Claire Letemendia - The Licence of War

“I myself thought he was lying, he was such a dark man. And he talked a lovely Spanish — as lovely as yours. He spoke many tongues, besides. I wouldn’t understand them, being as I am an ignorant gypsy,” she added, with the false humility of her race.

“What was his name?”

“In The Hague they called him Monsieur Beaumont.”

Antonio leant closer. “ Beaumont ?”

“So he was French,” said Teresa.

“He told me his father was from England, my lady,” Juana insisted. “And his mother was a noble lady from Seville.”

Antonio’s heart thundered within his ribcage. Grabbing his wine glass, he swallowed a large gulp.

“As I remember,” put in Teresa’s senior aunt, “one of the de Capdavila y Fuentes wedded an English lord.”

Antonio forced a shrug; Juana was edging towards the door. “Ah yes,” he said, “I forget his name.”

“What is that stink?” exclaimed María de Mercedes.

“The baby has soiled itself,” Teresa said, covering her nose. “Please, Don Antonio, get rid of them.”

“Anything to oblige you, my dear.” Antonio leapt from his seat, strode over to Juana, and snatched her by the wrist. She had to run to keep up with him as he marched her through the house and into the courtyard. Neither spoke a word until they arrived at the gates to his property; by some miracle, the child still slumbered, oblivious.

“Ay,” cried Juana, “you are hurting!”

Antonio tightened his grip. “What did you see in me today?”

“I saw Monsieur. You would be his image if he was older.”

“How old was he?”

“Five and twenty, or a little more — I couldn’t say. You gaje are different from us. Why, who is he to you?”

Antonio’s head was spinning as though he had drunk a whole cask of Malaga. “You’re to go back into the city, Juana, to an inn, El Caballo Blanco, near the church of San Pedro. Tell Gaspar Jimenez that Don Antonio de Zamora wants you to stay there.”

“When will you come to me?” she asked warily.

“When I choose,” he said. “And if I don’t find you, I swear by the devil, I’ll hunt you down. You can watch your child die first, before you meet your Maker.”

England, October-December 1643

King Charles was hunting stag in the royal forest, with his party of lords and gentlemen, and a pack of eager hounds. They had disappeared from view into a thick mist that drifted through the trees. Like smoke on a battlefield, Laurence thought, as he reined in to wipe sweat from his eyes. He did not enjoy the chase.

“Your Highness, you must be more careful,” he warned the young Prince, who had pulled up impatiently at his side; the boy was riding too fast, and his horse had already stumbled once on a tree root.

“If we don’t hurry, Mr. Beaumont, we may lose them,” Prince Charles shouted. “I want to watch the kill.” Before Laurence could stop him, the boy put spurs to his mount and galloped ahead, vanishing among the trees.

Laurence became aware of an extraordinary silence. No birdsong or soughing of branches above, no rustle of animals in the bushes. He was alone. Then Sir Bernard Radcliff emerged out of the mist and walked towards him. Laurence felt astonished: he had last seen Radcliff in the grounds of the Earl of Pembroke’s London house, dying from a multitude of wounds inflicted by the Earl’s guards.

“I understand your surprise,” remarked Radcliff, with a superior smile. “But don’t forget, your precious tutor Dr. Seward instructed me in magic, as well as in the casting of horoscopes. The dead can be revived, sir, if one knows the proper rituals.”

“You were wrong about the King’s death,” said Laurence, his voice sounding puny as a child’s in the vastness of the forest. “It wasn’t to happen when you predicted.”

“It will happen soon, nonetheless.”

Radcliff’s smile faded as spectacularly as he did, dwindling to a wisp of fog; and now Laurence discovered himself in a small clearing where the King’s body was laid out upon a makeshift bier of bracken and dry leaves. Pembroke stood over the bier, like an old vulture in his sombre cloak, leaning on a cane. Nearby were his guards with Prince Charles, who was kneeling, white-faced, wrists and ankles tied, a rope around his neck.

Pembroke turned a bleak stare on Laurence, and shook his head in reproof. “I had planned that he would reign under my authority, after his father’s tragic accident. Alas, he watched the kill. That was your mistake, Mr. Beaumont. You ought to have kept him by your side.”

Trembling, Laurence drew his pistol from the holster of his saddle. “You’ll never get away with the murder of two kings.” He fired. The shot ricocheted off Pembroke’s cloak, as if he were wearing steel. Laurence gaped in terror as the speeding ball changed course, and plunged into the Prince’s breast.

Laurence jolted awake and tasted blood in his mouth. Exploring with his tongue, he identified the source: he had bitten into the tender flesh inside his lower lip. Dawn was breaking, and he could hear the Oxford bells chime seven.

Isabella slept on next to him, one shapely arm flung over the counterpane, her peaceful expression a contrast to his unquiet mind. He longed to rouse her and tell her about the nightmare and what had inspired it: how through the initial year of this civil war he had helped thwart a conspiracy to kill the King. It frustrated him that the criminal designs of Pembroke and Radcliff had to remain a strictly guarded secret: in Radcliff’s case, to protect his widow; and in Pembroke’s, because the King had chosen not to expose his former friend as a traitor. Yet what troubled Laurence far more was that in the domain of politics and intrigue he could not be open with the woman he loved. Isabella was still close to the man who had once been her guardian, the new Secretary of State, Lord George Digby, whom Laurence trusted no further than he could spit.

He sank back and nestled against her, inhaling the scent on her naked skin: attar of roses, orris root, musk, and frankincense; and a more animal trace, from their passion of the night before. Yesterday he had asked her a second time to marry him, and she had refused. “Must we fight everyone?” she had said. “That is what our marriage would entail.” He was prepared to fight. But was she?

“I opened Pandora’s box, and evil flew out,” Seward muttered, as he hurried along Merton Street. He could imagine what Beaumont would say: that he should not have upset himself by gazing again into the King’s future.

Passing Oriel College, he turned north, and threaded his way up to Broad Street, into St. Giles. As if in defiance of the war, Oxford was stirring to its usual business: traders were setting up their stalls, servants emptied slop buckets into the gutters, drovers plodded behind sheep and cattle, and carts rolled in loaded with hay from the countryside. Near the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, Seward’s path was blocked by a troop of laughing soldiers headed for their billets after night patrol on the city defences. He waited impatiently for them to go by, then carried on at a frantic pace up the Woodstock Road, dived into a side street, and arrived breathless at Mistress Savage’s house.

The door stood wide, and a young maidservant was sweeping the threshold. She stopped when she saw him, her broom in mid-air. “I am Doctor William Seward, of Merton College,” he panted. “I have urgent news for Mr. Beaumont.”

“Please sit in the parlour, sir,” she said, “and I’ll wake him.”

Seward fell into a chair, and mopped his brow with a corner of his cloak. A few minutes later, Beaumont ran down the stairs, his pale green eyes anxious and his inky hair tangled from sleep. He wore just his breeches, which hung dangerously low. Even agitated, Seward could not keep his own eyes from lingering on that smooth, olive-toned body, so youthful despite its many scars.