‘Why?’
‘The outward forms of worship are important, pudding, in part because they just whiff a bit of popery, but in the main for what they represent: the Church as arbiter between man and his God. Throw predestination into the mix and the godly are wild with fury.’
‘You mean the Arminian question?’
‘Aye, that’s it, puss. So the godly believe that you are marked from the start, elect or non-elect to join Christ in heaven. Arminians – and I count myself one – believe ’tis all gammon. A man’s deeds must tell in the reckoning. Lord how we fight about it, as if our places in heaven were settled by rhetoric and noise alone.’
‘All played out against the example, in the Continent, of how it could all turn to ruin.’
‘Exactly, clever puss.’ He pats her head, and she pulls back, annoyed by the gesture. ‘So we fear the foreign wars and hurtle towards them, because our fearing them makes us fight with each other all the more. It’s a pickle, puss, and it’s coming to a head over the prayer book.’
‘Why is Laud so insistent on everyone using it, Father, if it’s so unpopular?’
‘He wants a common church, love. Total uniformity across the two nations. And the Scots ain’t happy. Crawling with godly and insects, that place. So though it looks like we’re fighting the Scots over a book, it’s about a whole heap more.’
‘But if the Scots are willing to bear arms against the king over the book, what about our godly?’
‘That’s what the king’s party is fearful of. Some of the godly want to paint their faces blue and join the mad bastards. But mostly they want to bring down Laud, for all the king loves him. Even those not so caught in the theology are cross with the midget Laud. The king’s not called a parliament since he was made archbishop. Without Parliament, the king can’t raise taxes like a Christian, but must creep about like a Moor, taking levies where he can. Forced loans and arbitrary levies for his ships, all aided by his favourite counsellor, Strafford. So those with God in their hearts curse Laud, as those with imps rootling in their coffers curse Strafford. And some call the no-Parliament years a personal rule, and some call it a tyranny.’
‘And what about you, Father? Where do you stand?’
‘On my own, largely, puss, with a glass in hand.’ He laughs at his own joke, an infectious, rolling sound. He drinks again. ‘Well, but I am no papist, love. But neither am I strict in following Calvin, you know that. Each man must find his own path to God, and mine is one that avoids extremes. A higgledy path to salvation. But I’ll get there, perhaps.’
He stands quickly. ‘Pudding cat, we’re too serious, you and I,’ he says, and he picks her up and whirls her round in a circle, their hands clasped tight. She laughs as they spin, round and round, until at last they collapse into a chair, Hen sitting on his lap as she used to. She lays her head on him, sinking into the familiar perfume of wine and tobacco, timing her breathing to match the rise and fall of his chest.
CHAPTER THREE
April 1640
THE CROWD IS CLOSELY PACKED AND RAUCOUS. BEHIND HER, a group of tipsy apprentices sing. They lurch to one side, and the people surrounding them are forced sideways, like fish haplessly caught in the current. There is a feverish air. A new parliament has been called at last. At last!
‘Sorry, pudding,’ shouts Challoner. ‘I tried to find a place in a window. But it was no good. All gone.’
She shrugs and grips his arm more tightly. She hears Sam’s voice shouting overhead. She looks up to see him perched with assumed nonchalance on top of the sign for the Swan, his feet dangling over the bird’s fading beak.
‘They’re coming,’ he cries, and points over the heads of the crowd. She can’t see much, wedged in the third row. She peers through gaps in the tightly packed bodies to where the king’s men are marching past, from page up to privy counsellor. There is good-hearted cheering from the crowd. But then the whistles and boos erupt, and she thinks it must be the archbishop, or perhaps Strafford stalking past, the crowd’s fury breaking on his head.
Now a full-throated cheer, and here is the king. He is mounted, and she can see his head, strangely disembodied, bobbing above the crowd. His face is a mask. In the masque it could be worn to play Dignity or Disdain. She looks up to see Sam cheering, waving his hat in the air, the Swan sign swinging wildly as he kicks it with his feet.
