The Tyrant’s Shadow

by Antonia Senior

  Will sits listening for footsteps and banging doors. All he hears is the silence, and the voice in his head wheedling: ‘Let her go.’

  The knock at the door is loud and violent.

  Patience, curled in the corner of her room, ignores it. She hears, as if through a sheet of dimpled glass, Sarah’s footsteps and the opening of the door and the gruff sound of a man’s voice.

  She rests her head on her knees and pulls them tight with her arms. She closes her eyes. The wooden floor beneath her is hard and cold, but she cannot the abide the thought of any softness. Her body hurts. She breathes with the pain.

  But the footsteps come closer and there is a knock at the door. For you, says a voice, distantly. For you.

  ‘It is Mr Challoner.’ This she hears, and she raises her head.

  ‘Tell him I will be down shortly,’ she says. ‘Rouse out something to offer him from the kitchen.’

  She unfolds her body warily. It cricks and cracks back into place. She is astonished it still works. It seemed broken.

  She crosses the room to the glass, and checks herself over. There are no marks on her face; he tends to aim for the body. She smoothes down her hair and straightens her dress and dredges a smile from somewhere deep inside.

  Downstairs, Sam fills the room as completely as she expected. He stands by the empty fireplace, broad and at ease. His shipboard tan is fading to a more English pallor, but still he looks healthy. He is vibrant, incongruous – like a diamond, he catches the room’s dim light and shines it back at her.

  ‘I come to bid you and your husband farewell,’ he says, without preamble.

  ‘You are leaving?’

  ‘I hope so. I have an interview with someone Will knows, who will secure a passport for me. I do not want to leave and find I cannot come back.’

  Sarah comes into the room, graceless and unsmiling. She sets down a decanter and some stale-looking biscuits. They are silent as she backs out of the door. There are no sounds of retreating footsteps. Patience imagines her ear pressed against the door, squirrelling away information for her master.

  ‘I am sorry you are leaving,’ she says. She is being polite, she tells herself.

  He nods. ‘I will be back. I have a notion to increase my small capital.’

  ‘How, may I ask?’

  ‘I know the court in exile, and the clusters of men who keep the old cause. They are pining, Mrs Simmonds. Pining for home. Many have young children who have never been on these blessed shores, who grow with French accents, or Dutch ones. I have a notion I can trade to them; carry to and fro.’

  ‘They could come home. You have.’

  ‘It is not so simple. Many feel it would be a betrayal of . . .’ He stutters over the name. ‘The man they call king.’

  ‘And you do not?’

  He sighs heavily. ‘Have you read Thomas Hobbes, Mrs Simmonds?’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘Ah, you are surprised. I do read the odd thing that is not a muster manual.’

  She inclines her head, smiling at him.

  ‘Which is not to say that I understood all of it. Most of the book went sailing over my head like a misfired shot. But the essence that matters is this. Hobbes is a monarchist, Mrs Simmonds. But not because he believes as many of the exiles do that Charles Stuart is anointed by God.’

  ‘You have met him? Charles Stuart, I mean.’

  ‘I have lived near him, and hunted with him, and watched him at play. And he is a fine man. But touched by the divine?’ Sam laughs broadly, and it is so infectious that Patience joins in without quite knowing why.

  Laughing hurts, and she has a moment of rage so fierce she almost cries out. Sidrach has made laughing painful. As if the humiliation were not quite enough on its own.

  Sam’s voice breaks in, as if from a distance. ‘Are you quite well, Mrs Simmonds? I beg your pardon, I am boring you with all this talk of philosophers.’

  ‘No,’ she says, fiercely. ‘You are not boring me.’

  ‘No? Well. Hobbes says that man is a wolf to man, Mrs Simmonds. Without a common power to hold all men in awe, there will be no propriety, nor right to property. We will be in a constant state of war.’

  ‘So a king is necessary to hold our baser nature in check?’

  ‘Exactly so, Mrs Simmonds.’

  ‘And where is God? He made us in His image. This Mr Hobbes assumes that we are all venal, all bestial.’

  ‘And are we not? Forgive me, madam, but I have seen much. And little of it makes me think that man is a congenial beast. You live a sheltered life, Mrs Simmonds, and thank the Lord for that. You do not know of violence, of pain.’

