Footsteps.
Patience presses her ear to the door. Splinters jag at her face.
It doesn’t sound like Sidrach. Even if it is him, she cannot bear it in here any longer. Daylight brought some relief, in the slight lightening of the dark. Thank the Lord for that thin line of light under the bottom of the door. But she is thirsty and hungry. She is bored of the constant, dragging fear. Things scuttle in the darkness at the bottom of the steps.
She sits at the top, right by the door. How long has she been in here? At least one night and most of one day.
She must get out before darkness falls again. She must.
‘Help!’ she croaks with her parched voice. ‘Help me.’
She hears the footsteps come closer, and pause.
‘Oh please,’ she says. ‘Please let me out.’
The sound of a lock being turned. The creaking open of the door, which fills the cellar with light. Beautiful, painful light. She squints against its glare to make out a small, unfamiliar shape.
‘Missus? Missus, is that you?’
Anne, the butcher girl. In her blood-smeared apron, with the hovering smell about her of sage and thyme.
Will, slumped against the wall under the sign of the Bird, which creaks and moans above his head, looks through the open doors of the gate to where Cromwell’s carriage is waiting. The horses are bridled and impatient. The coachman has donned his hat and is clambering stiffly up on to his tall seat.
The Lord Protector’s lifeguards are ranging themselves up, ready for inspection by their captain. Will can’t make out their faces from here, but he watches the routine of checking kit and squaring shoulders.
God’s bones.
Sam appears next to him.
‘Nothing,’ he says.
Will turns to look into his face. ‘I must go to warn Cromwell.’
‘If Sid’s here,’ says Sam, ‘he will have seen us together now. Me with you. And if you warn Cromwell, Sid will know that we are in this thing together.’
‘Yes.’
Sam shakes his head. They do not need to articulate the obvious fact that he will be a traitor to both sides. Thurloe will know that he was abetting Simmonds. Hyde will know he colluded in warning Cromwell. Both sides will condemn Sam Challoner.
I cannot go back to Cologne. I cannot stay here. I am in limbo.
He feels a moment of vertigo. A strange sensation that sends him reaching for the solidity of the wall behind him.
‘I will go to Patience. Get there first and try to persuade her to run with me,’ he says.
‘She will not go, Sam. It is too great a sin to ask of her.’
‘I must try.’
‘And I must warn Cromwell. I am sorry, Sam.’
Sam laughs suddenly. ‘God’s blood, Will. Am I to sacrifice my future for that warty old whoreson? What fools fate makes of us.’
‘Aye.’
Behind them they hear the barking of commands and the neighing of a horse. Will pulls Sam into a close embrace.
‘Go well, my brother.’
‘And you.’
Will feels a new hand on his shoulder, and a voice that cracks and trembles cries: ‘You are here!’
They spin to look at Patience – a dishevelled red face, smeared with coal. A wildness in her eyes.
‘He is here! Up there.’ She points above the sign and they look upwards, as if he will be there floating above their heads. A spectral demon.
‘Come. Follow!’ she shouts.
Will looks back briefly, to see the large, ungainly shape of his chief walking towards his coach through a corridor of soldiers. Patience and Sam push through the doors of the inn, looking for the stairs.
‘You have rooms upstairs?’ she says to the potboy, who gawps at her.
‘Where, boy?’ says Sam, grabbing his shoulder. The youngster, frightened, points to the side of the room, where a door is closed.
‘Will. Stay. Watch Cromwell.’ Sam’s officer’s voice is strong and implacable.
Will nods, and Sam runs to the door, pushing against it. It stays closed.
‘This is the only way?’
‘There’s stairs at the back, sir. Towards the river. But, sir, you cannot. I mean, Mr Powell is up there. He pays for privacy, sir.’
Sam ignores the boy’s bleating. He steps back and charges the door, which buckles and snaps against his weight.
‘Stay here,’ he shouts to Patience. But she is damned if she will be told to stay put, now at the end of it all, and she follows him up the narrow stairs. The two of them are close together as they bundle through the door at the top.
A room, sparsely furnished. A canopied bed, and crude paintings on the walls of mythical creatures glumly copulating. A stale, hot smell.
