‘’Twill be a stony one, when we take power.’ Joseph’s voice was gleeful with menace. You’re a fool! Come, throw your hand in with us and I’ll see you are rewarded.’
Campbell’s anger overflowed and he made to draw the sword at his side. ‘Sir, you are offensive to me …’
‘Now, now, my boy. ’ Twill serve no purpose to run this Puritan through. I fear there are still too many left to take his place.’ The deep voice of Campbell’s father spoke from behind them. Charmian turned to look for her mother, but there was no sign of her, only Sir Geoffrey stood there. ‘Our day will come again, Radley,’ he added softly, and though Joseph Radley laughed derisively, the Royalist merely nodded. ‘ Oh yes, our day will come, I promise you.’
‘Never! The King is beaten. He will have to stand trial and you and all your like will follow him to the block.’ He shook his fist towards Sir Geoffrey whilst Charmian watched, shocked by the venom in her father’s voice.
Then swiftly, angered by Sir Geoffrey’s calm and smiling face, Joseph Radley turned back towards his daughter and raised his hand as if to strike her. ‘Are you still here? Back to the castle, I told you.’
She felt rather than saw Campbell make a sudden movement as if to protect her, but Charmian herself dodged the blow as it fell and began to run towards the towering walls of the castle.
The three men watched the swiftly running figure of the child.
‘That’s a remarkable daughter you have there, Joseph Radley,’ Sir Geoffrey said softly. ‘One day you may lose her through your own stupidity.’
Joseph Radley’s only answer was a low growl of rage.
They left Gartree Castle within the hour. As Joseph Radley climbed into the coach after his wife and daughter, Charmian heard him say, ‘You will not forget, Sister, in half an hour.’
‘You may rest assured, Brother. It will be just as we have arranged.’
Charmian glanced up at her mother, but she seemed just as mystified by the strange conversation as the child.
‘Drive on,’ roared Joseph Radley and sat back in the seat, a small smile twisting his mouth. In his eyes there was the glint of excitement. The look sent a shiver down Charmian’s back and she was filled with a feeling that something was about to happen. Something that, although it would obviously bring her father pleasure, was most likely to cause distress to her mother and to herself.
She did not have to wait very long to find out. Two miles along the road, her father ordered the coach to pull off the main highway and turn down a narrow cart-track coming to stand beneath the shadows of a copse.
‘Joseph—why have we stopped?’ There was alarm and fear in Elizabeth Radley’s eyes.
‘Hold your tongue, Wife,’ he snapped and levered his bulk out of the seat and down from the coach. As he moved away Charmian knelt on the seat and peered out.
‘Madam,’ she whispered. ‘There are soldiers all around us. Soldiers from the castle.’
‘What?’ Elizabeth looked and saw and then sank back into her seat, her cheeks deathly pale, her eyes closed. ‘Oh no—no! They m-must mean to ambush them.’
‘Who? What do you mean?’
Elizabeth’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Hush, my dear, you must keep very quiet. We can only hope and pray …’
‘Madam,’ Charmian took her mother’s cold hands in hers. ‘Please tell me that I may understand.’
Elizabeth hesitated and then haltingly, she tried to explain. ‘I believe—your father may have arranged with his sister to lay in wait for the Denholms. No doubt Mary Mason will demand that they now leave her home and—and …’
‘Oh Madam! Sir Geoffrey and his lady and Campbell—oh no, not Campbell. He has been so kind to me.’
Tears welled in Elizabeth’s eyes. ‘There is nothing we can do. We are as much—prisoners, as their King.’
They waited a long time in the cold, huddled in their cloaks inside the coach. Outside the soldiers moved about and then suddenly there was a flurry of activity as a runner brought word. The soldiers crouched down on either side of the main highway, their pistols at the ready, at the very moment when Charmian’s sharp ears caught the sound of another coach rattling towards them. Not wanting to watch and yet quite unable to tear her terrified gaze away, the child watched as nearer and nearer came the luxurious coach of the Royalist family.
