldered wake, Antony hoped his friend did not mean to stand out in the courtyard and converse.

He did not. They descended the staircase, and so out into the clamor of Cornhill. Soame paused to let a keg-laden cart rumble past, and Antony catch up to him. Settling his hat more comfortably on his head, Antony asked the younger man, “Where do you lead me?”

“An alehouse,” Soame said feelingly. “Out of this accursed sun, and into a place where I can tell you the news.”

News? Antony’s attention sharpened. A tavern would offer shade, drink—and a degree of privacy not to be found in the gossiping atmosphere of the Exchange. They went down the sloping mire of Cornhill and onward to Cheapside, where stood the Nag’s Head, Soame’s favorite tippling house. His friend planted a familiar kiss on a serving-wench and got them a table in a cool corner, with cups of sack to wet their throats. “Best watch your wife doesn’t learn of that, Tom,” Antony said, with a smile to cushion the warning; Mary Soame was a Puritan sort, and not likely to turn a blind eye to philandering.

Soame dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “A harmless buss on the cheek, is all; nothing to it.”

On the lips, rather, but the younger man’s behavior was his own problem. Antony let it pass. “What brought you after me? This is hot weather for considering anything of import.”

The broad features darkened. “And likely to get hotter,” Soame said, not meaning the weather. “Have you heard Abbot’s latest woe? Our woe, I should say.”

Which made it political, not personal. Soame was an alderman for Vintry Ward, as Antony was for Langbourn, and while the list of things that might bring trouble to the Lord Mayor of London and his Court of Aldermen was long, Antony felt unpleasantly capable of narrowing it down. “Don’t drag it out, man; just say.”

“A loan.”

“Again?”

“Are you surprised? The King pisses away money as his father did—though at least he has the decency to piss it on war instead of drunkenness and catamites.”

Antony winced at the blunt words. “Watch your tongue! If you haven’t a care for yourself, at least think of me; I’ll be hanged for hearing your sedition, as you’ll be hanged for speaking it.”

Soame grinned, pulling out a roll of tobacco and his pipe. “I do no more than quote our Lord Mayor. But very well; I’ll spare your tender sensibilities. Returning to the point: it seems the five thousand pounds the Common Council gave our good King Charles in March—”

“Were an insult at the time, and not one I imagine he’s forgotten.” Antony pinched the bridge of his nose and reached for his wine. “What has he asked for?”

“A hundred thousand.”

Coughing on the wine, Antony fumbled for his handkerchief to wipe the spittle from his beard. “God in Heaven. Not again.”

“You’re quoting Abbot, too.” Soame lit a spill from the candle and touched it to his pipe, drawing until the tobacco smoldered to his satisfaction. Exhaling the fragrant smoke, he went on. “We are the King’s chamber, after all, are we not? The jewel in his crown, the preeminent city of his realm. For which distinction we pay handsomely—and pay, and pay again.”

With compensation, to be sure—but only when they could squeeze it out of the royal purse. Which was not often enough for anyone’s peace of mind. The Crown was chronically short of money, and slow to repay its debts. “Are the securities any good?”

“They’re pig swill. But we’ve a war on our back step; unless we want to be buggered up the arse by the Scots, his Majesty will need money.”

Antony sighed. “And to think—one sovereign on both thrones was supposed to solve that problem.”

“Just like it did with the Irish, eh?” Soame sank back on the settle, wedging his shoulders into the corner of the walls. “Must be like trying to drive a team of three horses, all of them trying to bite each other.”

An apt analogy. Old James, Charles’s father, had dreamt of uniting his realms under a single crown, making himself not three Kings in one, but one King, ruling over one conjoined land. Or at least of Scotland and England conjoined; Antony was not certain whether he had meant to include Ireland in that happy harmony. At any rate, it had never come about; the English were fractious about a Scotsman ascending their throne in the first place, and not liable to agree to any such change.

With separate realms, though, came a host of inevitable problems, and Charles showed little delicacy in handling them—as this morass with the Scottish Covenanters demonstrated. Antony had some sympathy for their refusal to adopt the Anglican prayer book; the King’s attempt to force it upon the Presbyterians up north had been as badly conceived and executed as this entire damn war. When they ejected the Anglican bishops, however, it only hardened the King against them.

Antony began to place his fingers one by one on the table’s stained surface, mapping out the political landscape in his mind. The aldermen of London rarely refused the Crown, but the Common Council had grown more recalcitrant of late. Their response was certain: they had balked against a loan in March, and would do so again.

Could the City raise the money? No doubt. Many aldermen and wealthy citizens were connected with the East India Company, the Providence Company, and other great trading ventures. Antony himself was an East India man, as was the Lord Mayor Abbott. The companies had loaned money to the Crown before. Their resentment was growing, though, as more and more of those loans went unpaid.

And religion played its role in the south, too. London harbored more than a few men sympathetic to the Presbyterian cause in Scotland; Antony knew full well that many of his fellow aldermen would gladly see the Church of England discard bishops and other popish trappings. They would not look kindly on the attempt to squelch the Scottish dissent.

Which was stronger: religion or nation? Ideology or economy?

“How fares the army?” he asked. “Is the King’s need legitimate?”

In response, Soame beckoned for more wine, and waited until it came before he answered. “I drink to the poor souls up at Berwick,” he said, and toasted the absent soldiers solemnly. “Half can’t tell their right foot from their left, and from what I hear they’re armed with pitchforks and profanity. Starvation, smallpox, an infestation of lice… I would not be there for all the wenches in Christendom.”

“And no chance of peace?” Antony waved away his own question before Soame could answer it. “Always a chance, yes, I know. But it requires diplomacy his Majesty may not be inclined to exercise.” If by diplomacy he meant a willingness to bend. And Charles was not renowned for his cooperative nature, especially in the twin matters of religion and royal prerogative. The Scots had stepped on both, with hobnailed boots.