The Tyrant’s Shadow

by Antonia Senior

  Walking through St James’s towards Petty France, Will smiles at Thurloe’s discomfort at being summoned like a boy by Cromwell in Vane’s presence. An ambitious fellow like Thurloe must be at war with himself – to which star should he hitch himself?

  The relationship between Vane and Cromwell is turning increasingly vexatious. Vane has emerged as one of the most influential Parliamentarians. But his ideas are dangerous; revolutionary. He believes in complete freedom of worship. He is said to have sympathy with the more extreme sects, to have failed to condemn the Ranters and those who believe that England’s soul can be remade with all men equal in the sight of law and the Lord.

  Will breathes in the icy air. How he enjoys escaping, just for a little while. The intrigues and politicking depress him. He thinks of Nedham, and the man’s glee at machinations that leave Will saddened. He has a sudden insight, one of those thoughts that come on a man when he is walking on a cold, clear day: Cromwell is still a soldier at heart – he believes in the power of plain speech, in honour and in providence. Vane is a politician: he believes in layered speech and in expediency. Does that make one of them a fool and the other a knave?

  No, it is not so simple. Will thinks of his late father-in-law, who believed that good things could come from yoking man’s baser instincts to a common cause; and that terrible things could come from too much honour, too much simplifying.

  Turning in to Petty France, he thinks, not for the first time, how glad he is to be a great man’s servant, and not a great man.

  At Milton’s house, he is ushered in by a harassed maid and taken through to the bedroom. A stoked fire rages, and Will feels the heat strike him as he walks in. His fingertips tingle as his skin lurches from cold to hot, and he smacks his hands together. Milton is sitting up in the bed, a makeshift writing desk balanced precariously on his knee. His head whips round at the sound of Will’s hollow hands clapping and he regards him with an expression on his face that looks, perhaps, fearful. But what does Milton have to fear from him? Then it strikes him, in the long, silent minute before the maid announces his name. Milton can no longer see at all; the man is completely blind.

  Will walks forward in a fog of pity and embarrassment. Should he mention it? Should he talk of it at all? He announces himself, hesitantly.

  ‘Johnson,’ says Milton, tersely.

  ‘I have news,’ says Will, quickly. ‘A great sea battle is being fought in the Channel. Blake has caught de Tromp trying to sneak the Dutch merchant fleet through the Channel.’

  Milton pats the bed beside him. Will sits, trying to avoid the worst of the ink stains. He answers the older man’s eager questions. He tries not to stare at his eyes, which have lost some of their redness and gained a sort of milky sheen. Why should I not stare? he thinks, irreverently. Milton cannot see me staring.

  At last they reach the end of the scant news about the Dutch. They agree that nothing more can be said before more news comes, and then fall to picking apart the small bones again.

  Silence hovers. ‘Your eyes. Is it,’ says Will, sifting his way through the possible phrases, ‘permanent?’

  ‘They think so.’

  ‘I am sorry, Milton.’

  ‘Yes.’ He rubs his eyes in the habitual gesture Will knows. ‘They are trying to press an assistant on me. Some halfwit with a child’s Latin, no doubt. I have asked for Andrew Marvell. Do you know him? No. Well, a young man. A fine poet, if a little naive in his expression. A good Latinist, more to the point. He will not irritate me.’

  He reaches out a hand and Will takes it. ‘You will come and tell me, Johnson. What happens in the Channel. I feel trapped here. Headaches. I need to know. To be connected. I am an island here.’

  There is something amiss. Looking through the glass, Patience sees grown men running. She sees clusters of people huddling in fierce conversation. At the centre of the strangeness is the beggar boy. He sits on the street, his arms wrapped around his legs and his head resting upon his knees. Poor little thing.

  From below her, a figure emerges from the house. Sarah. She bustles away down the street, not sparing a glance for the little boy who sits so forlornly opposite.

  Patience listens for the silence. For the strange empty echo of a house with no one else there. Sidrach is out, too, somewhere. She gathers herself – her great and unbearable boredom weighed against her trepidation.

