The shops along the bridge were putting up their shutters and I stopped the goldsmith putting up his. I told him I was no longer interested in leasing a property. I pointed to a necklace, which took a good deal of the money I had saved.
‘It’s gold, innit?’ Ellie whispered.
‘Enamelled gold,’ I said. ‘You’re gold to me.’
She looked at me levelly. ‘You’re a bloody liar, Tom.’ Then she burst into tears. ‘You’re leaving me, ain’t you?’
Nothing I said would convince her that exactly the opposite was true. She pointed to the mouldering herring skeleton, which she had pinned to the side of the press. That was all she needed, she said.
‘Your memento mori,’ I said softly. When she looked at me blankly I told her it was an object that reminded people of death.
‘You’re a cheerful bugger, ain’t you, Tom?’ she said. ‘But you’re bloody right.’ And she buried her head in my chest and we held each other tightly, before she looked up with a sniff and a grin. ‘I could never wear that in Spitall – I’d get nubbed!’ Her grin broadened. ‘But I could wear it at night.’
It was a week before the Army Council was due to discuss Wildman’s Case of the Army. The Bull and Mouth was a ferment of argument at the Levellers’ meeting in the upstairs room. Nehemiah put down a motion that ‘Wee should urge the meeting that no further addresses be made to the King.’
This was Leveller talk for a republic. It was insane and I said so. Cromwell would never accept it.
‘Why should we accept Cromwell?’ Nehemiah flung back at me. ‘He is not the meeting.’
My relationship with Nehemiah grew even worse when Will, whose father was seriously ill, proposed me as a representative in his place for our old regiment.
‘Point of order,’ said Nehemiah. He had the army lists in front of him. ‘There is no Tom N-Neave on this list.’
If he had kept his mouth shut, I would never have gone. Even though I was still Major Stonehouse on the army list, I hated the name too much to use it. But if my longing to be there when the words I had run with as a boy might finally be heard was not enough, his rancour tipped the scales.
‘I will go as Tom Neave,’ I said. ‘Disguised as Major Stonehouse.’
Everyone except Nehemiah thumped the table at that and the meeting broke up as all such meetings do, late at night, with a bundle of jumbled decisions that John Wildman, in presenting the case for the soldiers, was instructed to ‘lick into shape’.
He came back to Gun Press for a late supper. While Ellie spitted herrings over the fire and Scogman fetched strong ale, Wildman took me down to the depths of despair. He looked at the pamphlet not from the point of view of the radicals, who all agreed with one another, when they were not cutting each other’s throats, but from the point of view that mattered, that of Adam, the ordinary, cautious, middle-of-the-road soldier.
Wildman stroked his silky moustache. ‘Adam don’t want to get rid of the King. His Majesty robs him and kills half the Adams in the country, but the remainder still loves His Majesty, like a beaten wife loves her husband. He knows Parliament is rotten, but better the devil, eh? Cromwell’s rigged it. He’s got enough Adams on the Army Council to –’ He threw the pamphlet in the bin.
‘We’re fucked then,’ said Scogman.
‘Unless we rig it different.’ He beamed at Ellie. ‘You grill the most delicious herring, my dear! Look at the roe on this one.’
He swallowed it whole.
It was in the air that late October morning. Mixed with the stink of coal dust and sewers, the whiff of hot bread from the ovens was the smell of excitement. Many people believed it was something like the mysterious force of magnetism charging the air, for it moved a normally stingy baker, who had fought at Naseby, to give free bread to a couple of soldiers and wish them good luck. It was in the sound of the carts rattling to the river, carrying soldiers in tattered uniforms, waving when they recognised old comrades, only to fight with them for boats at the riverside. Above all it was in the boats. From Iron Gate Stairs, Puddle Wharf, Queenhithe, Milford and further west, boats were in constant demand. At the Fulham ferry to Putney, you could scarce see the water for boats.
