‘Smirking, Johnson? Smirking.’
‘No, my lord general. I was—’
‘You were smiling, Johnson. Smiling as if it amuses you. This great and sorrowful discord between men of God. This misery at the heart of England. This blood spilled and His legacy still at stake, and William Johnson, this great potentate, this great seer, rises above it all to smirk and prance and find it all so damned amusing.’
‘No, my lord general. No.’
The word seems to wind the man tighter. His great head ringing with righteousness, with a flattening pulse of rage. Will steps backwards, his hands raised and palms open.
Cromwell lurches towards him. ‘I know you are not godly. I do not see you pray. I do not see the Lord’s fire in your soul. When will you see, Johnson? When will you feel his breath at your neck? Is it the devil in you, sir? I thought you sad. I thought you quiet. A bookish, clerkish, mousy sort of a man. But perhaps you are bad. Perhaps the Lord’s song cannot find your heart, because the devil already squats there.’
‘I. No. Lord General, I beg your—’
‘Get out, Johnson. Get out.’ Cromwell presses the heel of his palm to his forehead and screeches. His fervour is terrifying, and yet somehow almost absurd. Will reaches behind him for the door handle. He feels the cold metal of it, and wrenches the door open. Pulling it to behind him, he shuts out that fury, that passion.
What just happened?
Jesus Christ. He feels the Lord’s name hover on his lips, and stores the irony for the telling of the story to Nedham. He will make a joke of this unfunny thing, for what else can a mortal do when lashed by the wrath of a man with his God on his back?
Patience waits by the fire for her husband’s return. She prays, prays, that the meeting has gone well. Sidrach has been in a bouncing, trembling mood for days, ever since the summons arrived, abuzz with extravagant plans to tell Cromwell where he is going wrong. Grandiose pledges of actions he will take, of schemes he will implement once he is at the right hand of the lord general, who is only wanting a little good advice before being the herald of Christ he could become.
Tom clatters into the room, his new nailed boots skittering on the stone flags. He carries a bucket of coal in each hand. Seeing her, he bobs his head and grins a wide toothless smile. ‘Missus,’ he says. ‘Perishing cold, missus.’
She sees that his lips are blue.
‘Come here, boy,’ she says. She sees him look around the kitchen. ‘Sarah is out, Tom. As is the master. Do not worry.’
He comes closer, and at a sign stokes the fire higher.
‘Sit,’ she says. ‘Warm yourself.’
He sits, and she throws a blanket around his thin shoulders. He looks sideways at her, a small, shy smile at his lips.
‘Do you know any songs Tom?’
‘Only what my mother taught me, begging pardon, missus.’
‘Sing one to me.’
‘It’s in the old tongue, missus. My mother. She was Irish.’ He says it in a whisper.
‘Are you a papist, Tom?’ She shrinks a little from him, in spite of herself.
He shakes his head with vigour. ‘Not I, missus.’
He puts his hands to the fire, spreading his fingers and clenching them into fists. Pulling them back under the blanket, he clamps them under his armpits.
‘What’s a papist, missus?’
‘Tom! Well then. Papists believe that the Pope is the head of the Church. And that salvation can be bought and sold. And that excess and gluttony are legitimate in the service of the Lord.’
The boy pulls the blanket closer. His lips are losing their blue tinge.
‘And what do you believe, missus?’
‘I believe that man’s relationship with God is a private one. That salvation is the Lord’s gift, not man’s. That saints and bishops are creatures of man, not God.’
‘And how do you know you are right, missus?’
‘Well,’ she says, and pauses. ‘Well.’
She finds that the words fail to come to her tongue as bidden. How does she know?
‘Never mind that,’ she says, utterly weary of it all. ‘Sing the song your mother sang, Tom.’
In a low, guttural voice, Tom begins to sing. A sibilant, rhythmic lament, that suits the leaping of the flames, the low red gleam of the quiet kitchen. She watches him sing it, watches him fight to remember the strange words and the melody. Midway through, he falters suddenly.
He turns to her with a stricken face, his eyes wide with a kind of terror.
‘I remember the words, but I have forgotten what they mean. I have forgotten.’