  She feels the blush hit her cheeks. She has a sudden urge to confide. To lay her head on Sam’s shoulder. The blush spreads across her skin. She is burning.

  Sam is pacing the room, threshing out his thoughts while he walks. He seems not to have noticed her flaming cheeks, the pulse beating in her forehead like a drum.

  ‘Hobbes has come home to England. Because, you see, Mrs Simmonds, the consequences of his argument are that it matters not who exercises the power; only that power be exercised. It is, I confess, attractive. To be allowed to be loyal to a system, not a divine monarch. I can keep my loyalty intact, a private thing, and live peaceably in this new Commonwealth.’

  He stops and grins. He reminds her of Blackberry suddenly.

  ‘I know your objection, Mrs Simmonds. ’Tis all gammon I swallow, because I want to be convinced, because I am glad to be home. Glad to be no longer in the wars. I do not know, I confess. I do not know even my own mind.’

  She is beguiled by his rueful admission. She is used to men who wear their certainty like an armour.

  ‘But what of God and His love?’ she asks. ‘What of His son’s coming? What place do they have in your philosophy?’

  ‘My philosophy? Well. I think we have fought enough over God’s design, Mrs Simmonds. Seas of blood have been spilled in His name. And if He comes again? It seems to me that no one can agree on what He will want from us. To be sin-free? But did He not forgive the sinners? We seek to do His will, but we can’t agree on what His will is. It all ends in misery.’

  ‘So we should ignore His will?’ She is shocked, breathless.

  He looks at her, holding her gaze. ‘That is about the sum of it. Until He comes and tells me what He wants, I’ll doff the cap on a Sunday and leave it at that.’

  They look at each other. She is awed into silence. She feels as if they are teetering on a cliff edge together, but she cannot quite say why or how. He turns away and the vertigo eases. She sits, heavy and lumpen, the edges of her bruises clashing and jolting her into a fresh spasm of pain.

  ‘It is good to talk to you of these things, Mistress Simmonds,’ he says, oddly formal suddenly.

  ‘You do not think philosophy beyond a woman?’

  He laughs. ‘Not I. You did not know my sister very well, I recall. Twins, madam. One slow and dopey. One clever and deep. One who read philosophy and history for joy. The other who was beaten by his tutor for being dim-witted while he dreamed of horses. No, Mistress Simmonds. I concede all ground on this to women. I love a clever woman,’ he says, looking down on her with a broad smile that suddenly falters at its edges.

  ‘Well,’ he says, all cavalry bluster suddenly. ‘I must be off. I am due at Whitehall to see this friend of Will’s.’

  She stands on weak legs. Holds out a hand. It feels ominous, this gesture. She is aware that something will happen. Some unnamed, momentous thing. When he takes her hand, bending over to kiss it like a Frenchman, she notices as if from a great height the shock that jolts her. She is relieved it is not worse. She thought she might seize up, or faint, or fall.

  She is all normal politeness. All stately Puritan ice.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Challoner,’ she says, exactly as if it does not matter to her at all.

  Sam is still thinking about Mrs Simmonds as he is ushered into Thurloe’s office. Still thinking about her face, a
nd the planes of it. Her smile, and the quick flashes of temper that set her eyes to gleam at him.

  He is still thinking about her as he makes his bow, and it is with a wrench that he pulls himself to the present. He sees Thurloe’s eyes upon him. The man is disconcerting, and Sam finds himself stumbling over his words.

  Thurloe nods as he speaks, nods as Sam gives a potted history of his war and his peace. His relationship to Will Johnson, secretary to the lord general. Then he sits back in his chair, pressing the tips of his fingers together into a steeple shape. His eyebrows rise at the centre, giving him a quizzical air. His hair falls to his shoulders in a disarray that could be artful. He lets the silence settle. Sam will not be intimidated into filling it.

  ‘Well, Mr Challoner,’ says Thurloe.

  Captain Challoner, thinks Sam, but merely inclines his head graciously.

  ‘I am minded to give you a passport. The Commonwealth, I think, has no reason to fear your wanderings. From the plan outlined by you, I think you will want to come back and forth between London and the Continent.’

  ‘Yes, Master Secretary. For trade purposes. I was never political.’

  ‘Yet you joined the late king.’

