The Beckoning Dream

This seemed neither here nor there, and its relevance to poor Rob seemed questionable, but doubtless there was some point to this that escaped her. The lounging man was fidgeting again.

Sir Thomas gave him a benevolent stare. “Patience, Tom Trenchard, patience. We are almost at the heart of the matter.”

“Oh, excellent,” drawled Tom Trenchard, mocking Sir Thomas’s earlier remark. “I had thought that we were trapped in the outworks for ever.”

This time Catherine favoured him with a close examination, particularly since Sir Thomas was allowing him more freedom than was usually given to an underling. The principal thing about him was that he was big, much bigger than any of the men in Betterton’s company.

His shoulders were broad, his hands large, and he appeared to be at least six feet in height. His hair, his own, was of a burning red gold—more gold than red. It was neither long like the wigs of the King’s courtiers, nor cropped short like one of Cromwell’s Roundheads, but somewhere in between. It was neither straight nor curly, but again, was also somewhere in between, waving slightly.

His clothes were rough and serviceable. His shirt had been washed until it was yellow, and the weary lace at his throat and wrists was darned. His boots were the best thing about him, but even they were not those of a court gallant. Neither was his harsh and craggy face.

She already knew that he was mannerless, and he gave off the ineffable aura of all the soldiers whom she had ever met, being wild, but contained. Or almost contained. He saw her looking at him, and nodded thoughtfully. “You will know me again, mistress, I see.”

“Do I need to?” Catherine countered, and then to Sir Thomas, “Forgive me, sir, for allowing my attention to stray,” for she knew that the great ones of this world required all attention to be on them, and not on such lowly creatures as she judged herself and the lounging man to be.

He forgave her immediately. “Nay, mistress, you do well to inspect Master Trenchard. You will have much to do with him. As you have not denied either your loyalty, or your knowledge of Dutch, I am putting it to you, mistress, that you might oblige us by accompanying him to the Netherlands, there to use your skills as a linguist and as an actress. You will join him in an enterprise to persuade one William Grahame, who has done the state some service in the past, to bring off one final coup on our behalf.

“William Grahame has indicated to us that he is in a position to give us information about the disposition of the Dutch army and their fleet. He has also said that he will only do so to an emissary of my office who will meet him in the Low Countries at a place of his choosing. Once he has passed this information to us, and not before, your final task will be to bring him safely home to England again. He is weary of living abroad.”

He beamed at her as he finished speaking. Tom Trenchard grunted, mannerless again, “And so we reach the point—at long last.”

“Tom’s grasp of diplomacy is poor, I fear,” explained Sir Thomas needlessly. Catherine had already gathered that. She was already gathering something else, something which might help Rob, even before Sir Thomas mentally ticked off his next point.

“You must also understand, mistress, that success in this delicate matter—if you agree to undertake it—would prove most beneficial when the case of Master Robert Wood comes to trial—if it comes to trial, that is. The likelihood is that, with your kind co-operation, it will not.”

“And if I refuse?” returned Catherine.

“Why then, alas, Master Robert Wood will pay the price for his folly on the headsman’s block on Tower Hill.”

“And if I accept, but fail, what then?” asked Catherine.

“Why then, you all fail. Master Tom Trenchard, Mistress Catherine Wood and Master Robert Wood. Such may—or may not be—God’s will. Only He proposes and disposes.”

“Although Sir Thomas Gower makes a good fist of imitating Him,” drawled Tom Trenchard. “Particularly since it will not be his head on the plate handed to King Herod, whatever happens.”

So there it was. The price of Rob’s freedom was that she undertake a dangerous enterprise—and succeed in it.

“I have agreed with Master Betterton—” Catherine began, but Sir Thomas did not allow her to finish.

“Nay, mistress. I understand that Master Wagstaffe’s masterpiece has its last showing tonight—at which you will, of course, be present to play Belinda.

“Moreover, Master Betterton would not, if asked by those who have the power to do so, refuse to release you for as long as is necessary. Particularly on the understanding that, when you return, you shall be the heroine of Master Wagstaffe’s proposed new play—The Braggart Returns, or, Lackwit Married. I look forward to seeing it.”