From a small, sleepy village of watermen and farmers, with a number of grand houses where rich merchants retreated from the stink of the City during summer, that season Putney had become a miniature city overflowing with the stench and struggle of people the rich normally escaped from. They were awoken not by a crowing cock, but by the beat of a drum. Since August, Putney had had the doubtful privilege of being the army HQ.
The best houses, with river views, were occupied by the grandees, Fairfax, Cromwell and Ireton. Officers billeted in the High Street. Soldiers pitched their tents in the fields of bickering farmers, although they and the shopkeepers stood to make a small fortune from the soldiers – at least on paper.
Overlooking the river, at the centre of it all, was the medieval church of St Mary’s. There the army held its meetings, partly because it was the only place big enough, but mostly because it was hoped God would give guidance.
As people went into church, Scogman and I distributed the new pamphlet that came from Wildman, ‘licking the old one into shape’. It had been agreed in hurried meetings and printed the day before. Every one of the hundred people squeezing into that dark, damp church for the prayers that preceded every meeting had the pamphlet.
‘Put it among the prayer books,’ Wildman said. ‘God needs to read it too.’
Mr Ink was very grand again, with replaceable paper cuffs to catch the splashes of ink, and an ink boy who scuttled to the Communion table in the chancel with horn and paper. He pulled me round a pillar.
‘Ireton found out how I released you from gaol. But I was not reprimanded – I was told I should have paid you more.’
‘Why?’
He shook his head. ‘Something is up.’
‘What?’
‘You are, it seems.’
In fact, as I rose to my feet from prayers, Cromwell came up to me. He was distant, but I was amazed he was speaking to me at all.
‘I am glad to see you are a Stonehouse again.’
Ireton must have seen the muddle of feelings in my face, for he gripped my arm and drew me away.
‘I should stick to Stonehouse,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to find yourself in prison like your father.’
‘You have him?’
‘He has been seen near the Exchange. Do you know where he is?’
‘No. I did not even know he was still in the country.’
‘Oh, he’s in the country all right. He wouldn’t be anywhere else at the moment, would he?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. I know why you’re a Stonehouse again.’
There was almost a wink in his black, sloe-like eyes. I found his sudden friendliness not only puzzling, but more unnerving than his enmity.
‘I did my best to persuade Cromwell you did not help your father to escape from Holdenby. You’re not such a fool. I know this is just a charade.’ He tapped the pamphlet we had just printed.
‘I believe in it totally!’ I said hotly.
He gave me a sceptical look and glanced at Cromwell, who was gathering his papers. He looked brooding, lost in another world.
‘He’s indecisive again. Waiting for God to tell him what to do. Everything’s coming to the boil,’ Ireton muttered. His manner changed and he became almost pleading. ‘If you know anything, for the Lord’s sake tell me. Cromwell has redoubled the guards but he won’t have the King kept in close custody. It is his royal prerogative. Royal prerogative! He has been seeing anyone he likes at Hampton Court … including Scottish ministers. Has he reached an agreement with them to fight another war? I don’t know – but I know he has withdrawn his parole not to escape.’
I almost felt sorry for Ireton. He did the bulk of the drafting and planning. With Cromwell, he ferried between Putney and Westminster, struggling to reach an agr
eement between Parliament and an increasingly recalcitrant King. The last thing he wanted to do was debate soldiers’ rights. But a split in the army would be ruthlessly exploited by the King. Perhaps his and Cromwell’s conciliatory attitude towards me was because of that. No, no, it was more than that. Something to do with my father. With the Stonehouses. I jumped at the sudden flutter of a trapped bird in the roof of the church. Just as Ellie had done that night, I felt the eyes of the falcon watching me. Absurd! Nevertheless, I whirled round. Nehemiah was looking at me steadily, broodingly. He did not look away, but did something he rarely did, least of all with me. He smiled.
It was extraordinary. People on both sides who had previously hated me seemed to be taking a liking to me. I expected him to loathe the pamphlet because it said nothing about getting rid of the King. But he shook me by the hand.
‘Makes everything so simple,’ he said.
It did.
Cromwell, the master of tactics and ambushes, had been outmanoeuvred by Wildman. Expecting an onslaught on the King and the grievances of soldiers, he got neither.
