Ned raises his hand to touch his head, and wonders what happened to the others.
Ned thinks about Taffy, and his provocative coarseness. I am twenty years old, Ned thinks, and I am likely to die on this field. And I have never known what it is to touch a woman. He thinks of Lucy Tompkins, and her soft curls and tempting curves. If I escape this, Lord, can I visit a bawdy house? Just once, oh Lord. Cheese will take me; he knows them all. But I won’t get home, he thinks, and even if I do, I cannot sin. Can I? Just once?
The devil is tempting me, Ned thinks. Like our Lord in the desert. But deserts are so very hot, and I am so cold. You didn’t know how lucky you were, Lord.
Now, thinks Ned, I am a blasphemer, as well as a man desperate to sin. I am being tested and I am failing. Who am I?
He cries now, at last. In the darkness, he prays. He tries to hear God’s pure voice. But there is only the sound of his own sobbing.
‘Son of God, shine on me,’ he says aloud. ‘Shine on me.’
As if to mock him, the moon drifts behind a silver cloud.
He tries to remember the example of the martyrs, who were burnt by fire for the true faith. John Hooper, the Bishop of Worcester and Gloucester, who spent three-quarters of an hour being eaten by an inefficient fire. How did Foxe describe the end, in his book of the glorious Protestant martyrs? How Ned pored over that book as a boy, committing it to memory. Hooper bore it, until: ‘having his nether parts burned and his bowels fallen out, he died as quietly as a child in its bed’.
Hooper was always Ned’s favourite of Foxe’s martyrs; the one he chose to play when the boys played papists and saints.
Is Master Hooper looking down on me? Ned wonders.
Now, alone and naked in the field, he whispers: ‘“He now reigneth as a blessed martyr in the joys of heaven prepared for the faithful in Christ before the foundations of the world; for whose constancy all Christians are bound to praise God.”’
Ned adds a private, silent prayer. He wants constancy and courage now, the strength to bear this trial. Cold is better than fire, he tells himself. Hooper’s face turned black, and all the fat, water and blood that fill a man’s body dropped out of the scorched ends of his fingers. This trial is as nothing to his, thinks Ned. And yet, a small voice whispers mutinously in his head. And yet. I am me, and not him. And his torment is trapped in the pages of a book, and mine fills the world. All the universe is now turning on my freezing body and faltering mind. And a still smaller voice whispers: Fuck Hooper the martyr, what about me?
He sleeps a little, or at least, he thinks he does. The moon has gone without him seeing its passing, and there is a lightness at the edge of the sky. Christ’s blood, but I’m cold, he thinks. Cold, cold. He’s not sure he wants it to get light; he’ll be able to see the faces of his companions. But if it stays dark, he’ll die here. Jesus wept. Make up your mind, Ned. Light or dark, which is it?
Suddenly, he thinks, what have I done?
I stood firm for what I believed was right, I lost my family, and this is where I am. I thought I was making a choice. But was I? Unmanly to shirk the fight, manly to fight; what manner of choice is that? The past few years have seen me backing myself into a corner, so this was the only fate possible. And I thought myself my own master.
And this, he thinks, is what it means to be a man, after all. Lying naked in a field, covered in other men’s corrupting flesh, waiting for a dawn I’m terrified of. And suddenly Ned, who has spent the best years of his youth disciplining himself into godly sobriety, is laughing. Alone with the naked corpses, he laughs until his ribs ache. The sun comes up, at last, streaking the sky with warm pink light.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN LONDON, THE TALE DRIBBLES BACK FROM THE BATTLE. A victory, and Prince Rupert captured, come the first reports, bringing cheering to the street. Then the news travels, from shop to shop, mouth to mouth, kitchen to kitchen. No victory, nor a loss neither. An inconclusive, fractious thing. Both sides amateurishly astonished by the horror of battle.
Birch arrives, unexpectedly, after dinner on the Sunday. The young lawyer, Oliver Chettle, is with him. The family are sitting at the table together: Sam, Hen and her father. And an empty chair where Ned should be.