  Before she can talk herself frightened, she runs down the stairs. She grabs her shawl and heads for the kitchen door, slipping through it into the alleyway behind the house. Pausing by the corner wall, she checks the street for Sidrach or Sarah, feeling absurd and gleeful all at once.

  Crossing, she slips next to the boy, crouching down next to him. He moves his head sideways, looking at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she says. ‘Why are you always here?’

  In answer, he closes his eyes, and she sees for the first time the greyness of his skin and the birdlike thinness of his limbs. His lips are a chilling blue.

  Without thinking, she picks him up. He is as light as Blackberry, for all that he is at least five years older. He is uncomplaining as she pushes the door of the kitchen open with her foot and places him by the fire. He does not speak as she takes a bowl and ladles into it the hot broth straight from the stock pot that bubbles there on its tripod. He just looks at her with large, trusting eyes, like a runt left out to die.

  She hands him the bowl and he takes it, still looking at him. He begins to shiver violently, and the broth splashes out and dribbles down his arm.

  ‘Shh,’ she says. ‘Shh, boy. Let me help.’

  She sits on the floor next to him, her legs crossed under her, and holds the bowl to his lips. He drinks a little. She is worried he will be sick. She remembers nursing a starving lamb, and how tentative she was about feeding it too much milk while its hunger was larger than its stomach.

  ‘Lie down, boy,’ she says, placing a thick wool blanket next to him. He lays down his head, and looks at her one more time with the big eyes before closing them. She pulls the blanket across him, and sits in the darkening kitchen listening to him breathe.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A boy, Sidrach,’ she says, jumping out of her seat and standing to look at him.

  He tuts impatiently.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sidrach. He was outside. Near death, poor thing. Starving and freezing.’

  ‘You have brought a ragged beggar boy into my house. Are you entirely stupid?’

  She hangs her head. ‘Charity. You said it. In your sermon.’ She risks a look at his face. It is turning thunderous. ‘You will be able to tell the congregation. That you saved a beggar boy. They will admire you for it.’

  He pauses, looking at her and then down at the boy again. She can almost hear him thinking.

  He sighs. ‘He sleeps in here. Only until he is well. And if he steals anything, I will flay him, so help me.’

  ‘Oh Sidrach. You are so good, so kind. Thank you!’

  He grunts, and turns to leave. ‘Just a week or two,’ he says.

  Patience crouches down next to the boy and pushes the hair back from his forehead. He murmurs a little in his sleep, and half-smiles.

  Victory. The lord general’s beatific air returns. God is at his side once more. Who can doubt it?

  Will watches – amused, awed? – as Cromwell seems physically to grow. He broadens and straightens, as if pulled heavenwards by God’s favour.

  He looks down at Will with a broad smile that seems to imply that the destroyed Dutch fleet is somehow their achievement, somehow down to their moral rectitude. De Tromp scuttles back to Holland because Cromwell and Will are locked in an angelic circle of grace, which can allow only for victory. From a chair in the corner Elizabeth Cromwell watches her husband. We all watch him, thinks Will. Anticipating his wants, heading off his anger, hoping for his praise. It is exhausting.

  ‘Honour my wife with your company, Johnson,’ says the general. ‘I will be with you shortly. The Lord wil
l wait no longer for my praises.’

  He leaves the room, and the close air seems to sag, like a kicked bladder.

  ‘And how is your boy, Mr Johnson?’

  ‘Growing ever taller, madam.’

  He stands by the window and glances out to the old tennis court, now unkempt and straggling, towards the Banqueting House.

  ‘I am told,’ she says, standing and drawing nearer, ‘that from this very window, you could see the king being led out to his death.’

  ‘These are comfortable lodgings,’ says Will. The keeper of the palace used to live here, in this grand house attached to the back of the Cockpit – Whitehall Palace’s now disused theatre. This room, the Cromwells’ private chamber, is large enough to be imposing and small enough to be warm.

  She looks at him with shrewd eyes. ‘You do not like to talk of the late king’s death?’

  ‘I do not. I beg your pardon. It was the day my wife was killed.’

  ‘But the two deaths were not related.’

  ‘Were they not?’

