Sea Change (12 page)

'We'll be walking away from here as calmly as two professors on a promenade, Spandrel,' said Mcllwraith, uncocking the pistols and slipping them into the pockets of his greatcoat. 'If you attempt to break away, however, I'll shoot you down without a moment's hesitation. Be in no doubt of that. I have need of you, but my need's not so pressing that I'll brook any resistance. And you're an escaped prisoner, remember. I'd probably be rewarded for my pains. We have a little way to go to a place of safety. Once there, I'll explain what I want from you. Until then, you'll keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Now, walk straight ahead.'

The simplicity of these instructions was strangely welcome to Spandrel. Who — or what — Mcllwraith was he had no idea. But the fact remained that he was no longer in a cramped cell beneath the Stadhuis, nor were manacles chafing his wrists. He was free — up to a point. And, to judge by what Cloisterman had said, not a moment too soon. There was treachery everywhere. No-one could be trusted. But, for the present, he was walking the streets of Amsterdam and breathing the clear, sunlit air. It was enough. It was, in truth, all he had recently longed for.

The route they followed led through a busy marketplace, then steadily north, by a series of alleys and canalside streets, to the harbour. As they reached the bustling waterfront, a view opened up between the rooftops to the east of the Montelbaanstoren. But they headed west, along the wharves and over the canal bridges. Slowly, Spandrel lost his sense of conspicuousness. Nobody knew who he was and nobody cared. By rights, he should have tried to flee the city. But out on the long straight roads through the flat fields of a country he did not know he really would be conspicuous. The city that had been his prison was also his only refuge.

At length, they entered a quieter district at the western end of the harbour. The warehouses here were mostly shuttered and unattended. A windmill loomed ahead atop a seaward bastion of the city wall. Some way short of it, Mcllwraith directed Spandrel down an alley between a high wooden fence on one side and a row of warehouses on the other. Sawing and hammering could be heard from over the fence, but they had the alley to themselves. The far end was a wharf on some inlet of the harbour. A barge drifted by in the distance as they walked.

'This is far enough,' Mcllwraith announced suddenly. They stopped by the doors of a warehouse that looked to Spandrel just like all the others to left and right. The number 52 and the word SPECERIJEN were stencilled over the lintel. Mcllwraith took out a key and opened the wicket, then motioned for Spandrel to enter.

The interior was dark and cold as a tomb,, but dry, the dust scented with sweetness. Mcllwraith lit a lantern that hung from a beam, but its circle of light stretched no further than a nearby jumble of upturned boxes and a bench, on which stood a wicker hamper. Spandrel was left to imagine how far off the rear wall might be. There were patterings and scurryings from the darkness.

'We'll be here till nightfall,' said Mcllwraith. 'There's coal and a brazier somewhere, so we'll not freeze to death. And…' he crossed to the bench and unstrapped the hamper 'the rats haven't gnawed through this yet, so we'll not starve either.' He raised the lid. 'Bread. Cheese. Ham. A flagon of ale. And some tobacco. Plenty of everything. Just what you'll be needing after a couple of weeks on prison rations.'

'Why are you doing this?'

'Not because I'm sorry for you, Spandrel, if that's what you were hoping. My help comes with a price.'

'I have no money.'

'But you can pay me back, nonetheless.'

'How?'

'Eat something, man. You need to build your strength up.' Mcllwraith kicked a box into position next to the bench and gestured for Spandrel to sit. He pulled a hunk of bread off a loaf and passed it to him with some thick slices of ham. Then he uncorked the flagon and stood it on the bench near Spandrel's elbow. 'Good?'

The bread was fresh and doughy, the ham lean and succulent. Their flavours surged through Spandrel. He coughed and took a gulp of the ale, then looked up at Mcllwraith. 'Good,' he announced.

'Don't bolt it or you'll bring it up no sooner than you've got it down. There's plenty of time.' Mcllwraith stowed his pistols away, then lit a pipe and sat up on the bench while Spandrel ate and drank more slowly. 'I'm Captain James Mcllwraith. Acting on behalf of General Ross for the House of Commons Secret Committee of Inquiry into the South Sea Company. The Brodrick Committee, as it's known. Heard of it?'