Instead he got a pamphlet that broadened, yet simplified, The Case of the Army. It went to first principles. It asked where the power of the rulers came from in the first place. What, or who, gave them the right to such power? It was no longer a case for the army. That word was not even in the title. The pamphlet was called An Agreement of the People.
People were crammed in the pews, craning round the pillars to see Cromwell’s frown growing deeper as Wildman presented the case. Perched on a sill, I could see Mr Ink’s quill flying over the page. Miraculously, the trapped bird had found a way out, as, it seemed to me, An Agreement found a way through the impasse between King and Parliament.
It turned the soldiers’ case, their pay and grievances, into the people’s case, their rights into the people’s rights. But how could those rights be determined by a Parliament that had already rejected them? Parliament itself must be reformed.
The pamphlet was as astute and significant in what it did not say as much as in what it did. Cromwell had prepared his arguments as a rebuttal of criticisms of his case against the King. But the pamphlet said nothing about the King. Nothing about the House of Lords. It was as if they did not exist – as, at the beginning of time, it was argued, they did not.
The pamphlet proposed a written Constitution. It held that power belonged to the people, who alone could elect a party in Parliament.
Again, there was no mention of the King.
By negotiating with the King, Cromwell was attempting to put new wine into old bottles. Those bottles were cracked and broken. Before any negotiations with the King, the people had earned their right, through the blood they had spilled, to say what those rights and liberties were.
‘Sovereignty of the people?’ Cromwell retorted. ‘The people themselves will not go along with it!’
‘No negotiations?’ put in Ireton. ‘We are halfway through negotiations with the King. We have made declarations we cannot break!’
There was an uproar at that. The soldiers’ friends had been killed and they had all risked their lives, yet were not to be allowed a say in those declarations? They were not a mercenary army!
People who had never spoken, never even thought they had a voice, shot up their hands clamouring to speak. What did they fight for? To enslave themselves all over again? Mr Ink darted up and down, struggling to identify them, in the end recording them simply as ‘Bedfordshire man’ or ‘Suffolk trooper’.
When it became too dark to see, Ireton grudgingly gave way and said the declarations with the King would be reviewed in the light of the agreement. But it was during the second day that I felt God had spoken.
The words came from the mouth of an officer, Colonel Rainborough. ‘I do believe that the poorest he in England hath a life to live as the greatest he … Every man that is to live under a government ought first – by his own consent – to put himself under that government.’
By the time we left the church, the moon was up and the stars out. Scogman, Mr Ink and I were drunk on words. Ireton had argued about property as the basis for votes, but the meeting had agreed that ‘all but beggars and servants would have the vote’. Cromwell said he would put it to Parliament.
Parliament? We felt we were Parliament! We stood on the river bank relieving ourselves. Nobody had dared to leave for fear of missing the final vote. With a sigh of relief, Scogman arced a line of piss, shimmering in the moonlight, into the Thames.
‘There’s my message for Westminster.’
We laughed at anything. Beer was passed round. Camp fires were crackling near the tents in the fields. The rumour that the King had been talking to the Scots caused some to cry that the ‘man of blood’ should be brought to trial, but most were euphoric.
‘The King will be no more than icing on the cake,’ Mr Ink declared solemnly. ‘And that cake was baked today.’
I stared down the river, which was eddying this way and that, for the tide was on the turn. The City was a great pall of smoke, pierced only by the moonlit St Paul’s and church spires. It seemed like yesterday that I had come up river to seek my fortune. I felt as if I was that small boy again, who had been given smeared, smuggled words from Parliament, to run with through the streets. Even my voice sounded smaller, like a child asking questions.
‘It was true then,’ I said to Mr Ink, ‘when you said the words would change the world.’
Mr Ink wagged his finger at me, correcting me, exactly as he used to. ‘Have, Tom,’ he said. ‘Have.’
‘Here!’ Scogman said suddenly. He fished in his pockets, where he found sixpence and two groats. ‘Does this mean I have a vote?’
