‘No. I’m not running away.’
I was sitting on my bed; he bent to one knee and looked me in the eye.
‘Nat, Crofts’ death was a terrible thing, but it was an accident. You’ve done good things in your life and this doesn’t cancel them out. You have to do what she says.’
‘I can’t. I did it, I’ll take the punishment.’
‘All right, look at it this way. You know what state the queen’s in. She’s still not well, and she’s worried to death about what’s going on at home. Would you really give her the pain of making her punish you? Or will you help her by making the problem disappear?’
He stood, and I looked up at him.
‘When do I have to go?’
‘At dawn, tomorrow.’
* * *
I took my leave of the queen later that night. I’d been so caught up with my own troubles lately, I hadn’t noticed how thin and pale she’d become; her eyes were ringed with shadows and her once-rosy cheeks were hollow. But she insisted on sitting up with me until the candles burned down.
‘In these times,’ she said, ‘I’ve learned to say my goodbyes properly. You never know when it might be for the last time.’
We talked about old times: the days when she and the king could hardly bear to be in the same room; the happy years at Whitehall, before all the troubles started; and our time on the road together.
‘You’ve changed so little these past few years,’ she said, ‘and look at me, old and worn.’ I started to deny it but she shook her head. ‘No, it’s true. The times we’ve been through have taken their toll on me. When I look in the mirror, I wonder if the king will even recognise me when we see each other again.’
She gave me the letter for her sister.
‘Stay there until I send for you. I don’t know how long it will be – perhaps a year or more – but this will be forgotten in time. And perhaps by then we’ll all be home again.’
Did she really still believe that? The king was losing the war, we all knew it. And if the other side won, it would never be safe for her to go home.
‘Let’s hope so,’ I said.
* * *
When I woke the next morning I found a letter poked under my door, with my name scrawled across the front in Arabella’s handwriting. I wanted to break the seal and hear her voice once more, even though it was only saying goodbye. But that would just make leaving harder. I tucked it inside my coat, and made up my mind that I wouldn’t read it until I was far away.
Henry came with me to the edge of the city. We rode mostly in silence, but I was glad of his company. And there was nothing we needed to say; just as we’d always been able to share a joke without saying a word, that day we didn’t talk about the sadness of parting either.
‘You never did buy me a new pair of boots,’ he said, as the city gate came into sight. ‘To replace the ones you puked on.’
‘It was barely a spatter. You were as fussy as a girl in those days.’
As we slowed to a halt, he said, ‘It’s a long ride down to Turin. Where will you break the journey?’
All through the long, sleepless night before, I’d been thinking about the queen’s letter, but it was only as I opened my mouth to answer Henry that I finally made my decision.
‘I’m not going to Turin. Everyone there will know what I did, and I’m too much of a coward to face it.’
‘My friend, if there’s one thing you’re not, it’s a coward.’
I shrugged.
‘Well, I can’t do it.’
‘Then where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere no one knows me, somewhere I can get a position in a house and keep my head down.’
I did know, by then, where I was going. But if I told him, he’d try to persuade me out of it.
‘How long will you stay away?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Can I tell the queen? She’ll worry when she finds out you haven’t arrived in Savoy.’
‘Tell her I’ll write, as soon as I’m settled. You know she thinks the next time we see each other, it’ll be when we’re all on our way home?’
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t answer.
‘I suppose you’ll be married by then,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘I’ve decided we should just do it quietly,’ he said. ‘The queen won’t mind, we’ve waited long enough.’
I thought of the letter, tucked inside my cloak, the last words I’d ever hear from Arabella before she became another man’s wife.
‘Well then,’ said Henry. ‘This is it, old friend.’
I nodded.
‘We’ll meet again,’ he said. ‘When all this is over.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, Henry.’
