Kitabı oku: «The Beckoning Dream», sayfa 3

Chapter Three

Oh, the devil was in it that Hal Arlington had decided that William Grahame could best be snared by the wiles of a pretty woman so that, instead of carrying out this mission on his own, Stair was saddled with an actress who carped at his every word. And her every word was devoted to denying him her bed, which would have been the only thing that made having to drag Catherine around the Low Countries worthwhile!

The pox was on it that he had ever volunteered to try to turn Grahame at all! One last such junket, the very last, he had told Arlington and Sir Thomas, having at first refused to oblige them.

“I am seven years away from being a mercenary soldier for anyone to hire. If anyone deserves a quiet life, it is I. I have served my King both before his Restoration and after—as you well know.”

“The Dutch War goes badly—as you equally well know, Stair, and yours are the special talents we need.”

In a sense that had pained him, for were not those talents the ones that he had needed to survive in the penury which exile from England had forced upon him during the late usurper Cromwell’s rule? Cunning, lying, cheating and killing, yes, killing, for that was the soldier’s trade. Leading men in hopeless causes that he had won against all the odds, by using those same talents.

He thought that he had done with it, that he was now free to live a civilised life in peace. Not simply enjoying its ease, but also the pretty women to whom he need make no commitment, as well as music, the playhouse, books and the blessed quiet of his country estates, both in England and Scotland, when he was no longer at Court. Estates most fortunately restored to him when Charles II had come into his own again.

God knew, he no longer needed the money in order to survive. If he did this thing, he would do it for nothing, which, of course, Gower and Arlington also knew and was partly why they had asked him to be their agent in the Netherlands. As usual, the King’s Treasury was empty, and not needing to pay him would be a bonus.

So, he had agreed. Only to discover that they had also decided that he needed a woman to pose as his wife, and a pretty woman at that, skilled in seductive arts, for Grahame had a reputation for being weak where women were concerned.

“As a bird is caught by lime, so will he be caught by a pair of fine eyes,” Sir Thomas had said. “And we know the very doxy who will turn the trick for us.”

In consequence, he had found himself in his own proper person at the Duke’s Theatre, in company with Hal Arlington, trying to test the nerve of the young actress whom Sir Thomas knew that he could blackmail through her indiscreet and foolish brother.

And nerve she had, no doubt of it, by the way in which she had refused to let his unsettling jests with oranges, posies and gloves disturb her. She had also displayed a pretty wit, which she was now constantly exercising at his expense—except when she was seasick, that was.

Sir Stair Cameron, to be known in the Netherlands only as Tom Trenchard—Trenchard being his mother’s name, and Tom his own second Christian name—was leaning disconsolate over the packet’s side as it neared land, musing on his fate.

He lifted his face to feel the rain on it. Blessed, cleansing rain. By God, when this is over, he vowed, I shall refuse to engage in such tricks ever again, but now I must go below and help my disobliging doxy to ready herself to be on dry land again.

Tom did not reflect—for he never allowed the possibility of failure to trouble him—that having to take a young, untried woman with him might put his mission in hazard, even cause it to fail. He had made such a point to Gower and Bennet but they had dismissed it. And so, perforce, had he to do the same.

All the same, the idea was there, very like a worm that secretly eats away at the foundations of a seemingly secure house until at last it falls.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. No more mewling and puking over what was past and could not be changed, he told himself, no looking backwards, either. Forwards, ever forwards, was the motto his father had adopted on being made a baronet, and he would try to live up to it, as had always been his habit.

The day was growing late, and it was likely that they would not dock until the morning. Once on shore they would travel to Antwerp where they might, please God, find Grahame and finish the business almost before it was begun.

Time to go below to wake his supposed wife from her schnapps-induced sleep.

“Aye, that will do very well, mistress, very well, indeed,” announced Tom Trenchard approvingly. Catherine had dressed herself in a neat gown of the deepest rose. Its neckline was low and boat-shaped, but was modestly hidden by a high-necked jacket of padded pale mauve satin, trimmed with narrow bands of white fur, which reached the knee and was fastened with tiny bows of fine gold braid.

Round her slender neck was a small pearl necklace, and her hair, instead of being arranged in the wild confusion of curls popular at King Charles’s court, was modestly strained back into a large knot, leaving a fringe to soften her high forehead.

This had the effect of enhancing rather than diminishing the delicate purity of her face and profile.

For his part, Tom had also changed out of his rough and serviceable clothing. Although he was not pretending to be a bluff and conventional Dutch burgher, he looked less of a wild mercenary captain and more of a man who was able to conduct himself properly out of an army camp as well as in it.

He was wearing jacket and breeches of well-worn, but not threadbare, black velvet, trimmed with silver. His shirt was white, not a dirty cream, and he sported a white linen collar edged with lace that, if not rich, was at least respectable. His boots, as usual, were splendid. He had also shaved himself carefully so he looked less like the wild man of the woods, which Catherine had privately nicknamed him.