And at the end, Sidrach. His back is to them. He is crouching by the low window. The pane is cocked open, and light spills inwards on to the dusty floor.
As they crash into the room, he turns, opening his body towards them. She sees the ugly bulk of the pistol resting on the sill of the window.
He is rising then, with a face of fury and the pistol in an outstretched hand, turning, turning it towards them so that Patience can see the mouth in its barrel – wide open and ready to spit.
‘You bitch,’ says Sidrach, scarcely noticing Sam. All his rage and spite crunch into his voice.
She looks into the open mouth of the pistol. She teeters. She looks beyond the metal to the snarl of his face above it. The world slows enough for her to wonder why he hates her so much.
Sam, shielded by Sidrach’s hatred for her, is already lunging across the room, his sword out and leaping for Sidrach’s wrist. He slashes, and the pistol falls to the floor. Beside it, lying palm up on the wooden boards, is Sidrach’s unfurled fist.
Sidrach stands, stupid, looking at the blood fountaining from his wrist. At the missing space where his hand should be. Then he screams, and his face is a wide, contorted horror, and the sound is something demonic, something not of this world. Sam stoops to grab the pistol, and as he does so, he looks out of the window. There, framed exactly, is the Holbein Gate. And out of the gate comes the carriage.
Below him, he sees the top of Will’s head. Will looks up towards the window and Sam shrinks back. There is no sign of recognition in Will’s eyes as he drops his chin and moves out of sight, towards the door of the inn.
Behind him, Sam can hear Sidrach sobbing with pain and Patience crying. The carriage is moving forward, beginning its sweeping turn. As it circles, Sam finds himself bringing the pistol around to bear.
Along the long muzzle, he looks through the open window of the carriage directly at the unmistakable profile of Oliver Cromwell. His hat is off. He is mopping his forehead with a startling white kerchief. Beyond him is the dim outline of Mrs Cromwell. Sam regards Cromwell with astonishment. The raggle of shoulder-length hair. The nose that seems a parody of itself. So large, so insistently Cromwellian.
He gazes down the long line of the pistol in his hand, and feels his finger quiver on the trigger. He imagines, for a heady, trembling second, returning to Cologne as the man who killed Cromwell. He thinks of his dead father, and his sister, and his brother; and the ceaseless roll call of his comrades with their souls ripped hellwards and their corpses rotting from Marston Moor to Worcester.
And yet. What price revenge?
Will runs up the stairs. His own sword is in his hands and he follows the screams. Outside, he saw the soldiers suddenly alert, listening as the noise filled the street. He saw the captain of Cromwell’s lifeguard snap orders at the sergeant.
He must get to the others before the soldiers do. Help them. He can hear sounds from the top of the stairs. But he cannot work out whose scream it is. It is high-pitched, insistent. Behind him, the inn’s customers cluster at the foot of the steps, looking upwards with nervous prurience. Good. They will slow down the soldiers.
‘Keep back,’ he roars down at them as he runs up the stairs. ‘Back!’
At the to
p, the door is already open, and he rushes in.
Sam is standing at the window, looking into the room, holding the pistol limply at one side.
Sidrach is on his knees, screaming, holding the bloodied stump of an arm to his chest.
Patience glances towards Will. He sees her white face, and the blood smears on her cheek. He does not know whose blood. But no matter.
He leaps forward with barely a pause, turns his sword point-first and thrusts it into Sidrach’s throat, so the screams becomes a gurgle and he crumples to the floor.
He can hear soldiers shouting somewhere, and Patience’s voice saying: ‘He’s dead, he’s dead.’
‘Run, Sam. The other stairs.’
Sam pauses. He nods. ‘I did not shoot,’ he says, and Will does not understand the words, nor the bemused look on Sam’s face. ‘Sid,’ says Sam. ‘Blame me for Sid, Will.’ He runs towards the back of the room.
Patience feels Will pull her into a tight embrace. She hears him whisper. ‘If there is a sin, it is my sin. Mine. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
She is crying, she thinks, and retching. The blood is pooling on to the floor. And she is free. Free! But her freedom is drenched in too much blood, too much.
