London - Edward Rutherfurd [441]
“There is something terrible . . .” he began.
“Come into the church,” Meredith suggested. “It’s quieter there.”
So inside the handsome new church of St Bride’s O Be Joyful told an astounded Meredith what he had heard.
When he had finished, Meredith, with a thoughtful nod, beckoned him. “Follow me,” he said. “There is something I must show you.” He led him down a passageway to where a heavy door guarded the stairs that led down into the crypt. Lighting a lamp, he gave it to Carpenter and asked him to lead the way. Only when the craftsman was more than halfway down, did Meredith close the heavy door and turn the key in the lock, as Lord St James had told him to do.
Then he went back through the church, leaving O Be Joyful a prisoner.
“Do you believe him?” Lord St James asked Meredith. They were sitting in the parlour of the clergyman’s house.
“I’m sure he believes that what he says is true.”
The earl said nothing for a moment, then asked: “Can you keep him there?”
“The poor fellow could shout his head off down in the crypt and no one would hear him. But do you really think it’s necessary?”
“Just for today. I need to think.” The old man rose to leave.
As the hours passed, Julius discovered it was not easy to work out what to do. Like most old people, it was not the recent past that was vivid in his memory, but the days of his youth. And despite all that had passed between them in the Civil War, he still felt, as keenly as if it were yesterday, the guilt over Gideon himself, Carpenter and the Spanish Ambassador. Unlike O Be Joyful he was sure that if the craftsman took his story of a new popish plot around London he would be believed. Quite apart from the trouble that might stir up, he was in little doubt about what King James would do. With Judge Jeffreys in charge the fellow would be lucky if he escaped with his life. I sent the father Gideon to a whipping, he thought. I can’t stand by and watch the son go to something worse. It was this that had prompted his dash that afternoon to St Bride’s in the hope that Meredith could help him prevent the woodcarver doing something foolish. But how could they stop Carpenter placing himself in peril?
This dilemma, however, was better than the other he faced. The popish plot: had Carpenter misunderstood what he had heard? Could this French Jesuit, for whatever reason, have been lying? James’s Catholicism was one thing, but had Charles really deceived his faithful supporters all those years? Had he really promised to deliver England to Rome, and bring in French troops to do it? The idea was unthinkable, a treachery not to be borne.
Lord St James supped alone. He took a little brandy. Unable to sleep, he found himself keeping a vigil through the night, just as he had once before, long ago, on the eve of the execution of the martyred king. Except that this time it was not the sad, chaste face of the first Charles who came before his mind’s eye, but the swarthy, lecherous, cynical face of the second.
Could his king, to whom he was bound by his sacred oath, really have done such a thing? Could his own faith be shaken by some foolish tale from one of the cursed Carpenters? How could it be, he wondered, as midnight silently passed, that in his heart he now believed O Be Joyful rather than his king? The answer, though it came to him like a tiny voice, also came from a lifetime of experience. The loyalties of the Stuarts had usually lain outside England. And the Stuart men – yes, even the martyred king if truth be told – were nearly always liars.
The crypt of St Bride’s was a musty place. It was dark. No sound could escape and the door was utterly solid.
It was the betrayal that hurt O Be Joyful most. Even Meredith, it seemed, was in the popish plot. Was there anyone in London he could trust now, apart from Eugene Penny? As the hours passed, he wondered what lay in store for him. If they were coming to arrest him, why were they taking so long?
At last he went to sleep, awoke, dozed again, then lost track of all time. His family must