His hair was, for the first time since she had met him, carefully brushed and fell in deep red-gold waves to just below his ears. He carried a large steeple-crowned black hat with a pewter buckle holding its thin silver band.

The whole effect was impressive. No, he was not handsome, far from it, but he had a presence. The French had a saying, Catherine knew, that a woman of striking, but not beautiful looks, was jolie laide, which meant an ugly woman who was pretty or attractive in an unusual way. It could, she grudgingly admitted, be applied to Tom, who was better than handsome.

It did not mean that she liked him the more, simply that his brute strength attracted her more than the languor of the pretty gentlemen of King Charles’s court did. She had held them off when they had tried to tumble her into bed, and so she would hold off Tom. She would be no man’s whore, as she had told Sir Thomas Gower.

“Deep in thought?” offered Tom, who seemed to be a bit of a mind reader. “What interests you so much…wife…that you have just left me in spirit, if not in body?”

She would not be flustered. “Nothing, except that this morning, for the first time, I feel dry land firm beneath my feet again.”

Forty-eight hours ago they had docked at a wharf on the coast well outside Antwerp itself, which by the Peace of Westphalia was closed to shipping. Antwerp was not Dutch territory, being situated in Flanders, territory still under the heel of the Austrian Empire, and it was always known as the Austrian Netherlands. Being so near to Holland, it would be a useful place to work from—if one were careful.

Once safely on land again, Catherine had found the ground heaving beneath her feet as though she were still on the packet. It had needed Tom’s strong arms to steady her.

Today, however was a different matter. The inn at which they were staying was clean after a fashion that Catherine had never seen before. Its black-and-white tiled floors were spotless. A serving maid swept and washed them several times a day. The linen on her bed was not only white, but smelled sweet, as did the bed hangings. It was a far cry from the inns in which she had slept on the occasions when the players took to the roads in England.

The furniture in the inn was spare, but had been polished until it shone, as did the copper, pewter and silver dishes that adorned the table and sideboards. In the main inn parlour there was a mirror on one wall, and on the other hung a tapestry showing Jupiter turning himself into a swan in order to seduce Helen of Troy’s mother, Leda.

Few private houses in London boasted such trappings as this inn in Antwerp. Tom had told her that everywhere in the Low Countries might such wealth and such cleanliness be found—“We are pigs, by comparison, living in stys,” he had ended.

And now they were to visit the man whom Tom hoped would be their go-between with Grahame, one Amos Shooter, who might know where he was to be found. Early that morning, Tom had visited the address of the house that Sir Thomas Gower had given him as that of Grahame’s lodgings, but had been told that no one named William Grahame had ever lived there!

“Not true, of course,” Tom had said to her and Geordie, who was also tricked out like a maypole—his expression. “But this business is a woundy chancy game.”

Game! He called it a game! Catherine was beginning to think of it as a nightmare.

“Now for my second man. One I think that I might—just—trust.”

“Thought you trusted no one, master,” sniffed Geordie.

Tom ignored him. “We must look well-found,” he had ordered her. “Not as though we are beggars come to cadge money from a rich friend. Do not overdo matters, though. That would be equally suspicious. Do you not have a small linen cap that you might wear, mistress? Bare heads are for unmarried women.”

Catherine shook her head. “A pity, that,” he sighed. “Well, a good husband would be sure to buy his modest wife one, so we shall go to market tomorrow. Too late to go today!”

So, here they were, knocking at the stout oak door of a respectable red-brick mansion in Antwerp, not far from the market place, which was lined with medieval guild houses. It was opened by a fat, red-cheeked serving maid who bustled them through into a large room at the rear of the house, which opened on to a courtyard lined with flowers in terracotta tubs.

“Amos has done well, I see,” Tom whispered in Catherine’s ear as they followed the maid, for the house was even cleaner and better appointed than their inn. “I had heard that he had married wealth, but had not realised how much wealth. Ah, Amos, my old friend, we meet again,” he said as Amos, a man as large as Tom, came to meet them.

Amos’s welcome was warmer than Tom’s. He threw his arms around him and embraced him lustily. His wife, a pretty woman, plump and rosy, greeted Catherine much more sedately.

Embraces over, Amos held Tom at arm’s length, saying, “Old friend, you are larger than ever, and the world has treated you well enough, I see. And this is your wife? I thought you vowed that you’d never marry, Tom. Not after the beautiful Clarinda deceived you so!”

“Aye, Amos, but ’tis not only a woman’s prerogative to change one’s mind. This is my wife, Catherine, and yes, I thrive—a little. But not like you,” and he gave Amos a poke in his fair round belly. “You carried not that when we were comrades in arms together, nor were you so finely housed and clothed!”