Sam looks at her from the door, as she kneels on the floor and pulls Will closer, and he opens his mouth to say something. But then he is gone, and she hears the thunder of soldiers coming up the stairs. And she looks at Sidrach’s empty black eyes and waits for the Lord’s judgement to strike her exultant heart.
WHITEHALL, LONDON
September 1655
WILL !’ SAYS CROMWELL, LOOKING UP FROM THE PILES of paper on his desk. A smile to light a room, still. But a dulled light.
Will bows. Rising, he pushes his hair from his eyes.
‘A sad business, this,’ says Cromwell.
He gestures to the cluster of men around him; men whose faces Will does not even recognize. They file out on the command. One pauses at the door, an unspoken objection on his jowly, smug face. Cromwell raises a bushy eyebrow and he scuttles out.
When the door has clicked shut, he says: ‘Your own brother- in-law. Thurloe has told me. A pity he died.’
Will manages to pull a contrite face.
‘We could have questioned him. The plot thickens. Thickens, Will.’
He stands and walks to the window. Outside, they can see the grey huddle of London in the rain. The soft patter and smear of the drops on the window. ‘You must come out to Hampton Court. Bring your boy, Will. He would love it.’
‘He would. We breech him tomorrow.’
‘So soon! I will tell Mrs Cromwell. She will rouse out a present for him.’
‘No need, Your Highness.’
Cromwell turns back to him. ‘Will, given the circumstances . . .’ He falters.
‘I have already informed Thurloe,’ says Will quickly, ‘that I would prefer, given the circumstances, to return to private practice of law.’
‘Good man,’ says Cromwell. ‘You always were a good man. I am sure we can put business of state in your path.’
‘Thank you.’
Cromwell pauses. Will wonders if he should leave. He begins gathering himself to head out, but the Lord Protector starts to speak again. ‘Thurloe thinks we should proclaim your brother-in- law’s plotting. Use it. We are formulating a plan to put the major generals in direct charge in the provinces. Some may not like it. But there are enemies everywhere, Will. We need to be vigilant.’
‘Yes, Lord Protector.’
‘There is your sister’s good name, of course. He has no other relatives?’
‘No.’
‘I met him, did I not? A fine-looking man. Intransigent.’
‘He was certainly a man of decided opinions, Lord Protector.’
Cromwell nods. Behind him, the rain still spatters the glass. Will thinks of Blackberry’s breeching in the morning. After, if the rain holds off, he will take the boy beyond the walls. He has begun asking questions. Why does the moon follow me? Where do the stars go in the daytime?
They will lie, as Will and Henrietta once did, and look at the stars from beneath a blanket. They will talk of the moon, and where the stars go in the daytime. Tomorrow will be a good day, thinks Will. Tomorrow I will let others toast the boy’s health and I will avoid the wine.
‘I think then we will keep this business quiet. I do not want to give the Fifth Monarchists more reasons to hate me. They seem to have enough already. We have put it about that he died in an altercation with a Royalist. Also your brother-in-law, I understand. He has gone back to Cologne?’
‘Yes, Lord Protector.’
‘Useful that he has left. It will be better for him, too, if this business keeps out of the way of Nedham’s pen. I don’t doubt they would hang and quarter him in Cologne for preventing my assassination.’
‘That is very true, Your Highness. He is safer if the story is quiet.’
‘How strange are His ways. A Royalist, one of Rupert’s own, stopping a bullet meant for my heart.’
He pauses, and raises his eyes heavenwards. ‘Strange,’ he says again. ‘Why did he not let Simmonds shoot, Will? Thurloe was unclear on that.’
Will considers telling the truth. ‘He wants an England at peace, Your Highness. He has suffered a surfeit of war. And he believes you to be the best bulwark against disorder.’
Cromwell nods. ‘A right-thinking fellow. You are lucky in one of your brothers-in-law, at least.’
He walks towards Will and claps him on the shoulder. Up close, Will can see the broken red veins embedded in his cheeks, and the mottling of the grey bags under his eyes. ‘We shall miss you here,’ says Cromwell. ‘There are challenges ahead. People will not like the major generals being set up over them. But the change is coming. We will win the souls of the people, Will.’