* * *
The way to Savoy was south; I watched Henry ride out of sight, then turned north and headed for the coast. I had let the queen down so badly, just when she needed friends around her, and now there was only one thing I could do. I would go home to England, and fight for the king. No one would care, now, that I gave the other side a reason to mock; the fight was all but over anyway. Nor would I make any difference to the result, but I fully intended to die trying. It wouldn’t atone for Crofts’ death, nor the anguish I’d caused the queen, but it was all I could offer.
I boarded the first boat bound for Dover and watched France disappear. The wind buffeted the sails; we’d make good time if it continued. I felt inside my coat, pulled out the letter from Arabella, and looked at it. I wanted so badly to hear her voice again, but after the terrible thing I’d done, I didn’t deserve the comfort it would give me. I reached up, the letter between my fingers, and let the wind take it.
Chapter Forty-eight
We didn’t make good time: after a couple of hours, the wind dropped, and the ship was becalmed for a day. But that gave me a chance to think about what to do when I arrived. I planned to aim for Oxford, but how I was to get there was another matter. I didn’t know if anyone would still recognise me – it had been a long time since the days of the newsbooks and poems proclaiming me the smallest man in England – but if they did, I’d be as much of a prize to the other side as I ever was. And from the start, I’d pass through territory where people would be only too pleased to turn me in. The whole of the south-east had been solid for Parliament from the start – in that one letter I’d had from Jeremiah, he said there’d barely even been any fighting in Kent. Once the army had taken control of the ports and the big towns, people had either genuinely sided with their cause, or decided it was safest to pretend they did, if necessary by denouncing a neighbour just to be sure everyone was convinced.
So before the cliffs of Dover came into sight, I used my pocket knife to cut my hair short, trampled my hat until it looked battered and worn, and scuffed my boots with sand from a fire bucket. My travelling clothes were simple, and I hoped that with the rest of my adjustments, no one would notice the fine cloth they were made from. I’d still stand out, there was nothing I could do about that, but as long as no one realised who I was, I had a chance of getting to Oxford.
I stood on deck as we approached, remembering the day we left for France, when we all thought we’d be home again in a few months. So much had happened since then, on both sides of the water, and none of it good. I was so lost in my thoughts that it wasn’t until we were close to land that I saw the soldiers. The harbour was full of them, walking up and down in twos and threes, now and then stopping people and seemingly asking them questions. If they were checking travellers coming off the ships, I was in trouble. They’d know mine had come from France, and I stood out a mile from the few other passengers, merchants to a man. I looked around: could I hide somewhere, wait until everyone else got off? But the other passengers were gathering on deck now, and I couldn’t do that without attracting attention.
There was nothing for it but to brazen it out and hope for the best. I wracked my brain for a reason I could give for being in France, t
hat wouldn’t associate me with the king’s side. All I could come up with was a cock and bull story about delivering a special package for an uncle who traded in gems, which I could back up with a few convincing phrases dredged up from my memories of the queen selling her jewels in Amsterdam. It wouldn’t withstand more than a moment’s scrutiny, but it was all I had.
As the sailors lowered the gangplank, three soldiers approached. Would they come on board, or wait to check us as we stepped off the ship? If it was the latter, I might just have a chance to run. My heart pounding, I watched as they walked briskly towards the ship. And then carried on past it.
As I walked away from the ship, hardly able to believe my luck, one of the sailors shouted down, asking a woman walking by what was going on.
‘Never seen so many soldiers down here,’ he said. ‘What are they after?’
‘You haven’t heard the news?’
‘Wouldn’t be asking if I had, darlin’, would I?’
‘It’s the king,’ said the woman. ‘He’s chucked it all in. And they say he’s running to France.’
* * *
The soldiers weren’t checking passengers arriving; they were checking who was leaving. I got the full story – or at least as much as anyone knew then – by listening to the talk at a tavern near the end of the harbour. Before I left France, the last message from the king had news of yet another defeat, this time at Stow-on-the-Wold, dangerously close to Oxford. He was in low spirits, he’d written, but still sure he could either win round Parliament or swing the Scots to his side with his wily negotiations. Now I learned that since then, his last strongholds in the West Country had fallen. With next to nothing more to defend, he’d left Oxford – in disguise, so the tavern-keeper said – and nobody knew where he was. Some speculated that he’d fled to France, others to Princess Mary in Holland, but what was clear was that he’d given up the fight.
