by Ann Swinfen
‘My wheat, my precious wheat!’
And it seemed to her, kneeling there amongst the ruined crop dizzy with pain, that, in allowing this injury to befall John’s land, she had somehow injured John himself.
Richard and the other boys rode back in the middle of the morning, the younger boys still in their nightshifts. They had each ridden one horse and led two or three more, skirting round the edge of the farmland and taking refuge on the moor. Before coming back, they had visited Agnes Lea, who had given them breakfast.
Triumphant at his success in saving the horses from the troopers, Richard was dismayed when he heard of the attack on the house and saw the state of the ruined wheat. He stood appalled when he came upon Anne, still barefoot in her shift and house-gown, her face smeared with soot, her singed hair shrivelled against her cheek, her shoulder roughly bandaged, come back to survey the field again after trying to calm her household and setting them to work to keep their thoughts off the disaster.
‘This is my fault,’ said Richard quietly. ‘I should never have come here. I’ll understand if you cannot forgive me, Anne.’
She shrugged. It was difficult, still, for her to speak.
He touched her arm gently. ‘When John comes home, he’ll relieve you of this burden of running the estate,’ he said, mistaking her altogether.
‘I don’t know where John is, or whether I shall ever see him again.’ The bitter words caught in her throat. She had no strength to dissemble today.
He stared at her in astonishment.
‘But, Anne, I thought you knew! I learned of it when I was at Stafford. John is imprisoned in Stafford Castle, not twenty miles from here.’
‘We require you to write a testament,’ Danvers said.
But he had refused, and now he was to know the price.
They led him down the stairs and through the Great Hall, back towards the dungeons where he had wrestled with his own encroaching hell. Inside the outer door of the dungeons they turned left and descended again. Up above, in the world of light and sanity, the summer sun was warm and the clean smell of the newly washed countryside blew in over the castle walls after last night’s thunderstorm. As they sank down into these nether regions of the castle, a bone-aching cold wrapped them round, so that, try as he might, John could not stop himself shivering.
There were two guards, one gripping him cruelly hard by each elbow, yet they must have known he could not escape. They thrust him ahead of them into a dark chamber, lit by a single torch flaring from a bracket on the wall. The chamber was crowded, the amber glow flickered on benches and tables, glinted off metal, caught the edge of some framework of machinery—a ratcheted wheel, straps with metal buckles.
There was a man in the room, whose shadow, cast by the torch, climbed the wall and leaned over John from the low ceiling. The man was hooded. John felt terror rising in his throat like bile, and sweat broke out on his back and trickled down to soak the waist of his breeches. There was a smell in the room—the smell of his own rank fear and the smell, soaked into the very stones, of centuries of fear, and the smell, pungent and unmistakable, of men raised to a high pitch of excitement, men watching an execution or cutting the throat of a deer or seizing a woman for rape.
The torturer stepped forward and, without a word, took John softly by the arm.
Inside his head, silent screams echoed and reverberated in the hollows of his skull.
Anne lay on her bed, indifferent to the sounds of the house all around her. Her clothes carried the smell of the fire, and the hands which she pressed against her eyes were scratched and filthy. The wound in her shoulder burned with pain, yet she hardly noticed it, for all she could see behind her closed lids was the blazing wheat field, the confident young shoots curling and dying in barren ash. She began to sob hopelessly as another image overlaid it. Her last parting from John. She had turned and fled from him up the stairs, leaving him with bitter words that she could never call back. John—John was in Stafford Castle. So close. Yet this was no comfort to her. Instead she was seized by sudden overwhelming terror that knocked the breath from her lungs and wiped out her tears, as she stared into the space before her, seeing nothing but the flash of red hot iron in the darkness. She had never felt so much alone, nor known such despair that she would never see John again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I, John Swynfen, being of sound mind, though troubled by melancholy—nay, I lie, for my mind is anything but sound—and of body sick and weakened, but not like to die, save at the hands of mine enemies, do here set down an account of my life both inward and outward, this month past. For it seems to me that I am not like to see again the wife and children I love, nor to set my foot again on the soil held by my forefathers since before the time Norman William came to these shores. I therefore put pen to paper in order that they may know that I did not choose to buy life and freedom at the price of conscience and principle. I pray that the Lord may give me the strength to write these things, for my hand shaketh like the aspen tree, and my mind is as troubled as the waters of the sea when a great wind bloweth.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
When first I was brought to this place of confinement, being the castle close by the town of Stafford, which town sent me to speak for them in Parliament, the which I have always striven to do fairly and justly—when, I say, I was brought here in a vile kind of cart, wherein I was beaten and abused, and shot and my wound left to rot, then I was cast into a dungeon and shackled by a chain to the wall, like unto a wicked criminal. There I languished many days in a Hell and torment of mind until I was brought before the governor of this place, one Colonel Danvers, a man known to me in the past as an officer in the Parliamentary army, not over scrupulous in all his dealings, and one who will turn always towards the rising power, as the lodestone turns to the North, hoping to steer his ways through the troubled waters of these times by the strength of a greater man. So now, when Oliver Cromwell climbs to power over the men he has brought low by wickedness and cunning, this Danvers turns to him and seeks to bask in his sun while it is in the ascendant.
