The Tyrant’s Shadow

by Antonia Senior

  If she has children, where will they play? Where will they climb and swim?

  She is being absurd. She has Sidrach. The fiery preacher. Man of God and political ambition. Through him, she has a place in the great re-imagining of England.

  This house is grand in its gloomy way. She must put aside her qualms; find her courage. This is the melancholy made inevitable by the excitement of the wedding. Just a few days into her new life – of course it will feel unusual.

  She pulls the shawl tight, and into a knot across her chest. It is cold out today, but sparkling. She loves a cold, bright day, and she saw the glare of it through the bedroom window and thought to flee into it.

  Where will she go? Beyond the walls? Or closer, to watch the boatmen shoot the bridge?

  ‘Patience.’

  She turns to see him standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at her. His face is in shadow, and she smiles towards it.

  ‘Husband!’

  ‘Where do you think you are going?’

  ‘I am not sure. What a beautiful day it is, Sidrach. Do you not think?’

  She reaches for her hat. He walks down the stairs towards her, and the boards creak beneath his tread.

  ‘It may be so, Patience. But I told you, I am busy today. I cannot go out.’

  She laughs, placing the hat on her head. ‘But I will be just fine by myself. I might see Blackberry. Take him for a picnic. You said you were busy, Sidrach. I thought I would leave you in peace.’

  He is close to her, and she looks at him. The scowl on his face makes her stomach lurch. She has offended him. What has she done?

  He reaches out and yanks the hat away from her. It catches a couple of strands of hair, and they come away from her head too. She gasps at the pain of it.

  ‘My wife does not gallivant about town. My wife does not sit in the mud to eat her food. My wife goes out when I go out. Do I make myself understood?’

  ‘Yes. But Sidrach . . .’ She stutters to silence as she watches his face lose its handsome sheen and turn bleaker, uglier.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I am sorry. I did not think.’

  ‘No,’ he says, loosening the violence in his face. Unleashing a smile that makes her sigh with gratitude. ‘No, you did not. You have a husband now, darling girl. Who loves you. Who has vowed to look after you. And you have vowed to obey him. Run along inside and keep busy. Perhaps we will venture out later, after I have written my sermon.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  He laughs, walking away and back up the stairs. She watches him go, and the minutes and hours ahead close in upon her, suffocating her.

  ‘Blackberry!’

  She kneels, her arms outstretched.

  He cannons into her and she wraps her arms around his thin body. She thinks, not for the first time, how apt is the name his mother gave him. He smells sweet, but with a background sharpness, like pickling juices.

  ‘I miss you,’ he shouts into her shoulder. ‘You’re gone.’

  ‘I am sorry, little Blackberry.’

  She pulls back to look into his face. There are tears, and she knows he hates crying. He looks at her with fierce, brimming eyes. She pushes back his hair from his wet cheeks and cups his face in her hands.

  ‘Beautiful boy. I am here.’

  She feels a hand fall on her shoulder and she stands, quickly.

  ‘And here is your Uncle Sidrach,’ she says. Blackberry looks bemused by the sudden change of tone. He is caught between two expectations of him, and he hovers between them. How transparent children are, thinks Patience, helplessly. She remembers the pale skin of his bare back, and how the visible veins meander around his spine.

  Sidrach’s hand is heavy on her shoulder.

  ‘Make your bow, Blackberry,’ says Will, walking forward. He stands behind the boy, grinning at her.

  The boy folds himself in two.

  ‘Hello, Richard,’ says Sidrach to Blackberry. ‘Johnson.’ He bows his head to Will.

  ‘Simmonds,’ says Will.

  Patience hears herself babble: ‘I have cooked a goose. The geese have walked in from the fens only this week! Hattie got one for me. Imagine that, Blackberry! All those geese walking all that way. Sage and onions, Will, like Mother makes.’

  ‘Apple sauce?’

  ‘Of course. And bread pudding, my Blackberry. Just for you.’