I sat at a table, staring at my mug of watery ale.
Where do I go now?
I couldn’t fight for the king if the king wasn’t fighting anymore, and I couldn’t go back to France. Suddenly weary, I closed my eyes for a second, and as so often happened, my mind conjured up Crofts’ white, lifeless face, and hot guilt washed over me again. I had to pay for what I’d done. I’d have liked to do it in a way that would have brought me some honour, but that option wasn’t open to me now, and perhaps I hadn’t deserved it anyway. So there was only one way left. I would give myself up. Pick any soldier on the harbour, tell them who I was, and put myself in line for the traitor’s death I’d been promised by Major Sarenbrant, all that time ago. Traitor, murderer, what difference did it make?
Leaving my ale untouched, I walked out. A hundred yards away, a pair of soldiers were talking to a ship’s captain. One wore the uniform of an officer; that would shorten the process, at least. I waited outside the tavern for the conversation to finish. After a couple of minutes, the sea captain shook his head in answer to what must have been a final question and walked off. The soldiers stood with their back to me, and as I walked towards them, I heard the officer say,
‘Reckon the bird’s flown, don’t you?’
The other man nodded.
‘Run off to his papist whore of a wife,’ he said. ‘And good riddance to the pair of them.’
I turned and walked away. I couldn’t hand myself over to the people who’d tried to kill her in her bed, that night in Bridlington, and who’d plotted to snatch her and put her in the Tower. So I would have to find somewhere else to go. I didn’t know where Sam was, or even if he was still alive; there’d been no way to get a letter to him while he was moving about with the army. There was only one other person I could think of to go to. Someone I knew would give me shelter, until I could work out what to do with myself.
* * *
It was three days until the next stage wagon left Dover; not wanting to hang around where there were so many soldiers, I decided to walk. It was more than twenty miles, a long way for my short legs, but I was in no hurry, knowing that once I arrived I’d have to confess why I was there.
I remembered Kent as a lush, green county, with orchards full of apple and cherry trees, and well-fed cattle in the pastures. Now I saw fields lying fallow and fruit trees chopped down, I guessed for firewood. Though there’d been little fighting in Kent, its men would have been pressed to fight elsewhere, and not all of them would come back to plough and plant. And the soldiers who’d held Kent for Parliament would have taken what they needed with scant concern for who owned it, just as I’d seen ours do in Oxford. It was a shock to see: if this was a county that had escaped the worst of the turmoil, what must it be like in the places that had been fought over so bitterly?
At night I slept under hedges, wary of entering an inn. Luckily the weather was kind, and the long road left me so tired that I slept almost as soon as I lay down, yet still Crofts’ face haunted my dreams, and I would wake up before the dawn, sweating despite the morning chill.
At last, footsore and weary, I stood in front of a cottage that was surrounded by neat rows of carrots and cabbages, with four red hens pecking around in the dirt. I knocked on the door and, when it opened, there was Jeremiah’s dear, kind face, just exactly as I remembered it.
* * *
What I didn’t know was that while I made my way up from the coast, fresh news had come from the north. The king hadn’t fled to France, or Holland; he’d surrendered to the Scots. The old fool thought he could come to terms with them but, within days, it was obvious he was their prisoner. The war was over, with us on the wrong side. And, wrapped up in my own misery and guilt, I hadn’t stopped to consider that by turning up on their doorstep, I was putting Jeremiah and his family in danger too.
The battles might be over, but that didn’t mean the fight had been forgotten. In the eyes of the other side, I was a traitor, and if Jeremiah and Sukie were found sheltering me, they’d be guilty of treason too. They had a son now, Michael, a happy little lad just past his first birthday, with tufty fair hair that made him look like a baby bird. It was to him that Sukie’s sharp brown eyes darted when Jeremiah insisted I could stay as long as I needed to.