  Why are we talking of this? I do not want to talk of this. He looks down at her. No man would call her a beauty. She has yellowing skin and too many chins. He tries to imagine her young, but fails, entirely. Perhaps she emerged from her mother with grey hair springing from its ties, with a mouth that droops at the edges, caught in a criss-cross of lines. She has lived in the shadows of her husband. What must he have been like, straining at his life of quiet provincialism? Impossible. Exhausting: that word again. Cromwell simply cannot fathom that other men do not have his capacity, his drive. Does he demand the same from his wife as from his acolytes?

  She is watching him closely, and lays a hand on his arm. ‘Your small drama is lost beside the bigger one.’

  ‘Ah but that is the point, madam. Tragedy is a matter of perspective. The sun looks small because it is far away.’

  ‘There is no sun today,’ she says, looking past him to the window.

  ‘Rain is likely, I think.’

  She grins at him, almost mischievous.

  ‘Rain!’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  They turn back into the room, listening to the silence. Listening, he realizes, for the heavy pound of Cromwell’s footsteps.

  ‘And does your son like the rain, Mr Johnson?’

  ‘He does. His mother . . .’ Will trails off, catching himself. Better not to speak of uncomfortable things.

  ‘This place,’ she says, with a shudder. She walks to the fireplace and throws a log on to the flames. She stokes it expertly. Will thinks to call a servant, but it is done now.

  ‘Through that wall,’ she says, pointing, ‘is the old theatre. Just think, Mr Johnson, of the sins and the carnality and the looseness. The vileness. And before that, the cockfights. With drunkenness and gambling and blood. The blood!’ She throws her hands up in a quick and violent motion. As if in despair at the sinners of the past.

  ‘There is some irony, madam, in your husband and yourself being lodged here. In the Cockpit.’

  ‘There is no irony, Mr Johnson. Only providence.’

  He bows.

  With another quick turn away from dangerous ground, she says: ‘How is Mr Milton?’

  ‘Completely blind now, I am afraid.’ Is that providence, too? ‘And no wife to help him. He wrote a disgusting pamphlet once. In favour of divorce. It was, I am afraid, beyond absurd. Matrimony is holy.’

  Will thinks of Patience. She is slowly closing herself, folding inwards like a tulip in the night air. He says nothing, just bows and smiles ambiguously. They pause. Then to Will’s relief, from outside the room comes the sound of heavy footsteps and the light whistle of a man who believes implacably that God is on his side.

  Patience pushes the bloody rag down under the bubbling surface of the water. The handle of the long wooden spoon is hot to the touch. She grips it, thinking strange thoughts of plunging her hand into the pot. Imagining the pain, the blisters popping their way on to her skin.

  ‘More coke, missus?’

  She surfaces.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Thank you, Tom.’

  The fire beneath the pot is faltering. She smiles at the boy.

  ‘It is here, the coke,’ he says. He has a strange, sing-song accent. His words are ordered in a peculiar way. He has had a hard life, so much is clear. Brutal. There are bruises lingering among the freckles that cover his body. Fingerprints pressed into the pale skin of his upper arms.

  There is a quiet intimacy to the kitchen. The fire is warm, and the steam rises from the boiling pot, carrying the metallic tang of the blood as it washes away into the pinking water.

  Sidrach is out of town and will not be home until tomorrow.

  She sits in the chair by the fire, watching the boy as he pours the coal and pokes the fire. He has quick, neat movements. There is a contained grace in him that would suit a girl. It has been more than a week or two, but he has made himself useful and there has been no talk of his leaving. He veers clear of Sidrach, and takes on the messier, smellier tasks from Sarah, who tolerates his presence. The skin is stretching on his skinny limbs as he fills out and loses his greying tinge.

  ‘Do you have a mother, Tom?’

  ‘No, missus.’ The boy laughs, without mirth.

  ‘I do. Shall I tell you about her while you clean the shoes?’

  He nods, and sits on the floor next to the fire, folding his skinny legs. He reaches for the black and the brush, and looks up at her. There are copper glints in his hair, caught by the fire. When he came, his hair seemed a dull, dark grey. But he has been washed, since then.

  ‘My mother smells of caramel,’ says Patience. ‘I think perhaps from making jam. Or perhaps there’s just a sweetness that belongs on her skin. She’s sharp in her manner, though. We don’t cross her.