  They keep the conversation light, general. A determined, relentless stream on geese they have known and eaten. The proper time to kill a fattened bird. The correct stuffing. The recipes of mothers and grandmothers. Apples. The orchards they scrumped from as children. The new ale Patience has bought in – Morning Dew, they call it. The impossibility of brewing the household’s ale oneself with London water as it is.

  The goose is picked over until only its bones are left. Sarah, the maid, scoops them up for the stock pot. The bread pudding is reduced to crumbs. Blackberry, full and querulous, has been persuaded to sleep a while.

  Outside, the light is fading. Patience lights the candles. Will looks younger in their glow. She can’t see the dark circles under his eyes or the still shocking whiteness of his hair.

  ‘It seems strange, to see so little of you,’ he says suddenly.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she says, not looking at Sidrach.

  ‘While we were becoming properly acquainted as man and wife,’ Sidrach says, ‘I thought it best that Patience should concentrate on her own household.’

  ‘But she could visit sometimes. Perhaps when you are working?’

  ‘But what if I need something? My dear Johnson, you should see how I labour over my sermons, how tired I become as I struggle daily with man’s blindness. With his obstinate, crass refusal to see the will of his Maker. Daily I wrestle.’

  He sighs, and moves his hands as if grasping an obdurate sinner crouching in front of him.

  ‘And what would become of my task if I were to look up and call for a drop of something, or a bite of something, only to find my wife has gallivanted away?’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘Will,’ she says sharply. ‘My task is to help Sidrach. He has a great need of me.’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ he says. He closes his hand over hers.

  ‘Already, Johnson, I find that I cannot do without your sister. Now, I must ask you a great favour.’

  Will gives a non-committal grunt. His fingers tap on the table.

  Sidrach leans forward, his hand still wrapped around Patience’s. His face wears its most winning smile. ‘Well now, Johnson. I would like an audience with the lord general. I have much to tell him, much to suggest.’

  Will puts his hands in the air, fending off the request. ‘The lord general is a busy man, Simmonds. I can’t arrange audiences for him on a whim. I could, perhaps, arrange for you to preach to the Rump, and if Cromwell likes what he hears, an audience is possible.’

  ‘My dear Johnson. You are like a brother to me. You work for the general. I say that an audience is easily arranged.’

  ‘And I say that it is not.’

  Patience feels Sidrach’s hand tighten on hers. She looks mutely at Will, asking him with her eyes to oblige her husband. Will looks away – he does not see her silent entreaty. A bitter silence falls.

  Will stirs himself, looking at Patience. ‘I had a letter, Patience, from Henrietta’s brother Sam,’ he says. ‘From Montserrat! He is with Prince Rupert still. You know he served with the prince at Naseby, and before, I believe. He tells me he has sailed to the West Indies. And to Africa.’

  ‘Africa! How I would like to hear him speak of it.’

  ‘You are not likely to meet him, Patience,’ says Sidrach, sharply. ‘My wife and a pirate. For piracy was his intent, I suppose. Like his master, the devil Rupert.’

  Will smiles. ‘Ah. I think he would call himself a privateer, Simmonds.’

  ‘A pirate.’

  Will smiles at Sidrach. His smile is a gauntlet. He watches the other man bristle.

  ‘And how,’ says Patience,
eyes flitting between them, ‘is your work, Will?’

  Sidrach breaks in: ‘Cromwell should sweep those godless swine aside. What is he thinking, letting them swive and enrich themselves while the Lord’s work is waiting?’

  ‘He is thinking, I believe, that he is subject to the will of Parliament.’

  ‘Nonsense. What is Parliament’s will, man’s will, set against the will of our Lord?’

  ‘And who decides the will of our Lord, Simmonds? Him? You?’

  Patience stands abruptly, moving towards the fire. She throws another log on to the flames, and the crackle and spit of the catching wood fills the room.

  ‘And Mrs Cromwell, Will,’ she says, brightly. ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘I have. She is elusive. She has had separate staircases built at Whitehall, so she can get about unseen. But I have taken a meal with her and her husband.’

  ‘And what is she like?’

  ‘As you would expect.’

  Patience tries to imagine it. A settled country goodwife, picked up by fate, tumbled round, and set upon a demi-throne at the heart of things.

