Tidelands Read online

  The spit boy rose up from his truckle bed by the fireside. “Who’s there?”

  “Sssh, it’s me,” James said familiarly. “I didn’t know if anyone had remembered his sops in wine?”

  “What?”

  “The king. He takes bread and wine at midnight. Has anyone taken it up?”

  “No!” the boy exclaimed. “Lord! This is always happening. And his servers have gone to the inn, and the cook gone to bed.”

  “I’ll do it,” grumbled James. “I do everything.”

  “D’you have the key to the cellar? Shall I wake the groom of the servery: Mr. Wilson?”

  “No. The king doesn’t drink from your cellar. He has his own wine, in his own room. I have the key. You go back to sleep. I’ll serve him.”

  He took a glass and a decanter from the cupboard in the hall and walked up the stairs. The door to the king’s room was locked on the inside, but as he approached it across the creaking floorboards of the landing he heard the clock on St. Thomas’s Church strike midnight, and at the same time the sound of an oiled bolt sliding back. He felt a sense of complete elation. He was on the threshold of the king’s bedchamber, the king was opening the door, the boat was waiting. “This is triumph,” James thought. “This is what it feels like to win.”

  The king opened the door and peered out.

  “Clarion.” James said the password, and dropped to his knee.

  “Rise,” the king replied indifferently. “I’m not coming.”

  James turned an incredulous face up to the king. “Your Majesty?”

  The king stepped back into his room and beckoned James in, nodding that he should close the door. His lined face was bright: a cornered man getting the last laugh. “Not tonight.”

  “The porter is gone from the door. Your son, His Royal Highness, is waiting for you with his fleet. I’ve got a man under your window and another on the quay, a ship to take you to the prince. We’re safe to go now . . .”

  His Majesty waved it all aside. “Yes, yes. Very good, very good. But we’ll do it another day, if needs be. I have them on the run, you see. They’re bringing me an agreement.”

  James felt his head swim with dismay, and then he remembered the frightened man waiting under the king’s window. “I have to send some men away,” he said. “Men in danger, waiting for you. I can’t stay myself, if you’re not going to come. But I beg you to come, sire. This is your chance—”

  “I am making my own chances.” The king had already turned away. “You can go.”

  “I beg you,” James repeated. He heard his voice quaver and he flushed, shamed before his king. “Please, Sire . . . Her Majesty the Queen sent the money herself, for me to hire the ship. She commissioned me to rescue you. I am under her orders.”

  The king turned back, his smile vanished. “I don’t need rescuing,” he said irritably. “I am the best judge of my actions. I know what is happening. Her Majesty has nothing but a woman’s wit: she cannot know. They are coming to me on their knees with handsome proposals. The Scots’ invasion taught them that they have to make terms with me or next I will bring the Irish down on them. They have seen that the country rises up for me. They begin to understand my power; it is never-ending, it is eternal. They can win a thousand battles—but I still have the right. The parliament knows they cannot rule without a king. Without me.”

  James felt the rise of a treasonous rage. He wanted to lay hold of the man and drag him to safety. “Before God, Your Majesty, I swear that you should come now, and then you can negotiate from a place of safety, with your wife and son at your side. Their future depends on you, as does all of ours. However good the offer, whatever parliament promises you, you would be safest talking to them from France.”

  The king drew himself up. “I will never leave my kingdom,” he said firmly. “My kingdom can never leave me. God ordained I should be king. That cannot be set aside. We will come to an agreement, my subjects and I. I shall return to London and Her Majesty the Queen will join me there, at my palace at Whitehall. I shall not steal away like a thief in the night. Tell her that.” He nodded James to the door as if to dismiss him.

  “I cannot go without you! I swore!”

  “It is my command.”

  “Your Majesty, please!”

  Charles made a little gesture with his hand, a little cutting-off gesture. There was nothing James could do but leave: stepping carefully backwards as royal protocol demanded, never turning his back, going steadily until he felt the brass ring latch of the door press into his back, and he checked.

  “Your Majesty, I have risked my life to come for you,” he said quietly. “And a loyal man is waiting on the quayside to go with you to France. He has said good-bye to his own family and his country. He will go into exile with you and not leave your side till you are in safety. We have a boat, we will take you to your own son. He is waiting for you with his fleet on the high seas. Your safety and freedom are waiting. Your future—all of our futures—depends on you coming away now.”

  “I thank you for your service.” But the king had already seated himself and turned to his letters. “I am grateful. And when I come to my own again I will reward you. You can be sure of that.”

  James, thinking wildly that he would never be sure of anything, ever again, bowed low and went out of the room. As he stood on the shadowy landing he heard the door close quietly behind him and the bolt slide shut. He thought it was the most final noise he had ever heard, like the dull thud of an executioner’s axe through a neck and onto the block.

  Downstairs, in the street, the nameless man flinched like a frightened dog when he saw the figure come from the darkened doorway. “Your Majesty,” he breathed, and dropped to his knee.

  “Get up, it’s me.” James pushed up the brim of his hat to show his face. “He won’t come.”

  “Mother of God!”

  “Come on,” James whispered. “Back to the inn.”

  They went swiftly, by a circuitous route, down the dark alleyways and then along the quayside to fetch their comrade from his hidden doorway. The three of them slipped in the unlocked front door, and into the dining room. As soon as the door was shut, James pulled off his hat and threw down his cloak. He flung himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

  “Why didn’t you make him come?” one of the men demanded.

  “How?”

  “Christ! You should have told him!”

  “I did.”

  “Doesn’t he know the danger he’s in? That we’re in? How could he let us go through all this for him, and then not come? We’ve been planning this for weeks!”

  “Months. He thinks they will make an agreement.”

  “Why didn’t you insist?”

  “He’s the king. What could I say?”

  “When parliament comes, what if they can’t agree?”

  “He’s sure they will,” James said through his clenched teeth. “I begged him to come. I warned him. I did everything that I could. He was determined. I pray to God that he’s right.”

  “But why not come? Why run away from imprisonment at Hampton Court, breaking his word of honor, his parole, but not run from here? When we’ve got a ship waiting and his son at sea?”

  “In the name of God, I don’t know!” James swore, driven to despair. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was the right thing, the safest thing, the only thing for him to do. But how could I make him come! How could I?”

  The second man had not taken off his hat, nor even unfastened his cloak. “I’m off,” he said savagely. “I won’t do this again. Don’t try to find me or invite me. Don’t call on me for help. This has been a night I won’t repeat. This is my last time. I am finished in his cause. He has lost me. I cannot serve him. They warned me he was changeable and talkative as a woman. But I would never have thought he would let his friends, men sworn to his cause, stand in the street in mortal danger while he chose not to bother.”

  James nodded in silence as the man let him