by Jerry Dunne
This carefully chosen anchor shifts the whole burden for us quite remarkably. Now we don’t need any other prominent physical character involved in the story, even though we will have an antagonist – the monarchy. We certainly don’t need to introduce the court setting and other physical characters of the court. We can write a very short but vibrant story focused entirely on Cromwell’s complex feelings toward the monarchy.
THE STORY PLAN
Outline
The story has one main character and is woven around Cromwell’s signature on King Charles’s death warrant. The POV is third person, Cromwell’s. The time period spans just a few minutes.
As soon as Cromwell adds his signature (third to do so) to the death warrant, the very act of seeing his signature on such a document triggers a startling reaction in him. Almost like a ghost, the monarchy begins to haunt Cromwell, even dragging his childhood memories into the fray. It works to weaken him by forcing doubt on his radical and puritanical actions from the conservative side of his nature.
The plot arc
We use the 3 act plot arc structure here. This might seem like a tall order for what is in fact a very short psychological story, but it is easier to do than may at first appear.
Set-up
Cromwell is about to sign the death warrant.
Inciting incident
After signing, his usually familiar name and signature now look somehow unfamiliar to him on this document, making him starkly aware that his whole life and even his sense of identity have just taken the most unexpected and drastic of turns.
Middle part
(Doubt)
Sudden doubt makes Cromwell react by raging with indignation at the King’s character.
(Doubt grows heavier)
Walking along a corridor, Cromwell feels the silence pressing in on him. A Latin inscription on a window Deo et regi fidelis (Faithful to God and king) fills him with growing doubt. Spiritual signs of the monarchy are everywhere. You can kill a man of flesh and blood but the monarchy itself is another matter.
High point
Cromwell stares transfixed at shadows ahead in the corridor, seeing a childhood memory there. Once, he and his two best friends had signed a childhood pledge to their king, the father of this king. The boys had promised to protect the old king with their lives, for at that time he had faced dangers. This memory makes him smile.
Darkest moment (doubt grows heavier still)
But then this memory shakes Oliver to his core. He had once loved the old king. The same name and signature that had once signed that document had just signed this one. Now he wonders whose side God is really on. The memory of his love for the old king makes him realize how that same love still beats with a powerful rhythm in the depths of many an English heart. The corridor’s walls are throwing tyrant! traitor! at him.
Climax
But this king is not the old king. This man of flesh and blood had pitted himself against England and its Parliament. Traitor! Imbecile! Warmonger! Every chance offered had been thrown back in their faces. That’s why it had come to this. He, O Cromwell, could do nothing more. Let God sort it out. Outside, gathered soldiers let up a great cheer.
Resolution
Yet, for the next few weeks he must make an effort to avoid silence and shadow or whispers whose source he couldn’t know.
THE STORY
The Signature
The ink was dry on the president of the court’s signature, Jo Bradshawe.
Thomas Grey, second up, was now signing the death warrant. Behind him, Oliver Cromwell waited with a slight grin on his face like a guilty child’s. Yet the grin failed to express the man’s complexity of thought and feeling.
Thomas Grey stepped away from the table.
Cromwell breathed in deeply. The time had come. He stepped forward, picked up the quill and rested the tip below the signature Tho Grey. He felt thick silence in his ears, felt it like a damp vapour hanging heavy on the air. His breath deepened. Damn that man of flesh and blood!
He tore the silence into shreds by scratching the tip hard against the parchment. He signed with his usual fluent flourish, absolutely not wavering or hesitating – O Cromwell.
Cromwell’s eyes fixed on the parchment as he threw down the quill. He frowned. So familiar was his name and signature. Yet, here on this document both now looked strange. In all his life’s changes from boyhood to early manhood, to Parliamentarian, to officer in the Parliamentarian Army, to his dealings with the king and bringing the king to account, right through to the present moment, in all this time he had never felt the least discomfort with his name or his signature, these symbols of his identity; and rightly so, as both had always served him reliably. But here on this document, he felt suddenly detached from them. His name here made him aware in the starkest of ways that his whole life and even his sense of identity had just taken the most drastic of turns. It was not a vague idea, a whispered possibility or even a sentiment spoken out loud any longer. Now, he, O Cromwell, was about to become a regicide.
His quill hand trembled. He clapped both hands together loudly to stop the trembling. What had caused it? Fear of the unknown? Or anger?
He felt boiling in his bowels. Yes, anger.
“The man is the worst kind of fool,” he said, spilling a drop of red wax to the right of his signature, and pressing on it with his signet ring.
Behind him Grey chuckled; but it was a quiet, cautious sound that faded quickly into the stone walls.