Acting upon his orders from those who govern him, this Danvers then moved me from my dungeon to comfortable quarters and provided me with every necessity, excepting only that one necessity without which a man may not live and call himself a man indeed, to wit, freedom. For I was kept locked within the chamber like a singing bird trapped in a pretty cage for the delectation of some eastern sultan. However, the men of power misjudged me, for I would not sing.
They gave me food to eat and wine to drink, they anointed my wounds and washed my raiment, until I became, in the outward man, once more a seeming citizen of a civilised nation. But—do you say it?—this England of ours is no longer possessed of civility. A nation which imprisons its lawful representatives and murders its lawful monarch can no longer claim civility. Nay, but if these things had been done in the name of the people’s good, what then? Why, so they were done, but words are one thing, actions another.
They have set up a tyranny and a despotism, they have cast aside those men who claimed to speak for the poor. For though I take John Lilburne of the Levellers to be a misguided man, and Gerrard Winstanley of the Diggers to be little better than mad, yet I know they acted from belief and kindness. What of this Ireton, this Cromwell? Even, now, what of this Fairfax, whom once I thought a good man and a just man, but who has proceeded in concert with them? These men have thrown into the dungeons at Windsor those generals who led the way before them in the war against a tyrannical king. And they have promised their soldiers, poor men who have suffered and died for them—starved, penniless and bereft of their families—promised them rewards and new freedoms, through that monstrous document the Agreement.
Now, so I have been told by Governor Danvers, those same soldiers who refused to cross the seas to fight the benighted Irish are turned away from the army, thei
r only support, and their arrears of pay denied them. And some, breaking out in mutiny at their treatment, have suffered terrible punishments and even death. So this man Cromwell, under pretence of fighting the king to protect the people, robs the people of their elected Parliament, the soldiers of their due rewards, and the country of its freedom, setting himself up to rule over it with a secret coterie of men, pledged to be the instruments of his wishes.
I seem to wander from my subject, but I do not, although my mind is cast into turmoil by what I have endured.
God help me, do not let me lose my reason. My thoughts fly away and will not take shape under my hands. I will leave this writing for a time.
Once he had placed me in that better chamber, Danvers set before me temptations, like choice dishes at a banquet. He promised to convey my letters, and to deliver letters to me. During this month of promises, he has had from my hand ten letters to my family and as many to friends. To none of the letters written to my family have I received an answer. My suspicion is, that none were conveyed. As for those others, I have received one reply only, but of that more anon.
These temptations were, as one might say, but the invitation to the feast. The real purpose lay elsewhere, and if I judge aright, the reason for my continued imprisonment, when others were freed long since, lies therein. For I am not a rich man like Crewe or Harley, who are set free, nor am I a general of the army, like Copley or Waller, who are kept fast, lest their old soldiers flock to them. Why then am I still held? I am but a country gentleman of moderate wealth and no military experience.
Why? God comfort me, why?
Aye, ’tis a conundrum, is it not?
My old tutors in logic and rhetoric at Cambridge would bid me set out my case by the dialectical principles of Aristotle and Tully, but my head aches too much for cogent argument. Any schoolboy, with his Aphthonius in hand, could better me. I suffer from the old trouble, when lightning seems to flash in the air before me, and my eye is veiled with darkness, when a megrim grips my head like a vice. And the wound in my leg, long neglected, will not heal cleanly, but suppurates like these evil men. I strive to find forgiveness for them, but I lack grace. I cannot. God forgive me, I cannot love mine enemies.
Why was I one of those few who were not only secluded from Parliament, but taken up and imprisoned? Why was I one of the few retained a prisoner, when so many were let go? I have thought much on this, and my conclusion is simple, but strange, in these days when so much is achieved by the sword. I was the enemy of those who pursued their own road to tyranny because I spoke out against them. My strength lies in words. (Nay, I know, this poor rambling document is hardly testimony to my skill on that score, but when I spoke in Parliament I had the power to move men and shape the fate of the nation.) Words, evanescent as smoke, but pregnant with so much power.
And, behold!, I am proved to have judged correctly. For next Danvers comes with the new temptation, and it is the main dish, the centrepiece of the feast, for which the other little comforts were but a prologue.
‘We require you to write a testament,’ says he.
Note the language:
Item: ‘we require’.
Item: ‘a testament’.
A ‘requirement’ brooks no objection or negotiation.
A ‘testament’ is an ominous document, smelling of legal enforcement and death.
‘A testament,’ says he, ‘asserting your compliance with His Highness’s good government established to bring this nation to order. You will make a declaration of loyalty and will praise General Cromwell for his achievements and urge on your fellow Members of Parliament and country gentry that they should submit to his rule. You will state your earnest support for his campaigns now in Ireland and planned for Scotland, to subdue the wild neighbours of this . . . nation.’
(He had nearly said ‘this kingdom’, but fell over the words and righted himself.)