'Yes. I think so. But what—'

'All in due course, Spandrel. Just listen, there's a good fellow. I have a House of Commons warrant authorizing me to do whatever's necessary to carry out the committee's wishes and requiring any British subject I encounter to assist me. Consider your assistance called upon. I've taken this warehouse on a short let. As far as the owner's agent is concerned, I need it to handle a consignment of cinnamon. But we're the consignment. You and me. And we're leaving rather than arriving. Aertsen will expect us to make for Rotterdam. His men will ride a stableful of horses into the ground chasing our shadows. They'd have overtaken us if we'd gone that way, no question. You'd have slowed me down too much to outrun them. As it is, we're leaving by ship. The Havfrue is a Danish vessel. It sails for Christiania tonight. We'll be on it. The master's agreed — for a generous consideration, naturally — to convey us to the eastern shore of the Zuider Zee. We'll be put off at Harderwijk. That's in the province of Gelderland. Be grateful for these Netherlanders' constitutional niceties, Spandrel. You can't be arrested outside Holland without all manner of swearing and affidaviting, for which there wouldn't be time even if Aertsen guessed our destination. And he's not likely to do that. We'll buy horses at Harderwijk and make for the border.'

'But why? Where are we going?'

'Lord save us, do you understand nothing, man? Isn't it obvious?'

'No. Not in the least.'

Mcllwraith sighed. 'You delivered the Green Book to de Vries, didn't you?'

'I delivered something.'

'You must have seen what it was.'

'No. It was sealed in a despatch-box. I saw the box. Nothing more.'

At that Mcllwraith loosed a guttural laugh that echoed in the rafters above them. 'I was hoping you'd know it by sight. That was one of my reasons for heezing you out of gaol. You would know Zuyler and the winsome widow by sight, wouldn't you?'

'Yes. Of course.'

'Then I'd best be grateful for small mercies. That pair have the Green Book, Spandrel. They tried to sell it to the Government — our Government — for a hundred thousand pounds.'

'How much?'

'A hundred thousand. And they'd likely have been paid it, but for numskullery in high places.'

'A hundred thousand… for a book?'

'Not just any book. The Green Book. The repository of the South Sea Company's darkest secrets. Who was bribed. When. How much. All the names. All the figures. Everything.'

'That's what I delivered?'

'It seems so. It wasn't with Knight when he was arrested. And Knight's known to have visited Janssen just before leaving England. It's what the committee's been looking for since it started work last month: the only true record of the company's dealings. The audited accounts were just a bundle of false figures and fictitious names. But even bribers need to keep tally. To root out the guilty men, high and low, the committee needs that book. And I mean to procure it for them.'

'How?'

'By catching up with Zuyler and his amorosa. It's clear they murdered de Vries and left you to take the blame. I'm not sure if Zuyler or de Vries was behind the attempt on your life — if that's what it was — and it doesn't much matter now anyway. According to Cloisterman, de Vries's money goes to his son. The widow doesn't even get her proverbial mite. Maybe the old man cut her out of his will for fear she might otherwise have a good reason to hasten his exit from this world. If so, he'd have made sure she knew that, which can't have filled her head with warm, wifely thoughts. Soon Zuyler was showing her what a younger man has to offer and they talked of running away together. But they needed money. And the Green Book offered them a way of getting more than they could ever hope to squeeze out of de Vries. They must have known it was on its way before you arrived. Between them, they must have weevilled into every one of de Vries's secrets. Oh, they've been clever. No question about it. But cleverness has a habit of foundering on simple bad luck. Our Embassy at The Hague's in the charge of a brainless popinjay. And the Secretary of State he answered to — the late, unlamented Lord Stanhope — had kept himself so calculatingly ignorant of the South Sea escapade that he didn't understand what Zuyler was offering for sale. So, the offer was rejected. How sad, how inconvenient, for our flitting pair of love-birds.' Mcllwraith clapped his hands together. 'But how very fortunate for us.'

'Fortunate?'

'Aye, man. Fortunate for both of us. For me because, if the sale had been completed, the Government would have the Green Book. And we can safely assume too many ministers are named in it for them to allow it ever to see the light of day. Sunderland, for one. Why, if the committee could nail his dealings to the barn-door… Well, I still have a chance now of enabling them to do just that.'

'And me?'

'You? It's even better for you, Spandrel. You're out of gaol. And you'll stay out if you stick by me. The committee will be in your debt if we deliver them the Green Book. That means the Government will be in your debt, because it's certain we'll have a whole sparkling new set of ministers once the truth about the existing lot's known. No fear of being sent back here to face trial then. No need to hide from your creditors. The most eminent of them will likely be facing trial himself Mcllwraith's tone turned suddenly sombre. 'That's if you help me, of course. Decide it's safer to run for it and you have my word you'll have to run for ever. I'll make sure you can't go home to England without being arrested and handed over to the Dutch authorities. You'll be back where you started — and where you'd have stayed but for me.' Then his tone softened again. 'But there's no question of that, is there? We're in this together.'