“Oh, but that was long ago. I am quite reformed these days. I am a respectable merchant now—and it is all Isabelle’s doing.” He threw his arms around his blushing wife and gave her a loving kiss.

So, the beautiful Clarinda—whoever she might be—deceived him, did she? thought Catherine. She must have been a brave lass to manage that! But she ignored this interesting news for the time being, concentrating instead on talking of polite nothings in French to Isabelle.

Polite nothings, indeed, seemed to be the order of the day. Amos bade Isabelle see that food and wine were served to their unexpected guests, and then began a loud discussion of long-gone battles and skirmishes with Tom, as well as memories of comrades long dead.

Tom had volunteered to her earlier that the greatest virtue a successful agent needed was patience. It was, perhaps, just as well that Catherine had learned it in a hard school, for at first Tom talked of everything but anything connected with their mission. It was very pleasant, though, to sit and laze in this well-appointed room, drinking wine and eating what in Scotland were called bannocks, well buttered.

Was Tom lazing as he laughed and talked and drank the good red wine? Or was he picking up hints and notions from his idle gossip with his friend? Catherine could not be sure. Names were flying between him and Amos. Tom had told her earlier, before they had left the inn, that Amos had no true convictions and had always signed up with the side that paid him the most. “Republican or Royalist, Turk or Christian—all were the same to him.”

“And you?” she had asked him. “Were you like Amos?”

“Oh,” he had told her, giving her the white smile that transformed his face, “you shall tell me your opinion of that when this venture is successfully over.”

He was as slippery as an eel—which in this kind of an enterprise was almost certainly an advantage. Seeing him now, one booted leg extended, wine glass in hand, one might have thought that the only care he had in the world was to gossip with an old friend, chance met.

“And William Grahame,” Tom said at last. “What of him? I had heard that he had set up his household in Antwerp these days.”

Was it her imagination or did something in Amos Shooter’s bland, amiable face change? Did it harden a little so that something of the severe mercenary soldier that he had once been peeped through his genial merchant’s mask? If so, the expression was so fleeting that it was gone almost before Catherine had seen it. He was laughing again.

“William Grahame, Tom? I had not thought that you knew him. Not your sort of fellow.”

“True. I know him not. But I was told that he might be a useful man to make a friend of.”

“No doubt, no doubt. He lodges but a mile away from here. He wanders, I am told, from town to town. About his business. Whatever that might be.”

Did Amos Shooter truly not know aught of Grahame but his possible resting place? Both Tom and Catherine were asking themselves the same question, and getting the same answer. He did, but for whatever reason he was not admitting that he did.

Tom took a deep draught of wine—and changed the subject. The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Mistress Shooter showed Catherine around the courtyard, and then took her through a little gate into a garden where herbs and vegetables grew, and, in summer, fruit on a sheltered wall.

Before they returned indoors, she said in her fractured English that she had learned from Amos, “Your husband should not trust this man Grahame overmuch. I tell you for your own good.”

“Why?” asked Catherine, trying to look innocent, and succeeding. After all, she did not need to be a great actress for it to appear that she knew nothing—for that was true.

Isabelle Shooter shook her head at her. “I cannot tell you. I should not have said what I did. But you seem to be a good girl, even if your husband is perhaps not quite the jolly man he pretends to be.”

Like Amos, then, thought Catherine cynically. But I would never have called Tom jolly. But, of course, he had been a jolly man this afternoon.

She said no more—for to know when to be silent is as great a gift, if not greater, than the ability to talk well, her Dutch mother had once said—which had the result that, when they returned to the big living room, Isabelle was holding her affectionately by the hand. She said to Tom as they left, “You have a pretty little wife, sir. Take care of her, I beg you.”

“Now what brought that on?” Tom asked her once they were on their way back to the inn, Geordie walking behind them. He had spent a happy few hours in the servants’ quarters, and was rather the worse for drinking a great quantity of the local light and gassy beer, although he was still able to walk.

“What?” Catherine asked, although she knew perfectly well what he meant.

“Amos’s pretty wife holding you so lovingly by the hand?”

“She thought that I was an innocent, and needed protection. She told me that you were not to trust William Grahame overmuch.”

“Did she, indeed? Believe me, I have no intention of trusting him at all—or Amos, either. And…?”

“There is no and…She said nothing more. Other than that you seemed a jolly man, but she did not think that you were. That you were pretending to be.”

Tom stopped walking, with the result that the overset Geordie, his head drooping, walked into him and earned himself a few curses from Tom, before he answered her.

“Did she so? A wise lady, then. Which begs the question, that being so, if she were wise, why did she wed Amos?”

Catherine shrugged her shoulders. “Why does one marry anyone? For a hundred reasons—or none at all. And did the jolly Amos tell you where William Grahame might be found?”