‘You will admit to your errors and crimes in the past, and beg His Highness’s forgiveness. You will promise to bow to the will of him and of his government in all things.’
When he finished this speech, it seemed that the air between us buzzed, as with wasps whose nest has been broken apart. I came near to swatting out, as if I could rid myself of them. But the buzzing was inside my own troubled brain. Then a silence settled over us.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘I am not sure,’ I said, ‘that I take your meaning. I have been grievously abused by the instruments of this fellow Cromwell’s government. Why should that induce me to write such a document?’
‘As for inducements,’ said he, ‘if you write this testament of apology and compliance, then His Highness will pardon you and you will be released from imprisonment. Moreover, you will be found high office in the new government, higher than you could have aspired to for many years under the old dispensation.’
Then I knew that I had judged rightly, and all that I had endured had been to this end. Because of my gift of words, I was a valuable piece in their game of chess. These words they would use to attempt the corruption of good men. So my one talent, this gift from God, would turn to poison as of the serpent.
‘And if I do not write such a document?’ I said, attempting to keep my voice steady, for I thought I knew what was to come next. I was full of dread. They could break my body if they chose, and I felt myself sweat with the terror of it.
He looked at me soberly. He is not an evil man by nature, I think, but he is easily led into evil by stronger men than he. I think he did not like what he had to say.
‘If you do not, His Highness will be obliged to make example of you. Your estates will be sequestrated, your family dispossessed and turned out as vagabonds to wander the land. You will yourself be subjected to torture, until you understand the error of your resistance, and write the testament at the last. So you understand, there is nothing to be gained by refusing, and much to be lost.’
I thought of Prynne and his courage under torture and maiming. And I thought how he had joked about being able to endure anything but the loss of his tongue. For it is words, not bodies, that make men in the image of God. Let our bodies be misshapen or mutilated, yet if we retain our minds to think, and our words to speak, then we shall retain that spark of the divine within us. But my family, my wife, my children—what right have I under God to force them into destitution, to wander homeless over the land?
‘And if I still refuse, even under torture?’
He looked at me pityingly.
‘Believe me, Swynfen, I have seen men put to the torture. I think that you have not. Every man breaks in the end. Why endure that? For you will break. And if you refuse at the outset, and agree at the end, your family will still be dispossessed.’
He rose from his chair and walked to the door.
‘I will allow you two days to ponder this. If you have not agreed in two days, then I must proceed with the other means of persuasion.’
Lord God of Hosts, give me strength in this adversity.
I passed the two days in prayer, in meditation, and in perusing Boethius’s Philosophiae Consolatio. Previously I had found myself too distracted by my situation to concentrate my mind on his words, but now I read them in a kind of desperation, as if somewhere here I might find the answer to my dilemma. I could live, with power and riches, but shamed and bereft of honour; or I could destroy my family and myself, endure torture and death, but preserve my honour and beliefs. None would know of it but God. Should that weigh in the balance? I was a coward. I feared torture. And I feared that my family and my friends would not know why I had allowed those dearest to me to be destroyed.
A divergence, though a brief one: for those of you who know Boethius’s work, the resemblance between his case and mine will be striking. Indeed, it grows closer all the while. Boethius wished to live the life of a scholar. At the end of the fifth century of Our Lord he wrote and translated many books which preserved for subsequent scholars the great works of the ancients. His works of scholarship l
asted down the ages from his own time for the next thousand years, until such great men as Plato and Aristotle were rediscovered in the Greek tongue. Boethius translated the Greek philosophers into Latin, and wrote his own original works of theology, philosophy, geometry, rhetoric, every branch of learning. I myself used his textbook on music while a student at university. However, Boethius was called to leave his studies and serve his country in public life, which he did selflessly and with great distinction. The ruler of Italy at the time was Theodoric, a barbarian (but Christian) king, client of the eastern Roman emperor, but who had effectively become, in those unsettled times, an independent monarch.
I see in Theodoric aspects of both Charles Stuart and this Cromwell (a man who, like Theodoric, has seized power, coming from nowhere). Theodoric was an absolute ruler, but maintained the forms of the old Roman senate (as we might say, Parliament), and was at first, in many ways, a just and tolerant ruler. Boethius served him loyally, and rose high, becoming consul. All changed, however, when the long-standing rift between the western empire and the east (as we might say, a civil war) seemed like to be healed. Theodoric was opposed to peace, for then he would cease to hold the absolute power he so much enjoyed, becoming again no more than a client king, answerable to the emperor. Boethius was of the peace party (as am I), but did not conspire against Theodoric. However, all men in politics have enemies. Boethius’s enemies accused him of treason. He was imprisoned, tortured, and finally bludgeoned to death. While he awaited execution, he wrote the Consolatio. Theodoric’s rule, which had promised so fair, ended in horrible bloodshed soon afterwards.
I do not set myself up to be a Boethius—I am a poor scholar by comparison, and had not risen so high in office as he. But like him I tried to do my duty honestly, I worked for peace, and, if God gives me strength enough, I mean to hold to my principles.