‘Not to the man, perhaps, but to his state. What are we without order, child, but savages? I wanted you to be safe in an ordered world. Instead . . .’ He trails off. Then suddenly, rainbow-like, he smiles, and the rarity of that once familiar act brings tears rushing into Hen’s eyes.
‘The indignity of it, my pudding,’ he says quietly through his smile. ‘It is cruel to be hanged as a pawn at the start of the game. If I am to be hanged, I could have at least played the knight’s part.’ He laughs, incredulous. ‘I thought I was a rook, pudding, that’s the joke. And yet I was a pawn all along.’
He takes her face in both his hands and looks into it, as if searching for something. ‘Don’t let anyone make a pawn of you. The brightest and best of all my children,’ he says. ‘And you a girl.’
He kisses her. ‘Did Will ever tell you, or show you, how to look at the sun?’
She starts at Will’s name on her father’s lips.
‘No, Father.’
‘You cannot look at it straight on. Turns you blind. You must project it onto paper. I have been thinking much of that, in here. No man can look at his own soul, look straight at it with no tricks or artifice, without running mad. So we tell ourselves our own story, and make ourselves heroic, and tell our hearts lies about our baser actions. We project our souls onto paper and garnish the results with bravery or kindness. We have to believe our own stories, pudding.’
He stands and paces to the window, peering out. He stretches a hand through the opening until it finds the sunlight.
‘It’s a gift, in a way, pudding, to know that death is coming. I can feel it breathing on me. And I’m looking at my soul, as straight as I can.’
He stops speaking, and she sees the fat tears rolling down his face. She jumps up and pushes herself into his arms, pressing her head into his chest.
He whispers into her hair: ‘And I’ve failed. Oh Lord, how I’ve failed.’
The door opens, banging against the wall, and Sam walks in. He is drawn and pale. He brings with him the stale, hoppy tang of the tavern.
‘No word from Ned?’ asks Sam at once.
They both shake their heads. The three stand and look at each other. Ned’s absence makes a triangle, where by rights there should be a square. We are aligned all wrong, thinks Hen. No symmetry. She thinks of Will, suddenly, sketching out the universe’s thirst for harmony, for parallels. The heavens yearn for beauty, and we blight Earth with our ugliness.
‘The army is close enough. We should have heard by now.’ Sam’s voice is heavy, dripping with hurt and anger.
Hen looks at her father, who lays a hand on his son’s shoulder.
‘It is no great wonder that Ned is silent. You have guessed, Sam, and you, my clever cat, that it was Ned who betrayed me.’
‘No!’ She shouts it, even though his words speak to some unacknowledged truth that lies hidden in her mind. ‘No.’
‘Who else?’
‘No,’ she repeats again, quietly, as if the repetition will make her will become the truth. She looks at Sam’s sullen face, and knows that he believes it. And the three of them sit in silence for a time, watching the shadows lengthen on the walls.
The next morning, Sam and Hen are waiting outside Oliver Chettle’s office when the young lawyer arrives for work. A whistle dies on his lips as he sees them standing there, and he looks nervously over his shoulder as he ushers them inside. He is all courtesy, but his unease is obvious.
‘I should tell you I have been asked to help prepare the case against your father,’ he says, as soon as he decently can. ‘I will decline, on the grounds of knowing the family. But it may not be so easy to avoid.’
Hen sits in a proffered chair. She is light with hunger.
Sam says: ‘It is kind of you to see us, sir. We do understand, in these times . . .’
Chettle nods. ‘But I’m not sure how I can help.’
Hen breaks in. ‘We do not understand what Father faces. No one will talk to us.’
Chettle squirms a little in his chair. If Hen had any space for laughter left, she would raise a smile at his visible discomfort.
‘Miss Challoner. How blunt do you want me to be?’
‘Blunt.’ She pulls herself upright in the chair. ‘I am not a child, nor am I a fool. If you sugar-spin your words, I shall not thank you for it.’
‘Very well.’ He stands and paces.
‘This is unofficial, you understand. This conversation is entirely hypothetical.’
Sam and Hen nod.
‘It seems, from what I understand, that there is little doubt as to your father’s involvement in some level of royalist plotting. The question is how far does it go. And a deeper question is how far does Parliament want it to go.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Sam.
Chettle looks at him, before continuing slowly and deliberately.
‘Stroud is a new man, and ambitious. He has a direct line to Pym’s ear. There are some awkward decisions looming. Your father, and Tompkins and Waller, are public moderates. It would be –’ he pauses, searching for the right word – ‘convenient for prominent moderates to be unmasked as active royalists, and your father and his friends have played into their hands.’
‘You are saying it may not matter how far the plot has gone, but only how far it can be perceived to have gone,’ Hen says.
Chettle nods again, his lawyerly mask slipping a little to reveal some unexpected compassion.
She sits back in her chair, closing her eyes. ‘Like the plague-sore,’ she whispers.
Sam looks confused. ‘Plague-sore?’
‘No matter. Lay it out bald for us, Mr Chettle.’
‘The best outcome? Lengthy imprisonment in the Tower, and a sequestration order on his estates.’
Sam grips the table. ‘And the worst?’