  ‘She must be pleased,’ she says. ‘To be given the chance to help a great man at a great task.’

  Sidrach laughs. ‘I do not think a man such as Cromwell needs help from a woman.’

  She stares at him. Her face stings, as if from a slap.

  Not long afterwards, Will takes his leave. She walks him to the door. He carries Blackberry, his thin limbs flopping heavily.

  Will kisses Blackberry’s flushed brow. He says: ‘Mother says that now he is older, I should put him out to foster. Says it is peculiar, a father living alone with his boy.’

  ‘Will you?’

  He shakes his head, in a manner so ambiguous it could mean anything. She lets it go. She watches him thinking about saying something. She feels dizzyingly weary, and when he shrugs, turns and walks away silently, she is utterly relieved.

  Behind her, she can hear Sidrach’s steps echoing in the empty house. She stands by the door watching Will leave, Blackberry’s head lolling on his shoulder and their breath smoking in the freezing air.

  She lies still. As still as it is possible to be. If she moves, he will call her a whore and slap her. Although if that happens, he does finish quicker. She stifles a bitter laugh. Laughter might make her body move.

  Lie still. Don’t look as if you are enjoying it. As if you could enjoy it. Oh Lord Jesus. No wonder your mother was a virgin. As if something pure and beautiful could come from this ridiculous act.

  Think about something else. Anything.

  She thinks about the other Sidrach. She thinks about the low coo of his voice as he tells her she is beautiful. She is his own, and only his. His precious one.

  Now, in the darkness, he shifts, pushing at her from a different angle. Patience stays still, thighs spread, but muscles clenched so that her whole body is taut and painfully rigid. She thinks of relaxing her limbs, but he might confuse that with wantonness. Stay still, Patience. Stay still. Think of tomorrow’s meal, and the next day’s leavings, and the ale to be bought and the washing day that looms ahead of her.

  She remembers playing house with her sisters. They lined up their rag dolls and fed them elaborate meals of twigs and grasses on curling leaf plates. She thinks of how quickly they used to get bored and move on to other games, leaving the rag dolls tumbling down and the leaf plates rolling in the wind.

  He is mumbling to himself as he grunts and shudders. Like this, he bears no resemblance to the other Sidrachs. Not the loving one who kisses her and vows to keep her safe. Not the public one who charms men’s souls. She loves standing next to that man at events, the acknowledged helpmeet. She relishes her share of his pomp. She enjoys the envious glances of women whose husbands cannot move crowds nor articulate God’s will.

  Nor does this huffing, grinding, ridiculous man resemble the other Sidrach. The one she has glimpsed once or twice. She calls that Sidrach out of his hiding place. He is conjured up by her ineptitude. Her inexperience. Her fault.

  She will not think of him, that Sidrach.

  She retreats to thoughts of her household book. She loves it; the soft leather of the outside of it. The scraps of wit and wisdom she has scratched into its thick, creamy pages. The place where she keeps the recipes her mother has passed on. The stews and brews and mulls, the salves and potions and poultices.

  Perhaps she will have a daughter to whom the book can pass. She imagines this theoretical daughter; her fierce, mischievous face.

  Take 12 spoonfuls of right red rose water, the weight of sixpence in fine sugar and boil it on hot embers and coals softly, and the house will smell as if were full of roses.

  He is getting faster. Rubbing, rubbing at her. His head is pressed into her shoulder, his teeth biting at her nightgown. The curtains of the bed are parted slightly, and she looks out beyond him to the window and the black sky. A cloud shifts and she can see the moon. A thin sliver of white. She dislikes full moons, now; prefers the darkness.

  Outside, she can hear a city fox barking, and then the yowling scream of a she-fox mating. It sounds like a child in distress. She thinks of the boy who begs outside their house, and how his eyes fix on the walls. Poor boy. Is he safe from the foxes? she wonders. They are hungry too. Another scream pierces the night. What would Sidrach make of it if she started to yelp like a vixen?

