Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  Not lefs is it the right bufinefs of a neighbour to warn, when fome accident or mif-dealing in the houfe befide his does threaten him directly, fuch that if we fee our neighbour’s fire rage unchecked in the grate we muft fear left it do bring deftruction on our houfe as well as his, no lefs than if he let fome diftemper to fpread among the pigs that graze next ours, or fuffer fomeone afflicted of a plague to move among us.

  In this honeft fpirit are we bold, in fraternity and humanity and Godly fellowfhip, to fay to our neighbours that there is fuch an outcaft among them, fent from other lands by a pretender to fpread evil, we fay that there is fuch a diftemper among them, compofed mongrel-wife of parts royalift and parts crypto-catholick howfoever it may difguife itfelf with other names, and we fay that a fire does rage in their houfe, of pride and vainglorious bombaft againft their neighbour, and we fay that there lies peril in their path fhould they take another ftep.

  And the peril of our Scottifh brethren is this, that if they fuffer thefe errors to fpread among them, and do perfift in thefe mif-deeds, then it may be confidered that, not only in Chriftian duty but alfo in the mere fpirit of felf-preservation common to all confcious beings, England would be full-juftified in intervening precipitately, with a ftrength that has become too-well known in thefe iflands, to correct the wrongs of Scotland, for the good of all of us.

  To Edinburgh from London we fend hope that wifer counfels fhall prevail, that the men of Scotland fhall fhow that prudence of mind and greatnefs of fpirit that has ever been their quality, and love.

  [SS C/T/50/13]

  ‘Master Scot!’ and there was a thumping of boots and some military clatter from the entrance passage, and as Oliver Cromwell appeared in the doorway of the great hall of Government scribes every head lifted in concern – a strange reverse bow to greet the most powerful man in the country. Cromwell hesitated only a moment, a shadow among the wooden panels, and then strode towards his man.

  Thomas Scot had taken an instinctive step back, but contrived one forwards again as Cromwell closed fast. Still the boots thumped, and now there was a crumpled paper in the outstretched fist.

  ‘Master Scot.’ It had become a growl. The heads had all dropped as quickly as they had surfaced. ‘What devil’s foolishness is this?’

  Scot had breathed himself to defiant height, and returned the glare while his mind raced for comprehension; then he took the paper, uncrumpled and scanned it. He frowned.

  Three steps away, John Thurloe watched discreetly.

  Cromwell’s voice was lower still. ‘I give you latitude enough, the Lord knows it, and every credit. But this is nigh treason.’ Scot’s eyes flicked up and as hastily away. The worst of curses might be endured, but that word brought a unique peril. ‘There are no prouder more stubborn men on this earth than those that preside in Edinburgh, and those who preach. This. . . toy will touch them at their tenderest. Are you and your. . . coven of clerks quite deaf to political sense? Epistle – St Paul’s: it’s blasphemy even.’

  Scot had managed to raise one hand; it quavered between them.

  ‘This is not our work, Master Cromwell.’ There was something of relief in the words. Disbelief began to bubble on Cromwell’s face. ‘Sincerely. You know me for a proud and honest man, whatever other failings you may ascribe.’

  Cromwell blinked. ‘Then who?’

  ‘Perhaps some over-passionate partisan, of our interest but not of our controlling.’ Thurloe was only a step away now, and silently took the page, and stepped away again. ‘It may be impolitic’ – there was a renewed edge of defiance in the old voice – ‘but the reactionary precepts of the Scottish are mistrusted by many of your dearest supporters.’

  Cromwell swallowed his irritation, but the words were growled again. ‘Is there not licensing of papers in this country?’

  ‘Of course. But the over-enthusiastic might somehow circumvent it. Or the unscrupulous. This may have been a ruse intended to bring us difficulty.’

  ‘It will succeed, very like.’

  Thurloe was still working instinctively at the creases of the paper, as he read and reread the text.

  Since it is not idiotic loyalty, it is brilliant treachery.

  Shay had two papers in front of him on the desk, two reports from Scotland. His eyes kept being distracted by the brightness of colour from the Astbury garden, shining its whites and yellows and weird vivid green through the window. Then he would drag them down to the desk again.

  To the left, the report of Montrose’s utter defeat, written in a great house on the edge of the Highlands, of necessity more a castle than a home, an outpost of learning and relative civility in the wilderness.

  To the right, a report written in the discreet solidity of an Edinburgh town house.

  Sir,

  I have this day been ill-received wherever I have called, and we may perhaps rejoice in the fact. Each of my visits has been met with the merest courtesy required of the host and no warmth besides, and to this cold fare sometimes has been added a pointed remark and once a veritable sermon. The infamous public letter from London lately circulating in the town has roused the taciturn Scots to a rare heat, of affronted pride and dignity and religious principle.

  We may only speculate if this has contributed to the most recent adjustments of view among the leadership here. They have let go of some last more extreme demands, and sent to their representatives treating with His Majesty’s representatives in the Netherlands to conclude an arrangement as speedily as possible. Neither confirmation nor exact terms have yet been received here in Edinburgh, but I may declare with comfort that there will shortly be such an arrangement, and that accordingly His Majesty will once more have the political, financial and, we may thereby hope, military support of a substantial party in these islands.