“That he did. But he did not warn me, as his wife warned you. I fear that he may think me as devious as he is and that therefore I do not need warning. That bluff manner of his is not the true man.”

“So I thought. But you and I are not the true man or the true woman either. So we are all quits—except, perhaps, for Isabelle.”

Tom gave a great shout of laughter, which had the heads of the few passers-by turning to look at them, and Geordie absent-mindedly walking into him again.

“I can see I must watch my words, wife. You would make Will Wagstaffe a good secretary—the kind who embroiders his master’s words. There are many such around Whitehall. Why not in the playhouse?” He turned to throw a second set of oaths at Geordie for treading on his heels.

“Why not, indeed? And do not curse poor Geordie, for I swear that you probably drank more than he did.”

“Ah, but I hold it so much better. Remind me to teach you the trick of it.”

“I thank you, husband, but no. No man would wish a toping wife.”

“Well said, and now we are home again. We must begin our campaign by deciding on what to say and do when we at last meet the elusive Master Grahame. Battles are won by those whose planning is good, and lost by those who do not plan at all. Remember that.”

“As a useful hint to employ in the kitchen? My soldiers must be carrots and cabbages, all arranged properly in rows.”

Bantering thus, they reached their rooms, where Tom called for more drink, and some food to stay them for the morrow.

Well, thought Catherine later that night as he staggered to the bed that he had made no attempt to share with her, sharing the unfortunate Geordie’s instead, one thing was sure. Whatever Tom Trenchard might, or might not be, life with him was certainly never dull.

Nor did it so prove the next day. This time Catherine was told to dress more modestly, in an old grey gown, with a large shawl. On the way to the address that Amos had given them as that of William Grahame’s, Tom brought her a white linen matron’s cap, elegant with its small wings, and its lace frill that framed her face prettily even if it hid the dark glory of her hair.

Tom was soberly dressed too, in a brown leather jacket, coarse canvas breeches, his frayed cream shirt, and, of course, his beautiful boots. They were always constant! As was his black, steeple-crowned hat with its battered feather.

Geordie, their ghost, followed them. Since arriving in the Low Countries, he was wearing something that passed as a livery: a shabby blue jacket and breeches, grey woollen stockings and heavy, pewter-buckled shoes. He carried a large staff with a silver knob on the top. His sallow face was glummer than ever. One wondered why he served Tom at all since he seemed to take so little pleasure in the doing.

Tom had talked seriously to Catherine before they left. “Hal Arlington told me that Grahame has a weakness for pretty women. Now you are a pretty woman, but a married one, so if you are to attract him—and distract him—you must do so modestly. Killing looks from swiftly downcast eyes. A glance of admiration should he say something witty. Later, when you know him better, then you may go further.”

Catherine threw him a furious look. For the last few days she had been spending her time worrying over Tom seducing her, and all the time she had been brought along to try to seduce Grahame!

“And, pray, how far is that ‘further’ to be? Are you here to play pimp to my strumpet? For if so, I tell you plainly that you may be in love with your role, but I am certainly not about to play the part which you and your two masters have assigned to me.”

“No need for that,” Tom told her swiftly. “You are to tease him only. Draw him on. Nothing more.”

Distaste showed on Catherine’s face and rang in her voice. “And that is almost worse than going the whole way! To lure a poor devil on with hopes that you are never going to satisfy is more indecent than being an honest whore.”

“Your choice,” grinned Tom. “If you prefer being the honest whore…”

“Oh—” Catherine stamped her foot “—if I were not between a rock and a hard place so that Rob’s life depends on my complicity, I should take ship for England straightaway.”

“Well said, wife. I like a woman who knows the way of the world—so few do.”

“Oh…” Catherine let out a long breath. He was impossible, but there was no point in telling him so. So she didn’t.

After that, when he bought her the cap, she was minded not to thank him, but the expression on his hard face was so winning when he gave it to her, that she did so—even if a little ungraciously.

Grahame’s house turned out to be a small one-storied wooden building on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by vegetable gardens with a dirt road running through them. A boy was poling along a small flat boat loaded with cabbages on the small canal that ran parallel with the road.

“Not lodgings, I think,” Tom said thoughtfully as they left the road and walked up the path to the house through a neglected garden. “Something rented.” He looked around him. “It’s deathly quiet.”

He shivered. “Too quiet. I would have thought a man of Grahame’s persuasion would prefer to be lost in a crowded city than isolated here. Safer so.”

It was the first time, but not the last, that Catherine was to hear him say something which had an immediate bearing on what was about to happen—and of which he could not have known.

For, as they reached the door but before they could knock on it they heard, coming from inside, the noise of a violent commotion, and male voices shouting.

“What the devil!” exclaimed Tom—and pushed at the door, which was not locked and opened immediately. He strode in, Geordie behind him, pushing Catherine on one side, and telling her not to follow them but to wait outside.

An order that she immediately disobeyed.