As the king passes, the cheers move along with him. The crowd is subdued for a little while, until another roar builds away to their right. It ripples along with the procession until it engulfs them.
‘Hampden!’ roars Hen’s father in her ear. It must be the MPs then, thinks Hen – John Hampden, the hero of the remonstrance against ship money, and his colleagues. The crowd thins now, as the last of the procession wanders by.
Hen’s father sees Sam now and shakes a fist at him. ‘God’s lid, boy, you’ll break your neck!’ He stands under the sign and Sam slips down onto his shoulders. Challoner gives a theatrical stagger, and then kneels for the boy to climb down.
‘Small, the king, ain’t he?’ says Sam. ‘But what a horseman! Oh my blood, did you see how he had that great beast calm and high-stepping through the shouting?’
‘We don’t see enough of His Majesty,’ says Challoner, an arm round each twin, shepherding them through the remaining people. ‘Not like his father, always pimping himself out to the mob. I daresay we made a radiant spectacle for James after the bow-backed Scots.’
They make their way home, stepping over the detritus of the thinning crowd, the piecrusts and the empty flasks.
‘But it wasn’t his choice to parade for us, was it?’ asks Hen. ‘The king had to process for the opening of a new parliament, did he not, Father?’
‘It is tradition. Mind, it is tradition to call a parliament before now. Eleven years since the last.’
‘Why did he have to call it, Father?’ Hen threads her arm through his.
‘Because, my darling, he’s broke. Utterly, miserably lean of pocket. And all the little tricks and teases he’s been using to winkle money out of us are wearing thin. So, at last, he’s going cap in hand to ask for the proper raising of taxes.’
‘And then,’ says Sam, ‘he’ll smash the Scots. Huzzah!’
‘Perhaps,’ says Challoner, smiling at him. ‘But it won’t be so simple as he thinks, I fear. There’s scores of MPs lined up to say their ha’penny worth, and they’ve been bottling it all up for eleven years. We’ve some fun in sight.’
Challoner doesn’t look as if he’s enjoying the spectacle over the coming days, as Parliament stutters. One morning, with the new parliament barely two weeks old and clearly failing, he finds Hen sitting, as usual, in the library.
‘Pudding, how do you fancy a trip?’
‘To where?’ Lord! To escape these walls, just for a while. The thought is intoxicating. She grips her father’s sleeve. ‘Where, Papa?’
‘My brother, near Oxford. The family came here once, if you remember. There’s a girl your age, and a boy Edward’s, and sundry others whose ages I forget. Perhaps you were too young to remember them.’
‘To Oxford? Yes, Papa, yes! When shall we go? How shall we get there? What about Grandmother? For how long?’
He throws up his arms as if she is striking him.
‘Whoa there, my pudding. I thought you would be pleased. I’ll take you, just the two of us. Sam cannot come – he must pretend to be at his schooling. Not a bad time to be out of the city. Have you felt the mood?’
‘I have.’
‘There’s a fever abroad, and it’s too godly and too streaked with chaos for your father, kitten.’ She watches him force himself to brighten, and she smiles to help him.
‘No matter,’ he says, his answering smile growing easier. ‘We leave at dawn. So go to it!’
‘So, Grandmother, I’m to be away. For a month, probably.’
The old lady watches the fire. Hen sits beside her, taking one dry, thin-boned hand in her own.
‘To meet the cousin
s. On my own. Somewhere new, Grandmother – can you imagine that! No nurse.’
‘You should be married,’ says the old woman abruptly.
‘Oh? And who to, exactly? Besides, I am not sure I want to be married.’
Her grandmother turns at that, as she hoped she would, looking at her and not the flames.
‘Don’t be stupid, Henrietta. It doesn’t suit you. Of course you must have a husband. It is boring enough, and miserable enough, to be a woman married. Try being a spinster, my darling child.’
‘It doesn’t sound so bad. No one to tell you what to do.’
Her grandmother smiles. The fire is warm, and Hen settles contentedly, her head resting on the old woman’s shoulder.
