‘The troops.’
‘Yes. The troops. The people. His people.’
George was still. A tiny drop of sweat oozed from his forehead. I watched it trickle down his cheek and disappear into his small, neat beard. He did not move a muscle. Nehemiah studied his nails. The only movement came from the flickering candles. Even the smoke from Scogman’s pipe seemed to hang motionless in the air.
The crack of a musket made us duck instinctively. Nehemiah collided into George. Saddles fell to the floor and candles went over. In the sudden darkness, I grabbed for my pistol. Scogman, drawing his sword, was first outside. Troops were stumbling from their quarters where they had been eating. Cooks emerged from the kitchen. At the distant farm the dog was barking frantically. One of the cooks jeered at our swords and pistols.
‘Either the farmer’s killed the fox, or he’s shot that bloody dog,’ he said.
It seemed we had been alarmed over nothing, and we walked back towards the tack room. As we did so, George turned to me.
‘I will speak to the King,’ he said. ‘But only if the soldiers agree.’
But the soldiers, grumbling and jumpy, were returning to finish their meal. ‘Only if they agree?’ I echoed disbelievingly. ‘By the time you have a polite chat with everyone, Richard will have spirited the King away!’
‘They’re the people,’ George replied coldly. ‘As you said. We decided to risk our lives together at the very beginning when we snatched the artillery train at Oxford, and we will make this decision together.’
George was scrupulous. He went round everyone, small groups, larger groups, speaking and listening gravely. One minute I was humbled by their reactions, the next fearful that Richard would strike. Humbled, because in Drury Lane, working for Lord Stonehouse, I had not seen what was happening in front of my eyes. Most of the troopers who had come with George were a select group – not because they had been selected, but because they had selected themselves. They were what peers, magistrates and landowners saw as the biggest threat of all – masterless men. As the men who ruled saw it, first a man obeyed his father, then his master. That was how God the Father had ordained the world. Break that iron law of obedience and the world would collapse.
The New Model, in a way neither the nobles nor the gentry had intended or expected, had become a huge army of masterless men. They thought for themselves. They had been forced to.
I knew now why I had flung the ring in the fire. I had been brought up by a masterless man, in that great festering pool of them, London Without. When Mr Pym had given me his speeches to stir up the crowd, those men had spilled into the City. Once the genie was out of the bottle, no one could put it back.
On the run in Essex, Scogman had become part of another huge pool of masterless men, forced by enclosures to the Without of the parish and the lord. There, they lived on wastes, heaths, commons and forests, where they squatted until driven on – a mixture of tramps, casual labourers, carters, weavers, joiners, travelling craftsmen, cobblers, knife-sharpeners, players, jugglers, gipsies, cunning men, pedlars and mechanic preachers.
Among needles and thread, the pedlars had brought pamphlets. Craftsmen, who had lost their jobs during the war, turned to preaching. Quakers, Baptists, Independents of all kinds, they were religion Without; their churches, for people who never dared to enter or were not allowed inside one, were the wastelands and forests. Pamphlets and preaching had taught them it was the end time. They should prepare for a new world, or the next. The devastation of the war confirmed it.
These pools of masterless men became a great sea in the New Model Army. It had its share of rogues, thieves and cowards, but Cromwell promoted the God-fearing independent from Without, who believed in what he fought for, over a gentleman who was nothing else. The best of these were in the cavalry. And the best of those had joined George Joyce in his ride north.
I looked at them as if I had never seen faces before. Carved by war and weather, they had the texture of tree trunks. I was humbled by their penetrating questions and their trust in one another. Some prayed. Some consulted the Soldier’s Bible they carried in their packs. But they made up their minds quickly, as men do when they live from hand to mouth and a delay could be fatal.
‘Are you for it, Ben?’
‘Aye. The Lord be with us.’
‘Joshua?’
‘All for one, George.’
Joshua was a carpenter, a forest man, who was always whittling a piece of wood he kept in his pocket. He never could think deep, he said, unless he was ‘a-whittling’. He was convinced the wood did the thinking for him, making its own shape. This one came out a soldier, which decided him on the enterprise. When I said he looked like my son, Luke, he declared, ‘Luke he be,’ and gave me the doll. Thus, by a mixture of thought and faith, religion and magic, everyone reached a decision. There were no dissensions.
It was as if they had all gone there with the specific purpose of taking the King. Where, they did not know. Neither did they know where it would take them.
In his sombre garb, Nehemiah had been roaming the palace. Among the huge staff, he had been taken for a clerk. He had even been given a message to take to the groom of the King’s chambers. Before the groom dismissed him, he had caught a snatch of a violent argument between Lord Montague and the Parliamentary Commissioner, Browne.
‘Those rebels are planning something!’ he heard Montague saying. ‘We must act earlier. Give my man the key!’
Cloud drifted over the moon. George put what guard he could round the palace, but the men were thinly spread. The bulk of his force was camped outside the lodge gates. He pinned his hopes on persuasion and did not dare bring in a larger, more threatening number, for fear of overplaying his hand.
There were more than a hundred windows in the palace. Candles burned in most of them as I approached with George and Nehemiah, but the east wing, where I had sat in the library, was plunged in gloom.