They are surprised by their visitors; callers are uncommon in these times. Birch has been liberal with his money for Parliament, and if it is pragmatism rather than conviction loosening his wallet, the recipients are not asking. Challoner, meantime, twists his way around the levies where he can. The men bow stiffly to each other from across their political differences.
‘We came,’ says Birch, ‘with news of Ned.’
Hen drops her book. Birch slowly sits down in the great chair vacated by her father. He rearranges himself just so, and seems deliberately to be drawing out the tension. Hen thinks she might fly at him, and scratch out his eyes. Pompous old bastard, just tell the punchline.
‘He was at Edgehill, and is well.’
The Challoners seem to let out a collective sigh. Oliver Chettle is watching Hen, and as she puts a hand to the table to steady herself, moves forward as if to offer an arm. Sam is there first.
He pulls out a chair. ‘Here, Hen,’ he says, and she sinks into it.
I will not cry in front of these men, she thinks, and digs her fingernails into her palms. But Ned, Ned is safe. Thank you, Lord, thank you.
‘He was injured,’ says Chettle. ‘A blow to the head, and deaf for a time. They say he appeared out of the morning mist, bloody and naked, and they thought him a ghost at first. But he is well, and hearing. A runner came to the committee, to bring word from my Lord Essex, and told it as a tale from the battlefield. When I heard the apparition’s name, I thought to come and tell you.’
‘I take it very kindly, very kindly indeed,’ says Challoner. He is visibly moved, discomposed. Harmsworth enters the hall, carrying a wine jug. ‘A glass of wine for you, gentlemen,’ offers Challoner. ‘Harmsworth, tell his grandmother that Ned is safe and well after the battle at Edgehill.’
‘Indeed, sir! Very glad to hear it; they’ll be in the kitchen too, if I may say so.’
‘Well, well,’ says Challoner, and drinks deeply, too deeply. His hand is trembling.
‘He is much cosseted by his regiment, they say,’ says Birch. ‘In the symbolic line, it seemed, him looming out of the dawn like that. Alive when they thought he was lost.’
The wine is poured and the atmosphere seems almost convivial.
‘And the battle,’ says Sam. ‘What course did it take?’
Poor Sam, thinks Hen. Like a hunter pulling a miserable plough in the field next to where the other thoroughbreds chase.
Chettle lines the wine glasses up like regiments on the table. ‘Imagine both lines arranged so,’ he says. ‘Foot in the centre, cavalry on the flanks. This is Prince Rupert, devil take him. He charges, and our flank collapses, with barely a whimper. If he’d reined them back, His Majesty would be marching down Ludgate Hill this day. But the ill-disciplined whoremongers chased our fleeing boys, instead of wheeling round to take our middle. All was confusion after that. Pike met pike in the centre. Your brother’s regiment, led by General Holles, held their ground, the Lord be praised. They fought until dusk, and then lay down and slept.’
He pauses.
‘So no side won,’ says Challoner.
Chettle inclines his head. He is rising thirty, now, the young lawyer. He exudes confidence, yet without the edge of arrogance that could spill over. Handsome, too, thinks Hen. Not Will-handsome, but comely enough. His hair curls over his collar as he nods.
‘Can we not, then, gentleman,’ says Challoner, ‘consider this as a duel. Both sides have honourably discharged their pistols, and now we may all go home and consider ourselves friends again.’
Birch says: ‘It would be a relief to return to trade as usual, but I fear it will depend on the king.’
Chettle nods. ‘In confidence, I can tell you that both Houses are preparing a delegation to the king to talk terms.
Essex is withdrawing to Warwick, and at present the roads to London are clear for the king’s army. But His Majesty proved intransigent in the summer.’
‘Parliament asked too much,’ says Challoner, belligerently. ‘There is little point offering a man terms he cannot accept, then blaming him for not accepting them.’
‘Father,’ says Hen. ‘It is Sunday. Mr Birch and Mr Chettle did not come here to fight, but to comfort us with news of Ned.’
He opens his mouth as if to disagree with her, and closes it again, almost sheepish.
Chettle looks at Hen, a smile hovering.