  W. J.

  [SS C/S/50/64]

  Again the colours glistened at him through the window, and again he dragged himself down to the affairs of the real world. There would be a King once more, in Scotland at least. And once more we shall try our luck against Cromwell.

  Anthony Ascham, Ambassador-designate of the Commonwealth of England to the Court of the Kings of Spain at Madrid, passed his last night, before formally presenting his credentials for that office, in an inn on the edge of the city.

  The month-long journey had felt like a wild, adventurous interval between the dignified civilized pillars of London and Madrid. A rest day. A festival of misrule. A period in the wilderness to sharpen his faith. London, where they knew him as the bold theorist of the new regime – Ascham took another mouthful of the rich Spanish wine – the sober thinker. To Madrid – capital of perhaps the most cultured and powerful royal Court in Europe – surely our very antithesis. And yet I have been sent, and tomorrow I will be accepted – where he would be the austere diplomat. And in the evenings we shall debate a little, I imagine. I shall learn Spanish. The messenger arriving just an hour ago – such formalities, such obsequiousness. I shall publish in Spanish. ‘On the friendship and advice of the Commonwealth of England, to His Majesty the King of Spain’. That would sound well. The serving girl was hovering, and he brandished his goblet – a warm superior smile.

  Two men with their backs to him, nearer the door. Once glanced towards him. What must they think of me?

  Between the two capitals of power and politics, the sea and the hundreds of rocky miles of northern Spain. The colours so sharp and strong: dark greens and browns and orange. One didn’t see orange like that in England. And so much rock, and scattered sparse across it in terrifying isolation the mountain taverns, straw and stink and hugger-mugger bedding, and those dark, raven-haired women. A wildness to the place and to the people. A danger. It seemed so very far from the green horse-churned fields of England, and London’s brilliant bustling.

  He felt rather young again. Another mouthful of wine. Not yet forty, after all. I could be back in London before I’m forty, with this fine appointment already a glorious success behind me. Young because rather nervou
s. Young because the Spanish women seemed to watch him voraciously, to want to mother him and then possibly to swallow him whole.

  It would surely be unseemly. ‘A Discourse on the effects of Absolutism on Public Morality’?

  The door to some other room opened an inch, and an eye appeared in the gap. It seemed to stare at him for one dark moment, and then the door closed. The Englishman in Spain. The official Englishman. Do women automatically find foreigners more interesting? ‘On the allure of the exotic’.

  The serving girl was back beside him, a full scarlet skirt, a loose blouse, the suggestion of brown breasts free inside it, big dark eyes and that long, long hair. She reached the bottle towards him but, on a whim of dignity, Ascham held up his hand. She frowned a little, and her wrist dropped to the table with the bottle. He tried to pat it in avuncular fashion. Enigmatic. Faintly austere. She will wonder.

  Later, on the edge of a dream of bronzed glory and voluptuousness, a thundering of feet and a slam and black ghosts and a panicky stifling, and one half-real moment feeling the hand over his mouth and seeing metal flickering in the night above him, and then the cold burn of pain, and nothing.

  Sir,

  I judge Irelande largely lost to your purposes now. Cork has been surrenderd to the soldiers of Parliament, and as we lately hear they soon after defeated the Irish in the field close by. Now we learn that Clonmel, despite a valiant resistance, has likewise been given over to the invaders as its defence could no longer be sustained. Waterford holds, but only by the hardest and is like to fall at any hour. The Irish – those as are still ready to bear arms – have retreated into the hilly fastnesses of the west. There they will not be easy caught, but nor will they do Cromwell any harm. Clearest of all, the man himself thinks the business done, as we understand that he is leaving at last for England to resume duties there, bidding others to complete the conquest here. Proud of the discretion you gave me to judge my activities for myself, I believe that I will now be better used in England again, and in truth I shall not be sorry to leave this place, for it shall be like escaping from the pit itself.

  T. M.

  [SS C/S/50/71]

  Shay only skimmed the report, with just a smile at the flash of Teach at the end. He had expected nothing more of Ireland. The compromise with the more Protestant Scots made the compromise with the Catholic Irish unsustainable, anyway. Come on then, Teach. You and Ireland have served your turn; the game is now elsewhere.

  Teach and the old hearts of the royal cause would begin to converge on Scotland now, to hope to be there to welcome the young King and seek his favour, perhaps to strap on a sword again. Shay’s road there would be longer: it would lead south to Oxfordshire, and east, to Norfolk, before it turned again northward. Two weeks in the saddle? His backside shifted instinctively on the oak chair. I seem to have been riding to war these thirty years.

