The South Lawn Plot Read Free Page A

resentment or anger that he would be dead by May. His life of forty-six years would be taken by the relentless turbulence in his humors that was, even in the dawn stillness, causing him to press his eyes shut and close his good hand into a fist so tight that his finger bones cracked.
    He had seen the signs before, more than once, in the company of his uncle, a leading London physician. Cole took in a slow, deep breath. The pain eased a little.
    He turned his head and stared across the room. About twenty paces away, by the wall close to the bedchamber door, there was a writing desk in front of which was a long-backed chair. He watched as the first rays of the sun reached the edge of the desk and began spreading light over its surface.
    Cole rose again and shuffled across the island of woven wool to the desk long ago purchased by his father, a man who had taken as great an interest in business and profit as had his own brother in the medicinal arts.
    The room had once been a library and scriptorium before being adapted to its present function and the desk was well used. There were scratches in abundance and in one or two places previous users had carved signs and letters.
    Cole eased himself into the chair. A carved figure of the sun with a smiling face adorned the apex of the chair's back. Cole reached for a calamus and dipped it into a small wooden jug full of ink. There was paper in abundance and he began to scratch out words on a page. He was close now to finishing the document and for that he gave silent thanks to God. His eyes passed over the neatly arranged pile of pages written yesterday, the day before, and the days before that.
    Together, they amounted to what he believed was a most judicious indictment of James, the man who called himself king. The tract would conclude with a reasoned justification for the king's abdication or, if necessary, death at the hands of noble and patriotic Englishmen loyal to the true, mother church.
    The tract was intended for publication and dissemination only when James was removed from the throne. Cole felt he had more than justified in his writing what would be nothing less than a revolution. He had summoned all his power with words to join together the strands of argument that would surely convince England's nobility that the kingdom's rightful destiny was to be found by following the path laid down by the Church of Rome.
    This he believed with his heart, his soul; his very life. Others believed it too and one among them, the man who would carry the plan to its fruition, was close, very close, perhaps even now riding over the last miles to the house that stood where once a Norman keep, and before it a Saxon fort, had held sway over the fields and fens of this corner of Essex.
    Cole, lost in thought of what would soon reshape England's destiny, did not immediately notice the knock on the door. But the woman, now sitting up in the bed, coughed. He turned his head. The door opened slowly and the boy from the stables pushed his head into the room.
    â€œA horseman, my lord, on the Colchester road.”
    Cole dismissed the child with a nod. With a nimbleness that caused him some surprise he rose from the chair and made again for the window.
    Indeed there was a man, though not on a horse. He was walking his mountslowly towards the house. Cole recognized immediately the man's height, the purposeful, certain stride.
    â€œChrist and his virgin mother be praised,” he said.
    â€œRichard.” The woman said no more. But her complaint was clear. Cole ignored her nevertheless.
    He clapped his hands together in delight and stared intently at the approaching figure, his feet lost in ground fog. The rising sun was casting light on the man. It seemed to Cole as if the light was bursting forth from his very body. It seemed as if this man was the Messiah himself.
    Cole bowed his head. More quietly now he spoke lest he disturb the woman who seemed to have returned to her slumbers. He did not