‘No—no—no!’ Her cry of terror was lost amidst the shouts and cries of the soldiers as they leapt from their hiding-places and swarmed around the coach. Pistol shots cracked and the driver toppled from his seat clutching his shoulder. The horses reared in panic, and the coach swayed and rocked dangerously.
‘What is happening? I dare not look,’ came Elizabeth’s whisper.
‘They—they have captured Sir Geoffrey. He is getting down from the coach and there is Lady Denholm and—and Campbell. Oh!’ The child cried out. ‘The soliders are pointing their pistols at them. Oh Madam—they mean to kill them!’
Elizabeth gave a little cry and covered her face with shaking hands. Mesmerized, Charmian was compelled to watch.
‘My father is standing before Sir Geoffrey. Oh!’ The child winced as if she herself had felt the blow as her father struck Sir Geoffrey’s face once, twice, thrice. And then with a mixture of anguish and yet relief she watched the Royalist prisoners being bound.
‘They—they are not to be killed,’ she breathed.
‘Not at this moment, maybe,’ Elizabeth murmured hopelessly, ‘but what is to become of them? What is to become of them?’
Charmian scrambled down suddenly. ‘My father is coming back.’
Demurely they waited, trying desperately to appear as if they had witnessed nothing of the drama going on but a few yards from their coach. The door was wrenched open and Joseph Radley heaved himself inside once more.
‘The Royalist cause is crushed,’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘With the King our prisoner and most of his followers in irons or fled the country, there is nothing more they can do. And now—I have the one man who might yet have incited more followers to arms. I have him. I have him! Cromwell will be well pleased with this day’s work.’
Silently, Elizabeth Radley bowed her head, her only comfort the small hand of her daughter which held hers so tightly under the cover of her cloak.
Chapter Three
It seemed her father was right after all. The King was the prisoner of the Parliamentarians. He stood trial and was beheaded outside the Palace of Whitehall on 30 January 1649.
Cromwell and his men, her father among them, now ruled England. The growing child heard of these events from the snippets of conversation between the adults around her.
‘What will have happened to Sir Geoffrey and his son?’ she asked her mother repeatedly in the early years, but Elizabeth Radley could only shake her head and say sadly, ‘I don’t know, child. I really don’t know.’
Unwittingly, it was her father who at last gave her the news she sought—over two and a half years after Charles had been beheaded.
Charmian was sitting on the window-seat in the bay window with her mother, learning a new tapestry stitch, when Joseph Radley returned home. He had been away in London for three weeks. He seemed vastly pleased with himself and he marched up and down the long room, strutting like a proud peacock, rubbing his fat hands together.
‘Well, Wife, after all this time I think we have finally crushed the Royalists.’ He watched with smug satisfaction as Elizabeth Radley’s face paled.
‘Charles II—as his Royalist supporters insist on calling him—was crowned King in Scotland and marched at the head of an army of Scots, but Cromwell met them at Worcester and defeated them. Charles got away—to France, we believe.’
He paused, but Elizabeth would not be drawn into asking the question he knew she wished to voice.
‘I shall urge Cromwell to dissolve Parliament now and take power himself. I am to become a General in the New Model Army. It was suggested by Cromwell himself for my services,’ he added proudly.
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��I am very pleased for you,’ his wife replied dutifully, but her tone was flat and emotionless and her head remained bowed over her embroidery, though Charmian noticed that the fingers which pushed the needle in and out of her tapestry trembled slightly.
‘ ’Tis indeed an honour.’ He paused and then came to stand close beside Elizabeth. ‘I have news of your Cavalier friends.’
Elizabeth’s fingers trembled visibly, but she did not lift her head, nor speak. Charmian, however, dropped her work and looked up at her father. ‘Sir Geoffrey Denholm, you mean, and his son?’
Her father rounded on her. ‘What do you know of it, eh?’
Colour suffused the girl’s face. ‘Oh nothing—nothing—but …’ Wildly she searched for some plausible excuse for her hasty question. ‘They are the only Royalists we know, are they not?’
