‘I will fetch you something, my dear,’ she says.
‘Shall I call one of the servants?’ Will asks.
‘I will do it myself,’ she says sharply, and he understands that she is annoyed by his question. He is too tired to work out why that should be.
As she leaves the room, Cromwell looks at Will with red- rimmed eyes.
‘The whole weight of the cause, the cause for which better spirits than I fought and died, rests on this business in hand. On this parcel of biting, snapping fellows finding a means to reflect His will.’
He retreats into himself then, and Will knows enough of his chief to be silent. He turns to look out of the window. It is a clear night, with a bright moon. Henrietta loved the moon. The familiar sadness catches him by the throat, shakes him.
He notices two figures standing near the ruins of the old tennis court. They are shadowed, and it is dark, but he thinks he knows the shape of them. They stand conspiratorially close as if to whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears. Vane and Heselrige.
The messenger comes early to the Cockpit. Cromwell, in a workaday suit of plain black wool and grey stockings, is in a knot of officers and a handful of MPs. They are threshing out the details of the hiatus; almost agreeing and pleased with themselves. Cromwell looks younger than he did last night. He watches the good-natured debate with an avuncular eye.
The Cockpit is gloomy; the small windows allow in only a faint wash of daylight. They are meeting here, rather than in Cromwell’s more comfortable study, because they anticipate a crowd. But the small thicket of men is huddled in the octagon’s centre, leaving an echoing space around them.
Will is uneasy, even before the messenger whispers in his ear. Where is Vane? Where is Heselrige? Why are there so few MPs here? He spots one or two of them; known army sympathizers. The officers laugh, suddenly and loudly, the sound filling the dusty corners of the old theatre.
The door creaks open; from the outside, not from Cromwell’s quarters. A clerk comes in as the laughter ebbs. Will recognizes him; he’s something to do with the foreign affairs committee. He looks young and ashen, and Will watches him look at Cromwell standing among his officers and stay where he is. One foot out of the door, one in.
Will walks over to him, and the young man is visibly relieved.
‘Thurloe sent me. Can you tell the lord general,’ says the young clerk, in a low and confiding tone, ‘that they are sitting in the House. Now. Scores of MPs. Debating the bill.’
Will swallows, looking across at Cromwell. He doesn’t need to ask which bill. The clerk looks ready to flee. They both know the rage will break on them. Will nods, and walks forward.
He delivers the message clearly, and watches the slower MPs and officers trying to absorb it.
‘But we have agreed to delay,’ says one. Baffled.
‘To pause. For the cause,’ says another, befuddled into an absurd rhyme. No one smiles.
Will is watching Cromwell, waiting for the outburst. Harrison is turning a beetroot purple. Others of the officers clench white knuckles on sword hilts. All of them are aware of Cromwell, so aware that most cannot look directly at him. They look at their shoes, at the door, at Will.
Will forces himself to meet his chief’s gaze.
‘Send the messenger back. I do not believe this,’ Cromwell says, with a devastating calmness.
The remaining MPs look at each other, and Cromwell leans back, watching them silently.
‘We must . . . I mean. It is our duty to . . . to . . .’ says one MP with jowls that shudder over his lace collar as he speaks. They judder to a halt as he runs out of words and courage.
Abruptly he bows and heads out of the room, followed with some alacrity by the remaining MPs. Cromwell is left in a tight circle of officers. They stand in silence, waiting for orders. They seem, to Will’s non-martial eye, to have shifted and shaped themselves into rows and ranks. All of them are reflecting Cromwell’s contained violence, and the cumulative effect of such control seems to vibrate in the very air of the Cockpit.
The second messenger comes. The bill is being debated, with a view to being passed in haste. For months this bill has bounced back and forth between House and committee. And now?
Cromwell remains silent and the officers confer rather than listen to the awful pause. The speculation is wild.
‘What is in the bill now that they must rush it through without us?’
‘What does it matter? Self-serving, indulgent bastards. They mean to prolong themselves.’