Chettle mumbles. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ says Hen firmly. ‘Explain sequestration orders, if you please, Mr Chettle.’
‘The sequestration committee will issue an order. Your assets – in this case the house and any liquid capital – will be seized for the duration of the order. The house will be leased, and Parliament will take the profit. And any profit from the assets of the business.’
‘There will be no profits from the business while Father is imprisoned,’ says Sam. ‘His business is the sum of his character and enterprise. Without his person, there are no profits.’
Chettle spreads his hands. ‘The orders work better on the gentry, whose income derives primarily from land rents. Less messy for the committee.’
‘Lord forbid we should make things messy for the committee,’ says Sam.
Hen stands. ‘Thank you, Mr Chettle.’
‘You are going?’
‘You have been very helpful. But we must leave you to your business now.’
‘I am sorry,’ he says as he opens the door.
She looks up at him. ‘Yes. Yesterday, we were rich. Today we are homeless, penniless, and possibly fatherless. I believe I am sorry too. Good day, Mr Chettle.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
July 1643
IN ONE WEEK, THEY WILL HANG HIM. THEY WILL CUT DOWN HIS still twitching body and pull his insides out in front of his eyes. He will be butchered, like a pig before a feast. All that he is, and was, will be reduced to a pile of still-warm flesh, the skin addled by knives. And what of his soul? Oh Lord, look after his dear soul.
Since the council of war pronounced its verdict, Hen has been struggling to stay standing. She feels as if the world is turning faster, spinning beneath her feet with incredible ferocity to carry her inexorably towards the gallows day. She is losing her balance, and time rushes on despite her prayers.
The gibbet will be built outside their house, so her father can look towards his own front door as the rope drains the breath from his body. Tompkins will be hung outside his house in Cheapside. And Waller? Waller is now standing in Parliament, speaking for his life, as Sam watches from the ga
llery.
She wanders, listless, around St Paul’s churchyard. She tries, now and then, to pick up a book. Books have always been her crutch and passion. Yet now she cannot concentrate. The words swim. Life is too raw, too real, to be forgotten in lines of ink. She wonders, idly, if she will ever recover her love of books. She thinks of the girl who sat, curled in cushions and lost in words, and does not recognize her. A stranger.
Suddenly, as if by wishing it, Will stands in front of her. Will. He runs an ink-stained hand through his hair and grins uncertainly at her. There, under the shadow of St Paul’s tall spire, amid the chatter of the customers and the patter of the booksellers, is her beloved. She smiles back at him. They are silent for a heartbeat she can hear pulsing in her head.
‘William!’ A new voice, sharp and sour.
Will starts and half turns.
‘Mother,’ he says, and Hen looks over to where a black-clad woman with pulled-back hair is staring at her with naked hostility.
‘This is my mother, Sarah Johnson,’ says Will. ‘Mother, this is Henrietta Challoner.’
Hen notes the absence of explanation, and Sarah’s bristling at her name. The women greet each other, wary. Hen looks curiously at the older woman. It’s like reading an oracle, which tells her how Will could look when bitterness and time have tattooed their legacy on his face.
‘I heard about your father,’ says Will. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘There are some books he wants you to have.’
‘How very kind,’ says Mrs Johnson. ‘Have them sent to William’s rooms, by all means, Miss Challoner.’
Hen drops her head into a bow. ‘What brings you to London, Mrs Johnson?’
‘Just visiting my boy. Seeing how his studies go. Such a mountain of work he has, Miss Challoner. Such an age before he will be qualified. Such a life of toil and penny-pinching. He needs a mother’s care, once in a while.’
Will squirms. Hen tries not to laugh too openly at the older woman.
‘He is lucky, I am sure,’ she says mildly.
Then, suddenly, it is too much – Will’s passivity, his mother’s protective hostility. I cannot, thinks Hen, be bothered with any of this. I am too tired. None of it matters. Let her hate me; let him flounder.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘I will send the books. And now I must be home. My brother Sam will be waiting. You have not heard from Ned, Mr Johnson?’
‘No, not for an age.’
‘No, well. Goodbye, Mrs Johnson. And Mr Johnson.’
Mrs Johnson bobs a slight curtsy. She barely bothers to hide her relief as Hen turns away to walk down Ludgate Hill.
Once, Hen turns back to see them looking at her, Will’s mother talking to the side of her son’s face, which is set in a mask of hopeless misery. She turns her back on them and walks down the hill, striding under her skirts as if she’s wearing Sam’s breeches.
At home, she sits in the garden, waiting for Sam to return and tell her about Waller’s speech. The sun is hot, and the sweat prickles up her back, and in all the folds and creases of her body. Sweat-slick skin. A sign of life. The dead don’t sweat.
The garden, her father’s pride, is overgrown and thick with weeds. Old Benny has not been seen since the arrests. She plays briefly with the idea of working herself, pulling up some weeds and rescuing the suffocating plants. But to what end? He will not come here again. He will not see the garden from his gibbet. Someone else will sit here soon; someone who pays Parliament rent to sit in her dead father’s garden and sleep in his bed. Let that someone pull up the weeds.