Her father gave a grunt and turned away from her, back towards his wife, standing over her, gloating, Charmian thought resentfully. He enjoys making her unhappy.
There was a tense silence while Joseph Radley savoured the drama of the statement he was about to make. ‘ They were prisoners in the Tower. They have been there these last two years. But they escaped—damned if we know how—and are believed to have gone into exile—with their young King, most likely.’
Elizabeth Radley jumped as she pricked her finger with the needle. Again Charmian could not contain her curiosity. ‘But I thought the King was dead?’
Joseph Radley’s satisfaction at delivering this piece of news, at seeing his wife’s face turn pale and her lips tremble, seemed to mellow his temper. ‘My dear child,’ he addressed his daughter, though there was not a shred of affection in his words. Never did Joseph Radley use his daughter’s given name. It had been the only time he had ever given way to his wife’s pleas that their daughter be given a pretty, frivolous name. He had weakened that once, but never in all the years of the child’s growing had he ever used her name.
‘My dear child, the Royalists believe they are never without a King! As soon as one is—disposed of, his heir immediately becomes King. In their view, Charles’s son is already the lawful King of England.’
‘And is he?’
The vein in her father’s temple began to throb. Gone was his brief moment of good humour. ‘You should know better than to ask such a foolish question. England is a commonwealth. It became so when we abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords after Charles’s execution. England will never again have a king—not whilst I live and breathe!’ He turned and strode from the room.
There was silence after he had gone. Charmian raised her troubled eyes to look at her mother, who was sucking the finger she had pricked. Her own eyes mirrored Charmian’s concern.
‘What—will happen to them? To Sir Geoffrey and—and to Campbell?’
‘As long as they stay abroad—away from England—I think they will be safe,’ Elizabeth murmured, her voice shaking.
‘But what if they should come back to their home and their lands?’
‘I suppose their lands will already have been taken over by the Parliamentarians. No doubt Cromwell has given them to one of his men.’
‘You—you mean someone else will be living in Campbell’s home? Using all their possessions?’
‘Or destroying them,’ her mother said bitterly.
Charmian was silent for a moment, trying to understand what was happening all around her.
‘But what if they should try to come back to save their home? What would happen?’ The child, on the threshold of her womanhood, persisted.
A shudder ran through Elizabeth’s slim body. ‘It would be to certain death whilst Cromwell is so strong.’
Vividly, Charmian could picture the kind of death King Charles had suffered. He had been beheaded, she knew. She could visualize the figure bending over the block, the hooded executioner raising his axe, the swift blow. She swallowed the fear which rose in her throat, for in her imagination it was not the head of Charles, King of England, which fell but the laughing, handsome face of Campbell Denholm.
The years of Charmian’s childhood passed in comparative calm. Her father was absent from their home on the outskirts of the harbour town of Boston much of the time on Cromwell’s business. At these times there was peace and tranquility in their home, at least on the surface. But Charmian knew her mother was deeply troubled and though Charmian could not ask her the reason outright, her intuition told her that it had to do with the exiled Royalists and the fact that England was in the grip of the puritanical Parliamentarians.
In 1653 Cromwell, though he refused the Crown, was appointed Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland and though there were several plots and uprisings against his rule, these were soon quelled by force by men like Joseph Radley who rose to be one of the Lord Protector’s closest colleagues.
But as time went on the rule of the sword and the musket began to become unpopular with the ordinary folk of the land. Fear and hatred of Cromwell and his associates grew and festered as he closed all theatres and banned any form of merry-making. People looked back with affection to the easy-going days under their pleasure-loving King Charles.
By the year Charmian reached her eighteenth birthday, the childhood memory of her betrothal to her cousin had been so blurred by the passage of time that the only strong memory was of Sir Geoffrey and his son, Campbell. The lovely child—Princess Golden Hair, as Campbell had named her—had grown into a beautiful young woman. She knew herself to be betrothed to her cousin, Joshua Mason, and she also knew the Royalists to be in exile and yet her shadowy memory of Joshua had been obliterated—for they had not met again since their betrothal—by her vivid recollection of Campbell who had made such a lasting impression upon the girl-child. The two images had become fused in her mind and in her heart and the only picture she could recall was the face of Campbell Denholm.