  The thought makes her laugh, despite herself. She feels her body quiver. His face lifts from her shoulder, looms above her in the darkness. His hair falls in ragged strands about his shadowed face. ‘Slut,’ he spits. She turns her face away from the dribbling mouth. ‘Whore,’ he says again, in a vicious whisper. He doesn’t have time to hit her. He gasps and shudders.

  Thank God. He is done. He pulls himself out of her. There is a silence as he turns away and arranges the blankets, and then: ‘I do not expect my wife to whore herself, even to me, Patience.’ He is using his measured, reasonable voice. The voice she would use to chastise a recalcitrant child. She thinks of how it would be to scream like a vixen; to scream and scream at the moon and never to stop.

  ‘Charity!’ Sidrach shouts the word. His fist slams into the lectern. He leans forward, bringing them into his grace. His voice drops lower. ‘It is your duty. It must be your soul’s desire. Does not it say in the book: “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven”?’

  He leans back. His eyes roam from person to person. They pull towards him as one. He whispers into the clamorous silence of the church: ‘Do you want to find Him?’

  Oh yes, she calls back with her soul. She looks at him – at his fierce eyes and his skin aglow with the passion of his words – and she feels that surge again. Of awe and the unquenchable thirst to be approved by him.

  She looks around the room and sees the crowd leaning towards him, the parting of their lips and the yearning of their souls, and the great godlike stature of the man she can call husband. Pride is a sin, she tells herself. A sin. And yet look at him, oh my Lord. Am I not blessed? Is he not the pinnacle of your creation?

  WHITEHALL, LONDON

  February 1653

  ‘A NAVAL OFFICER HAS ARRIVED FROM PORTSMOUTH, Lord General.’

  Cromwell’s head snaps up from his papers. ‘Well?’

  Will shuffles forward. ‘Blake has engaged with de Tromp in the Channel. It is still ongoing. The Dutch are trying to convoy their Mediterranean merchantmen home. Three Dutchmen are sunk, one burned. We have lost one, and three have reached port in Portsmouth, too damaged to continue.’

  ‘Which three?’

  Will hesitates.

  ‘Lord help me, Johnson, which three? Where is General-at-Sea Blake now? Where is the wind?’

  Will steps backwards as the rage breaks over him. Cromwell advances, his face aglow. ‘The wind, man. Who has the weather gauge?’

  The weather gauge, thinks Will helplessly. He knows better than to interrupt.

  ‘Damn m
e, Johnson, who is winning?’

  Will has reached the door now. He feels behind his back for the handle. It is solid and cold to the touch.

  ‘I have the messenger outside, Lord General,’ he says, pulling at the door.

  ‘What are you waiting for then, man? Bring the fellow in. Let us hope he knows his larboards from his starboards. Those Dutch creatures do, Lord help us.’

  Will escapes, and ushers in the young lieutenant. The boy pulls himself upright and squares his shoulders. He looks as if he would rather face a Dutch broadside than cross the threshold of Cromwell’s room, which reeks of the general’s impatience.

  It is small wonder the general is beside himself. Since the defeat to the Dutch navy in November, England’s Channel has been governed from the Hague. If this attempt to wrest control back from the Dutch fails, the consequences for the fledgling Commonwealth will be catastrophic.

  Behind him, the door is wrenched open again. ‘Get Thurloe here,’ barks Cromwell.

  And then, more quietly: ‘If you please, Johnson.’

  Will, searching out Milton, hears that he has stayed at home. He walks out himself to tell him the news. Thurloe, the secretary to the Council of Foreign Affairs, is closeted with Cromwell. Will had found him thick in conversation with Sir Henry Vane, the treasurer to the navy. Thurloe’s sharp face clouded at Cromwell’s summons; he glanced sideways at Vane.

  Vane nodded, as if to give permission. He looked drawn, anxious. Well he might – this new fleet under Blake had been conceived and built by him. Carpenters and shipwrights on double-time across the south coast for months. Ships still juryrigged slipping from their moorings with the pitch scarce set in the plankings. Ships cost money; wars demand hoards. The screw turns ever tighter on Royalists’ estates. But it is still not enough.