Chapter 6
June 1634
Charles, by right of God, king, sovereign and lord of the Empire of Great Britain and its possessions, first of his name, paced angrily like a caged animal in the royal menagerie. His entire assembly of ministers and senior staff did their best to blend against the many life-sized oil portraits of His Majesty’s ancestors. Only his chancellor, Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, stood in the center of the room, the focus of His Majesty’s anger, because the perpetrators were not there.
“And you have done nothing in an entire month? Nothing at all to secure the safety of my realm and my people? My person? My children?” Charles’s long hair was tangled like a wild horse’s. Though he was fuming inwardly, Boyle stood without moving, his expression bland, for, in his experience, to react to the king was to make the outburst worse and more long-lasting.
“Your children, sire, have been under heavy guard since the incident,” the Earl of Cork said. “And a full company is here within the corridors of Whitehall and outside the windows, so that no one could possibly approach to threaten you. Your safety is paramount.”
“But the explosion destroyed an entire wall of the Tower of London. A wall! And more detonations beside. Who knows if there are more charges planted. I want to leave London. I am not safe here.”
The Earl of Cork delved deep within himself for patience. It wasn’t easy. He was as furious as the king. “Your Majesty, every room has been inspected again and again. We have no reason to believe that any of the perpetrators remain in the city. It is unlikely that they are even still within the country.”
“Why have you not brought them to justice?”
It was a question that Boyle had asked himself every day since May when the escape had occurred. He had no answers.
“We are searching for them everywhere, sire. We have been seeking anyone who may have been involved in the enormity. The investigation is questioning those who might have even the smallest connection to the disaster. We have found nothing yet. I promise you that you shall be informed of any developments.”
The king stopped to glare directly at him. Boyle could see that the king’s eyes were bloodshot, and his skin looked saggy. He had not been sleeping, which meant that the court physician had been unable to dispense a sedative or even a calming draught.
“You have allowed my greatest enemies to become enlarged upon the nation, my Lord of Cork,” Charles snapped out, enunciating every syllable. “And why has the outer wall of the Tower not yet been rebuilt?”
“It is under way, sire,” Boyle said. He could have launched into a full explanation of the difficulties and expenses involved with the restoration of the palace, but Charles wasn’t interested.
He would never forget the moment when it happened. The BOOM echoed the two and a half miles down the Thames and broke windows in countless buildings. Rowers and runners had taken more than a half hour to arrive at Whitehall with the report of the explosion. They’d had to wait for pieces of two-hundred-year-old granite blocks to stop raining down from the sky before it was safe to move. And the devastating blows came one after another from that moment onward. Discovering that he had lost some of his best men. Learning that his high-profile prisoners had vanished into thin air. Seeing the ruin of the Globe Theater, which he thought of as a parting slap from the Americans. So much had occurred during the chaos. He hated chaos.
The king, still mired in his own misery, blamed Cork for the mess, and insisted on an immediate solution to repairing it. Because half the wall was blown out, prisoners who remained behind in locked quarters were having to be shifted to other places. And the river side, the most obvious side of the fortress, was a ruin. Any visitor to the capital city would see it and laugh. Charles felt humiliated. If Boyle could have laid hands on Strafford, Cromwell, or any of the missing Tower guards, he would have run them through with his own sword.
What did amaze him was that literally no one was killed in the blast. To him, that meant that there was a widespread conspiracy with nearly everyone informed as to what parts of the palace grounds to avoid and when. As large as the Tower was, the catastrophe was big enough to have injured or killed at least a few innocent souls, but no one seemed to have been in the way when it fell. Organizing funds for the repairs was only part of his duty. He had to find and punish the guilty, and in a public manner that would satisfy the king’s—and his—thirst for revenge.
At last, the king released his ministers to leave, to go back to their job of governing the nation, since Charles scarcely showed an inclination to do so. Boyle concealed a sigh of relief as he and the others bowed and backed out of the room. Sharing a look of sympathy with the Lord High Admiral, he turned toward the corridor in the direction of his office. Courtiers bowed to him as he passed. He regarded them with a cool inclination of his head, and kept moving.
Though the king was paying no attention to the many responsibilities he had, that did not mean at all that suits and petitions ceased to come in from all quarters. That, on top of all the other tasks Boyle needed to shoulder, was just one more grievance he could not and never would air. Uppermost in his mind remained the investigation into the explosion and who may have been involved.
So many people had come to and gone from London during that time that it was virtually impossible to trace all of them, but he tried. Boyle felt in his bones that there must be a connection between Whitehall and the Tower. His investigation covered anyone who had visited or been seen in the Tower during the weeks before the escape. He even sent a man northward to Sutherland to interview the Scottish noblewoman who was dismissed from court shortly before the disaster. But she had taken no one north with her but an elderly couple. His agent returned with no satisfactory information. She had no reason to take vengeance upon the king, nor did she have any connection that he could determine to Strafford or Cromwell. She had visited the Americans at least once, according to one of the cooks who served the residences in the Tower, but so had dozens of others who had business in Whitehall. It was as much a form of entertainment to the denizens of court as seeing the wild animals or an execution on Tyburn Hill.