‘Wise words, Miss Challoner. Perhaps we should include you in the delegation.’
Challoner laughs. ‘Send my Hen, and we’d be living in peace within the week. If anyone can cut this Gordian knot, it’s my clever cat.’
Birch stirs uncomfortably. ‘Not even in jest, Challoner. I was there when the women marched on Parliament last winter to deliver their peace petition. Women! In political discourse. I never thought to see the day.’
Hen opens her mouth to speak, but closes it again on catching Chettle’s eye. They smile at each other, almost conspiratorially. She stands and walks to the window, overlooking the street. She looks towards the Temple. How long since I saw Will? she wonders. More than a year.
‘Bad enough,’ continues Birch, ‘when it was the poorer, nastier sort of slattern.’
‘Among the godly, there are more reports of women preachers,’ says Chettle. ‘Women who claim to be moved by the Spirit to speak of God.’
The glass in the window is steaming up. Hen wipes it with her sleeve and looks down into the street. She can guess who is coming next, and sure enough, St Paul’s strictures thunder around the room in Birch’s nasal voice.
‘“Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak.”’
She knows they will all be nodding behind her, as men do when St Paul is invoked to remind them of their women’s weaknesses. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord,’ she thinks. I am my father’s property, and then my husband’s; and this is how it is and always will be. I must learn to be more obedient, in my heart, as well as in my actions, she resolves, and turns back from the window.
But Lord, if you wanted me to be obedient, why did you make me so questioning?
When their visitors leave, Sam, Hen and Challoner sit together, not speaking. Glad of each other’s presence.
Sam breaks the silence. ‘Have you heard the ballad, Hen, that’s doing the rounds?’
She shakes her head.
Sitting by the fire, their arms linked and their heads close together, Sam sings softly, following a tune of an old nursery rhyme Grandmother used to sing. Challoner sits in the chair, watching them.
Lament! And let thy tears run down,
To see the rent
Between the robe and crown.
War like a serpent has its head got in,
And will not end as soon as it did begin.
Challoner repeats the last line in a low bass. And the three of them sing the verse again, in a deep, full-throated lament that carries through the house, up to the attic where the old lady sits, alone.
Later, on this day of reckonings and foreboding, there is another visitor. The poet Edmund Waller calls on Challoner. He is silky in his greetings, and professes himself willing to wait for Challoner, who is struggling awake from an afternoon nap. Waller stands by the fire in the hall, legs apart, hands on hips. He holds himself as if acting in a masque.
‘My dear Miss Challoner. More beautiful than ever.’ He bows.
Hen curtsies, blushing, instantly annoyed with herself for the blush. Odious man.
He stares at her a little longer.
‘Yet still so young,’ he says. ‘And then what wonders shall you do / Whose dawning beauty warms us so.’ He declaims his own lines, wrapping his tongue round the words with relish.
Hen debates with herself. Shall I feign ignorance, or admit to this man that I know his work? Lord grant me humility, she thinks, but not yet. She says:
‘Hope waits upon the flowery prime,
And summer, though it be less gay,
Yet is not looked on as a time
Of declination and decay.
For with a full hand that does bring
All that was promised by the spring.’
The triumph curdles halfway through when she realizes how flattered it makes him, how much he is preening. But she is committed now, and limps to the finish of the stanza.
He bows again, deeper this time. ‘Never have I heard my words with such pleasure, Miss Challoner.’
Hen notices something interesting now with a strange detachment. Flattery from a man is only as valuable as the man is attractive. She can see how some women would find Waller compelling: he is smooth and polished like a wax candle; he is fashionable and charming; he has fleshy lips and clear skin; and if he’s running to fat, his clothes are cut well enough to hide it. But to her, his attentions are off-key. She thinks of Will’s naked admiration, and of Chettle’s candid smile. Perhaps, she thinks, he is just too polished by the court ways for a simpleton like me. His gaze makes her curve her shoulders to hide her breasts, and clasp her arms across her appraised body.
Her father enters now, and she is relieved to see him. She can stand a little straighter with him beside her.