I jumped as a figure came out of the darkness of some trees. Joshua.
‘Listen!’
We could hear nothing, but he was a man of the forest, who could not only hear the crackle of leaves, but see in the sound the animal who walked on them.
‘There.’
For a moment, as the clouds drifted away from the moon, we saw, silhouetted against the sky, someone not entering but leaving. A slim figure in court livery, scarcely more than a boy. We heard him then, running like a hare. No use shouting. He could be desperate to see a girl. Or deliver a message. They must act earlier, Montague had said. The stables were guarded, but the boy could run to Althorp for a horse.
We entered the east wing and approached the King’s chambers. Browne saw us and told us we could not go any further. I stared down the long gallery, out into the darkness where the boy had run off. I went through the library and out of the door Montague had used before he saw me that morning. Almost opposite was a door, which should have been locked. It was open. We called Joshua and Ben, the guard on the other side of the gallery. They swore the door had been locked when they tried it.
A grumbling servant went to a board on which hung various keys. The key for the gallery door was missing. Browne was shocked and agitated. He was a stiff, upright man and I thought his agitation genuine. Perhaps the argument with Montague that Nehemiah had witnessed was a disagreement over the escape plan: Browne, cautious, correct, thinking it too dangerous; Montague, much more of a gambler, deciding to go ahead anyway. Speculation was useless. Browne would say nothing except that we could not disturb the King, who was at his devotions.
‘Very well,’ George said. ‘Joshua. I don’t want your men in the open. Place them in the library. We’ll welcome them from there. And from here, Tom …’ He opened the door to a passage which led to the steward’s quarters.
I had stripped off my rank and was dressed as an ordinary redcoat. I pulled out my pistol. ‘I can cover the stairs and the gallery.’
Browne’s face looked drained of blood. ‘You cannot fight her
e!’
‘You give us no option.’
The calmer George became, the higher Browne’s voice rose. ‘You have no right to be here at all!’
‘We have the right to protect our King, sir.’
The sharp tinkling of a bell came from within the royal apartments, followed by a murmur of voices. Browne bit his lip and hurried inside. George put out his boot to stop the door closing. Tapestries of Tudor hunting scenes hung on the wall, no doubt put there when the original owner hoped Elizabeth would stay. A smell of fresh lavender lingered in the air. On a marble table a lantern clock showed the hour of ten. The smell, and the hunters on the tapestries with their raised lances, were an invisible barrier that made it seem sacrilegious to go further. George looked at me. We had no means of knowing whether there was another exit through which the King might have been taken.
George drew his sword and plunged forward, first into one room, then another. He stopped abruptly in a start of terror. A candle or two were barely lit. From the dim shadows a ghost-like figure appeared. Only when a candle burned up did he see the familiar face of the King. Even then, the King’s white nightdress, and his face still fixed with sleep, continued the illusion of a spirit until he spoke.
‘Who are you?’
‘Your Majesty,’ George stuttered. ‘I-I come to protect you.’
‘Protect me. Or kill me?’
George became aware of his sword. He sheathed it. From the hall outside, as another candle was lit, I could now see the servant picking up the silver bell by which he had been summoned. Browne stood stiffly erect in the shadows by the red silk bed.
‘You must leave, Your Majesty,’ George said.
‘Now?’
‘First light. This place is not safe. There is a plan to abduct you.’
‘Abduct? How do I know you are not trying to abduct me?’
George drew himself up. His voice lost its confused tone and became passionate. ‘We have no reason to do so. We are not your advisers. We are your people. Every man I have is loyal to you and will protect you with his life.’
The King smiled. Perhaps it was George’s youth, his passion, which suddenly made Charles more amused than apprehensive. ‘Not my advisers, you say. My bad advisers, you mean?’
George said nothing. He stood unmoving, as if on parade, as the King walked up to him. ‘Well, I have had my fill of advice, that is true. Quite true.’ He looked at George’s uniform, then his face. ‘You are a cornet.’
George stood even more stiffly. ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
The King turned to Browne. ‘These are your men, General?’
‘They are from the same regiment as the previous guard, Your Majesty.’
The King seemed amused by Browne’s discomfort, his tortuous choice of words. ‘Different bread may be made from the same wheat,’ he said drily.
His mood changed again abruptly. He moved restlessly about the room, as if there was no one there but his familiar servant. ‘What is the hour, James?’
‘Just after ten, Your Majesty.’
‘Did I have so little sleep? It felt longer.’
Those stories were right. He treated his servants with a courteous gentility. Perhaps it was because they posed no threats, offered no advice. It was more than that. He had been without the Queen he loved and his children for five years. His servants and companions had become his family. James picked up the Book of Common Prayer from his bedside. No, the King did not want that. James anticipated the King’s pacing, moving a chair, placing a cordial where it might be needed. The King’s mood switched sharply again. He turned to George.
‘I will go on three conditions. One, you promise not to harm me.’
‘We will not harm a hair of your head, Your Majesty.’