‘The biggest attendance in the House for years.’
‘And is it a coincidence? No. Planned. To wrong-foot us.’
The officers throw words about, groping for sense. Cromwell seems to listen with one ear, his face impassive.
A third messenger.
Sir Henry Vane is among those driving the bill on. Sir Henry Vane, who last night, in this room, agreed to pause.
Cromwell’s neck turns a blotchy red. A warning sign. But the rage Will expects does not quite materialize. Instead there is a heightening of this cold ferocity. An imprisoned rage that seems to thrum visibly beneath his skin.
This is the Cromwell of Naseby and Worcester. This is the Cromwell Will has heard about but not seen; who could charge bare-headed and armourless into a sea of murderous mutineers and bring the ringleader to his knees.
‘Harrison,’ he raps. ‘A troop. Loaded muskets.’
Harrison nods, running for the door.
Cromwell slowly dons his hat. He pulls on his gloves deliberately, finger by finger. He walks to the door, seeming never to doubt that they will all fall in behind him. This is, after all, a military operation. They will follow, so he must lead.
Outside the door, the morning air hits Will with its brightness and freshness. The stale Cockpit behind them, they stand for a heartbeat in the sunshine, waiting for Harrison’s assembled troop to arrive.
They come, grim-faced. Martial.
‘Lord General, is this wise?’ Will forces himself to ask the question.
Cromwell grunts – an acknowledgement and a dismissal. He is a fixed point of rage; there is no way through. Will falls back, letting the soldiers overtake him. They march onwards towards the House, their implacable leader at the front. Will wants them to run; to expend some of this cold fury. But they advance with slow deliberation, falling into step towards the enemy in his lace and silver buckles.
Will thinks of Blackberry. The army is seizing power, and he finds, as he watches the soldiers go, that he does not think of England’s fate. Of high politics and the tortured question of how to fill the king-shaped hole in the country’s soul. He thinks instead of his son, and the milk-white skin at the nape of his neck, and the chances of keeping him safe if the political tumult rains blood again.
Sidrach comes into the kitchen with a rare bounding energy. The door is flung aside, his hands are clapped and there is a smile on his face so wide she is reminded of a yawning ferret.
She glances down at Tom, who is crouched by the coals, frozen still in the act of blowing on the embers. He would be a comical figure in any other kitchen; his cheeks puffed out and his eyes wild. It’s a face that would make Blackberry laugh, in that exaggerated full-body guffaw that young children throw themselves into.
‘Well!’ Sidrach’s voice is a cheerful boom.
‘Husband,’ she says. ‘You are happy?’
‘The news, my dear. Such news. Cromwell has listened to Harrison, that godly man, that saint. Together they have thrown those godless fornicators out of Parliament. Cast them off like the flapping old women they are.’
Patience sinks slowly into a chair. Parliament dismissed? The questions whirl. On what authority? In whose name? What will come next? She knows better than to articulate the questions; she can’t bear the ridicule.
But Sidrach is too puffed, too bouncing with the possibilities to need prompting. He talks on.
‘And Cromwell, they say, is to appoint a council of godly men.
Imagine it. A Sanhedrin. As it was ordained in the book. Oh, the sinners and the drunkards and the fornicators will see something now, Patience. Oh, they shall see. A sword of burning fire. We will clear the way for Christ’s return. We shall do His work. Just as we laid waste to the papists in Ireland.’
There is a clatter as Tom drops the scuttle. He flinches, an arm rising ready to protect his face, but Sidrach is too glowing to notice.
‘The bawds and the adulterers and the thieves. Oh Patience! We will scourge them all. We will lay down the palms for His return, and the sins of the world will be undone by us. They are fools, Patience, who think that His coming does not need us. But we must clear the way.’
He is pacing the kitchen now. His measured step has become a bounce, his arms windmill, and she is afraid. She has learned to anticipate his every mood, and this one is new. She does not know what it means, and the not knowing is the worst. The great uncertainty that keeps her teetering on the lip of a precipice not of her own making.