'All you want me to do is help you find Zuyler and Estelle de Vries?' It sounded simple, though Spandrel knew it was unlikely to be so. But what choice did he have? Mcllwraith was right. They were in this together.

'That's all, my bonny fellow.'

'Then I'll do what I can. Though for the life of me I don't see how you hope to find them.'

'By putting myself in their shoes and using what God gave me to think with. Zuyler told Dalrymple — the popinjay at The Hague — that he knew where to find another buyer. And that the King wouldn't thank him and Stanhope when he learned who that buyer was. Those were his very words. Which he may come to regret uttering. Who would pay most dearly to disgrace His Majesty's Government in the eyes of his people? Who but one who would be King himself — who thinks he already is, by rights?'

'The Pretender.'

'You have it, Spandrel. They mean to try their luck with the Jacobites. They'd find a nest of them in Paris. But their dealings with Dalrymple and Stanhope will have left them wary of negotiating through intermediaries. I reckon they'll go to the court of James Edward Stuart himself.'

'In Rome?'

'Aye. But don't worry.' Mcllwraith grinned. 'We'll catch up with them long before they set foot in the Eternal City. That's a promise.'

Spandrel still had no idea how Mcllwraith meant to keep his promise when they boarded the boat sent for them by the master of the Havfrue at a nearby wharf early that evening and headed out across the moonlit harbour to where the ship was waiting for them at its anchorage beyond the boom. He was both more frightened and more excited by what had happened than he wanted Mcllwraith to realize. His new-found companion might be his saviour — or a devil in disguise. There was no way to tell. Nor could Spandrel hazard the remotest guess at how, or where, or when, their journey would end. He had feared he might never leave Amsterdam and had hoped only for a safe return home. Now, instead, he had embarked on a voyage into the unknown. He was further from home than ever. And he could not turn back.

The days following 'the abduction of the prisoner Spandrel', as the incident at Ugels's shop was drily described in Aertsen's formal report, were difficult ones for Cloisterman. He had to rebut any implication that he had connived with Mcllwraith to spirit Spandrel away, but he could not do so as forcefully as he might wish in case Aertsen felt his own position was threatened. In that event, he would probably defend himself by persuading Sheriff Lanckaert to recommend that Cloisterman be declared persona non grata and sent back to England in disgrace. Cloisterman enjoyed life in Amsterdam and his courtship of the daughter of a wealthy tobacco merchant was at a promising stage. Banishment would spell disaster for all his plans and had to be fended off.

The only way he could see of doing this was to tread lightly where the issue of Spandrel's guilt or innocence was concerned. It was now obvious that Zuyler had murdered de Vries and manoeuvred Spandrel into taking the blame. To state that openly, however, would be to question the competence of the Sheriff and hence of his deputy. He refrained from raising the matter, therefore, and hoped that Aertsen would reciprocate his restraint.

In this regard, the authorities' failure to recapture Spandrel and to seize his abductor was actually quite satisfactory, since it meant that the issue need not be confronted. Spandrel's escape from custody was embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as an admission that the real guilty party had long since slipped through their fingers. It was also noticeable that Aertsen did not press the matter of Mcllwraith's status as an agent of the Brodrick Committee. To do so might precipitate a formal complaint by the States of Holland to the House of Commons, with consequences too serious to contemplate for all concerned. Officially, therefore, Mcllwraith was an anonymous confederate of Spandrel and, so long as he was not apprehended, that is what he would remain.

Cloisterman was obliged, of course, to report a reasonably accurate version of events to Dalrymple. He calculated, however, that Dalrymple, like Aertsen, would favour the line of least resistance. It had to be assumed that Mcllwraith, with Spandrel as his willing or unwilling travelling companion, was no longer in the United Provinces. And it was unlikely that the pair would ever return. In that sense, they were no longer the concern of vice-consuls and charges d'affaires. Let Mcllwraith do his worst and leave others to worry about the consequences. Cloisterman's memorandum to Dalrymple on the subject bore the imprint of this agreeable urging between every reticent line.

It did not, though, yield the response Cloisterman expected, which was either silence or a testy but essentially approving little note. Instead, Cloisterman received by return of post a summons to The Hague. 'I should be obliged,' Dalrymple wrote in an abominable hand that suggested haste, perhaps even desperation, 'if you would wait upon me here at the very earliest juncture available transport will permit.' It did not augur well. In fact, it augured ill.