This time the look Sir Thomas gave her was that of a fellow conspirator in a plot that had nothing to do with his bully, Trenchard, or with William Grahame in the Netherlands. Unwillingly, Catherine nodded.

“To save Rob, I will agree to your demands.” She had been left with no choice, for Sir Thomas had not one hold over her but two. The greater, of course, was his use of Rob to blackmail her. The lesser was his knowledge of who Will Wagstaffe really was.

And it was also most likely sadly true that the only reason why the authorities—or rather Sir Thomas Gower—had ordered poor Rob to be arrested was to compel her to be their agent and their interpreter.

“That is most wise of you, Mistress Wood. Your loyalty to King Charles II does you great credit.”

To which Catherine made no answer, for she could not say, Be damned to King Charles II, I do but agree to save Rob’s neck. Tom Trenchard saw her mutinous expression and read it correctly.

“What, silent, mistress?” he drawled. “No grand pronouncements of your devotion to your King?”

“Quiet—but for the moment. And I have nothing to say to you. Tell me, Sir Thomas, in what capacity will I accompany Master Trenchard here?”

“Why, as his wife, who fortunately speaks Dutch—and French. You are an actress, mistress. Playing the wife should present you with no difficulties.”

“Playing the husband will offer me none,” interjected Tom meaningfully.

“And that is what I fear,” returned Catherine robustly. “I will not play the whore in order to play the wife. You understand me, sir, I am sure.”

“I concede that you have a ready tongue and have made a witty answer,” drawled Tom. “And I can only reply alas, yes, I understand you! Which may not be witty, but has the merit of being truthful.”

“Come now,” ordered Sir Thomas, “you are to be comrades, as well as loving husband and wife. Moreover, once in the Low Countries you are both to be noisily agreed in supporting the Republicans who wish to replace the King with a Cromwellian successor. Master Trenchard will claim to be a member of that family which followed the late Oliver so faithfully.

“And you, being half-Dutch, will acknowledge the Grand Pensionary, John De Witt, to be your man, not King Charles’s nephew, the powerless Stadtholder.” He paused.

“As a dutiful wife,” remarked Catherine demurely, “I shall be only too happy to echo the opinions of my husband.”

Tom Trenchard’s chuckle was a rich one. “Well said, mistress. I shall remind of you that—frequently.”

Sir Thomas smiled benevolently on the pair of them. “I shall inform you both of the details of your journey. You will travel by packet boat to Ostend and from thence to Antwerp in Flanders where you may hope to find Grahame—if he has not already made for Amsterdam, where I gather he has a reliable informer.

“You will, of course, follow him to Amsterdam, if necessary. You will send your despatches—in code—to my agent here, James Halsall, the King’s Cupbearer. He will pass them on to me.

“You will pose as merchants buying goods who are sympathetic towards those unregenerate Republicans who still hold fast against our gracious King. To bend William Grahame to our will is your main aim—because like all such creatures he plays a double game. Why, last year he sold all the Stadtholder’s agents in England to us, and now word hath it that the Stadtholder hath rewarded him with a pension—doubtless for selling our agents to him.

“Natheless, he is too valuable for us to carp at his dubious morals, and if gold and a pardon for his past sins brings him home to us with all his information—then so be it, whether there be blood on his hands, or no.”

Sir Thomas was, for once, Catherine guessed, dropping his pretence of being a benevolent uncle, and doing so deliberately in order to impress on her the serious nature of her mission. She heard Tom Trenchard clapping his hands and laughing at Sir Thomas’s unwonted cynicism.

She turned to stare at him. He was now slouched down in his chair, his feral eyes alight, one large hand slapping his coarse brown breeches above his spotless boots. The thought of spending much time in the Netherlands alone with him was enough to eat away at her normal self-control.

“It seems that only a trifle is needed to amuse you, Master Trenchard. I hope that you take heed of what I told you. I go to Holland as your supposed wife, not as your true whore. Remember that!”

“So long as you do, mistress, so long as you do.”

The insolent swine was leering at her. He might not, by his dress, be one of King Charles’s courtiers, but he certainly shared their morals. It did not help that Sir Thomas’s smile remained pasted to his face as he informed her that she was to pack her bag immediately, and be ready to leave as soon as Tom Trenchard called on her.