He stops, suddenly, as if struck. ‘Perhaps I might be chosen. Perhaps . . .’
He resumes pacing, shaking his head as if to clear it.
‘We must be fierce and bold, Patience. For when He comes, he will smite the nations that are unprepared.’ He pauses, looking at her with a sharp smile. ‘That’s the Irish done for, the bog-hogging papists. Ha!’
Patience tries a tentative smile back, and nothing happens.
‘He will rule with a rod of iron, and so must we. It says as much in the book, do you see? “He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Blood will flow, Patience!’
Oh, the pain of keeping silent. Oh, the swallowing of all the rebukes and retorts she can feel trembling on her tongue. The obvious, stupid flaws in his plan. The God of her father is a kind God who weeps for man and does not bleed him. We have spilled enough blood, Sidrach.
She bows her head so he cannot see her face. Cannot see the fury mounting. A rage that centres on herself, on her own stupidity. She thought that by marrying Sidrach she would help shape these events, be close to the whirligig of power. But in reality she has denied herself even an opinion, a voice of her own. Stupid, thoughtless child that she was.
He kneels next to her and takes her hands, pulling them towards him. The sleeves of her dress ride up, and they both see the bruises on her arm, the purple blush of finger marks.
Leaning forward, he kisses the bruises with an unbearable tenderness.
‘Dearest Patience. Dearest wife. It is all for you. For your soul. For does the Bible not say that wives must submit to their husbands as unto the Lord? I am teaching you to submit from love. Love of you and of the Lord.’
She watches him kiss her marked skin. Looking up at her, he says: ‘You are learning, my loveling. “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”’
I can trump you, she thinks. I can read. Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself. Beat yourself, Sidrach. Let the bruises flower on your own skin. Love yourself as you love me.
But all the defiance is inside. She is silent as he grins and chirps to himself, and on the surface she displays all the compliance he wishes for; she is a mirror through which he cannot see.
FETTER LANE, LONDON
June 1653
I AM HOME, SAYS SAM TO HIMSELF, AS THE GREAT BELLS TOLL above his head.
It seems a meaningless sort of a statement, and he laughs at himself. Where is home? He stands on Fetter Lane, looking across at the door of his father’s house. It has been repainted a dull grey, and the sunlight sinks into the grime on the windows.
He stands motionless in front of the house, while ghosts flit in and out of the door. His father, a genial lunchtime wine haze settled about him, saunters down the steps and out into the lane. Ned, his brother, pulls the door closed with a careful click, and looks around to see if he is being watched and judged. Poor old buttoned-up, God-fearing Ned. Last comes Hen, smiling. Pausing to tilt her face to the sun. Looking left and right with quick, restless eyes. Stepping out with a sure step, certain of adventure. Only the truly curious can find excitement wherever they are, he thinks. Lord, how he misses her.
The pack on his back is heavy. Stuffed with all his worldly goods. Around him, people scurry with purpose. Debating and talking, selling and buying. Moving from point A to point B, thinks Sam. I have no points. I am pointless.
What is the purpose of a pun if you cannot share it?
What now?
Where will he go?
He thought that all would become clear when he reached London. He thought that he would know what to do, how to live. He was half right. There was a joy in leaving Paris, in walking away from that stale pit of intrigue and boredom, where courtiers flock around a sensualist crown-less king. Where wives are attempted for something to do; the more violent the husband, the more delicious the risk. Where feuds are amplified as a distraction from the great and enervating ennui of being young and rootless and purposeless.
Until, at last, came the day when Sam tried to rise at noon and found he could not. The sun was high and angry, wilting the exiled English. Sam lay naked, sweating. The windows were open wide, the curtains were limply still. Not in the least tired, he made himself go back to sleep, for want of anything else to do. He succeeded in forcing a fitful, damp dreaminess.
On waking, he found it was still the afternoon. He thought about rising. But why? He thought about lying there alone until he wasted into a skeleton. He thought of all the corpses he had seen, all the broken, empty carcasses of men. Looking down at his pink, sweating skin, he thought of all that lay beneath, and how often he had seen it pulled inside out.
