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  Contents

  Epigraph

  1. London, February 1664

  2. Downing

  3. Our Own Brave Balty

  4. March 2nd

  5. Baltee ’ates Boats

  6. March 4th

  7. The Devil’s Own Work

  8. A Whole Different Kettle of Nasty

  9. The Chelsey Trollop

  10. What a Dreadful Story

  11. May 23rd

  12. Narragansetts Coming In

  13. A Bit of a Tit

  14. So-Big-Study-Man

  15. Hide the Outcasts

  16. What, Only Five Pounds?

  17. Mr. Fish

  18. Pepys in a Pickle

  19. How Clever of God

  20. May 28th

  21. The Razor’s Edge

  22. Integendeel

  23. Promise?

  24. A Fish for Mr. Fish

  25. Ghosts

  26. June 30th

  27. Vengeance Is Mine

  28. Mrs. Cobb’s Flower Beds

  29. Doctor Pell

  30. Underhill Is Critical

  31. August 2nd

  32. The Belt

  33. The Cincinnatus of Long Island

  34. August 4th

  35. Being English

  36. August 15th

  37. Old Petrus

  38. Chez Bouwerie Number One

  39. August 20th

  40. Too Kind

  41. Very Good Surgeon

  42. Parley

  43. Cincinnatus Agonistes

  44. Well Done, Koontzy

  45. This Englishman, Not Gone

  46. A Fine Summer Day

  47. No Quaker Nonsense

  48. Oh, Do Get Up

  49. Repent

  50. Don’t Be a Tit

  Epilogue: November 24th, 1664

  Historical Notes

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Katy, thankfully

  October 13th, 1660. To my Lord’s in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered, which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.

  Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord’s, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters.

  —Samuel Pepys, diary entry

  – CHAPTER 1 –

  London, February 1664

  Balthasar de St. Michel was contemplating his excellent good fortune at having such an influential brother-in-law as Samuel Pepys when he looked up and saw the head of Oliver Cromwell, mummifying on a pike. Revolting, he thought.

  It had been there for—what—three years now? When the late king’s son, Charles II, was restored to the throne, he ordered the moldering corpses of his father’s executioners dug up, hanged, and decapitated. “Symbolic revenge.” Ten of the fifty-nine men who signed the King’s death warrant were rather less fortunate than Cromwell. They got hanged and butchered while alive.

  Balthasar shuddered and moved briskly along to his destination, the Navy Office in Seething Lane, a busy warren near the Tower of London.

  “Brother Sam!” he said with a heartiness suggesting it was a social call.

  Samuel Pepys, Clerk of the Acts of the Royal Navy, looked up from his desk. His face did not convey delight. He knew from experience that this was not a social call.

  “Brother Balty. I fear you find me much occupied.”

  “I was passing by. Thought to stick my head in. Say hello.”

  “Good of you,” Pepys said heavily.

  “What’s the commotion?” Balty said, looking out the window at the bustle in the courtyard below.

  “Meetings. So as you see, I am somewhat—”

  “Say, how long are they going to leave Cromwell’s head on that pike?”

  Pepys sighed. “I wouldn’t know. For as long as it pleases his majesty, I expect.”

  “Frightful thing.”

  “Yes, I imagine that’s rather the point.”

  “Weren’t you present when they”—Balty made a chopping motion—“lopped off the king’s head?”

  “Yes. I was sixteen. Played truant from school. And was well whipped for it. Now if you’ll—”

  “Didn’t you also see the execution of the first of the regicides? What’s his name . . . Harrison?”

  “Yes. Well, good of you to—”

  “Must have been ghastly. Hanging, disemboweling, cutting off the privy parts. Then—”

  “Yes, Balty. It was horrid. So much so that I endeavor not to dwell upon it.”

  “People will suspect you’ve a penchant for gruesome entertainments.” He pronounced the word in the French way, himself being half French. Balty and his sister, Pepys’s wife, had the tendency to lapse into their father’s native tongue.

  “My penchant, Balty, is to be witness at great events. I do not attend only executions. I remind you that I was aboard the ship that brought his majesty back to England from Holland four years ago.”

  Pepys did not mention—to Balty or anyone, for that matter—the diary he’d been keeping since 1660. He wrote it in a shorthand decipherable only to himself, so that he could tell it all.

  “Well, good to see you,” Pepys said. “Do give Esther my love.”

  Esther was Balty’s wife of two years, and the latest addition to the growing number of mouths it fell to Pepys to feed. His rise within the Navy Office had barely kept pace with the proliferation of impoverished relatives.

  Balty’s father, Alexandre, had been a prosperous if minor member of the French aristocracy, Gentleman Ordinary to the great King Henri IV. He was in charge of the King’s Guard on that dreadful spring day in 1610 when his majesty was driven in an open carriage through the Tuileries. The guards lagged behind, preening for the ladies in the crowd. The fanatical Catholic François Ravaillac saw his opening and lunged, sinking his sword into the King. The King died quickly. Ravaillac’s death was a more prolonged affair.

