Page 48 of The King’s Man (Guardians of the Crown #2)

T o her surprise, Thamsine encountered little opposition in her request to see Thurloe and she was shown through to his rooms with no questions.

Thurloe looked up from the paper he had been writing as she entered and ran the quill through his fingers as he looked her up and down.

‘Well, well, Mistress Granville. What a pleasant surprise. You’re sadly missed by Mistress Skippon.’

Thamsine swallowed. ‘My disappearance was not my choice,’ she said defensively.

‘Lovell has told me. A domestic matter, I believe. All resolved now I trust?’

‘Not entirely.’

Thurloe studied her for a moment before speaking.

‘I was told you had a message for me. Is there some reason why Lovell couldn’t come in person?’

‘He had an encounter with some footpads last night,’ she lied.

‘And he didn’t come off well?’

‘No.’

‘That’s unusually careless of him. He is quite capable of taking much better care of himself.’ Thurloe’s eyes took on the hooded, predatory look she recognised from their previous encounters. ‘Convenient for him though. What is the message?’

‘Before I give it to you, I want your assurance that this work is a discharge of the debt I owe you.’

Thurloe’s face betrayed nothing. ‘Mistress Granville, what gives you the right to start making demands of me?’

‘I know what Lovell has been doing for you. The message I bear is the key to the whole operation. He told me it was of sufficient gravity for you to consider my work in delivering it a discharge of that duty.’

‘Indeed? How presumptuous of him.’ Thurloe raised an eyebrow. ‘Does it concern a meeting?’

‘Yes.’

Thurloe nodded. ‘Very well, consider your debt discharged, Mistress Granville. Now, the message, please.’

She repeated Kit’s message and Thurloe, his fingertips pressed together, nodded approvingly.

‘You’ve done well, Mistress Granville. You may give Captain Lovell a message from me.

Firstly, you must tell him that the arrangements must go ahead as described.

You may also tell him that if he is right and there is a satisfactory conclusion to this matter, then his debt to me will also be considered discharged. ’

‘What is your hold over him?’ Thamsine asked.

‘That is between Captain Lovell and myself, Mistress Granville. Now, good day to you.’

Thamsine hesitated at the door. ‘Lovell,’ she said, turning back to look at him. ‘My name is Lovell. We were married a week ago.’

Thurloe’s eyes widened with genuine surprise. ‘Indeed? I had not thought of Lovell as the marrying kind. I must say, you seem ideally suited to each other. Good day to you … ’ he paused and the corners of his mouth twitched. ‘Mistress Lovell.’

***

Thamsine stood at the window of Kit’s bed chamber watching the tall, lanky figure of the schoolteacher, Vowells, striding away from the Ship Inn, his head lowered against the cold rain.

He carried with him the details of a meeting that night.

A meeting that would probably mean his death.

She turned to her husband, her eyes flashing silent accusations.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’ Kit turned his head away.

‘You’ve sent him to his death. How do you live with yourself?’ When he didn’t reply, Thamsine sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘We had a bargain. I want to hear the whole story.’

‘My confession?’

‘If that is how you wish to put it.’

Kit laid his good arm across his forehead. ‘I’m Thurloe’s agent because I am a coward, Thamsine. Well, partly because I am a coward. The second reason is probably more honourable.’

Thamsine leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. ‘Go on.’

‘After Worcester … ’ He broke off and sighed. ‘I was wounded at Worcester, badly wounded. I was lucky to survive. It was only because the wife of one of the sergeants took pity on me that I survived.’

‘Was she pretty?’ Thamsine smiled.

‘No, she wasn’t,’ Kit snapped. ‘She was as wide as she was tall and as strong as any man. I was in no position to argue with her. I survived and found myself in a hellhole. No other word for it, Thamsine. I had ample cause to regret that I had not died and I prayed for death because it seemed the only release. That’s how Thurloe found me.

He promised me liberty and offered a means of persuasion that could not be resisted. ’

‘Did he torture you?’

Kit shook his head. ‘He didn’t need to, Tham. He knew I would acquiesce.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he held my brother. Did I mention I had a brother?’