The urgency of the summons had the meagre advantage of justifying Cloisterman in the minor extravagance of travelling by coach rather than trekschuit. The journey nevertheless took the better part of a day and he was tempted to put off reporting to the Dalrymplian presence until the following morning, weary as he was and in need of supper and a bath. Reckoning, however, that he would find the charge long since departed, he made his way to the Embassy and announced his arrival.

Dalrymple had indeed already gone home, but his secretary's clerk, Harris, was still there, instructed to remain, it transpired, with a late arrival by Cloisterman specifically in mind. 'Mr Dalrymple's anxious to see you, sir. Very anxious, I should say. I'm to escort you to his residence without delay.'

Dalrymple's residence was, in fact, only a short walk away. The simplest of instructions would have sufficed for Cloisterman to find it unescorted. Harris's company seemed intended, Cloisterman could not help but feel, to guard against his turning back rather than losing his way. The auguries were growing worse all the time.

A musical entertainment of some sort was under way when Cloisterman was admitted to the house. A snatch of jaggedly played Handel wafted out behind Dalrymple from the drawing-room. A disagreeable and faintly disturbing smile was hovering around the charge's moist lips and Cloisterman hardly supposed it was because he was pleased to see him. Harris was told to wait in an antechamber, while they retired to the privacy of Dalrymple's study, where the smile rapidly faded.

'When did we last have the pleasure of seeing you here, Cloisterman?'

'The farewell reception for Lord Cadogan, as I recall.'

'As long ago as that?'

'It was, yes.'

'Well, well. Perhaps it's fortunate for you that it's me rather than his lordship you have to answer to. He was a hard taskmaster and wouldn't have been amused by your mishandling of recent events.'

'I afforded Captain Mcllwraith every assistance,' said Cloisterman steadily. 'As you instructed me to.'

'My instructions did not include helping him to abduct a prisoner.'

'I didn't help him.'

'No? I'm not sure Sheriff Lanckaert would agree with you.'

'My report was detailed and accurate. If you've read it, you'll—'

'I've certainly read it. And a sorrier chronicle of mismanaged affairs I've seldom been obliged to peruse.'

'I'm sure I'd be diverted by your exegesis of what I should have done.'

'I haven't time to give lessons in adroitness, Cloisterman. It's lucky for you the Dutch don't seem disposed to make a fuss about it.'

'That's not entirely a question of luck.'

'Really?' Dalrymple eyed Cloisterman sceptically. 'How you've made your peace with the Amsterdam authorities I prefer not to know. I've not called you here for the purpose of recrimination. Circumstances do not afford me the leisure for such an exercise.' This, Dalrymple's expression implied, was something he regretted. 'Do you realize the degree of uncertainty that hovers over all our futures under the new Secretary of State?'

'Lord Townshend is clearly not the same man as Lord Stanhope.'

'He is not even his own man, Cloisterman. Walpole tells him what to think and do. And he will tell many more what to think and do before long. Brodrick's committee was due to report to the House of Commons today. Did you know that?'

'I confess not.'

'Their charges, whatever they are, will only strengthen Walpole's hand. It is his tune we must dance to now. You understand? We cannot allow him to doubt our loyalty.'

'I'm sure he will have no cause to.'

'In that case, you will be glad to learn that you have an opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to the new order.'

'Oh yes?' Cloisterman did not feel glad. Quite the reverse. He felt an apprehensiveness amounting almost to dread. 'What manner of opportunity?'

'A special emissary of Lord Townshend — and hence Walpole — is waiting for you at the Goude Hooft. It's an inn not far from here. Harris will show you the way. The emissary's a military man. Colonel Augustus Wagemaker. A straighter sort than Mcllwraith, but just as tough, I should say.'

'And he's waiting for me?

'Yes. You know more about this whole damnable business than anyone else. You're the obvious choice.'

'For what?'

'Wagemaker will explain his requirements to you. You will do your best — your very best — to comply with them.'

'Can you give me no idea what they are?'

'Onerous, I shouldn't wonder. Though well within your compass. You're going on a journey, Cloisterman.' Dalrymple's smile had crept back out from its hiding place. 'And it could be a long one.'

