He was gone, but I had been seen, and the rumours were spreading across the town. We kept the doors closed and I returned to my hiding place upstairs, hoping the story would fade. A few hours later a black carriage drew up outside the house, and a guard with a battered face jumped down. Rapped upon the door until Alice was forced to open it.
‘Hear there’s been a resurrection,’ Budge called up the stairs. ‘Hurry down, Mr Hawkins. And bring Miss Sparks with you.’
The carriage slows and turns sharply. I draw back the curtain. We’ve arrived. I settle back against the seat and reach for Kitty’s hand. A squall of rain spatters on the roof and I flinch, remembering the road to Tyburn, the stones clattering about my head.
Budge appears at the window, holding up a large umbrella. He beckons me out of the carriage. Kitty picks up her gown and slides to join us, but Budge shakes his head. ‘Just you, Hawkins.’
‘You asked for us both.’
‘Her Majesty wishes to speak with you alone.’
Kitty slams the carriage door closed and drops back against the seat. Folds her arms. ‘Her Majesty can kiss my rain-soaked arse.’
I follow Budge up the back stairs to the queen’s rooms, leaving a trail of muddy footsteps behind me. In the antechamber, Henrietta Howard waits in a lilac gown, tightly corseted and hung with jewels. Her expression is light and composed, her hands loose at her side.
I bow. ‘Madam.’
Budge glances anxiously at the door to the queen’s room. ‘My lady,’ he warns.
‘One moment, only.’ She draws me to one side. ‘Mr Hawkins. You have survived after all. How remarkable.’ She smiles, but she does not seem so very pleased.
Perhaps, indeed, she loathes me with an exquisite passion. It is impossible to guess from her countenance. For eleven years she had dreamed, desperately, that she might see her son again. She had hoped that as he grew older, Henry might realise the truth about his father, and forgive her for abandoning him. I wonder what she was forced to write in her letter to him, and I feel ashamed, again, for my part in it. ‘I am so sorry, madam, about your son.’
A flash of pain crosses her face. It is gone as fast. ‘I had a son. For ten years, I had a son. That much alone I can say.’
‘But you are free now. You may leave your rooms, visit your friends. Walk in the park without fear.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She folds her hands together. ‘These are comforts indeed. I am most grateful.’
‘And here you are, Mr Hawkins. Risen from the dead.’
I present a low bow.
‘Are you angry with me, sir?’
I look up, still bent in my bow. ‘Furious, Your Majesty.’
She laughs, great hiccuping gulps that make her long strands of pearls slide across her vast bosom. ‘Princess Amelia is in deep mourning for you. Such a heroic death. She will be most disappointed when she hears you are alive. Debout, monsieur.’
I stand. It is many weeks since our last meeting. Since then I have been arrested, put on trial, sentenced to death, hanged, and revived. The queen, meanwhile, does not appear to have moved. Her dress is new – a heavy, dark-blue sack gown – and there is a fresh plate of confectionery at her side. Other than that, the room is precisely as I remember it, and unbearably hot. She holds up a fan embroidered with garden scenes. Fans herself.
‘All in black,’ she muses. ‘How very sober you look. I suppose you wish to know why I chose not to pardon you?’
Chose? And with that word she reveals the truth – that my death was indeed part of her agreement with Howard. The truth is, she had enjoyed very little choice in the matter – and she would rather die than admit it. ‘I am sure Your Majesty had a very good reason.’
‘Oh, he is sure. What, am I your servant, to solve all your petty troubles? Fold them up comme ça?’ She snaps the fan closed. ‘What a conceited notion. Perhaps the Queen of England had no reason at all. Perhaps she was busy playing cards or embroidering a handkerchief. Budge, pour the boy a glass of claret.’
I sip the wine. It is even better than I remember. The queen decides to rise. This takes some effort and she appears to regret it, wincing as she walks to the fire. A touch of gout, I think. When she first arrived in England she would walk for at least an hour every day and wore out all her ladies-in-waiting.
‘Have you ever visited Yorkshire, Mr Hawkins?’
I am too tired to wonder at such an unexpected question. ‘No, ma’am.’
‘I’m told it has a rugged charm.’ She lets her gaze wander over me for a moment, but leaves the jest unspoken. ‘We have a friend, in need of assistance. You will set off at once. You may take your little trull along, if you wish. You had best marry her somewhere along the way. Your city manners will not be appreciated in the North.’
‘Your Majesty…’ I stop. Why waste breath refusing? This is not an offer, it is a command. I throw back the last of the wine. Bow my obedience.
Budge leads me back down the stairs. When we reach the final landing he hands me a sheaf of papers, bound with a black ribbon. ‘For Yorkshire.’
I tuck it beneath my arm. There are many things I wish to say to him. That I feel betrayed. Ill-treated. That I have no desire to travel all the way to Yorkshire, or perform any service for his mistress. But there seems no purpose in arguing, and so I say nothing. I find that I am saying less these days.
Budge is not used to my new, sombre ways. He peers at me, worried. ‘You hoped for an apology.’
‘No.’ I am not so foolish.
‘The queen never explains,’ Budge says. ‘And never apologises.’
I nod. In truth, I do not really care.
He glances up the staircase. Leans in. ‘Howard refused to agree terms unless you hanged. Twelve hundred pounds a year, control of his son, and no pardon for Thomas Hawkins. I do think she was passing sorry, sir.’
‘And Betty? Was she sorry?’
Budge frowns. ‘What choice was she given, do you think?’
The carriage rolls along the Strand. Kitty is so angry not to have met the queen that she cannot disguise it. She looks so furious and beautiful that I begin to laugh, for the first time in weeks.
‘We were going to Italy,’ Kitty grumbles. ‘I have seen Yorkshire on a map. I believe it is some distance from Italy.’
Sedan chairs weave around us, chairmen trudging through the rain, water pouring from their hats. A merchant skirts past a stream of brown filth spewing from a broken gutter. I have not left London in three years. I cannot decide if I will miss it. ‘The queen wants us to marry.’
Kitty looks down at her boots.
‘Kitty. Are you afraid I will gamble away all your money?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you afraid I will grow bored and leave you?’
Her boots are still of enormous interest to her. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you truly think that, my love?’
She looks up at last and stares deep into my eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
I smile at her. ‘Well. That is progress.’
The carriage rolls over a hole in the road and she is flung forward. I grab her and pull her to safety, holding her close. She laughs, a little, and her shoulders soften as she settles against my chest.
The carriage moves on through the rain, the driver urging the horses forward with light taps of his whip. He is keen to travel as far north as possible today before the rain turns the roads to a sticking mud. He doesn’t see the small, dark figure slip down from a sodden rooftop. The boy in the clean, patched clothes sprints after the carriage and climbs on the back. He tucks himself into a gap between the luggage until he is quite invisible. He’s good at that.