‘Let him go in there.’
‘Alone?’
‘You are always telling me you cannot stand the coffee there.’
‘Foul-smelling Turkish piss.’
‘Wait for him in the alehouse next door then. They could do with some of the business they’re losing to the coffee houses.’
As a scout in the army Scogman had sensed trouble like a rat smelling a ferret. He had that look now, his lips tightening belligerently. ‘Very good, sir. But he’s up to something.’
It was a little later when I asked Agnes about Anne’s condition that the thought occurred to me. Curious that I had been so repelled by the sight of that bloodstained linen pad, it had never occurred to me. If she was still bleeding, she could bear a child.
I was determined to be as formal in my approach as she was. I even considered calling her into my study. After all, was not having a child a business like any other? A business at which I had singularly failed? Luke was weak, a milksop who ran to his mother, easily led by others. Scogman believed a good flogging was the solution but it had never worked for me. I believed with Thomas More that a whip should have the violence of a peacock’s tail. In any case it was too late. When he was building the New Model Army Cromwell used to tell me that selection was more important than training. You could not train damaged goods.
I would have to start again. In the end I did not call her into my study. It would have been unheard of. To my knowledge no woman had ever been in that room, save the maid who cleaned it. Lord Stonehouse frowned from his picture above the fire at the thought of it. It was curious that, since she had remarked on it, I saw him everywhere: portraits in little-used rooms, one in the library I had never noticed before. There were no pictures of me. It was as though I was a temporary resident. She said so at one of our stilted dinners.
Strange, also, how dark the place had become since she had mentioned it. I noticed as never before how the tapestries smelt of soot and how grey the walls were in contrast to her apartments, where I had made an appointment to see her. It was as dark as evening in the corridors, but became afternoon in her drawing room. I had not seen her since she was indisposed, and was struck dumb at the sight of her.
She wore dark blue silk which was almost black, white lace and a single diamond in her hair. Her skin was translucent and paler than the lace. She had ordered tea unless I preferred coffee or chocolate? There was a selection of sweetmeats which I remembered from Highpoint, but which never appeared at Queen Street, including small sugar cakes of which I was inordinately fond. My hand went out to them but I withdrew it. Business first.
The words I had prepared flew out of my head. She seemed genuinely pleased to see me, saying it was kind of me to visit her. Or was there some kind of edge to it, as if I had just arrived from a distant town?
‘Should a husband not visit his wife, madam?’
It was what I called Highpoint language, the sort of social glue that had kept us together for so long, as comfortable as slipping into an easy chair. I was sorely tempted to do so. After all, these things took time, like an angler catching a fish.
‘Ah,’ she smiled. ‘But you have not been treating me like a wife, sir.’
She could only mean one thing, surely. I sat painfully upright, her words, accompanied by that smile, which was like a distant memory, giving me such an instant arousal I had not had for years. I shifted uncomfortably, seeing for the first time the virtue of Luke’s fashionably wide new britches. I swallowed. I could not get rid of the wretchedly light Highpoint tone with its accompanied fixed smile.
‘That, that is precisely what I have come to amend, madam.’ The pain from my tight britches was so excruciating I had to walk about. ‘I wish to visit you.’
She was picking up her bowl of tea. ‘But you are visiting – oh. I see.’ Tea spilled on her dress. I pulled out my handkerchief but Agnes appeared from nowhere with a cloth. When she had gone and fresh tea was poured Anne went to pick up her bowl, but did not trust her shaking hand. Her cheeks had coloured but when the blood retreated it only emphasised how pale she was. She looked at me directly, a thin blue vein at the side of her forehead pulsing.
‘When I said treating me like a wife, I meant, sir, you have shown little concern for me while I have been ill.’
‘I’m sorry. I did not realise you were so ill.’
‘Were you not told?’
‘Yes, yes, of course I was, but …’ What was the use? Why did I not say what I wanted, as other men did? Why did she always put me on the wrong foot? She always had from the very beginning! I wished I could go back and start again with that welcoming smile. No, no. That was contrived. She played this game far better than I ever could. All this, as I paced about on the pretext of looking at her pictures which she must have brought from Highpoint, for they were all from the King’s Collection. Whereas the pictures in Queen Street were blurred with dust and dirt, these were as bright as if painted yesterday. One I could not take my eyes off was an enigmatic picture of a woman, fully clothed, while another, naked apart from a stole which had drifted over her sex, leaned over her. A puckish-faced child was absorbed in his own play on the stone bench between them.
‘Naturally, I will prepare myself,’ she said. ‘You only have to tell me when.’
When? I could have taken her there and then. She was as calm and inscrutable as the clothed woman on the stone bench. That made her even more maddening. Her hand had stopped shaking and she was taking a sip of tea, as if we were discussing an alteration to the east front at Highpoint, which always troubled her. But was that not what I wanted, what I had planned? A business transaction? The object was not the treacherous will o’ the wisp of desire, but the solid certainty of having a child, who would be different. My child, not hers.
I bowed. ‘Thank you.’
The worst was over. The rest would happen at night. Agnes would be instructed, the door left open. Wait, wait, wait. I stared at the picture. The clothed woman seemed to have a mocking smile on her face. Prepare herself? What did she mean by that? I remembered when Highpoint had first taken over her life. We were still together then. We even talked about love. Did I really say something inane like I loved her when I first saw her, when I did not hate her for mocking my large, bare feet? She certainly said that she fell in love with me when she discovered I had greater prospects than putting boots on my ugly feet. She said it as a joke, but I began to believe it to be true when her body became as cold as the stone bench I was staring at. At the time of that first move to Highpoint I had wanted a child, a child brought up in peace, which I thought would bring us together. One never came. That was when she became wedded to Highpoint and I to the power I had just lost.
My throat was so dry the words came out with a hollow, parched ring. ‘When you say prepare yourself –’
She must have signalled for Agnes, who, when I turned, was staring at me as if I was about to suggest some bestial act. Her mistress dismissed her with an agitated gesture. For the first time she looked at a loss.
‘I want to have another child.’
‘You do.’
Her maid must have been listening, they always were, but I no longer cared. This was what other men and women took for granted. Scogman was astonished I felt I had to discuss it. Have her and be done with it, was his philosophy. The last thing he wanted was a child. If one appeared, he disappeared.
‘Another child. Yes. So I would be grateful if you –’ I strode across to a door which led to the bedroom and maid’s room and pulled it open. Agnes was bent so close to the door she fell towards me, only just stopping herself. She gaped up at me open-mouthed before scurrying into her room and slamming the door.