  TO MR J. H., AT THE SIGN OF THE BEAR

  Sir,

  I was much heartened at your note about the incident at New Market, though saddened by your distraught circumstances, for I had feared some indiscretion or ill aspect of mine had deterred you. Truly the climate of bitterness around you must try your soul, and I likewise am troubled by the belligerence of those around me. Cromwell is much vexed at the thought of war, and at the hotheadedness of the pamphleteers who have brought it on, and at the posturing of Charles Stuart, but he is entirely determined to come to Scotland and defeat the Scots again if he needs to. The military plans and preparations are well in hand, and the General himself eager to be on the march. Is there no road by which men of the prudent middling sort might lead their sundered countrymen to safety again? Even our concerns about the Levellers do make men here more angry than cautious, and I must say that I am concerned indeed. It seems that Colonel Rainsborough or those around him had indeed at some time and in some way had some correspondence with Royalist elements, and at the same time that Levellers in the Government had communication from Royalists. Can you imagine who that might have been? For it seems fantastical to me, and leaves me grieving for the right balance of this distracted land.

  [SS C/S/50/74]

  ‘I can’t believe that you dared come to London. Uxbridge was bad enough, but here!’

  Shay gripped the man’s arm, as much to stop him fidgeting. ‘Then we may hope that no one else will believe it.’

  ‘I often have visitors from Parliament; the Army even. To see my books. Or on business.’

  ‘Perfect. My reputation can only benefit.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of you.’ It was said with deliberate bitterness.

  Shay ran one finger along a line of books, enjoying its rhythmic bumping over the spines. The room was hardly big enough for the two of them, and all four walls were solid leather, rank after rank of buff-coloured boots on parade, broken by the rare gleam of calfskin. A table was piled with letters, news-sheets and pamphlets.

  He felt somehow clumsy in this temple. ‘Did you bring it?’ he asked sharply.

  A startled glance from the other, and then a little nod. He lifted a copy of the Veritas Britannica to show another pile of papers, and Shay dropped onto a stool in front of it.

  ‘Being a strict record of the Debates held within the Army, at Putneye, during October of the year of our Lord 1647’.

  In his ear, insistent: ‘Cromwell ordered these suppressed.’

  ‘But you have rather more respect for our history.’ He looked up.

  The man flushed slightly. ‘To have lost them. . . It would have been – I thought it—’

  ‘I understand.’ Shay watched the strained figure as it straightened the top paper unnecessarily. Not for the first time, he marvelled at the little braveries that flickered in men. ‘Our history will need these details. We’re all servants of the future.’

  The man looked at him, examining the idea. ‘Yes. That’s rather good. Yes, we are.’

  Shay began to turn over the pages, skimming and occasionally slowing. Cromwell and the other senior commanders trying to take the heat out of the radical men in the Army by giving them a hearing. Wild ideas, and the uneasy balancing of discipline and release. Votes for all men; fundamental rights; equality before the law; freedom of conscience.

  Shay said, ‘Tell me about Thomas Rainsborough.’

  ‘The most eloquent of the radical men, and the most forward. A devil in his manner, but—’

  ‘A politician? A rabble-rouser?’

  The man hesitated. ‘No. No, I should say not. Passionate, yes, but when he spoke he was most earnest and most sober.’

  ‘Trouble for Cromwell, though.’

  ‘They shared a mistrust of the King. But Cromwell thought the Levellers meant chaos in the Army, and anarchy in England. He worried about the King being captured by the Leveller faction.’

  Shay had found Rainsborough in the record.

  Col. Rainsborowe: For really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under.

  [SS C/T/47/7 & WORCESTER COLLEGE MS 65]

  One finger thumped at the page, slowly. This, surely, cannot be reconciled with Royalism.

  How should a King behave before his people?

  These are the decades of Charles Stuart, the second King of that name: a satin sheltered childhood, lace and loneliness and the strange tensions of his father’s retreat from his own Government; an adolescence at war, an uncomfortable, precocious presence on the battlefield, just another ridiculous extravagance in the tent like the gold dinner service and the bust of Aurelius, his pudgy insecurities being played out across a whole nation, and then the forced adulthood turned back to childhood games again, hiding and disguise and catch me if you can, and then the courtiers, with their en
dless matronly obeisances and scoldings, coming to tell him that his father, so cold and so painful, had been murdered by his own people. This is not what I was promised.

  I’ve never met this people. Perhaps some forgotten ceremonial unveiling of the infant to the world, and the soldiers plodding nearby like cattle when he stood in the tent doorway in defiance of his father’s hasty murmured pleas. Then fear and poverty and exile kept the company small, and of his own class. Shall they think me handsome?

  At the start of his third decade, Charles II was invited by his people to join them, and he came to Edinburgh by ship and by a plodding ride through endless wet hills, stopping at houses of surpassing meanness and gloom. Finally the entry to Edinburgh, his first conscious introduction to his people, a present for his twentieth birthday.

  And shall these people, too, think me tall and handsome? They seemed an emotionless, stubborn set of faces, these Scots gathered to greet him from their doorways and from their windows like raised eyebrows. Not to greet him; to consider him. This is not what I was promised in the paintings; this is not like the dreams.

  Used and forgotten, the Marquess of Montrose was there to greet his master too. From a spike protruding high out of the tolbooth his head gazed down on the procession, blackened and shrivelling and most indifferent of all.

  Shay adjusted his bulk on the bench, resettling his shoulders against the damp plaster wall. Unsuccessful. He remembered the conversation in London; stared down again at the letter in his fist.