‘We can hide him,’ he said, in answer to her look. He turned to me. ‘You’ll promise not to step outside in daylight?’
I shook my head.
‘I can’t let you do this. I’ll go.’
‘No you won’t.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘I didn’t take my part in the fight, Nat. I don’t say I regret it, not when I see women and children whose men went off to war and didn’t come home. But the queen was good to me, and I didn’t stand by her. So the least I can do is stand by you now, and I want no arguing about it.’
Part Three
Chapter Forty-nine
There was an apple tree outside the cottage; when I knocked on the door that day, after my long walk from Dover, it had been covered in pink blossom. One morning, as I glanced out of the window, I saw there were little apples hanging from the branches. I had been in hiding for four months, stepping outside the house only once darkness fell, for a quick walk to exercise my legs and get some fresh air.
Being so near to London, news reached Kent quickly, and at least once a week, Jeremiah or Sukie would walk into Canterbury and bring back the latest newsbook. Week after week, we read that the king was still negotiating with the Scots, and with Parliament, about how the country should be run, and who’d decide what prayerbook we used on a Sunday, and whether he could still appoint bishops to tell us all what to do. It was hard to see where it was all going, because one newsbook contradicted another, but I knew what he’d be doing: trying to play one side off against the other, congratulating himself on his cleverness. Still, after all that had happened, thinking he could get things back to the way they were.
But Parliament and their army were in charge of the country now, not him. Not long after I arrived, Sukie came back from Canterbury white-faced, with a story she’d heard. The local barber and the innkeeper had made a jo
ke about Cromwell in front of some soldiers in the marketplace, and the soldiers had dragged them out of the crowd and taken them away. People had mumbled and murmured, she’d been told, but no one raised a finger to stop it. After about an hour the soldiers rode into the square, with the two men on another horse, tied back to back with nooses hanging round their necks. They took them all the way to the gallows, with the innkeeper’s wife and daughter running behind, weeping and begging the soldiers to let the men go. Only at the last minute had the soldiers announced the thing to be a joke, but it had plainly seemed serious enough to their prisoners, one having pissed his pants in fear at the sight of the gibbet. None of us said it but I knew all three of us were thinking the same thing when Sukie told that story. They’d done that as punishment for a couple of silly remarks; what would they do if they caught hold of us?
* * *
And so I was stuck, and they were stuck with me, and none of us knew how long that might continue. The house had two rooms, a parlour and a bedroom, and there was a space under the thatch that Jeremiah made into a place for me to sleep, with a ladder I could shin up and pull in behind me if anyone came to the door during the day. There were no neighbours nearby, but now and then someone called wanting eggs from Sukie’s chickens. If she was outside tending the plants, she’d see them coming and warn me, and when she was indoors, we kept a wary eye on the little window, so no one could take us unawares.
Jeremiah headed off to the stables at dawn and didn’t come home till dusk, so during the day, it was just Sukie and me and little Michael in the cottage. Sukie, I discovered, wasn’t a great talker – she rationed her words as though there might be limited supply and she wasn’t going to be the foolish person caught short. But it didn’t need words to tell me that she didn’t want me there: I heard it in her irritated sigh as I came down the ladder each morning, and saw it in the pinched look on her face as she put a third plate on the table each evening. I understood perfectly well why. They’d made a nice life for themselves, and thanks to her foresight, they’d said little about where they’d come from when they arrived; it wasn’t generally known that they’d ever had anything to do with the king and queen, only that they’d once worked in a big house in London. The new master who’d bought the estate when it was confiscated was very definitely on the other side – the word was that he was personally acquainted with Cromwell – but he seemed to think as highly of Jeremiah’s skills as the old one had, and as Sukie said, it made no practical difference to them whether Jeremiah’s wages came from a friend of the king or a friend of Mr Cromwell; a penny bought the same amount of bread, either way. And now here I was, a cuckoo in their happy little nest, and a dangerous one at that.
The Smallest Man Page 22