Home, he thought. I will go home.
And here he is, standing on Fetter Lane. Being sworn at for getting in a haulier’s path; stepping backwards into an urchin, who swears at him too with thick London vowels and a thoroughgoing knowledge of God’s anatomy. He walks on, turning his back on his father’s house, where some fat Puritan whoremonger probably sits eating cheese and letting out sanctimonious farts, which waft up to the room that was once Sam’s.
He heads down towards Fleet Street, reflecting that an aimless body in London is like a carthorse in a cavalry charge. He is hungry; is that the place to start? He will find a pot house and ask for an ordinary. He thinks of the small stash of coins hidden about his person, and how quickly they will run through his fingers if he is not careful.
Here he is, on an aimless Saturday in London. He walks up and along past St Paul’s. They still stable some cavalry horses here, he has heard, though not in such numbers now the wars are done. He tries to imagine the great nave he knew as a child rigged as stables, with dozens of horses clattering on the stone floor. As he passes the old church, he catches a familiar scent – of hay and dung and sweat. It triggers a hotchpotch of memories: horses and battles; the feel of his hands on a sweat-slick neck, threading fingers through a coarse mane. The peculiar pulse of life and love under a favourite horse’s skin.
He turns in to Moorfields, thinking to walk a while in the shade of a tree or two. There a man can find quiet enough to contemplate his next move. But everyone in London has had a similar plan, it seems, and the place is jammed. Small children everywhere; harassed adults sweating and claiming to enjoy the weather. The laundresses and bleachers have staked the sunniest side, and great sails of white linen lie limply to dry in the sun. There is a wrestling match in one corner, drawing jeers and boos at present for some misdemeanour. Along the central path, the book-sellers call and holler, fighting with the ballad-sellers to be heard.
He finds a low wall and sits. He watches a boy with a stick pretending it is a sword, fighting a tree and calling it ‘papist’. He watches two pretty girls walking by, and he tips them an easy smile, which they pretend not to notice. They walk on, heads close and giggling.
It is, he thinks, remarkably the same. He expected something different. Some mark
that the world has been turned upside down – that these are a people who killed their king. Apparently, Old Noll is to announce his new assembly soon. At present there is no government. No one is in charge, bar Old Noll himself, the scheming bastard. Itching to be crowned. King Warty-face, the peasant monarch.
A small boy stops in front of him, bending over to smell a flower. There is a woman with him, and he finds himself watching them. The boy is still in his dresses, but looks close to breeching. She is dressed severely; godly from the lace at her high neck to the ends of her blunt-cut fingernails. But her face! Freckled and somehow cleaner than other faces, with a shine on it that comes from within. A face full of mischief and light. Sam thinks of the ladies of the French court; of the king’s latest mistress, who is beautiful but blowsy, all proffered tits and painted lips.
The girl smiles at something the boy says, and her teeth are white and even. Absurdly, Sam is reminded of his first and loveliest warhorse, who died beneath him at Naseby. A horse who was beautiful and loyal, and so full of heart that she ran until all her blood was spilled and still she ran some more. For him.
He laughs at himself for being such a ridiculous cavalryman; comparing this pretty girl with a horse for all love. His attention wanders. There are other people to watch; other girls to admire. But then the boy raises his head and looks at Sam with green eyes set beneath a chestnut fringe, and the rest of London falls away into so much chatter.
Patience watches Blackberry bending to smell a flower, and smiles. How strange his childhood is, hemmed in by London’s walls. She is to take him to the countryside soon, to stay with his grandparents.
Sidrach assented to the trip with a preoccupied wave. Cromwell is drawing up plans for his new council of the godly. Her husband is keen to keep Will happy, and to keep distractions such as Patience at bay. He has not laid a fist into her for weeks. She is off balance, waiting for him to notice her again. Fear lies cold on her soul; sometimes a light smear and at others a great suffocating drift.
The Tyrant’s Shadow Page 10