‘And how would you live? On your brothers’ charity? Edward is more godly by the year, my posy. He would demand a high price in conduct to look after you. You would argue.’
‘Sam – he would see me right.’
‘A second son? He will have enough to do to keep himself. And what of his wife?’
Hen smiles to think of Sam married.
‘She may not like you. My love, she will doubtless hate you for your closeness to Sam. And he will be hard-pressed then to help you. No, child. There is little joy to be found in poverty.’
‘Well then, Grandmother. What must I hope for?’
‘A widow,’ says the old lady, smiling down at her. ‘Yes, my lovely face, that’s the best thing for a woman to be. Unless she’s a poor widow. So fall in love with a young pauper if you must, my darling, but marry a rich, old man.’
‘Grandmother!’
The old lady laughs, but then a cloud settles over her. Hen watches her grandmother shrinking. ‘But don’t have children,’ the old lady says, her voice quivering. ‘You’ll lose them, and it will break you. Five I’ve lost. Five. Not counting the ones that died in me, or died leaving me.’
Hen holds on tight to her grandmother’s hand, as the old lady begins to cry. ‘Grandmother, you must sleep,’ Hen says.
‘Sleep? How can I sleep? Oh, I am damned, my darling, damned to hell. And Judgement Day will come, and I will beg and plead, and I will be told “no”. It has been destined.’
‘But Father says that predestination is absurd,’ says Hen, desperately paraphrasing her father’s measured doubts about the orthodoxy, trying to pierce her grandmother’s faith in her own damnation. ‘He says that our place in the afterlife must be governed by our actions.’
‘He would think that, my darling. But are all the preachers wrong, and he is right? Is the faith I have worshipped all my life wrong? Did my grandfather resist the bloodlust of that papist bastard Mary for no reason? It is the great whore in Rome talking through your father. The devil whispers in his ear. Don’t listen to him. It has already been decided, and I am chosen.’
The old lady pulls a blanket up round her chin, wrapping herself up into a bundle. Her hands work at the edges of the fabric, pulling it in tighter round herself.
‘I hear it in my heart, child. I am damned. Damned to the place of the weeping and gnashing of teeth. And the smoke of my torment will rise for ever and ever.’
The tears roll down her cheeks, and she looks earnestly at Hen, as if the child can convince her that she is wrong.
‘Why must you dwell on it, Grandmother, on death and damnation? You are alive now. Can’t you concentrate on that? Why do you think on the rest?’
‘How can I not? What else matters? This is all a poor rehearsal for the everlasting life to come.’
Hen wipes away her grandmother’s tears with the corner of her dress. The old lady doesn’t register the action; she just stares at the fire with wide, frightened eyes.
‘Don’t look at the fire, Grandmother. Look at me. Please.’ Hen pulls her grandmother’s face round by the chin until the old lady is facing her. But her eyes slide past Hen, so she lets go, watching as her grandmother’s head swivels round again to face the fire.
‘There are demons, darling child, and monsters. I will sit with the witches and the papists and I will burn. You have never been to a burning, have you, child? You smell the hair first, and then the skin crisping. And all the time you hear the screaming.’
‘But how do you know that is what you face? You are one of God’s chosen people, Grandmother.’
‘Child, He knows my heart. He tested me. He killed my children. And He knows how I cursed Him. And it was decided at my birth that I would be damned, and that He would take my children from me. One by one, He took them.’
Her voice rises, edging towards the point of hysteria where there will be no soothing her. ‘And He is so good, so loving, child. He has made a hell of this life, so I may better endure the fires of the next one. Oh, but I am still so frightened of the fire, child. So frightened.’
‘Shh, shh.’ Hen begins to repeat the litany, her voice rising and falling rhythmically. ‘Listen, Grandmother, to the children you will meet in heaven. First there was Auntie Georgiana, the youngest, who died of the fever, just five. She was beautiful as the sun, and spirited as the moon.’
‘Yes, yes!’ Her Grandmother nods.