Cromwell stepped out of the room, moving along a deep corridor, a bare wall on his left, and on his right, recessed into the stone wall, were stained-glass windows set at regular intervals. The only sound came from his heels clicking on the floor. The sound reassured him, prevented the silence from suffocating him. White winter sunlight filtered in through the stained-glass windows, throwing multi-coloured shadows across the floor and walls. He stopped and turned to face a window, lowering his eyelids and bathing both body and mind in the warm light. When he raised his eyelids, he fixed his gaze on the Latin inscription on the window’s lower pane. It gleamed back at him like an accusation.
Deo et regi fidelis
(Faithful to God and king)
He spun on his heels, walking away. He made a fist and punched it into the palm of his other hand. You can kill a man of flesh and blood but the monarchy itself is another matter. When Charles the man was cut down, would this empower Charles the martyr? Were they giving him wings and a halo? Were they strengthening the monarchy?
He turned a corner and walked along a dark, windowless corridor. He narrowed his eyes. Was that a child coming toward him? Looked like a child. He halted, his heels falling silent. The child slipped into the shadows. Cromwell stared ahead as though transfixed and saw in the shadows a childhood memory. A slight smile curved his lips. At his home in Huntingdon, his two best friends and he had signed a pledge to their king, the father of this king. So earnest at the time, so solemn in their declarations, they had even used seals to make the document look official. Now he remembered the hot red wax and how they had even thought of using their own blood to seal the document. Their blood wasn’t thick enough or surely they would have used it. The boys had promised to protect the old king with their lives, for at that time he had faced dangers.
“I once loved the old king,” he whispered, recalling further what he had thought as a child of those who had attempted to kill the King a few years previously in the Jesuit Treason Plot.
The sudden realization of what this memory fully signified shook Oliver to his core. The same name and signature that had once signed that document had just signed this one.
“And now I am the one plotting his son’s destruction, and I am no Jesuit,” he gasped.
He asked the dark stone walls, “Where is that document now? Does God have his eye on it? Does God have his eye on that one and this one both? Does God have his eye both on the boy and the man?” He paused before adding, “The monarchy is held in deep affection in my ch
ildhood memories.”
Only for the way the shadows in this corridor caught his eye, he might never have remembered this event of his distant past. But now the memory of his love for the old king made him realize how that same love still beat with a powerful rhythm in the depths of many an English heart.
He stared back into the darkness, seeing in his mind’s eye the chamber where the death warrant lay upon the table waiting for many more signatures, and he swallowed dry.
His heels began clicking again. The sound grew sharp as musket shots ricocheting off the walls, accusing him with deafening echoes.
“Tyrant! Traitor! Tyrant! Traitor! Tyrant! Traitor!”
He, along with others, had thrown these words at the present king but old memories, cold shadows and cold stone walls were now throwing them back at him.
He lengthened his stride, craving the crisp air and the white winter sun. He snatched a deep breath and let it out with force. But this king was not the old king. This king, this man of flesh and blood, had pitted himself against England and its Parliament. This stubborn, duplicitous man of the flesh had refused to compromise in any way and on any point. Traitor! Imbecile! Warmonger! Every chance offered had been thrown back in their faces. That’s why it had come to this.
At the end of the corridor, he wiped cold sweat off his brow.
Even now the man could save himself. But, he, O Cromwell, could do nothing more. He had given his everything to the cause. From this point on, let God sort it out.
Cromwell threw open the doors and the stark sunlight fell on him. Soldiers gathered let up a great cheer.
Yet, for the next few weeks he must make an effort to avoid silence and shadow or whispers whose source he couldn’t know.
A SAYING AND TWO FABLES
Our mining technique has placed emphasis on a search for specific and obvious plot-driven universal character flaws, which helped us bring focus on the essay. So now we should easily be able to construct a saying and two fables out of it. The modern style fable, of course, offers up an idea for a short story in its own right, but either type fable may well encourage fresh short story ideas. This exercise is a good demonstration in showing how easily parts of the historical character (because we are pinpointing universal human flaws) and plot can be transformed into other media.
We narrowed our essay’s theme and moral to the following: the most powerful individual is never as important as their office. This is summed up nicely in the following: In some respects Charles was right: they couldn’t function without him. But Cromwell was right, too: they couldn’t function with him. But Charles would fail to grasp one eventual truth: they struggled to function effectively without the monarchy, but a single representative of it was expendable.
So let’s see how this works out in the saying and the fables.
A saying
Powerful fools never understand that power shines brighter on the symbols of office than on the individual as the symbols more keenly reflect the hearts and minds of the powerless, where the source of power shines out brightest.
Old style fable
The Cock, the Farmer & His Wife
Whenever at night a predator prowled round the farmyard, a new cock crowed a warning at the top of his lungs. This way the farmer never lost any hens.