  According to St. Michel family lore, never entirely reliable, Alexandre redeemed himself some years later when he plucked Henri’s drowning son, King Louis XIII, from a pond after his horse threw him during an excited hare hunt. Thus he could claim the unique distinction of having got one king killed and another saved. A series of disastrous decisions had reduced him to his present station here in London, taking out patents for various inventions. One supposedly fixed leaky chimneys. It did not. Another was a device that rendered pond water fit for horses to drink. The horses died.

  The proverbial apple did fall far from the tree. At twenty-four, Balthasar could claim no achievements, nor was there any indication of ones to come. The word “feckless” might have been coined to describe Balty. But his older sister Elizabeth, Pepys’s wife, adored him and doted on him. For her, Balty could do no wrong. Pepys fumed that he could do no right. Pepys loved his wife, though fidelity was not chief among his qualities. And so it fell
to Sam, again and again, to provide money and employment for his pointless, impecunious brother-in-law.

  “As to Esther,” Balty responded in a merry, conspiratorial tone, “we have news. We are with child.”

  This stung. Pepys and his wife had been trying for ten years to produce a child. Sam was more and more convinced that the hellish operation he endured to cut out his kidney stone had rendered him incapable. Elizabeth meanwhile was plagued by feminine cysts. God himself seemed against them.

  “Well, Balty,” Pepys said, forcing a wistful smile, “that is news. I am glad. Heartily glad. Bess will be very pleased to hear of it.”

  “That is, we might be with child.” Balty threw up his hands to show his frustration at the impenetrable mysteries of conception. “I suppose we’ll know at some point.”

  Pepys frowned. “Yes, I expect so. Now you really must excuse me. I’ve a great deal to do.”

  A clatter of hooves and carriage wheels came from the courtyard. Balty peered down. “A personage of significance arrives. Very lush carriage.”

  “Lord Downing.”

  Balty considered. “Downing . . .”

  “Sir George Downing.”

  Balty made a disapproving face. “What, the one who lured his former comrades into a trap and got them butchered? Bloody Judas.”

  Pepys said sternly, “Have a care with your tongue, Balty. And for my position here.”

  “But surely you can’t approve of such a man as that? It was monstrous, what he did. Perfidy of the lowest—”

  “Yes, Balty. We all know what he did. For which service the King created him baronet. Those he lured were among the men who’d condemned the King’s own father. Try to bear that in mind, amidst your deprecations.”

  “I find him despicable. Honteux.”

  Pepys agreed with his brother-in-law. Privately. He confined his own indignation about Downing—“perfidious rogue,” “ungrateful villain”—to his diary.

  “Downing is Envoy at The Hague. And the King’s spymaster. He’s a powerful man, Balty. I’d urge you to keep that in mind before you go emptying your spleen in public houses. His lordship’s not someone you want for an enemy.”

  “I shouldn’t want him for a friend.” Balty sniffed. “Not after what he did to his.”

  “Well, what a pity,” Pepys said with a touch of pique. “I was about to suggest the three of us take tea together. Now really, Balty, I must say good day to you.”

  Balty took a few steps toward the door.

  “Brother Sam?”

  “Yes, Balty?”

  “Might you have something for me? A position?”

  “A position? Well, yes. I could arrange a position for you today. Aboard one of our ships.”

  “Sam. You know I’m no good on ships. They make me ill. Even when they’re not moving.”

  “This is the Navy Office, Balty. Ships are what we are about.”

  “Couldn’t I be your aide-de-camp? Or subaltern, or whatever they’re called in the Navy. Here. On land.”

  “Balty, I say this with the deepest affection—you have no qualifications. None. You have not one scintilla of qualification for Navy work.” Or any other kind, he thought.

  Pepys regarded the specimen of aimlessness who stood before him. He knew what scene would greet him at home tonight—his wife berating him, either with icy silence or volcanic eruption. Elizabeth, being half French, was capable of both modes. It wasn’t fair. Again and again, Pepys had done what he could for Balty, usually in the form of “loans.”

  “There might be something in Deptford, at the dockyards. Let me make some inquiries.”

  “Oh, bravo. Thank you.” Balty added, “Nothing too menial.”

  Pepys stared.

  “I’m told I’ve got rather a good head on my shoulders,” Balty said. “No sense wasting it putting me to work hefting sacks of gunpowder and dry biscuit all day. Eh?”

  Pepys inwardly groaned, but his desire to be rid of Balty was greater than his temptation to box his ears. “I’ll make inquiries.” Pepys rubbed his forehead in exasperation.

  “Valerian,” Balty said.

  “What?”

  “Valerian. The herb. They call it the Phew Plant. On account of the stink.” Balty pinched his nose. “But there’s nothing better for headache. Or the colic.”

  “Thank you. But I have my hare’s foot for that.”

  “Cures flatulence, too.”

  Pepys sighed and pointed to the door. “Go, Balty.”

  “Shall I stop in tomorrow?”

  “Go.”

  – CHAPTER 2 –

  Downing

  Pepys waited outside the Lord High Admiral’s chamber. It was a closed meeting, just the Duke and Downing, no attendants.

