Tidelands Read online

  And would he not be certain to remember the gentlemen and ladies who had called upon him in his time of troubles? Would he not reward those who had invited him to visit, stretching his parole in lengthy jaunts around the island, sent him game from their estates, fruit from their forcing houses? Would he not repay those favored few who had ridden with him in the enormous lumbering royal coach which had been shipped with such trouble, to block the narrow lanes of the island? When he was Charles the king again, would he not be obliged to remember those who had treated him with the most obsequious respect when he had been Charles the prisoner?

  Mr. Hopkins’s house was as easy to enter as the royal court had been in the grand old days in London, when any wealthy man might walk in to gaze on his monarch and the royal family. The king believed that his dinner table should be on view in his dining hall, as an altar should be on view in church. There was divinity in both. Here in Newport, although there was a brace of guards on each door, they did not challenge anyone: if a man was richly dressed, he could enter. The king was free to come and go as he wished, bound only by his given word not to leave the island. The street outside was crowded all the day with gorgeously dressed well-wishers, parading up and down the freshly swept cobbles, remarking loudly on the simplicity of the town and the poverty of the buildings, besieged by common people wanting a glimpse of a man who claimed to be semidivine, constantly circled by beggars and the sick. King Charles was famous for the healing powers of his long white fingers. A sick man or woman could kneel before him and be restored with one light touch of the hand and a whispered blessing. No one was refused access to the king’s powers. Already a young woman was claiming that he had cured her blindness with his divine grace. Everyone knew that the king was not a mortal man. He had the holy oil on his sacred breast, he was the descendant of ordained kings, he was only one step down from the angels.

  James took care to keep the boys away from the sickly paupers, and paid a guard a small coin to allow them to stand below the window where, they were assured, the king was studying papers sent from parliament. Everyone said that the parliamentary commissioners would arrive within the week and they would work through the many clauses of an agreement with the king so that he might return to his throne and rule with the consent of the houses of parliament. Now the Scots were defeated, the king and parliament would have to agree: he had lost his last gamble. He would always be king, but no longer could he impose his will on the people. Finally, he would have to come to an accord. Peace—after two civil wars—would come to the country and the court.

  The boys waited, craning their necks to look up at the overhanging window; the church bells of Newport started to chime all around the town for six o’clock. There was an excited murmur among the crowd, one side of the leaded window swung open, and the graying head of the King of England poked out. Charles looked down at the people waiting below, he smiled wearily, and raised one heavily ringed hand.

  “Is that him?” Rob asked, the nephew of an army man, born and bred a roundhead, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice.

  “It is,” James confirmed, pulling his hat from his head and looking upwards, hoping to feel a flush of loyalty, of passionate devotion, but experiencing nothing but anxiety.

  “No crown?”

  “Only when he’s on the throne, I think.”

  “Then how can you be sure it’s him?” Rob persisted. “Without a crown? Could be anybody.”

  James did not say that at his seminary the novices had been shown portrait after portrait of the dark tragic face of the king to assist in their prayers for his safety. He did not say that he had dreamed of the day when the complicated conspiracy would finally fall into place with loyalists on the island, the Prince of Wales’s fleet waiting offshore, and a loyal ship’s captain engaged to sail at midnight with a mystery passenger. “I suppose I just know,” was all he said. “Nobody else would wave from his window.”

  “Hurrah!” Walter suddenly jumped up and down and waved. “Hurrah!”

  The heavy-lidded eyes turned towards the sudden cheer and the king raised his hand again to acknowledge the boy’s fervent loyalty. Then he withdrew, the window was slammed shut, and the shutters closed.

  “That’s it?” Rob asked.

  “Same every day,” a woman beside them answered him. “God bless him. And I come every day to see his sainted face.”

  “We’ll go to dinner,” James said, before the three of them attracted any attention. “Come on.”

  They went back to the Old Bull on the Street, where James had reserved private rooms, and James ordered a hearty dinner for the two boys, allowing them each a glass of wine. “I’m going out while you eat,” he said. “I want to take a look around and find a ship to take us home tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Can’t we come?” Walter asked. “I want to look around too.”

  “I’ll come back for you,” James promised. “We can walk through the market and along the riverside before we go to bed.” He pulled his hat low over his face and went out.

  The streets were still busy as he went down the narrow lanes to the harbor and looked at the boats bobbing at the quayside. The dull clatter of the cleats against the wooden masts reminded him of all the other quaysides, of the many ships in his young life of constant traveling. Every port had the same rattle of rigging, just as every town had an hourly carillon of church bells. He thought that one day he might have lived so long at peace that he would be able to hear it without knowing that it called him to secret dangerous work. He hoped that one day he might hear it without dread.

  “Is there a ship, the Marie, in port?” he asked a man, who was pushing past him with a coil of rope under his arm.

  “Come and gone,” the man said shortly. “Were you meeting her?”

  “No,” James said, lying instantly. “I thought she was always here.”

  “Because if you had been meeting her, I would have told you that the master told everyone that he would not meet his good friend after all, and he set sail this morning.”

  “Oh,” James said. A small coin found its way from his pocket to the waiting hand. The man hefted his rope and started to go on.

  “Any idea how I can hire another ship?”

  “Ask ’em,” he said unhelpfully, and pushed past.

  James paused for a moment, almost winded by the disastrous news. Everything had depended on the ship sailing at midnight, as they had agreed, but now the ship had failed him. His only comfort was that the openness of the failure probably showed that they were not detected. The master had cold feet at the thought of rescuing the King of England, and had set sail, but he had not been arrested. The plot could still go on with a new ship. James would have to find a master so loyal to the king that he would take the risk, or so easily bought that he would do it for money. James looked up and down the quayside and thought that there was no way of judging, no way even to ask the question without running into terrible danger.

  He did not dare to draw attention to himself, going up and down the quayside before dinner. He thought he had better come back later, stroll around the quayside taverns, find a way to have a more discreet conversation. He closed his eyes for a moment so that he would not see the forest of masts. His life had been on a knife-edge for so long that another venture did not excite him. He just felt bone-weary. More than anything he wanted this rescue to be successfully done, and all over. He did not even anticipate a sense of triumph tomorrow. He had set his heart on freeing the king, he had set his name to contracts and letters, and he had set himself to the task. He was faithful; and he thought that God would guide him, so he turned from the harbor to make his way back to Mr. Hopkins’s house. The door, set into the rear garden wall, was unlocked and unguarded, and James slipped into the darkened garden and went quietly towards the kitchen door, which stood open for the cool evening air.

  It was chaos inside. The king was a picky eater, but his importance had to be advertised by serving twenty different dis