At first, the farmer and his wife said, “Where would we be without you, new cock?”
Once the cock realized his worth, all day long he bragged loudly about the yard. The farmer’s wife often asked him to shut up and save it for a night time warning; but the cock always replied, “You’d be lost without me. You said so yourself.”
The farmer’s wife developed a splitting headache from the constant loud crowing. She offered the cock all sorts of treats if only he would shut up. He snatched the treats but never stopped his loud boasting. One day, her head splitting, she threw a stone at the cock.
With his dying breath, the cocked crowd faintly, “You need me! You need me!”
“Yes,” the wife admitted. “But your mistake was to assume I needed you more than a pain-free head.”
A modern style fable
The Salesman & His Boss
A top salesman often boasted of his great worth to the company. To ram home his point, he made jokes about his manager to his face, seeing himself as untouchable. His manager humoured him until the jokes turned to mocking, and then he quietly asked the salesman to stop.
The man laughed him off, “The company is all about sales and I’m the top sales dog.”
Soon, the manager noticed others were mocking him, too. Again, he asked the top salesman to moderate his behaviour, only to receive a reply, “The company is nothing without me!”
So he fired the top salesman.
Shocked, the salesman could only repeat, “The company is all about sales and I’m the top sales dog.”
The manager explained, “You hit the nail on the head there. The company is all about sales, and not about any individual.”
“Then you’ll miss me.”
“With you gone, the next in line becomes the top salesman. So we’ll still have a top dog. But maybe you’re right. I might end up missing your yapping and insults. But that’s a chance I’m more than willing to take.”
AN ALTERNATIVE TO WRITING THE FABLE
If we really like the idea of using a fable to help us focus on story ideas but struggle to master the technique working straight from the source material, we can find ones from the old masters that match the human flaw(s) highlighted in our source material. This in itself will keep our mind focused on specific themes and no doubt help us think up some new ideas. If we do this a lot, we will become very sharp at picking out plot-driven universal human flaws from the historical narrative and matching them with appropriate fables. This way we have combined two very different types of source material to help us develop our short story ideas. Using our fable match as a guideline – an old style fable, of course – we can then attempt to write a modern fable, which will offer us a fresh idea again.
AN EARLY DRAFT PLAN
If you understand that universal human flaws are just that, universal, you will start to see all sorts of new possibilities for the characters in the historical narrative. You can easily lift these aspects of the character in their situation and bring them across into a non-historical setting.
Let’s develop an early draft plan for a murder story or at least one where someone gets hurt. After all, our essay is a story of murder, of regicide, even though it was sanctioned by a hard core in Parliament. We can use both the essay and one or both of our fables to prompt us, but here in particular the old style fable inspires the idea. We will choose a story where the potential killer feels driven to attempt a murder as a result of the behaviour of the potential victim, and where the gruesome act may also have grave consequences for the potential killer. This is a similar set-up to the characters and plot of the essay and fables, though in the second fable the salesman gets fired, not murdered.
The first fable’s crowing cock character can be an irritating Neighbourhood Watch leader. This person, Ron, has helped the police catch half a dozen burglars in the last year and has also interrupted several burglaries, including two on his neighbour. The neighbour, Ben, is having an affair with a woman half a street away. Ron’s regular street watching for signs of criminal activity makes Ben take extra care that Ron never spots him on his regular sneak visits to his lover. But soon, to Ben’s horror, Ron starts joking in his presence about people sneaking around to each other’s houses. Ron does this especially when Ben’s wife is present. Ron never attempts to blackmail Ben, though the continuing jokey innuendos start to raise suspicions with Ben’s wife. Does Ron know about Ben’s extramarital activities? Ben realizes that a lot of Ron’s behaviour is down to bragging. Ron sees himself as a special person in the street because he’s helped catch burglars and prevented burglaries. Alone with him, Ben tells Ron to knock this joking off in front of the wife, but Ron ignores him and continues to do it.
Ron just doesn’t know how to keep his big mouth shut. Ben now hates Ron. Ben’s lover is horrified at the thought of being caught as she thinks her husband, an ex-military hard man, would kill her and Ben if he found out about their affair. She urges Ben to do something to shut Ron up.
Ben decides to kill or hurt Ron (we’re not sure which at this point in the plan – much will depend on character type and story pitch) and make it look like an attempted burglary gone wrong. Ben sneaks into Ron’s house, hits him over the head and gets out quick with a few stolen objects. If it is just to hurt him, he hits him hard over the head to cause him memory loss. But if it is a murder attempt, Ben bungles it. Ron is alive and in hospital with head injuries; though at least the police believe it was a burglary gone wrong. Ben visits him and discovers Ron never even knew about his affair. His jokes were connected to something else entirely. Ben had just read his own set of circumstances into the jokes.