  ‘After the Parliament hanged my father.’

  ‘He was a traitor.’

  Calm, Sam. Calm. Don’t punch the fellow in the mouth. Don’t make him swallow those big yellow teeth. Calm.

  ‘He was not. But perhaps, Mr Thurloe, we differ in our definitions. And now is the time for Englishmen to look to their similarities, rather than play up their differences. There has been enough of that.’

  Thurloe nods. He pulls a paper from a pile, scribbles on it, then signs it with a dramatic flourish. He sets a candle to melt wax for a seal.

  ‘When you return from the Continent, Mr Challoner, I would very much appreciate a visit.’

  ‘Delighted, of course,’ says Sam. ‘But to what end?’

  ‘Just a chat. Gossip from Charles II’s court. Tittle-tattle.’

  Sam bridles. The wax bubbles; Thurloe holds his signet ring just above, letting it hover.

  ‘You wish me to spy.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Challoner. I wish you to chat to me about the news that every halfwit Frenchman selling onions to the exiles has already told his third cousin once removed. I ask you to break no confidences. I ask you for no betrayals. Tittle-tattle. That is all.’

  Lord, thinks Sam. Does it matter if I say yes? I have proved my loyalty to the king’s cause with blood and pain. Tittle-tattle; that is all.

  Mrs Simmonds forces her way back into his mind. He wonders what she would say. She is a woman of convictions. Of moral certainties. But she is also one of the victors, and Sam is tired of being part of a lost cause. He is tired of fighting. He wants capital. He wants a home. A wife. Children. A little girl he will call Henrietta, for whom he will buy Greek primers and Latin poetry. And a pony.

  He needs this passport.

  He pictures a home that looks remarkably like his father’s house. He pictures a wife who looks remarkably like Patience Simmonds. This last, unexpected image prompts him to say: ‘Tittle-tattle? Why not?’

  No bad thing, he thinks, to put a fair stretch of water between him and Patience Simmonds and her impossible husband.

  No bad thing, he thinks again, as he rides a shifting, choppy Channel. Behind him, a grey mist over England, like God’s smeary thumbprint. Ahead, France. They will laugh at him, the crowd around the king. At the merchant’s son arraying his wares like a tinker.

  He must be pointed in his sales. In his cabin is a squalling, puking pile of spaniel puppies. English dogs. Cider. Books. Hunting rifles. The cot is stacked high with boxes, but he is happy sleeping in a hammock.

  It is a joy to be at sea, if only for a short while. He lifts his face to the cleansing rush of salted air, here on the windward side. The deck slopes away from him, down to a rushing sea. It is cold out here. The other passengers huddle inside, wrapped in furs against the wind easing through the clinkered sides.

  Too fast, they push on towards France.

  He is not sad, exactly, to leave England behind. It is clear that the Barebones is failing. He does not know what will happen next. His money is on King Oliver. Will insists not. He insists that Cromwell is a good fellow. But how much is that filtered through Will’s goodness? Sam smiles to think of his brother-in-law and his nephew. They are the closest thing he has to a family.

  The Barebones. He has used the name as everyone does. Unthinking. The Barebones.

  He thinks through the layers of flesh and muscle and blood to where his own bones hold him upright. He saw a skeleton once, in Paris. He had seen bones before, of course. Sticking out from splintered flesh; roughly exposed by the cut of a pike. In Paris, however, was the first time he had seen a full assembled skeleton. The bones were boiled clean, and strung together with wire.

  At the time, he was pissed and surrounded by fellow members of Prince Rupert’s horse. Someone had stolen the skeleton from somewhere. Who knows where. They had given it a hat, and a name: Digby, after Rupert’s nemesis amid the king’s staff. They had dragged it from brothel to tavern to brothel. Jermyn claimed to have enjoyed a threesome with Digby and a mulatto whore named Renee. Lord, how they had laughed. One of those blurred nights where brio and shame serenade your hammered soul.

  Sam sat beside Digby at a table somewhere, feeding him oysters that slimed down on to the floor. Pouring the lees of cheap wine into his mouth, red flecks catching on the boiled white of his skull.

  Sober now, Sam thinks, Digby was once a man. He raged and loved and whimpered.

  Tittle-tattle, he thinks.