‘Shh, Tom,’ she says. She reaches out to touch him, to smooth the hair back from his forehead. He pulls back, fierce and scared.
‘Shh,’ she says again, but as the sound ends, she hears something else. Footsteps on the stairs.
Patience and Tom share a panicked glance. Both spring to their feet. Tom shakes the coal from bucket to scuttle, sniffing back whatever misery threatens to engulf him.
Patience crosses to the table, pulling her knife from the sheath at her belt and starting to shred a cabbage with nervous strokes.
Sidrach walks in. She puts on a smile, and greets him cheerfully, even though it is obvious from the first glance at him that things have not gone well. His face is a glower of rage and frustration. He will be looking for a scapegoat, she thinks. Oh Lord.
Somehow it is a relief that the waiting is over. That she knows, now, the worst. That whatever she says, however honeyed her tone, smooth her voice, placatory her gestures, none of it matters.
He rages for a while about Cromwell. About his obstinacy; his refusal to see his role in the coming.
Mutinously, she thinks: and what is his role? To appoint you to some position of great authority? What else would make you happy, oh lord and master?
In her silence, which he takes for granted, he blusters on. Cromwell is a beast. A monster. A dissembling, perjuring villain. He wants to be King Oliver. King Noll.
Tom, trying to escape the kitchen quietly, manages to drop a bucket and it clatters to the floor. Coal dust flies out, settling like black snow on the shined floor.
Sidrach whips round, curses forming on his tongue. Tom’s face is misted with fear.
‘Husband,’ says Patience, loudly. ‘Leave the boy. I will clean it.’
He nods, barely mollified. He is winding himself up to strike, and it will probably be Tom. The boy’s eyes are wide, his eyebrows almost reaching his scalp. Patience pauses, and then says: ‘Will thinks that Cromwell is not as you suppose him. He does not want power for its own sake, or so Will thinks. He says—’
‘Will,’ says Sidrach, and in his tone he conveys all he thinks of her brother. At least he is looking at her now, not Tom.
‘Husband,’ she says, mustering her courage, drawing Sidrach off Tom, who has picked up his bucket and is sidling backwards towards the door. ‘He is my brother and I love him. And I think you are wrong about Cromwell.’
‘You think. You think. You do no such thing, woman. Your place, if you have forgotten, is not to lecture me about Cromwell. Your job . . .’
She blanks him out. Blanks out the words behind the wide and angry mouth, the spittle flying and the lips stretched thinly over his too-large teeth. Behind him, the door closes. Tom has escaped outside.
Patience looks down at her hands, which clutch the edge of the table. The raw, chapped red hands that seems to belong to someone else, to someone older, wiser. He has knocked the cabbage off the table. It rolls on the floor, rocking on its cut stem.
She moves to pick it up, and something about the move provokes him. He pushes her, palms thudding into her chest. Could she say sorry? Ask him to stop? She will not. He will do as he will do. Such is the nature of tyranny. All she can do is find her pride, hiding in peculiar corners.
Nurture your pride, Patience. Own your name. Do not beg. Do not plead. She talks herself into silence then, as the slaps come down like hail.
; ‘You must dissolve the Parliament.’
‘I will not.’ Cromwell’s fist grinds into his palm. ‘I will not,’ he repeats.
Major General Lambert sighs heavily. His hands sit on his hips.
‘Come, sir. My dear, dear sir. You must.’
‘You cannot wheedle me into it, John.’
Will feels like an intruder. He is in the corner of the room, holding a sheaf of unsigned letters. They have forgotten him, he thinks. He sidled in this morning, his usual time, with his usual greeting. Cromwell looked up from his desk and merely smiled. The smile lifted the weight from Will, who was nervous about the encounter after the lord general’s fury scraped him raw last time. Relief, yes; but he feels a little diminished too, by how easily he can be crushed or puffed by the chief’s favour.
Now he is invisible. He should cough, but he is caught in the room’s web of tension. The two soldiers, comrades, facing each other in the fading light. The light of the candles and the fire catching the grooved lines on Cromwell’s face, throwing a criss-cross of shadows across his skin, skitting over the dark bags under his eyes. The same light sheens the smooth young skin of Lambert, picks out the shine of his ungreyed, full hair.