  ‘Father’s a little scared of her. We all are. I used to think, Tom, that if dragons came for us, or trolls, my mother would beat them all back with her rolling pin. Stab monsters through the heart with her gardening shears.’

  He smiles, showing the gap in his teeth where he’s lost a couple to illness or a fist.

  ‘You will make a fine mother,’ he says.

  She is taken aback by his unexpected forwardness. She glances at the pot and the boiling telltale rag. Not yet. Not yet.

  A knock, suddenly, on the door. In bustles Marigold Capp, her pale face forced to a blush by the freezing air. She is settled by the fire; the rag pot is deftly moved out of view and a posset set on to warm. There are fresh-baked biscuits, the way Sidrach likes them – with a touch of cardamom.

  Tom has folded himself into a shadow. It takes a minute for Marigold to notice him. She looks at him sidelong, and turns suggestive eyes on Patience. ‘Tom,’ says Patience, taking the hint. ‘Will you run to Hattie, the butcher, and ask for some marrow bones?’

  He jumps to his feet, nodding his eagerness. She gives him the coins, and smiles her encouragement as he spins and runs for the door.

  ‘So,’ says Marigold, as soon as it slams shut. ‘That boy. How do you find him?’

  ‘Biddable,’ says Patience. An ally. A smile-in-waiting.

  ‘Strange child . . . I’m not sure how far you should trust him. It seems to me, my dear, that the boy sidles his way into Sidrach’s gaze. He sits there looking worshipfully at him during the sermons.’

  ‘That would certainly work with Sidrach,’ says Patience. She laughs, but gets nothing back from the other woman. Marigold disapproves of levity. Patience wonders whether Jesus was so serious.

  ‘Do you think Jesus laughed, Marigold, when he conjured the loaves? Do you think, when He returns to govern us, that He will smile?’

  ‘Patience, do not presume to imagine what Christ’s rule will look like.’

  ‘And why should I not? Is that not what Jeremiah and Sidrach do? Do they not believe themselves to be sweeping the ground for His approach?’

  ‘But they are men, dear. They sweep. We follow.’

  ‘Does Jeremiah sweep? I cannot
imagine it.’

  ‘A metaphor, Patience. Do not be obtuse.’

  I am not being obtuse, she thinks. She pokes at the fire to hide her sullen, rebellious face. I am making a joke.

  After Marigold leaves, Patience allows the indolence to envelop her again. She pulls her legs up to her chin, and watches the small leaps of the coals’ flames. Behind her, Tom is busy about his task, polishing the great silver candlesticks that Sidrach inherited from some ancient aunt.

  Sarah, the maid, is cleaning in the other rooms. She is older than Patience – in her thirties. She has kept house for Sidrach for years. She bobs at Patience when required. Does her duty. But in all these months of living in the same house, Patience and Sarah have not progressed beyond formalities. In her dreams of playing house, there was an apple-cheeked maid who became a friend; smiling confidences over the pounding of kneaded bread.

  She spies on me, Patience thinks. The thought catches her by surprise.

  ‘You are from the north, Tom?’

  ‘Yes, missus. But then on the colliers. Sailing into the Pool mostly.’

  ‘And was your family caught in the late troubles?’

  She turns, and catches an expression on his face that she cannot read. He does not reply and she decides not to press the question.

  She will go to bed early, she thinks. Push her limbs into the unfamiliar wide spaces of an empty bed. No sisters, no visiting cousins.

  No husband.

  She hugs the anticipation to herself as the household winds down towards bedtime. Lamps are lit and fires are stoked and a hush falls on the street outside as darkness falls.

  There are many jobs she has not done, relishing her rare idleness. She has not made tomorrow’s bread, nor checked the brewing ale. She has not made up a batch of the tonic that Sidrach likes to take for his liver; even though it takes a fair amount of boiling and straining and boiling again. I will get up early, she thinks, and do it all tomorrow. Tomorrow.

  She sends Tom off to his truckle bed in the corner of the kitchen. She ruffles his hair as she does it, and he pulls away startled, like a cat stroked unawares.