“Which will not be until after your last performance tonight. And then you will do as Tom bids you—so far as this mission is concerned, that is.”

Catherine ignored the possible double entendre in Sir Thomas’s last statement. Instead, looking steadily at him, she made one last statement of her own.

“I may depend upon thee, Sir Thomas, that should I succeed, then my brother’s safety is assured.”

“My word upon it, mistress. And I have never broke it yet.”

“Bent it a little, perhaps,” added Tom Trenchard, disobligingly, viciously dotting Sir Thomas’s i’s for him, as appeared to be his habit.

Catherine, after giving him one scathing look, ignored him. She thought again that he was quite the most ill-favoured man she had ever seen, with his high forehead, strong nose, grim mouth and determined jaw. Only the piercing blue of his eyes redeemed him.

She addressed Sir Thomas. “I may leave, now? After the commotion your tipstaffs made, my neighbours doubtless think that I, like my brother, am lodged in the Tower. I should be happy to disoblige them.”

“Indeed, mistress. I shall give orders that your brother be treated tenderly during his stay in the Tower, my word on it.”

And that, thought Catherine, is as much, if not more, than I might have hoped. She gave Sir Thomas a giant curtsy as he waved her away. “Tell one of the footmen who guard the door to see thee home again, mistress,” being his final words to her.

She had gone. Tom Trenchard rose to his feet, and drawled familiarly at Sir Thomas, “Exactly as I prophesied after I toyed with her at the play. The doxy has a ready wit and a brave spirit. I hope to enjoy both.”

He laughed again when the wall hanging behind Sir Thomas shivered as Black Wig, otherwise Hal Bennet, m’lord Arlington, emerged from his hiding place where he had overheard every word of Catherine’s interrogation.

“The wench will do, will she not?” said m’lord. “She may have been the fish at the end of your line, Thomas, but you had to play her carefully lest she landed back in the river again. I observe that you did not directly inform her that she is to use her female arts on Grahame to persuade him to turn coat yet once more—he being a noted womaniser. That may be done by Master Trenchard in Flanders or Holland—wheresoever you may find him!”

He swung on Tom Trenchard, otherwise Sir Stair Cameron, who was now pouring himself a goblet of wine from a jug on a side-table. “She knew thee not, Stair, I trust?”

“What, in this Alsatian get-up?” mocked Stair, referring to the London district where the City’s criminals congregated. “I doubt me whether she could have recognised the King himself if he were dressed in these woundy hand-me-downs.”

“Well suited for your errand in the Netherlands, Stair. None there would take you for the King’s friend, rather the King’s prisoner.”

“Or the friend of m’lord Arlington who turned the Seigneur de Buat away from the Grand Pensionary and towards the Peace party—which cost Buat his head,” riposted Stair.

Arlington’s reply to his friend was a dry one. “His fault, Stair. He was careless, and handed the Pensionary a letter from me, not meant for the Pensionary’s eyes. Do you take care, man. No careless heroics—nor careful ones, either.”

Stair Cameron bowed low, sweeping the floor with his plumed hat that had been sitting by his feet.

“An old soldier heeds thee, m’lord. My only worry is the lady. She may, once she knows what her part in this is, take against Grahame and refuse to enchant him. Furthermore, playing the heroine at the Duke of York’s Theatre is no great matter, and coolness shown on the boards might not mean coolness on life’s stage when one’s head might be loose on one’s shoulders. We shall see.”

Arlington dropped his jocular mode and flung an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “If aught goes amiss, Stair, and the heavens begin to fall on thee, then abandon all, and come home. Abandon Grahame to the Netherlanders if you have cause to suspect his honesty. Let the wolves have the wolf—we owe him nothing.”

“And the lady?”

Arlington looked at Sir Thomas Gower, who shrugged his shoulders. “Deal with her as common sense suggests. She is there not only to seduce Grahame, but to help you with your supposed insufficient Dutch and to give an air of truth to your claim to be a one-time solder turned merchant. You will both claim to have Republican leanings and in consequence are happy to spend some time in God’s own Republic—which is the way in which the Netherlanders speak of Holland.”

Stair toasted Arlington with an upraised goblet. “Well said, friend, and I swear to you that I shall try to persuade the Hollanders that I am God’s own soldier—however unlikely that is in truth.”