Lambert will kneel in a moment, thinks Will. Then I will cough.
‘I will not play the tyrant,’ says Cromwell.
‘I am not asking that. We are not asking that.’
‘Who is this “we”?’
Lambert waves a dismissive arm. ‘This, this is the answer.’ He thrusts a paper at Cromwell. ‘Look at it. I beg you. A new constitution. We have not settled matters since the death of the king. This answers that question. I have been working on it.’
‘That is where you have been? You were called to the Nominated Assembly?’
‘The Barebones?’ Lambert laughs. ‘That parcel of fools and knaves. Are you not disappointed by them? Are they not incapable of solving the matters that have dogged us since the execution of that man of blood?’
Cromwell nods, conceding the point. The Barebones seems as paralysed as its predecessor.
‘Listen, my lord general. Please.’ Lambert’s voice is a high wheedle. ‘We must separate out those who make the laws from those who implement the laws. This we have always agreed. We must have checks and balances on power. A set of scales. A three-legged stool. No one part of government can ignore the other. In this, my plan, there is a Council of State with real power, a Parliament, the judiciary and . . . and . . .’
He shuffles a little, aware of Cromwell’s gaze on him.
‘And what?’
‘A man at the centre of it.’
‘A king.’
‘No,’ says Lambert, hands raised. ‘Well then. Perhaps a man with some of the authority the king once had. But less power. Checks and balances.’
‘A king in all but name.’
‘You are becoming distracted by the naming of things, Lord General.’
‘Will,’ says Cromwell, suddenly. ‘Will, come here.’
Will steps forward, anxious now that he realizes he was never forgotten. He feels tender; nervous that his employer will unleash the fury on his already bruised person. ‘Bear witness,’ says Cromwell, his voice studied and neutral.
Lambert turns away, drooping.
‘Bear witness, I say, Johnson. I have no desire to be king, in name or in deed.’
Will inclines his head.
‘I myself invested the Barebones with its authority to sit for one year. Barely six months ago. I will not break that word. I will not be the tyrant that some already believe me to be,’ says Cromwell.
Lambert rounds on him, anger catching at the edges of his words. ‘For whose sake do you refuse to think about this? Your own? We slide towards anarchy, sir. In Scotland, the Royalists are rising. In London, the firebrand preachers seek to own the republic. What will their world look like, Lord General? What will the rule of King Charles II look like?’
Cromwell seems to grow in size, the great swell of his barrel chest making slight Lambert seem even smaller. ‘Do you lecture me on my duty, sir? Do you so presume?’
Lambert, quailing, seeks to deflect him.
‘Mr Johnson. What do you say, sir?’
They both turn to look at him. Will recognizes the blotched skin of Cromwell’s face, the tremble that comes before an explosion of honest rage. His every sense strains to tell the chief whatever he wishes to hear. To dampen the rage. But is that not the curse of great men? How many suffer by surrounding themselves only with those who twist the truth into a single, arse-licking ‘yes’.
‘I cannot see Barebones finding a settlement,’ says Will, cautiously. ‘I do not want to see a monarchy, nor an anarchy.’
The three of them are silent. Cromwell’s great head sinks towards his chest. There it is; the present muddle laid out before them. Scylla on one side: the old days of tyranny and popery and kings. The devil’s piper playing the tunes in Whitehall. Charybdis on the other: anarchy, blood and more blood. Orphans. Widows. Harvests rotting for lack of men. Beggars and vagrants, and the red-ragged stumps of veterans’ lost limbs. The cacophonous squabbling of God’s prophets, tearing the land apart. And in the middle of the channel, a parcel of panicking men trying to steer in the dark with no fucking compass.
Will raises his eyes to meet Cromwell’s. ‘Sometimes, my lord general, perhaps the least bad answer is good enough.’
Lambert waves his piece of paper. Cromwell turns away from both of them. He closes his eyes and looks heavenwards.
‘I would be alone, gentlemen,’ he says. ‘I must think. Pray for guidance.’
Lambert and Will glance at each other and move towards the door. Will pulls it open, to let in a rush of cold, dark air.