Thamsine nodded.

Kit’s lips tightened. ‘Like you and your brother, Daniel and his sister, Frances, are the children of my father’s second marriage. Daniel would be twenty-one now. Frances is two years younger.’

‘They’re both alive?’

‘Frances lives with her mother and my grandfather at Eveleigh Priory. Eveleigh was one of the last sieges of the war. My father and I held it for two months before Parliament’s troops took it by storm.

The house was largely destroyed, my father killed, and I was taken prisoner.

They released me in ’47 and I went straight to France. ’

He took a breath. ‘My brother Daniel had been a boy when Eveleigh fell. When I returned in ’51 he was eighteen, fearless and spoiling for a battle. Just as I had been ten years earlier.’

‘Like Edward.’

‘Indeed. I had regaled him with too many stories of the high times and glory. I didn’t think …

didn’t notice that he hung on every word.

He saw this as his chance to regain the family fortunes and he begged to come with me.

In the end, I agreed to take him. My stepmother was hysterical but she could no more have stopped him than I.

He would have come anyway and it seemed far better to let him come with me, under my protection.

I promised his mother I would look after him and keep him safe.

’ Kit gave a hollow laugh. ‘You know how the battle went? God knows it was as hard a battle as ever I had fought. I kept Daniel at my side but the fighting separated us. He was beset on all sides and I tried to reach him but I was cut down and a musket stock –’ He touched his head above the right ear ‘– took the last fight out of me. I woke up a prisoner in Worcester Cathedral. No one could tell me what became of Daniel and for months after the battle, I thought he was dead.’

‘But he survived?’

Kit swallowed. ‘Six months after Worcester, Thurloe came to Warwick Castle, where I was held, with his proposition. He had me dragged to a window. Below in the courtyard in the cold, the mud, and the rain were a group of Scottish prisoners who were to be transported to Barbados. Daniel was among them, shackled and beaten, with barely a rag on his back. However bad my lot had been, his had been infinitely worse. Thurloe told me that Daniel would be transported with the other prisoners and unless I co-operated he would be dead by year’s end.

Barbados.’ Kit spat the word out. ‘I don’t know if you have heard of the conditions in Barbados, Thamsine? ’

She shook her head.

‘The men, black and white, are treated like animals, and those who don’t die of the maltreatment die of disease.

Thurloe gave me a choice. If I agreed to his proposal Daniel would be well treated.

If I did not, then he worked the fields as one of the slaves.

He was right. The boy would be dead within a year. What choice did I have?’

He looked away. Thamsine placed her hand over his and said nothing.

With his face still turned from her, he said, ‘Daniel has spent two years on that pestilential island.’

Thamsine’s mouth went dry and she swallowed. ‘Do you know if he is still alive?’

‘Thurloe says he is, and I would rather live with that hope than see England plunged into civil war again.’ He looked at Thamsine, his face creased with a pain that was not physical.

‘It was all Thurloe needed to secure my co-operation. It came to a simple choice between my brother’s life or an indefinite life in prison.

It was no choice, Thamsine. If I refused, both Daniel and I would be dead.

My answer was a given. I took the coward’s choice. ’

Thamsine shook her head. ‘Kit, any man would have done what you did. Why do you think it was a coward’s choice?’

He looked at her. ‘You’re not a man, Thamsine.

You don’t understand the concept of honour.

There is no honour in betraying my friends and comrades, no matter how good the personal cause may be.

Thurloe offered me freedom, and at that nadir of my life that was all I craved, whatever the cost. Daniel was not given that choice. ’

She stared at him for a long moment, trying to make sense of what he had just told her. This misguided concept of honour had killed her brother and changed her life forever.

‘You’re right, I don’t understand “honour”,’ she said, fighting the bitterness in her voice. ‘How would your death in prison have helped your brother?’

He gave what passed for a shrug and grimaced.

‘It was a Devil’s bargain, Thamsine. I’ve kept my word and mercifully now it is nearly done.

Daniel will be freed and once he is safely returned to England, you and I shall leave this cursed island and go wherever our hearts take us.