The Scotswoman had also been spotted speaking to a merchant’s daughter in the anteroom to the court in Whitehall, another petitioner. Cork had cudgeled his brain to recall whether he had interacted with the girl, and flipped through his files of correspondence. Yes, impoverished gentry, no one of moment. She had asked for help with taxes on behalf of her father. Not much to go on there. He had also checked the tax rolls. Sir Timothy de Beauchamp, baronet of Churnet and Trent had paid up within the month’s grace he had been given. Probably sold off some assets to make that quarter-day payment. Boyle vowed to keep an eye on the de Beauchamps; if perhaps there was a chance to seize the estates when they failed to make the following year’s tax payments, he would swoop down at once. For the crown, of course.
“My lord?” His secretary, Phillip Haymill, knocked on the open door.
“Yes, Haymill?” Boyle looked up at him. The pale-faced man had worked in the palace for years in other capacities than serving the chancellor. Boyle had been inclined when he took office to make a clean sweep of anyone who might have had any doings with or sympathy for Strafford. If there had been grumbles about the changeover, he had not heard any of them. Haymill had been a minor functionary in acquiring supplies for several ministries, and was known to be good at organization.
“Mr. Logan is here, sir. And there are,” Haymill consulted a folded note, “thirty-two petitioners in the anteroom awaiting your pleasure.”
“Send Logan in.” Boyle said. Briefly, he consulted the correspondence on his desk. Nothing that demanded his immediate attention. In a moment, a man with thinning brown hair under an old-fashioned hood arrived. Boyle waved him to the seat on the other side of the desk.
Logan leaned across the leather-topped table. “No joy in the East End,” he said, without preamble. “Those carts we found out in the marshes of which I told ye, none will claim them. They’re about clapped out. The markin’s on ’em, one I found the owner’s name and went to him, a seller of wines and spirits, Hawkins. He says he sold the cart on, three, four weeks back. Knows nowt o’ where it’s been since. The other’s like an old tart. Everyone’s ’ad her, and nobody knows who ’ad her last. But the barges,” here Logan’s eyes gleamed, “cut adrift downstream. ’Ad to claim them back from the salvagers. Cost ye five pounds in all, sir. I’ve got witnesses to say that they were the crafts that went downstream loaded with men and women on the morning of the explosion. One in good condition, markin’s says it goes back to a Master Bywell in the warehouses. Agent for a number o’ merchants. Gave me lip, ’e did, fought back furious when I pressed ’im about aught to do with the Tower catastrophe. Didn’t like bein’ accused of anything.”
Boyle knew what Logan meant by “pressed.” It didn’t amount to torture, but came just short of leaving visible bruises. If he was an ordinary man, Bywell would hold no secrets back only to make the discomfort stop before it ascended to pain.
“I would not have trusted his word. Did you search his premises?”
“’Course I searched! Warehouses, outbuildings, even his house. Me and my men couldn’t find a trace of gunpowder or nothin’ to connect him, and we looked everywhere. Not a thing. Dead end. And ’e wants ’is barge back, if you please, claimin’ I has ‘no right to retain his property.’”
“Give it to him,” Boyle said. “And charge him the five pounds for its safe return.” He made a note of Bywell’s name. “Keep an eye on this merchants’ agent. He may know more than he says.” Something about Logan’s account of the man’s smug regard irritated Boyle. His instinct told him not to simply turn his back. The boat had, after all, been involved. If only the cursed thing could talk! “That will be all, Logan.”
“Yes, my lord.” The man bowed and removed himself from the office. Haymill would pay him what was agreed.
Boyle stared into space. Every avenue that he had explored thus far had not yielded any useful information. He would not back down, nor would he stop looking for co-conspirators. One day, he vowed, he would lay hands on those who had blown up the Tower and turned faithful guards into traitors.
In the meanwhile, he needed to mollify the nobility and gentry on the king’s behalf. Across the country, more every day were agitating to have Charles recall Parliament. But, owing to the king’s reading of future histories, he was absolutely unwilling to do so. Even polite pressure from overseas allies was proving no match for Charles’ obduracy. He feared the headsman’s sword, as well he should. Cork himself was afraid of what would happen to both the king and to himself if there was an uprising. It had happened, or would have happened. The twisting of history was such a conundrum that the Laocoön himself would find it too convoluted. But the dramatis personae were there still. And the greatest agitator and future tyrant and regicide, Oliver Cromwell, was now at large. He could summon up supporters, wherever he had gone. Too many people knew the contents of the Americans’ books.
It was better to keep agitation down, by whatever means he had at his disposal. Some of them disliked having their voices muted, citing Magna Carta. They were all talk, and he could ignore them. Some refused to pay their taxes. The de Beauchamp wench that spoke to him the previous April, wanted to pay, but claimed they couldn’t. That might or might not be true. She wasn’t alone in that claim. Perhaps it was time to start confiscating the lands or chattels of those who had fallen behind on their remittance to the crown and were loudest in their protests over being disenfranchised. A few examples would no doubt make the others fall in line. He had a whole company of mercenaries still in his employ. Some he had sent abroad, but the others here could earn their keep by applying a listening ear to find out which ones were truly loyal, and which ones might cause trouble and pay heed to Cromwell, should he approach any of them. Boyle often found that sending a few bully boys into trouble spots kept larger problems from arising. But that took money, so shaking down the northern lords and gentlemen for the cash to pay the mercenaries for keeping them under His Majesty’s thumb seemed almost poetic.
He called for Haymill to summon his captains.