‘John,’ says Cromwell, and both of them stop.
‘I will not dissolve the Parliament. I will not, and I cannot.’
He lays a curious emphasis on the pronouns, a heavy and insistent ‘I’.
Will notices the look that passes between them, these two men who once stood side by side on the battlefield. These men who are used to each other’s ways, each other’s orders. As he leaves the room, he hears the thud of Cromwell falling to his knees. The start of his passionate entreaty to his God.
The door to his office clatters open, and Will jumps, splattering ink across the page he has been labouring on. He begins to curse, looking up as he does so, and sees Nedham standing in the doorway.
‘Will. You’re to come. Come on now, man. Hurry.’ He is near hopping with excitement.
Will casts down his quill and stands.
‘What is happening?’
‘The end, Johnson. The death throes. The start of a new reign.’
‘Stop talking in riddles, Nedham, for the Lord’s sake,’ says Will, as they emerge into the corridor. He looks at his friend; he does not know which way he is supposed to be going.
‘To the Parliament, Will, to watch the show. Lambert’s done it. Half done it. Some vote or other gone awry, and now he’s to clear the chamber with the sword of righteousness.’
‘And then what?’
Nedham stops and looks at him. They are still in the midst of a clatter of excited men. Everywhere there are clerks and secretaries: clustering in bands, heading towards the heart of the action. Drawn to the drama, and the carnage, and the promise of England being remade in their sight.
‘Then, Will? Then, King Noll.’
Will reels. It is one thing to guess that it is coming. Another for it to come. Here is history, and here, like a pinprick in the firmament, is Will Johnson: private secretary to a king. Jesus Christ.
‘Here,’ says Nedham, ducking through a door Will does not know. Through a narrow passage shorn of adornments. They are near running, and Will can feel the hammer of his heart; although whether it is excitement or exertion, or a marriage of both, he cannot tell.
Emerging through another door, he blinks and stares. They are in the great hall where the MPs sit. Cavernous and echoing. There is shouting
outside, but in here it is oddly quiet – except for the tramp and scrape of the soldiers’ heavy boots as they cluster in the centre.
A man walks past, black-coated and ashen-faced. Nedham plucks his sleeve. For some reason, he speaks in a loud whisper – the odd hush of the place demands it. ‘Pray, sir. What is afoot?’
The man is clearly irritated to be stopped, but he looks at Nedham and Will, and says, ‘There was a motion to dissolve ourselves, gentlemen. Most have gone. Some,’ he waves an expansive arm to the benches, where small knots of men sit, ‘some insist on staying.’
Will sees Lambert then. Gorgeous in his military finery, he is striding towards a few of the recalcitrant members. His hand is on the hilt of his sword – ostentatiously, he pulls it a notch or two from its scabbard.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says. His voice is loud and echoes in the chamber. All heads swivel to look. Will feels Nedham grab his arm, feels his friend’s fingers gripping through the fabric. Lambert would not draw blood in this place. He would not. Surely?
Lambert’s face is malevolent, at odds with the foppish ringlets curling down.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says again. ‘It is over.’
Will cannot see the faces of the men he is accosting – there are gawpers and soldiers in the way. All hold their breath. All wait.
In the pause that spirals on, Will pictures blood running down the central stone of the chamber. Red rivers that stain and besmirch. Perhaps it does not matter – the threat of blood in this place is the same in the eyes of God and man as the actual liquid itself.
He hears a kerfuffle. The last members are standing. Awkward, they push aside the soldiers and make for the door. Their protest is enough to save their individual consciences
‘Cromwell as king, then,’ he whispers to Nedham.
‘What else is left? Perhaps not in name.’
‘A reign demanded by the military, not by the people,’ says Will. His voice is a little loud, and he draws Lambert’s eye.
‘You,’ says the general. ‘Johnson?’
‘Yes, General,’ says Will, pacing forward.
‘Go. Find Cromwell. He does not know of this action.’ Will notes the projection of his voice – the direction of the words towards the retreating politicians. ‘He does not know,’ says Lambert again, loudly.
The Tyrant’s Shadow Page 14