Will makes a non-committal noise. Cromwell looks sharply at him.
‘We need stability. Peace, as your brother-in-law knows. There is a free and interrupted passage of the Gospel running through the midst of us, Will. Each man can hear it, if he is given quiet. The major generals can guarantee the peace. Then we will win the souls. We won the war, Will. We will win the peace also. Do you not think this is so?’
Will looks at his chief. He looks at the grey streaks in his hair. The clenching and unclenching of his fist. The ink spatter on his right hand, smudged with the thumb of his left. He looks at the bible open on the desk, its pages rumpled. He looks at the appeal on Cromwell’s face. The unlikely, unexpected doubt he sees there.
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ he says. ‘I am sure it will be so.’
If I could write a letter to Henrietta and place it in the hands of an angel I am not sure I believe in; if I could watch that letter soar through the clouds, borne by thunderous beating winds, then I would write of love.
I would write of this boy. This boy. This boy you bore and loved. This boy who is neither you, nor me, but some wondrous creation of his own invention. This boy who asks questions and seeks knowledge. This boy with your eyes and my chin and his own bubbling spring of joy.
I would write of the books I will offer to him. Of the diffidence with which I will offer them. Because I would vow this in my letter: to let him read what he will, to let him follow his own stars, find his own Homer.
Then. Henrietta, I would tell you of this night. Of how we are lying here as I once lay with you, looking at the stars. Imagining you. Talking about you. Conjuring you among all the celestial bodies.
The patterns of life, my Henrietta! Do you remember how we once imagined him? Talked of him. Conjured him among all the celestial bodies.
Looking at the stars with you, with him, reminding each other that in the great sweep of myth and lore, the only prick of light that really matters is the love of the living and the dead. Our souls are made for love, my Henrietta. Not for despair. Not for bitterness. Not really. Not at the reckoning.
And our boy. He will grow up in a world replete with all th
e usual villains: war, disease, misery, grief, boredom, hunger, thirst.
But it is also a world in which men can conceive of flying, my Henrietta. Not as a wish. Not as the fairy tales would have it, on the wings of spirits and dragons. No. Man can conceive of building something in the image of the angels. Something with wings and an engine, and no soul of its own. A machine.
He may build this machine, our boy. Perhaps, perhaps not. I do not wish greatness upon him. I have lived close to greatness, and I have seen the sourness in its belly. But he could fly, my Henrietta. He could feel the rush of wind in his face, like one of Cromwell’s hawks. He could soar.
And this I vow, my Henrietta. While I breathe, if he falls I will catch him. But I will not stop him trying to fly.
This is what I would write, Henrietta. That while man is violent and power-hungry and base, he is something else. Man is glorious. Man can dream. Invent. Name and track the stars. Love.
This boy is glorious. Our boy.
In Cologne, Sam is sitting on a bale of cotton in a warehouse by the river. He crumples his letter from Will. It is full of stars, and a strange febrile joy to be alive. The one fact to hold on to is Blackberry’s breeching. He is a boy on his way to manhood.
They are far away, his only family.
He has a world of things to do. He must tally off these bales, for a start. He must talk to the captain. He must report to Mr Shaw. There is a reception tonight for Charles Stuart, who is in town, and Rupert himself has sent a boy requesting Sam comes. He can imagine it. The desperate shine of cheap buckles and fake gems. The pouting red-lipped girls. The triple-bluff languor of the under-employed soldiers: a layer of affected sloth that is supposed to mask brilliant industry, which in fact is a bored apathy.
He can imagine the preening of whichever woman has temporary occupancy of the crownless king’s bed. The to-and- fro as the mothers and girls weigh relative prospects. Where does Sam stand now that he is on his way to being prosperous? He was penniless and untitled. How will he rank against the titled paupers who will be pecking around the king’s cast-offs tonight?
Shaw’s daughter will be there, with her new intended. A younger son with an honourable name and debts that stretch from Paris to Brussels. She will be watching Sam as she parades her catch; her jewellery ostentatiously real amid a sparkle of tinted glass. This could have been yours, her eyes will say.
The Tyrant’s Shadow Page 26