Most people saw the same assurance in my face, but it was skin deep. Once I had believed in the republic as Luke believed in the King. I still did, but not with the enthusiasm of the child of the streets I had once been. Years of working with Cromwell, of looking for a form of government that would work without falling back on the army, had convinced me that power came first. If I looked in the mirror, which I seldom cared to, I saw a man who looked older than his thirty-five years, whose cheeks were rather too pink from sweet sack, and whose once fiery red hair was a dull copper streaked with grey.
The rush of relief when I saw that Luke was not only well, but apparently in rude health, was followed by anger both at his foolhardiness and my weakness in not leaving him to take his punishment. At first, with the gaoler blocking his view of me and Scogman, he did not see us.
Luke gave the gaoler a long, languid look and raised a declamatory hand. ‘When I think of my sweet King … a gaoler with his keys knows no such liberty!’
‘Well said, Luke!’ called the prisoner next door.
My anger was redoubled when the gaoler touched his forehead to Luke. ‘Beg your pardon, sir –’
I pushed him to one side. Luke stared at me as if I was an apparition, before turning the good side of his face away. It was a habit of his when he was with me. The muscles were more rigid on his scarred side and made his expression difficult to read.
‘Get up.’
Slowly he uncurled his legs and rose. He was an inch or two taller than me. I flung a nosegay at him. He caught it, then let it fall amongst the straw littering the floor.
‘Did you have anything with you when you were taken?’
When he did not answer, the gaoler said, ‘Packed and ready, sir. To be signed for. Thank you, sir!’
This when I tossed him a Cromwell, a half crown which he caught with the dexterity of a swift catching a fly, moving to bite it before his finger ran suspiciously over the edge to check its validity. It was the first coin to be milled at the edge against forgeries. It frustrated me beyond measure that from small innovations like this to large ones like the world’s first professional army, Cromwell had transformed the country in a way that the gentlemanly but hopeless and untrustworthy King Charles had never done, yet my son and his friends called Cromwell a devil and Charles a saint.
The light caught Cromwell’s head on the coin. Luke stared at it and found his voice. ‘Where are you taking me? The Tower?’
I only just stopped myself from smiling. One moment Luke frustrated me, the next he touched my heart. He lived in a world of fancy. I was about to tell him we were going home but Scogman got in first.
‘The axe is being sharpened at this very moment, Mr Luke.’
There was no love lost between them. Luke complained that Scogman was not a proper steward, for he could not write or add up, except in ways that suited him. In other words he was a thief. Not having served in the army, Luke did not realise that there were normal accounts and army accounts. I knew perfectly well what Scogman was doing. He did it out of habit, for the thrill of it, mostly for someone else, usually a woman he fancied. It was small stuff. At the same time he was ferociously loyal to me.
‘I want the same treatment as everyone else,’ Luke said.
‘This is not a game!’ I said. ‘Come.’
He knew that tone, that manner. Automatically, he began to follow me, stumbling against the piss-bucket. He almost immediately righted himself, but Scogman made a move to grab him and save him. Luke must have misinterpreted that as an attempt to frogmarch him out of the cell. He lashed out at Scogman, winding him. The bucket went over, spilling its contents over Scogman’s boots. No one was more conscious of his status than Luke. Now, in a blind rage that a servant he despised would dare to lay a hand on him, he aimed another blow. Scogman caught Luke’s flailing fist and twisted his arm behind his back.
‘Easy, Mr Luke, sir, easy,’ Scogman said.
This mixture of control and deference inflamed Luke even further. The more he struggled to get away, the more pain he inflicted on himself, but he would not give up.
‘Enough!’ I said. ‘Release him.’
Scogman did so. Luke staggered into the gaoler before sprawling against the wall, rubbing his arm, tears of humiliation pricking his eyes. I was tempted to leave him there and be done with it, but Anne would never forgive me. My wife found an excuse for his every fault.
‘Luke. Your mother is not well.’ I hated saying it but it was the easiest option and it was partly true. Anne was sick with worry about him. There was no one he cared about more than his mother. I was convinced that was the problem. She alone had brought him up, eschewing nurses when he was a baby. Even after the war they lived in the country, which they loved, while my work with Cromwell kept me in town.
Luke’s reaction was immediate. He forgot his humiliation in his concern for her, asking what was wrong. I would not answer, angry at both myself for my deception and at him that concern for his mother meant far more than any respect for me. But there was no more resistance, physical at least.
‘God bless the King in heaven!’ he shouted as we walked down the corridor.
‘And the King across the water!’ answered the man in the next cell.
Their cries were picked up by other prisoners. The shouts and the drumming on the cell doors could still be heard as our coach went off into the night.
HE NEVER QUESTIONS WHO HE IS.
UNTIL SOMEONE TRIES TO KILL HIM.
The gripping first instalment of a page-turning trilogy set against the backdrop of the English Civil War.
The bloody saga of revolution and terror reaches its climax in the final instalment of the Tom Neave trilogy.
Out January 2015.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my editors: Clare Smith, who encouraged me from the book’s conception, Essie Cousins who saw it through its final stages and copyeditor Helen Gray, who had an unerring eye for my inconsistencies; to my researcher, Deborah Rosario, for digging out everything from the origins of early shorthand to the intricacies of seventeenth century bowls; and above all to my wife Cynthia for her help and patience during my frequent absences in the seventeenth century.
Acknowledgements are usually to the living, but I want to salute George Joyce, the real character who was instrumental in kidnapping the King. He lit the fuse that ignited the very English revolution in 1647, which, although it petered out, was an inspiration for the American and French revolutions that followed. He remained a revolutionary all his life. In a sense he never died. After the Restoration he was hunted down and was last heard of in Rotterdam in 1670, where he vanished. I like to think he is haunting these pages.
About the Author
PETER RANSLEY has written extensively for television. His BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith was a BATFA nomination for best series. His book The Hawk was filmed with Helen Mirren and he is a winner of the Royal Television Society’s Writer’s Award. His first novel in the Tom Neave trilogy, Plague Child, was published in 2011. The third and final instalment, The King’s List, will be published in 2015.
ALSO BY PETER RANSLEY
Plague Child
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