Arlington ended the session with a clap of laughter. “The age of miracles is back on earth, Stair, if thou and God may be mentioned in the same breath. Forget that—and come home safely with Grahame and the lady in thy pocket. Great shall be thy reward—on earth, if not in heaven.”

Stair Cameron bowed low again. “Oh, I beg leave to doubt that, Hal. From what I know of our revered King Charles and his empty Treasury, I shall have to wait for heaven. What I do I do for you, and our friendship. Let that be enough.”

Sir Thomas Gower, who had poured a drink for himself and Arlington, had the final word. “Long live friendship, then. A toast to that, and to the King’s Majesty.”

Chapter Two

Catherine Wood, posing as Mistress Tom Trenchard, hung over the packet boat’s side, vomiting her heart up. A spring crossing from London to Ostend was frequently unpleasant, and this one was no exception.

Nothing seemed to have gone right since the afternoon on which Tom Trenchard had called at her door to escort her to the docks. His appearance was as fly-by-night as it had been forty-eight hours before in Sir Thomas Gower’s office. Behind him stood an equally ill-dressed manservant who had been pulling a little wagon on which Tom’s two battered trunks rested.

The day was cold and a light drizzle had begun to fall. Tom was sporting a much darned cloak about his shoulders: it suitably matched his shabby lace. He leaned a familiar shoulder on the door post, grinning down at her from his great height.

“Well, mistress, do you intend to keep me standing in the rain forever? A true wife would invite her husband in.”

“I am not your true wife, sir,” Catherine riposted coldly, “but natheless you may come in.” As Tom removed his hat in order to enter, she added, “Do you intend your man to remain outside growing wet whilst his master enjoys the fireside indoors? He may sit with my serving maid in the kitchen.”

Tom was nothing put out. “Ah, a kind wife, I see, who considers the welfare of her husband’s servants, as well as her husband. Do as the mistress bids, Geordie.”

Geordie doffed a much-creased hat whose broad brim drooped to his shoulders. “And the trunks, Mistress Trenchard, may they come in, too?” He was so ill-shaven that it was difficult to tell whether he was as poorly favoured as his master.

Catherine nodded assent and followed Tom in. He was already seated before the hearth, and was pulling off his beautiful boots.

“You have made yourself at home, I see.” Catherine could not help being acid. He was here on sufferance, solely because she was being blackmailed into doing something which she had no wish to do, in order to save her silly brother’s life, and Tom was already behaving like the master of the house.

He must learn—and learn soon—that he could take no liberties with her. Alas, his next words simply went to prove that he had every intention of doing so. “Look you, Mistress Wood, or rather, Mistress Trenchard, from this moment on you are my wife, and what is a wife’s is her husband’s for him to do as he pleases with. If you are to pass as my wife without attracting comment, then I suggest that you remember that. A tankard of ale would not come amiss, wife.”

Oh, it was plain that the next few weeks—pray God that they were not months—were going to be difficult ones, if the start of this misbegotten venture was a sample of her future! Unwillingly, Catherine bobbed a mocking curtsy at him in a broad parody of a stage serving maid before bustling into the kitchen to do as she was bid. She could hear him laughing as she stage-exited right, as it were.

Once in the kitchen, she found that Geordie had made himself at home also, and was not only drinking her good ale, but was eating a large slice from a freshmade loaf, liberally spread with new-churned butter. At least he showed a little gratitude, pulling a greasy forelock and offering her a bobbing bow.

The whole effect was spoiled a little by his bulging cheeks and eyes as he stuffed more bread into his mouth. Plainly Master Tom Trenchard did not feed his servant well.

Tom accepted the ale she handed him as his due—waving her to a seat by her own fireside as though the house were already his. From what pigsty had he graduated to arrive at King Charles’s court? If he were from the court, that was. His rank and standing seemed dubious to say the least.

By his clothes he was virtually penniless, some sort of hireling, called in to serve the nation’s spymaster—for that was surely Sir Thomas Gower’s office. Yet Sir Thomas had treated him almost as an equal, and he had not hesitated to mock at Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas had said that they would pose as merchants. He seemed an unlikely merchant.