  It was no secret that Downing had been pressing hard for another war with the Dutch. Pepys had confided to his diary: The King is not able to set out five ships at this present without great difficulty, we neither having money, credit, nor stores. He wanted desperately to focus the Duke’s attention on this lamentable but inescapable reality. His brother, the King, was bleeding the Exchequer white with the extravagances of his merry court.

  The door opened. Downing emerged: forty-one, corpulent, suspicious eyes that seemed to look at you sideways, cruel smile, blue-tinted periwig.

  “Ah, the evitable Mr. Pep-iss.”

  Pepys fell in beside him as they walked to Downing’s carriage. They’d known each other for fifteen years. Downing had been chief judge at Pepys’s school examination, awarding him a scholarship to Cambridge. Downing found it witty to mispronounce Pepys’s surname, instead of the correct “Peeps.”

  “I trust my lord’s meeting with my Lord High Admiral was satisfactory?”

  “Very. I am as ever impressed with his grace’s grasp of affairs, naval and otherwise.”

  “And are we to have another war with Holland?”

  “What, Sam—no badinage today? You know how I enjoy our chin-wags.”

  They reached Sir George’s carriage. Downing gestured for Pepys to climb in. The carriage started on its way to Downing’s house in Whitehall, abutting St. James’s Park.

  His lordship was in a frisky mood, which always accentuated his air of malevolence. There was no softness to Downing. Some ascribed this to his being New England born and bred. He was notoriously mean with his money, of which he possessed a great deal. He maintained his aged mother in wretched poverty.

  “War,” Downing said idly. “Did the Duke and I talk of war? Let me see. There may have been some mention of war. We talked about so many things.”

  “If I may, my lord—the Navy is simply not equipped. It would be calamitous to embark on—”

  “Yes, Sam. All in good time. In omnibus negotiis prius quam aggrediare, adhibenda est preparatio diligens.”

  Pepys couldn’t be flummoxed by extracts from Cicero.

  “ ‘In all matters before beginning,’ ” he translated, “ ‘a diligent preparation must be made.’ From the De Officiis, I believe.”

  “A lump of sugar for my clever boy. Was I not perspicacious to promote your career? My eye for talent is peerless.”

  He liked a bit of groveling, Downing. Pepys was content to acquiesce if it would get him heard on the catastrophic consequences of starting a war with Holland.

  “I should be shearing sheep, were it not for my lord’s generous patronage.”

  Downing stared at his protégé, trying to decide if he was being flippant.

  “You overstate. No, you’d be in your father’s tailor shop. But as it happens, the Duke and I spent most of our time on another subject. New England.”

  New England was of no great interest to Pepys, except as a potential source of timber for the Navy’s warships.

  “The Duke informs me his brother the King is much vexed by his colonies there. Since his restoration, they have been conducting themselves very sourly. But then”—Downing smirked—“the Puritan saints have always been sour.”

  Downing’
s family had emigrated there from Ireland. Downing was in the first class of the Harvard College in Boston. His first cousin, John Winthrop, was Governor of the Connecticut Colony.

  “Massachusetts has been minting its own coinage,” Downing said.

  “Is that not contrary to law?”

  “Very contrary. They also chafe at his majesty’s recent missive constraining their persecution of the Quakers.”

  “We persecute Quakers here.” Pepys shrugged. He disapproved of it, privately. “Just yesterday I saw twenty of them being marched off to jail, clapped in chains.” He stopped himself from adding, Poor lambs. “Why does his majesty not approve persecuting them in New England?”

  “The New Englanders’ zeal was somewhat extreme. When Endecott hanged the Dyer wench in Boston four years ago it apparently left a bitter residue. Three other Quaker women caused a fuss and got sentenced to be tied to the cart and whipped naked through ten towns. Ten! A bit harsh, arguably. Left a trail of bloody snow for miles. Finally, the local magistrate at the next town said enough and cut them loose. Queer lot, Quakers. But if his majesty tells his colonial governors to stop killing them, then stop killing them they must. And get on with it. At a practical level, if we want the Quakers here to emigrate, we ought to make New England more hospitable to them. Or at least less lethal.”

  “Quite.”

  “The Puritans despise them almost as much as they do papists. They are convinced his majesty and his brother the Duke are secretly Roman. That his real purpose in protecting the Quakers is to give him cover to protect Catholics. Under the guise of ‘general toleration.’ ”

  Pepys trod carefully in these matters. His wife was Huguenot, but she often remarked—in front of others, for which Pepys boxed her ears—that she intended to die in the Catholic faith.

  “The New Haven Colony is the worst,” Downing went on. “They left Massachusetts because it wasn’t strict enough for them. Can you imagine? Not strict enough! I spent years in Massachusetts, and let me tell you, it was plenty strict.”

  “So I’ve heard.” New England sounded very grim to Pepys.

  “It was New Haven protected two of the regicide judges, Whalley and Goffe. We tried to get them in ’61. But they hid them. Gave the hunters a jolly runaround. It was most brazen. His majesty has not forgotten it. I’ve half a mind to have another go at finding them and bringing them to justice.”