The marriage between Joshua and Charmian had been planned to take place when Charmian reached the age of 18.
Preparations were being made at the home of the Radleys for the ceremony when word came that Joshua was ill, very ill, and he lingered betwixt life and death for several weeks. At first it was feared his illness was the dreaded plague. During the years since Cromwell had finally taken power, Mary Mason had opened her house to soldiers of Cromwell’s Army as they marched through the countryside quelling any sign of revolt and crushing disobedience of the Puritans’ new laws. But with them they brought the risk of all manner of infection. As the days passed after the onset of Joshua’s illness, it became apparent that the disease was typhoid—just as dangerous to life and yet it did not bring the certainty of death that plague did.
Word came at last that Joshua had begun to recover, but that because his complete return to health would be slow, Mary Mason suggested that the marriage should be postponed. Her son, she wrote to her half-brother, was not strong enough to make any kind of journey and would need his mother’s care for many more weeks.
Joseph Radley was not pleased. His one wish was to see his sinfully beautiful daughter safely married to his half-sister’s son and shut away in Gartree Castle. Of course he blamed his wife for the fact that Charmian was becoming difficult to handle.
‘You’ve put fancy notions into her head,’ he would storm. ‘She seeks pleasure, to be amused all the time. She wishes to dress herself in frippery and has no devotion to her religion.’
‘To your religion, Joseph,’ Elizabeth replied rashly without stopping to think what she was saying.
The vein in his temple throbbed purple. ‘Have you sown the seeds of sin in her mind?’
‘No, of c-course not,’ Elizabeth faltered, heartily regretting her brief moment of rebellion. ‘I have tried to teach her your beliefs, but …’
‘But she has Royalist blood in her—your blood! Tainted blood! Oh don’t deny it, Wife,’ he wagged his finger in her face. Your family—the Parkhavens—would be Royalist if there were any of them still alive but you to be a Royalist. And,’ he added, his lip curling maliciou
sly and he thrust his purple-blotched face close to his wife’s, ‘you loved a Royalist, did you not?’
For once her eyes met his resentful gaze calmly. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she said softly and not without a trace of sadness in her tone. ‘A very long time ago.’
‘But you have never forgotten him, have you?’ her husband snarled. ‘I remember—aaah, what matter? He’s gone now, into exile. You’ll never see him again.’ He turned swiftly from her, marching from the room and slamming the heavy door behind him leaving his wife biting her trembling lip.
So Charmian’s marriage was postponed and the weeks drifted into months. Not that she was allowed the opportunity of meeting any other suitor for her life was strictly ordered, secluded and sheltered.
Then in September 1658, the world that Joseph Radley had believed to be so secure began to crumble.
Oliver Cromwell died of pneumonia.
Joseph Radley was like a man possessed with an evil, fearful spirit. He stormed through the house like a wild boar, bellowing orders and then immediately countermanding them so that his servants were soon running in all directions in total confusion.
Elizabeth and Charmian looked at each other anxiously, but only Charmian was bold enough—now at 19, almost 20—to voice the question.
‘What will happen now?’
‘How should I know?’ her father growled. ‘His son, Richard, is to succeed. I will have to go to him. He is not the man his father was. He’ll be the ruin of us all!’
Joseph Radley left Boston in a flurry and a fury, and peace settled upon the household after his departure.
Over the next few months news came from him spasmodically. Cromwell had nominated his son Richard as his successor, but some eight months later a hastily written letter arrived for Elizabeth Radley from her husband.
‘… He has been overthrown by the military chiefs led by his own brother-in-law, Fleetwood. We are in a state of chaos …’
Later, word came that after Parliament having been recalled and then six months later dissolved, the situation was growing worse daily. Once more England seemed on the brink of civil war.
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