‘Mr Challoner, your daughter was delighting me with proof of her erudition. She is the learned one of the world, I declare.’
Challoner chuckles fondly. ‘She is, she is.’
‘But perhaps the young lady has business about the house. I would talk to you alone.’
‘Well.’ Challoner looks embarrassed.
Hen runs over to kiss him. ‘I should visit Grandmother,’ she says.
As she walks out of the room and up the stairs, she feels lighter, somehow. Chettle told them earlier that Waller had been picked to join the peace delegation. A good choice, said Chettle. The reformers in Parliament trust him after his stand on ship money, even if he cannot be brought to hate the bishops. Yet the king loves a poet, and this one has spread his courtly flattery thick. He can butter both sides of a slice, that one. But, she wonders, if he’s been charged with this urgent mission to the king, why is he here? What business can he possibly have with her father?
The next day, Hen is at Hyde Park Corner with Mrs Birch, helping to build one of the series of fortifications Londoners are throwing up against their advancing king. It is a peculiar thing, to build a barrier against your own king.
Hen is set to work carrying away the stones unearthed by the spades of the men. Mrs Birch decided on the Hyde Park fortifications on hearing rumours that a better class of woman would be pitching in at this fort building. Sure enough, each time Hen passes the patch of grass where Mrs Birch has spread herself most of the afternoon, she gains some new whispered intelligence.
‘Look, Henrietta! Over there, Lady Middlesex and Lady Anne Waller! There, carrying the carts of soil. What a shame to get such fine linen so dirty. I don’t suppose Lady Middlesex owns an old gown for such work.’
Despite the dirt and the shock of physical labour, Hen is immensely enjoying herself. There is a festive atmosphere here, on this first day of digging. Children dodge in and out of legs. Carts laden with food have been pulled up from the City to feed the workers. Somewhere a drum beats, and a small boy with a pure alto sings a simple, rhythmic song to aid the diggers.
Hen enjoys the sense of a universal purpose, and the easy fellowship that comes with a common physical goal. And then, suddenly, as twilight sinks down towards the freshly dug soil, Will is standing beside her.
‘Will!’
‘I saw you. I was working over there.’ He points at random towards the far end of the trench.
Hen spins round, looking for Mrs Birch, but she is too far away to be seen in the gloaming.
‘Will, we had word of Ned. He was at Edgehill, and hurt, but not bad
ly.’
‘Thank the Lord!’ he says, and she loves him for his sincerity.
Silence, then. An awkward, lingering one.
She traces the lines of his face with her gaze, trying to capture it. His dark hair, almost black, falls over his eyes, and he pushes it back in that well-remembered gesture. There is a smudge of mud on his forehead, and he is flushed from the digging. Hen is suddenly aware that she, too, has been grubbing in the mud. What she sees in him as endearing, he could perceive as marks of a slattern. Her hair hangs in ratty tangles down her face. And still the silence lingers like an intrusive chaperone.
‘I should not—’ she begins.
‘I must—’ he says at the same time.
They laugh.
‘You first.’
‘You.’
‘I know that it is impossible,’ he says. ‘I shall not see you again, I promise it.’
‘But this was an accident,’ says Hen. ‘It doesn’t count,’ she adds, childishly.
He smiles, and his beauty hits her again, punches her in the stomach and catches the breath in her throat. ‘No, indeed, it does not count. Oh Hen, I miss you. I miss seeing your face, and hearing you talk. I miss kissing you.’
‘And I you.’
Silence, again. But this time, not awkward.
He takes her hand and they stand near each other in the half-light. She feels taller, more lithe, under his gaze.
‘I had hoped that this would fade,’ she says.
‘But it has not.’
‘No.’
‘I will move to another section of the fortifications,’ he says.
She clenches his hand tight.
She hears her name being called through the darkness.
‘I must go.’
And she walks away.
All through that chill autumn, Hen labours at the fort when she can. She loves it; the work brings a freedom she has never known. The tiredness at the end of each day feels blessed and profound. Each morning she wakes and relishes the absence of the question: How shall I fill my day?
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