So, was he a gentleman down on his luck? And what matter if he were not? These days gentlemen were as nastily rapacious where women were concerned as their supposed inferiors, and at Whitehall the courtiers, led by such debauchees as m’lord Rochester, were the nastiest of all. No woman was safe with them. It would be as well to remember that.

“You are very quiet, wife? What ails you? A silent woman is a lusus naturae—almost against nature.”

“I mislike sentences which assume that all women are the same woman. Men would not care to be told that because some men are dissolute rakes, then all must be so.”

“Oh, wittily spoken—good enough for Master Wagstaffe, I vow. Tell me, my dear wife, does reciting the well-found words of learned playwrights result in your own lines in real life becoming as witty as theirs?”

Catherine widened her eyes. “La, sir, your intelligence quite overthrows me! Let me try to enlighten you. Am I, then, to suppose that Sir Thomas Gower and Lord Arlington’s wisdom must transfer itself to you when you frequent their company?

“I see little sign of that; on the contrary, you maintain your usual coarse mode of speech. From this I deduce that my wit is therefore my own, and not the consequence of mixing with the geniuses who frequent the Duke’s Theatre, be they actors or scribblers.”

Tom was laughing as she finished, and before she could stop him he had put a large arm around her waist and hefted her on to his knee. “Shrew!” he hissed affably into her ear. “It is a good thing that you are not my true wife or you might earn a lesson in civility. As it is, let this serve.”

He tipped her backwards and began to kiss her without so much as a by your leave, just like the rapacious gentlemen whose conduct she had just been silently lamenting. First he saluted each cheek, and then her mouth became his target.

The devil of it was that she would have expected him to be fierce and brutal in such forced loving, but no such thing. His mouth was as soft and gentle as a man’s could be, stroking and teasing, rather than assaulting her, so that her treacherous body began to respond to him!

Fortunately, just when Catherine’s senses were beginning to betray her, he loosed her a little to free his right hand, and her common sense immediately reasserted itself. Wrestling away from him, she broke free—to slide from his lap to the ground, and found herself facing his man Geordie, who wandered in still chewing as though he had not eaten for a week.

“I gave you no leave to do that, sir,” she told him severely.

“Oho, that were quick work, master,” Geordie announced, spewing crumbs around him, “not that one expects slow work when an actress is your doxy.”

Catherine picked herself up from the floor and slapped the face, not of her unwanted would-be lover, but of his servant.

“Fie and for shame,” she cried, “after I have warmed and fed you. I gave him no leave to kiss me, nor you to call me doxy.”

“Bonaroba, rather,” suggested Tom from behind her, using Alsatian slang to describe a whore.

Enraged, Catherine swung round and boxed his ears, too. “We might as well start as we mean to go on,” she announced. “I will not allow liberties to my person at your hands, nor liberties about my person from his tongue. You, sir, are a hedge captain, and your servant is naught but a cullion who needs to acquire a wash as well as manners.”

Tom was openly laughing at her defiance. “Well, I at least am clean,” he told her smugly. And, yes, that at least was true as she had discovered when trapped on his knee. His clothes might be shabby but his body smelled of yellow soap and lemon mixed.

“Oh, you are impossible, both of you,” she raged. “Like master, like man. How am I to endure this ill-begotten enterprise in such unwanted company?”

“By accepting that, for the duration of it, we are man and wife, and Geordie is our only servant.” Tom’s tone was suddenly grave.

“I may not take my woman with me, then?”

“Indeed, not. The fewer who know anything of us, the better.”

“But Geordie—” and Catherine’s voice rose dangerously “—is to be relied on?”

“Very much so. We have been to the wars together, and he has twice saved my life.”

To her look of disbelief at the mere idea of such a scarecrow saving anything, Geordie offered a brief nod. “True enough, mistress. Only fair to say that he saved mine more times than that.”

“I trust him,” said Tom belligerently, “and so must you. Your life may depend on it.”

“Oh, in this ridiculous brouhaha everyone’s life depends on someone else,” declaimed Catherine bitterly. “Mine on you, yours on me, and both of us on Geordie, and poor Rob’s life depends on all three of us. It’s better than a play. No, worse than a play, for no play would be so improbable.”

“You’re the actress, so you should know,” was Tom’s response to that. “In real life, my dear, everyone does depend on everyone else. ’Tis but the condition of fallen man.”