George spoke with such youthful indignation that the King had felt it necessary to stipulate this, the monarch laughed. ‘I doubt you can promise quite that. I have lost a few of those hairs and, no doubt, will lose a few more. My second condition is that you must not ask me to do anything against my conscience.’
George’s fervour was as outright as his indignation.
‘Your Majesty, you are with men who own their consciences. Your conscience is your own.’
This time the King’s broadening smile had no trace of patronage. ‘A good answer for a cornet. For a general, perhaps, eh, Browne?’
Browne said nothing.
‘Perhaps too good for a general, or a King, for that matter, who has seen too much,’ the King muttered. ‘But I have a third condition. I must have my household and my Parliamentary Commissioners with me.’
‘Readily, Your Majesty,’ George said.
The speed with which he agreed seemed to disconcert the King rather than reassure him. He stood stock still, staring into space. It was as if he was seeing the ghosts of similar scenes passing before his eyes.
Whether the King slept again, I do not know. Few people did as chests were packed and horses checked. There was one alarm during the night. The boy Joshua had seen was caught slipping back over the wall with a message for Montague. It said: ‘Plan changed. Have fresh forces and will surround Holdenby.’ It was signed Stonehouse.
‘We’ve left it too late,’ George muttered.
‘The King will ride with us,’ I said.
‘Are you crazy? He might be killed!’
But to his astonishment, in the grey, early light, when the King was shown a black stallion from the stables his eyes lit up. His favourite painting was of himself in full armour. He loved the activity, the half-darkness, the barely open eyes, the stumbling, the cursing reaching a crescendo of shouting, the thump of chests dropping into wagons and the stamping and neighing of horses. After dreary months of negotiating, of endlessly walking the east wing, to have made a decision, whatever it was, and to be on the move, wherever it was taking him, was exhilarating.
That mood of joviality, almost frivolity, lasted until he rode out to see the troops in the meadow outside, in battle order, flying the flag of Black Tom. It was the flag the King had seen fluttering over Fairfax’s regiments at his final defeat at Naseby.
He reined in his horse. ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked sharply.
‘Oxford,’ said George.
George had finally chosen it because it was heavily garrisoned by Cromwell’s troops.
The King shook his head. ‘Not Oxford. The air is bad.’
The air bad! It would soon be much worse at Holdenby. Scouts returned to report that a regiment supporting Holles was approaching from the direction of Coventry. Richard, with a smaller force, was less than half an hour away.
George suggested Cambridge. That got an even worse reception. The King said it had the miasma of the fens. It was also where Cromwell was MP.
‘We could make the royal horse bolt,’ Scogman said.
‘Take that flag down,’ I snapped. ‘Where’s the royal standard?’
No one could find it. Servants turned one wagon upside down and started on another. The sky was the colour of curdled milk. The last of the mist clinging to the meadows was disappearing, sucked up by the rising sun. Browne was next to the King, as placid as his horse cropping the grass. His face suggested he had known it all the time: we were an incompetent rabble who would disappear at the first shot.
Montague and Denbigh were watching from the lodge. George had refused to allow them to join the King’s retinue. They laughed as a drum fell with a hollow echo from the wagon being searched. The urgency that had galvanised the King the previous night was turning into farce.
Montague pointed towards a ridge a mile away. A man, motionless on a horse, was staring down at us. He pulled his horse round and beckoned.
‘We must move,’ George said.
‘We can’t force him,’ I replied.
‘If we stay and fight he could be killed.’
But the King, increasingly agitated, would move only if he had the assurances from the troops that George had given him the previous night. This they gave
with such force and one voice that he was reassured; but only to the extent of pressing George to tell him whose orders he was under.
‘The orders of the soldiers of the army,’ George replied.
Cresting the top of the ridge was a white horse. It was impossible to tell whether my father had fifty men or several hundred behind him. At his side the standard bearer flew the Stonehouse falcon. I felt the pull of it. It was as though the ring had escaped the fire and, like a phoenix, had reformed itself. The King saw it. I felt the longing in his face. To take one last chance. The romance and glory of it, of the Cavalier, the last remnant of the old knights, pitted against the drabness of the new order, with soldiers whose faces must have seemed to him as identical as their redcoats. The King’s longing was transmitted to his horse, which pawed restlessly.
‘Who has given you this commission?’ he said to George. ‘Have you no letter? Nothing in writing from your general?’
At a steady trot, Richard, his mercenaries and other troops he had gathered were descending the hill. They looked to be about a hundred. They would not attack against our bigger force, but would shadow and harry us until reinforcements arrived. The sight gave George a fresh urgency. He rode directly up to the King.
‘This is my commission!’ he yelled, gesturing across the lines of troops.
‘The King!’ roared the troops, their faces coming alive.
That was another romance. I saw it lighting up the King’s face. His people. It was just as much a romance as the Cavalier. He did not know his people. What he did know was that he could not defeat the New Model Army. If it had not been broken up – and here was solid, disciplined proof it had not – what chance did he have? But arid calculations for him were never enough. He needed the music of romance and the roar of the troops provided it. But there was more.
Scogman had found the King’s standard. No one was more independent, had less love for the King than Scogman. No loyalist could have lifted it aloft with more fervour than he did.
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