She puts her head back and lets the sun burn her face. Silence from Ned. She will not think about Will.
Her father has asked her not to come. He is, she understands, marshalling his courage for a final meeting. He will send for her.
Her stomach rumbles, angry at her listlessness. Cook has gone to a new post, taking Milly and Wayneman the boy. She has known them her entire life; practically grown up with Milly. Yet they slipped out of her life with barely a glance backwards. Only Nurse and Harmsworth remain, waiting for the end. They each keep to themselves, avoiding each other on the stairs, raiding the fast disappearing stores in the pantry and eating alone. Like mice rattling around an empty house. Hen listens at doors to check the corridors are empty before scurrying out. She cannot face seeing Nurse. She saw her face when she brought home news of the trial, and it was different, suddenly: middle-aged, lost, scared. Hen needs to hold on to her hatred; she has no room for this unexpected surge of pity for her tormentor.
In this upside-down house, Hen is looking after Grandmother – badly. She feeds her and cleans her. She empties her bedpan and puts lard on her sores, and tries not to think as she does it. If she listens to herself, she will hear screaming. ‘Let go, old woman. Please, let go.’
But Grandmother will not let go. Mute and unblinking, she somehow wills herself to stay alive. Her fear of the afterlife is stronger than her despair at her half-life.
Hen thinks back to the pronouncement of the sentence, and how her father crumpled as if he’d been struck. The case against him had been compelling. Stroud convinced all who listened that Tompkins, Waller and Challoner had been planning an audacious royalist coup. They were to seize the king’s children and arrest a clutch of leading parliamentarians, including the Lord Mayor. They were to seize the Tower, and the forts, and the magazines, and arrange to let the king’s army through the gates to take London.
‘To awe and master the parliament! That was their despicable aim!’ So Stroud thundered to the murmured sound of disapproval, no matter how vehement the denials. No matter how much her father shook his greying head and tried to protest.
She remembers Stroud’s triumph at the sentence. And with even greater animosity, she remembers Pym’s face. Quiet, disinterested satisfaction. The pawns are taken, and King Pym’s position bolstered. She wanted to shout at him, to jolt him out of his detachment. In my game, he is not a pawn, but a man. He likes singing bawdy songs, and drinking Rhenish wine. He likes snow, and summer picnics. He loves my brothers and me, and he keeps a portrait of my mother in a locket. He is not fucking moulded from ivory, for you to tip over at your whim.
Then they led her father away, and she heard him shout: ‘Be brave, my pudding. And look after your brothers.’
She nodded, holding on to Sam’s hand, willing herself not to cry until he was gone.
She cries now, alone in the garden. A light smattering of tears: she has exhausted her well of sobs. Her throat is permanently dry, and her head aches. And still no word from Ned. Ned – a Judas? Please God, no. But why does he not write, at least?
Time passes. She knows this by the lengthening shadows and the gathering chill in the air. Perhaps she sleeps. Perhaps she just sits, trying to hear the world turning.
Sam flops down beside her on the bench. She leans into him. He is so alive, Sam. So warm and pulsing. She fancies she can feel the strength of his heart through his skin. She feels like she is drowning, and the pressure of his skin on hers is all that keeps her from slipping under the waves. She closes her eyes, imagining herself as a river corpse, floating down the Thames to be caught and buffeted by the eddies at London Bridge. What a release it would be. She imagines surrendering herself to the waves, the ecstasy of it.
Sam is silent. The trial has robbed him of his exuberance. He is a quieter, soberer boy. She can see Ned in him now, where once there was only wonder at the boys being related at all.
‘Well,’ he says heavily. ‘It was as we thought. Waller grovelled, bowed and scraped. His tongue was so far lodged up Pym’s arse you could see it poking out the man’s navel.’
‘And?’
‘The word is that it has worked. It helps that his cousin is John Hampden, the darling of the House, and now martyr. You heard, Hen, that Hampden was killed by Prince Rupert’s men at Chalgrove just weeks ago. Waller wears his dead cousin’s shroud as armour. Waller is back to the Tower. But it is reckoned that is only a s
top-gap, and a fat fine will see him free.’
‘Can we not muster a fat fine for Father?’
‘Too late. The council has condemned him, and besides, I heard more talk at Westminster today.’
‘Well?’
His voice is harsh and distant. ‘Pym is preparing a new oath. One to be sworn by all in Parliament. It will demand allegiance to the reforms, and vilify crypto-royalists.’
‘Those who are not with us must be against us? So there will be no place for moderates?’
‘No. Those who refuse to vow will be forced out, to join the king, perhaps. Those who would have liked to play pig in the middle will be forced to align themselves with Pym and his people. Once committed, they cannot row backwards.’
Hen digests the news. ‘It’s as Oliver Chettle warned us. Pym is using this plot for a political surge.’
‘Indeed. So someone has to remain guilty. And if it is not Waller . . .’
They sit in silence for a while, Hen fighting to master her anger.
Then, at last, it comes, as she knew it would.
‘I must go, Hen,’ he says. ‘To Oxford.’
‘Not to Essex’s army then.’
He grunts. ‘You joke. Parliament is to kill our father. We all have our scales, