This Rough Ocean

by Ann Swinfen

  He turned away and the younger man, abashed, scurried off. As they hastened with the rest of the Commons out of the Palace of Westminster for the brief time the Speaker had allowed them for dinner, Clotworthy took John by the elbow and he winced a little from the pain, suddenly stirred up again.

  ‘Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory?’ Clotworthy asked, naming the taverns nearest to Westminster Hall. ‘Or do you go home to dine with Anne?’

  John grinned. ‘Anne is off to the New Exchange about some business of a gown for my sister. Heaven today, I think, don’t you? In celebration of this morning’s progress in the business of peace?’

  ‘Heaven it shall be,’ said Clotworthy, rattling the coins in his purse. ‘Though the victuals in Heaven cost more angels than those in Hell, we shall dine today amongst the blessed, and at my cost.’

  ‘Oh, very droll,’ said John with a laugh, ‘though ’tis not the first time I have heard that jest.’

  Heaven was by far the finest of the three taverns. They sat down to crisp linen napery in a room lit by large windows. The air was pleasantly warmed with smells of good meat cooked with fresh herbs, and the serving girls were clean, a mighty difference from the greasy, sweaty wenches in Hell. Clotworthy continued in an expansive mood as they ate their dinner of boiled beef and cabbage, mopping up the juices with excellent freshly baked bread, free of the sweepings from the baker’s floor that contaminated most of London’s loaves.

  ‘We shall have them, you know,’ said Clotworthy, washing down the last of his meal with a third tankard of ale and stretching out his legs. ‘I was watching their faces. And when you conclude the debate, the vote is sure to go our way.’

  His big frame and somewhat bullying manner alarmed many, but John reckoned that by now he had taken Clotworthy’s measure.

  ‘I think so, too,’ said John cautiously. ‘But, what then? Do you suppose Cromwell and Ireton will meekly accept the decision of Parliament? By all they have been plotting and contriving these last weeks, I think not.’

  ‘They cannot dissolve Parliament. As constituted, this Parliament can only dissolve itself.’ Clotworthy waved his hand, brushing John’s fears aside like gnats.

  John tried to keep his sense of misgiving out of his voice. ‘They may simply ignore Parliament. They have the army in their pocket. What can we do in the face of an armed mob of soldiers? Call on the London Trained Bands? We should be a laughing-stock at the least. At the worst, we should be guilty of initiating carnage on the streets of London.’

  ‘Nay, it will never come to that. Be of good cheer, my friend. Even these men, with their lust for power, will not act against Parliament more violently and illegally than Charles Stuart himself.’

  ‘I hope that may prove true,’ said John.

  Chapter Four

  In the open courtyard of the New Exchange, encircled by arcades of shops, the crowds were greater than when they had first arrived, and many, it seemed, had come to seek and exchange news rather than to purchase goods. After the cost of Grace’s new gown had been settled with George Cutler, and arrangements made for the first fitting, the women had taken their leave of the tailor and descended to the ground floor. During the time they had spent in his shop on the upper gallery, the mood of the citizens had shifted. Further word of the army’s nearer approach had reached the City from Westminster, so that groups huddled together, talking in hushed voices. People now glanced about nervously, as if they expected the soldiers to burst in amongst the elegant galleries—the glovers and hatters, the silk merchants and Muscovy fur traders, the perfumers and goldsmiths. Some of the shopkeepers had already closed for the day, two hours before time. They were putting up shutters and bolting their shops to secure them against attack. A few, amongst them the jewellers, were packing up all their goods and removing them to safety.

  ‘Before we return to Westminster, I must find some small Christmas gifts for the children,’ said Anne, with a worried frown. ‘Will you come with us, Grace?’

  ‘Gladly. I’ve already knitted a red cap and gloves for young Charlie. His father,’ said Grace, smiling indulgently, ‘has bought him a pipe and drum.’

  Young Charlie Coleman was sixteen months old.

  ‘The pipe you may be spared a while,’ said Anne dryly, ‘but the drum? I’m afraid you may regret it before Twelfth Night!’

  Despite her own growing sense of anxiety, Anne was determined to finish the errands she had undertaken. The children should not be deprived of Christmas remembrances because she was frightened of unruly soldiers. Such fears might, after all, be nothing but wild fancies. The army might never invade London. Trying to appear both calm and determined, she led the other women to the toy shop, which was kept by a round-faced, tidy, respectable woman who sold both English toys and others brought in by ship from France and the Low Countries.

  ‘Ah, mistress,’ said the shopkeeper, shaking her head, ‘these late wars have played a merry dance with my trade. ’Tis the same with my toy flutes and poppets as ’tis with your French wines and Hollands, your dried fruits from the Mediterranean and Africa, and your spices from the Orient lands. Why, no ship is safe from the Barbary pirates or the papist freebooters, while they know our sailors and soldiers are busy a-cutting each others’ throats.’

  ‘You speak truly,’ said Anne. ‘Why, a few days ago I must give sixpence the ounce for peppercorns and I should never have done so in the days of peace. Before the war it was three shillings a pound.’

  It was George Cutler’s lament all over again. Despite the woman’s apologies, the small toy shop overflowed with delights. Propped up in an open-topped barrel stood a collection of hobbyhorses, large and small, ranging from simple nags fashioned of crudely painted planks to bold steeds with finely carved heads, manes of real horse hair, and leather harness jingling with bells. A cascade of drums hung from a rope overhead and the hinged flap which was lowered to form the ware-bench was piled high with smaller toys. On one side a parade of wooden soldiers marched in formation, whilst on the other a group of dolls displayed their fashionable clothes, fine enough for the queen’s own ladies and far too delicate for a child’s plaything. On either side of the shop front the shopkeeper had fastened whirligigs in bright colours. In the sudden gusts of winter wind that blew across the central court of the Exchange, they spun wildly. As giddy—it seemed to Anne—as that world of politics where John spent his days, allies spun round to enemies with a careless flick of passing wind.

  For Mary, a few months younger than Charlie Coleman and just able to walk by herself, Anne selected a wooden horse on wheels that could be pulled by a cord.

  ‘Look, Patience, isn’t this a cunning thing!’ She drew the horse along the floor in front of the shop until it collided with a set of skittles and fell over.

  ‘The skittles for Jack, do you think?’ asked Grace, setting them upright again.

  ‘Nay, he’ll think them too childish. But Francis would like them. He’s very patient and careful. He’ll love to line them up and arrange them neatly. And he’ll practice over and over until he can bowl them down. For Jack, I think something more manly. I’ll look afterwards at the leatherworker’s shop.’

  ‘Here’s a pretty thing,’ said Patience, holding up a brightly painted spinning top with its toy whip. ‘For Ralph?’

  Anne considered. Ralph at five was clumsier than Francis had been two years ago at four. ‘I can’t imagine he’ll contrive to make it spin, he hasn’t the patience, but he’d love the whip, for playing at huntsman. Aye.’ She turned to the shopkeeper. ‘The horse, the top and the skittles. Have you any simple dolls? These are very beautiful, but too dainty for my rough little moppet who’s only four years old.’

  The woman fetched a wooden doll of the kind imported from Flanders and laid it on the counter. The doll had black painted hair and a pleasant face, somewhat astonished to find itself lying naked in a London toy shop.

  ‘I doubt if I’ll have time to fashion clothes for it,’ Anne said. ‘Have you no dressed ones,
but not so elegant as these others?’

  ‘I could help,’ Patience said eagerly. ‘For Dorothea? There are some scraps left from the gown I made for her. I could sew a gown for the doll to match Dorothea’s.’

  It was decided. Anne paid the woman, and Patience tucked the bundle of toys into her basket as they walked to the leatherworker’s shop near the entrance to the Exchange. There remained only the two eldest boys.

  ‘Belts for them both, I think,’ said Anne, fingering the goods on display.

  ‘Won’t Dick mind having the same gift as his small brother?’ asked Grace. ‘At fifteen he’s nearly a man.’

  ‘Aye, your father was married at fifteen, wasn’t he? But Dick’s too giddy to be thought a man yet. John worries about his spendthrift ways.’

  ‘He’s a good lad,’ Grace pleaded. Her eldest nephew was so close to her in age that she always championed him. ‘He has such a kind and loving heart that it wins him many friends. He’ll learn carefulness with money as he grows older. Better a generous nature than a mean one.’

  ‘True!’ Anne sighed and laughed all at once. As Nan was her comfort, Dick was her worry, but she too cherished his loving heart and sometimes felt John was overly strict with him, as if he ought to be ready to display a man’s sobriety and wisdom simply because he was the eldest by seven years. If the other children had lived, it might not have gone so hard with him.

  

  It was the afternoon’s business in the Commons to deal with the menacing approach of the army. Yesterday the Lord General Thomas Fairfax had sent a letter to Abraham Reynardson, the Lord Mayor of London. Fairfax’s letter was now read aloud to the members, though the fiery style of it was easily recognised as Ireton’s and not that of the taciturn Black Tom. Nevertheless, the members were all of one mind in urging the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London to raise the forty thousand pounds demanded, and with all possible speed, to placate the officers and men. Perhaps, John thought, though with little hope, the advance on London could still be halted by the payment of this sum, before the city suffered the horror and humiliation of being looted by its own army.

  Two days earlier, when the previous threatening letter from the generals had been read out in Parliament, even that rabid opponent of the army, William Prynne, had seemed paralysed with fear. Now it appeared he had found his courage again. Prynne stood up, the sole member prepared to oppose paying the arrears to the soldiers. He wore an old-fashioned close bonnet to conceal the hideously mutilated sides of his head where his ears had been cut off on the orders of Archbishop Laud, but the brands on his cheeks glowed red in the afternoon light, the letters S and L for Seditious Libeller.

  ‘Do you call yourselves men of conscience and courage?’ he shouted. ‘Thus to buy off this ungovernable rabble? By their action in threatening Parliament, they have committed treason. I move they be declared rebels and traitors.’

  ‘The notion has some appeal,’ John murmured ruefully to Crewe, who was sitting with him and Clotworthy on the front bench, ‘but I fear it will not serve.’

  He caught the Speaker’s eye and rose to his feet.

  ‘Indeed, Mr Speaker,’ he said calmly, ‘my friend Master Prynne has much justice in his remarks, but the safety of the people of London is also in our hands. To declare the army rebels and traitors would certainly fill us with a sense of our own rectitude, but it would not stop the advance.’

  He glanced around the chamber. Men of all parties were listening attentively.

  ‘Moreover, the common soldiers do have a true grievance. They have not been paid for months. Many go barefoot and threadbare. They have no means to buy food or lodgings for themselves, or to travel home to their families. Their sole hope is to remain with the army. If their grievances can be settled by this payment from the City, it may be that many will choose to take themselves off home, to spend the remainder of the winter in comfort instead of sleeping in icy ditches and snow-bound fields. Let us not emulate their churlishness. Let them be paid, and no more said on the matter.’

  He sat down to a splatter of applause, and Prynne’s dangerous provocation to the army was overruled.

  It began to grow dark in the House as the last of the light faded from the great triple-arched window behind the Speaker’s chair. The members moved for candles to be brought. After the delay while the candle-sconces were filled and the candles lit, they resumed business. The members might advise the Lord Mayor to find the money for the common troops, but they still had to confront the army command.

  ‘We must send a direct and forceful order from the House to Fairfax,’ John said to Crewe, frowning. ‘The Commons cannot sit in Westminster like milksops, quaking with fear and acquiescing in the invasion of London.’

  ‘Aye.’ Crewe nodded. ‘We may lack teeth, but let us growl as best we may.’

  As the darkness deepened in the corners of the hall where the candlelight did not reach, they argued back and forth about the terms of the order the Speaker should send to Fairfax, commanding him to halt the advance on London immediately. The members were all tired and hungry. The army party prevaricated. They had no wish to appear to be encouraging the looting of London by the soldiery. On the other hand, they must not act in any way to offend their powerful army friends. Some of the extreme members of the peace party tried to insert a clause into the order stating that the army’s march was ‘derogatory to the freedom of Parliament’. This was put to the vote, and the remaining exhausted members, who had not yet escaped to their lodgings, stumbled forward to the division in the dimness. By a vote of forty-four to thirty-three they agreed to delete this inflammatory clause, and the amended order was despatched to Fairfax. It was well into evening when the House rose.

  

  Anne bade farewell to Grace and her maid at the door of the Exchange, realising as they came out into the Strand how late it had grown. The streets were nearly deserted now, a few last visitors to the shops hurrying home as darkness fell. The thought of the cold and muddy river trip back to Westminster by wherry filled her with gloom.

  ‘I think we’ll take a hackney,’ said Anne uneasily. ‘The streets seem safe enough for now, and the river is hateful at night.’

  There was always a row of hackney carriages waiting outside the Exchange to carry home ladies and gentlemen burdened with packages. As they rattled away westwards over the cobbles, Anne peered out at the darkening streets. There were few people about anywhere, and both houses and shops were shuttered. Even the great houses fronting the river showed few signs of life. The hackney smelled of stale sweat and, curiously, of onions and rancid cheese. Through the gaps around the windows the insidious London fog crept in, a blend of brown coal smoke which caught in the throat like rotting eggs and the dark sinister vapours which rose from the river at night, when the dead boats hooked up the risen corpses of suicides. The sound of the wheels changed as they reached a stretch of unmade road between the City and Westminster. The carriage slowed. The dirt road was bogged with half-melted sleet and, light though the carriage was, the horse struggled to pull it through the mud. The two women clutched the hanging straps as they were flung from side to side, for the hackneys were built for paved streets. On rutted earth they were unstable and easily overturned. When the horse’s hooves struck cobbles again in Westminster, they both relaxed with a sigh and smiled at each other as though they had outrun some pursuing peril.

  Back at the house in St Ann’s Lane, welcomed in by the warmth of fire and candlelight and the good smell of roasting meat turning on the spit, they were mobbed by the children.

  ‘There were soldiers here, Mama!’ said Jack, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

  Anne looked up sharply at the manservant who was hanging their wet cloaks near the fire in the hallway.

  ‘Peter? What’s this tale about soldiers?’

  ‘They were no trouble to us, Mistress Swynfen. We gave them beer and cheese and sent them off.’ He gave her a meaningful look. ‘They weren’t seeking anyone.’
>
  The room shimmered and dipped around her; she felt Patience take her arm and ease her into the carved chair beside the fire. They weren’t seeking anyone. But the next group of soldiers might be looking for John, bent on violence. He had escaped assassins once, but a troop of rogue soldiers was altogether different. And without John, what could a parcel of women and children and two elderly menservants do against armed men, hardened at Naseby and Bristol and Preston?

  ‘Is the master not home yet?’ she asked, ashamed of the tremor in her voice.

  ‘Nay, mistress. He sent word from the House that they had voted for candles. They’ll sit late tonight.’

  Anne frowned. John’s wound should have been dressed again by now, or it would fester. When the house voted for candles the sitting could be prolonged till nine or ten o’clock. Bess, the nurse, came down the stairs with Mary and set her on her uncertain legs. Solemnly she started off across the floor towards her mother, gaining in speed as if she were running downhill, until she flung herself into the folds of Anne’s skirts and clung there.

  ‘Mama!’ she cried triumphantly.

  Anne picked her up and hugged her close.

  ‘You’re as warm as a toasted bannock, my pet. We should have stayed here in the house like you, and not gone adventuring out into the City in this bitter weather.’ She remembered with remorse that John had not wanted her to go.

  She struggled to stand, and found her legs weak. ‘Nay, do not trouble, Patience,’ she said impatiently, as the girl reached out a hand to support her. ‘I am well enough.’

  Setting Mary upon the floor, she shook out her dress, which was soaking wet six inches deep around the hem.