’ He shifted uncomfortably, grimacing. ‘I want to be free of England, Thamsine.’

‘I have lands in Virginia.’

Kit’s eyes gleamed. ‘Virginia. That would be a new start for us both.’

He took her hand in his good one, his thumb circling the palm. ‘Do you think, for a moment, we can let ourselves believe that there will be a future without John Thurloe or Ambrose Morton?’

‘I think we have to believe that, Kit,’ she replied. She laid a hand on his battered cheek. ‘I only know that whatever that future is, it has to be together.’

His fingers tightened on hers and he lifted her hand to his lips. Beneath the bruising he looked pale and pinched, his eyes lost in dark circles. Thamsine kissed him gently and stood up.

‘You’re exhausted,’ she said. ‘I promised Nan I would help in the taproom tonight. May is … ’ She left the sentence unfinished.

May had not left her bed. She lay under the covers, curled up like a child, too exhausted to cry and too traumatised to move.

‘I’ll bring you some supper and then you can sleep.’

***

Thamsine had promised to help Jem in the taproom, but there were few customers and as soon as she had a chance, she warmed some broth to take upstairs to Kit.

She had not expected to find him standing in the middle of the room, a blanket inadequately draped around him.

In her haste to get to him, she slopped soup onto the tray.

‘What are you doing?’ She reached him as his knees buckled and he sat back on the bed.

‘I was looking for my clothes,’ he said.

His hair, tangled and still matted with his blood, stood on end. His bruised face was taut and grey with pain and his eyes glittered with fever.

‘Why do you want your clothes?’

‘I have to warn them,’ he said.

Thamsine knew he meant the conspirators, who even now were gathering at the Swan.

‘Kit, you’re too late. You know that.’

‘Maybe not. If I hurry – ’

‘You couldn’t hurry if the hounds of Hell were after you.’ She sat down beside him on the bed and took his good hand in hers. ‘It’s too late for a conscience now, Kit,’ she said.

He turned to look at her. ‘They’ll hang, Thamsine.’

‘You knew that, Kit.’ She stroked the hair away from his eyes, his beautiful green eyes, dulled by pain and anguish. Kit Lovell, always so confident and in control, stared into a vision of Hell that she could not understand.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I can warn them. I’ll attract less attention than you.’

He stared into the far corner of the room, his shoulders rising and falling with every painful breath.

‘All right,’ he said at last.

She stood to go and he caught her hand.

‘Thamsine, be careful.’

‘I won’t take unnecessary risks, I promise.’

She smiled and kissed him, drawing the tumbled bedclothes back around him. His cloak hung over the back of the chair. She snatched it up and ran out into the dark streets.

***

She arrived too late.

The street outside the Swan Inn heaved with horses and soldiers and she melted into the shadows of a back alley to watch as Kit’s former comrades were led out. Vowells, Gerard and other familiar faces. She shook her head and turned to go.

‘Where d’ya think you’re going?’ A soldier stepped across her path.

‘Just headin’ home, love.’ Thamsine dropped into a London accent. ‘What’s ‘appening here?’ She jerked her head at the scene in the street.

‘Traitors,’ the soldier said. ‘You head off home, love. The night’s no time for pleasant strolls.’

Thamsine returned to the Ship Inn with a heavy heart. As she pushed open the door to the bedchamber, Kit straightened, his eyes wide and expectant but as his gaze scanned her face, he turned away.

Thamsine shut the door behind her, leaning against it.

‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ she said. ‘It looked like Thurloe got them all. What did you hope to achieve by warning them?’

He laid an arm across his eyes. ‘I could have redeemed myself, somehow.’

‘You’ve done enough. You were always playing a dangerous game. You knew the price. It’s done. You’re free. Kit. We’re both free.’

He lifted his arm away from his eyes. ‘We’re neither of us free until we are quit of England, Thamsine.’ The fingers of his left hand crushed the bedclothes. ‘Leave me. I need some time alone.’

Thamsine hesitated, torn between throwing her arms around him to assuage the terrible pain that went beyond his physical injuries and recognising that he had to come to terms with his betrayal. She closed the door behind her. He needed to be alone with his demons.