  Does it matter, any question of loyalty? Those to whom you proffer loyalty expect it without cherishing it. At the end of it all, whatever you do or choose, you end up like Digby. Except, perhaps, without even the comfort of cheap wine and mulatto whores named Renee.

  Tittle-tattle.

  There is always the possibility of heaven to focus a man’s mind on his duty. But Sidrach Simmonds’ heaven is not for me, thinks Sam. He lets the roll of wave and sky fill him with a vivid delight. Why waste this life dreaming of the next? He should not have thought of Sidrach Simmonds. For thoughts of the man lead to thoughts of his wife. Sam thinks she would stand here with him on the deck, clutching the windward rail with wet hands, laughing at the sea.

  You do not know her, he tells himself. Like as not, she would huddle below with the rest of the lubbers. No, she would not. He lets himself think of Mrs Simmonds, made safe by her absence and the growing stretch of sea between him and her bright eyes. He imagines her turning a sparkling face on him, parting her lips into a smile that is also a challenge.

  He grips the rail tighter, and forces himself to look towards France.

  WHITEHALL, LONDON

  November 1653

  ‘KINDNESS, GENTLEMEN. LOVE.’

  Cromwell’s voice is low, reasonable. Across the table from him is Sidrach Simmonds, part of a coterie of fellow Fifth Monarchist preachers. Christopher Feake, the firecap preacher from Blackfriars, is at the centre of the group. Alongside him is Major General Harrison, the Fifth Monarchist nearest the heart of power.

  Feake lifts his lip in a curl of derision. Sidrach Simmonds flicks his eyes at Will. Love. The word lies on the table between them all, like an embarrassing and maggoty fish.

  Will watches Cromwell refuse to be intimidated by them. What is their scorn compared to a cavalry charge, compared to Prince Rupert riding down on you with a drawn sword and a scream and a devil’s imp prancing at his side, dog-shaped? He has earned the right, one hundred times over, to talk of love and kindness.

  ‘We all believe,’ says Cromwell, ‘in the Gospel. In the power and glory of the Lord. So why are we at odds, gentleman? Why can we not work together?’

  ‘Together,’ spits Feake.

  Harrison lays a restraining hand on his arm. Feake spasms at the touch, and Harrison withdraws.

  ‘Lord General,�
� says Harrison, his voice pitched to soothe. ‘We can all agree on generalities. We believe in the power of God’s truth, and we believe that His son is coming again.’

  Harrison’s influence, such as it is, relies on his position straddling the divide between Whitehall and the religious firebrands in the city and the army. But the stretch is becoming too much even for him; he is a man with a foot in diverging boats, and soon he will have to jump.

  ‘Generalities,’ says Feake, his palm pressing down on the table, fingers spread wide. ‘Generalities are irrelevant. What matters is action. Detail. What are we doing to prepare for His arrival? What are we doing to clear His path?’

  If He is coming, what need does He have of the scurrying of ants? Will sighs, audibly. Eyes swivel in his direction, looking for a scapegoat. He gazes firmly at the floor.

  ‘Leaving aside the Church itself and the question of tithes and parishes,’ says Feake, ‘why spend the assembly’s time on law reform? To what end?’

  Cromwell leans back in his chair. ‘To make justice quicker and more easily accessible to the common man.’

  ‘What justice? Whose justice? What need do we have of laws made by man, when God laid down the law to Moses?’

  Will rolls his eyes extravagantly. Looking up, he sees Simmonds watching him. The man looks thunderous. Poor little Patience. What was she thinking?

  He feels a sudden jolt of guilt. Why did he not protest more earnestly against the match? Why did he not lie at her feet, clutching her ankles, stopping her walk towards this man as he stood there waiting to own her? He wonders what she believes now, about the coming of Christ and the rest of it. Most likely she believes whatever she is allowed to believe.

  Will sees Feake, Harrison and Simmonds to the door. As he closes it behind them, Simmonds pauses and turns to glare at him. There is anger and contempt in his eyes.

  Will, feeling buoyant now that Christ’s triumvirate are leaving, winks at him. A cocky, Nedham-esque provocation that feels delightful. He watches Simmonds’ fury surge and clicks the heavy wooden door shut. Turning into the room still smiling, he sees his chief’s face, and his stomach clenches with fear.