‘With your capacity to find money,’ Mr Ink said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they made you Chancellor.’
Many felt they had votes that evening. More than that. They looked at the torn, muddy ground and thought they had reclaimed a piece of England. Although it was cold, and a light drizzle was falling, one man prayed, alternately looking up to the heavens, then kissing the grass. A group sat huddled round a fire. They talked about a hill in Surrey one knew. It was barren, but might be dug. Animals would fertilise it. Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. Did that not mean that God had given this soil, this grass, to everyone?
I heard the soft skirl of Joshua’s pipe, but it was not martial, it was a jig. Puritans dancing? They were godly men, but that night there was a maypole in them all.
Scogman and I were looking for a boat to take us back to Spitall when we smelt it. Duck. Roast duck. It made us realise how hungry we were. We were drawn by the smell to the edge of a field, a little apart from the other tents. Gobbets of fat from the duck dropped into the fire, throwing up flares of light on Nehemiah’s face. He was having an argument with someone. It did not seem politic to interfere, but when we realised the other man was what we were looking for – a waterman – we stopped.
‘Evening better for poaching – if that’s what you’re after,’ the waterman said.
‘Morning. It’s got be morning. Upstream.’
‘Upstream?’
‘Beyond Richmond. Stag Island.’
‘Stag Island? Have to be early. Tide turns. Goes downstream, eight, nine o’clock, thereabouts …’
Nehemiah took out his purse. From the rattle, he was not short of money. Firelight flickered on a double crown. The waterman stretched out his hand. Nehemiah drew the coin back and resumed his negotiations, but I heard no more, for there was the click of a gun being cocked in my ear and the barrel of it was pressed into my cheek. Scogman pulled out his knife.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Bennet said.
There was a steady, unchanging blankness in his face, which was in stark contrast to the distant sound of the pipe playing the jig, and the murmur of psalms from another group. Nehemiah shaded his eyes against the light of the fire. In one sharp movement, Bennet shoved me staggering forwards towards the fire and brought the gun round on Scogman.
I almost collided with the waterman, who prevented me from falling.
‘Why! He’s not a spy. It’s Tom. And Scoggy. We’re all brothers tonight, aren’t we, Tom?’
I rubbed my bruised cheek. ‘I would hope so.’
Bennet looked anything but brotherly. He took Nehemiah to one side and there was a hurried, whispered conversation, which ended with Nehemiah snapping at him not to be a fool and to lock his gun. The waterman said this was a bad business, and he wanted nothing to do with poaching.
‘Poaching?’ Nehemiah looked amazed as he pointed to the sizzling duck. ‘That ain’t poaching, is it, Scoggy?’
Scogman looked puzzled. His mouth was watering so much the words came out as a mumble. ‘Poaching? No such thing as poaching after today, is there?’
Nehemiah laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good old Scoggy! And God said: let there be winged things … and God found them good …’ He hacked off a piece of breast, the burned skin shrivelled round the dark meat, with bubbles of fat winking from it, and held it out to me. ‘After today, everything belongs to everyone, right, Tom?’
I mumbled between mouthfuls that I did not think that was quite in the agreement, but the roast duck was certainly a powerful argument for it. Nehemiah’s laughter redoubled, as beyond the camp fire came the sound of horses. Cromwell, Ireton and the other grandees were riding to the village for their supper. I caught Ireton’s eye as Nehemiah put his arm round me, declaring I had a way with words.
‘You taught me everything I know … Well, not quite everything …’ He was never one to show his feelings but his voice caught. ‘We have had our disagreements, Tom, but I think we share the right e-e-end?’
I embraced him. ‘We do, we do.’
During this Bennet squatted, taking a cloth to his gun, although it had not been used. It was a curious instrument, with a tubular sight, an exposed spring and a decorated plate, which he polished assiduously.
‘Oh, put it away, put it away, Bennet!’ cried Nehemiah. ‘We’re all brothers today!’
Ellie had fallen asleep by the dying fire. I could not stop talking about that momentous day, even in the moment when we were undressing for bed in the shivering cold upstairs.
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