The contents of the Brodrick Committee's report, at which Dalrymple could still only guess, were by now already known to the House of Commons in London. It had taken four hours for the document to be read, by Brodrick until his voice gave out and then by the Clerk of the House. The complexities and obscurities of the tale it told were formidable but, so far as the Government was concerned, the charges were horribly simple. Bribes, in the form of free allocations of South Sea stock which could be sold later at a guaranteed profit, had been paid to certain ministers to ensure that they turned a blind eye to glaring irregularities in the National Debt conversion scheme, irregularities that had left the Company with liabilities for the year ahead of £14,500,000 to be set against income from the Exchequer of £2,000,000: insolvency, in other words, on a grand, not to say grotesque, scale. The ministers named as recipients of bribes were, as expected, Chancellor of the Exchequer John Aislabie, Postmaster-General James Craggs the elder, Secretary to the Treasury Charles Stanhope and, as less confidently anticipated … the First Lord of the Treasury and Groom of the Stole, Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland.

How the House would proceed in the light of such a damning report was still unclear when it adjourned for the evening. Impeachment of the named ministers was the obvious course, but that would mean entrusting verdict and punishment to the Lords. Many favoured trying them, peers and all, along with the directors, in the Commons. The decision on that would have to wait for another day.

Some matters would not wait, however. The report had accused the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, James Craggs the younger, not of accepting a bribe himself but of negotiating bribes for the Duchess of Kendal and her so-called nieces. The Duchess, born Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg, was none other than the King's openly acknowledged mistress. The King's wife had been confined in a German castle for the past twenty-seven years after being divorced on grounds of non-cohabitation following an affair with a Swedish count. The Duchess's 'nieces' were in reality her daughters by the King. Their corruption, if proved, would creep close to the person of the King himself. Craggs could not be interrogated on the point. Smallpox held him in its mortal grip. And his fellow Secretary of State, Viscount Townshend, had nothing to answer for. But one awkward duty did devolve upon him: that of explaining to his fretful monarch how the royal ladies' reputations were to be protected.

Thus it was that at an unheard-of hour for such summonses, Lord Townshend found himself being ushered into the royal closet at St James's Palace by the Turkish Groom of the Chamber, the notoriously inscrutable Mehemet. The scarcely less inscrutable Earl of Sunderland was already present. He had a narrow, skewed face that seemed forever suspended between a smile and a frown. His eyes were close-set and evasive. He greeted Townshend with his customary coolness, clearly unabashed by being accused in the Commons earlier that evening of accepting £50,000 worth of South Sea stock as virtual hush-money.

But if Sunderland was calm in the face of the storm, the King was not. He had always been a difficult man to read, what with his stilted English, his immobile features and his unsociable temperament, but it was apparent to Townshend that the committee's traduction of his beloved mistress had hit a tender spot. 'They had not the right to say these things,' he complained through gritted teeth. 'Mr Craggs was helping to the Duchess. What is wrong with that?'

'I'm sure Lord Townshend doesn't think there was anything wrong,' said Sunderland.

'Indeed not, Your Majesty,' Townshend swiftly rejoined. 'And I'm confident the purchase of shares by the Duchess is not what will occupy the House in its consideration of the report.' (She had not purchased them, of course, but it was as well to subscribe to the fiction that she had.)

'The purchase of shares by anyone,' said the King with heavy emphasis, 'is out of their business.'

Townshend glanced at Sunderland. What — or rather whom — did the King mean by 'anyone'? It was a certain bet that his Groom of the Stole knew the answer. 'I fear, sir, that they will make it their business.'

'Perhaps your brother-in-law could dissuade them from doing so,' said Sunderland, with more of his smile than his frown.

'He did dissuade them from printing the report.'

'Printing?' The King's face was briefly lit by horror. 'We want no printing.'

'And there will be none, sir.'

'His Majesty is concerned about Mr Knight's… papers, Townshend. How is it that your department has failed to secure all of them?'

'Knight took steps to keep some of his more… sensitive… records from us. But we're on the track of them.'

'Track?' queried Sunderland. 'You speak literally?'

'Where is it?' the King put in, adding in an explanatory growl, 'Das Grune Buch.' He was apparently unable to bring himself to describe the article in English.

'We're doing everything we can to find it, sir.'

'We?' Sunderland's eyebrows twitched up.

'My department,' said Townshend levelly.

'Assisted and advised, no doubt, by your brother-in-law.'

'The Paymaster-General does what he can.'

'So he does. But you should beware. The robin is by nature a solitary bird.'

'In the present circumstances, Spencer, I should have thought you had more to beware of than me.'

'The report? It's nothing.' Sunderland flapped a dismissive hand. 'They can't touch me.'

'Without the Green Book, you mean?'

'I mean—' Sunderland broke off, apparently deciding that what he really meant was better not disclosed. 'They wouldn't have the nerve,' he eventually added. 'I made most of them. And I can break the rest.'