‘Auntie Sarah, who was beaten to death by her husband, though he was a man of God, and he claimed it was an accident and that she fell down the stairs. She too was beautiful, like the first crocus of the year, full of hope and life.
‘And then Uncle George, the merchant, who sailed off towards the rising sun carrying your heart and who was never seen again by an Englishman, dead or alive. And he was handsome, and strong, with a laugh so beautiful it would make angels weep.
‘And then my mother, who died bringing Sam and me into the world, and who loved us enough to fill the oceans with her tears when she had to leave us. And she was beautiful, like a star, and I must watch for her in the darkest hour of the night, watching me.’
She strokes her grandmother’s hair. The old lady is leaning on her now. She hates doing Uncle Charles. She remembers him, and how he was running to fat, and laughed too long and too loud at poor jokes, and had a defeated air. It makes her question the rest of the litany her grandmother has taught her.
‘And then Uncle Charles, who was taken by the evil sickness, though he had been so strong and hale. And he was the handsomest man who walked through the Exchange, and was fair set to become the richest merchant in all the City.’
Her grandmother is calm now. She turns away from the fire and leans on Hen, breathing quietly. Beyond the window Hen hears the bellman walk past jangling his bell insistently. ‘Past nine of the clock, and a cold night ahead.’ I am leaving all this for a while, thinks Hen, and her relief is mired in guilt.
She steps from the dusky carriage, limbs aching from sitting for so long. She can see a pretty brick house with a lawn in front of it. Somewhere near, a river rushes past. The door of the house opens, and a red-faced man spills out, followed by a woman Hen guesses must be her aunt. A couple of smaller children run about, whooping, and a dog chases its tail round and round in an ecstasy of excitement. Standing sullenly on the steps of the house is a girl of Hen’s age.
‘Aha, aha!’ shouts the red-faced man. ‘Richard, dear one.’ They clasp each other in a fierce hug, drawing back and looking into each other’s face. There is a reckoning of new lines, of hair greying and hair lost, and then another delighted clasp.
‘Robert, Robert.’ Hen’s father says the name like a benediction. ‘And Martha, good Martha.’ He turns to Hen’s aunt, smiling still.
‘And this, dear brother, dear sister, is my little pudding cat, all grown up, or very nearly.’
Hen sees the girl at the top of the steps smirk. She feels her cheeks turn crimson. To hide her confusion, she drops into a bow, murmuring: ‘Henrietta, ma’am, if you please.’
‘Well, well,’ says Uncle Robert loudly. He seems incapable of any other vocal register. ‘Well, well! Such a beauty. So like her mother.’
His wife shoots him a maddened look. ‘Never mind that, Robert. Come here, child. You must be tired after y
our journey. I’ll show you where you can tidy up. And this, my dear, is your cousin Anne. I am sure you will be great friends.’
Hen looks up to smile at her cousin and sees only disdain.
‘What news, what news from London?’ Uncle Robert’s voice booms behind her. ‘The parliament, brother. How we’re longing to hear of it.’
‘Give me a glass of your finest claret, Robert, and you shall hear all the news.’
‘So good to have visitors. Such a raising of the spirit you bring, such a quickening of the temper, and you shall fill this country air with news from London. What joy!’ says Robert as they walk through the hall.
Anne sullenly shows her cousin up the stairs.
‘You’re to share with me,’ she says, pushing open a door to a small wood-panelled room. ‘Smaller than you’re used to, I expect, compared to London. And you’ll have to sleep on the trestle.’
Hen just nods. She walks to the window, where cushions make a seat of the broad sill. The last of the afternoon sun glows gold around the black leading of the pane. Outside, a perfect lawn runs down to a small river. A willow tree curls over the water, the wind ruffling its leaves.
‘What a wonderful room.’ She turns to her cousin and is surprised to see the hint of a smile.
‘I like it,’ Anne says. ‘Not grand enough for you, I should think.’
Hen shrugs. ‘It’s the quiet that worries me. Is it always so quiet?’
‘I suppose so. I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘I can’t imagine sleeping with all this silence for background noise.’
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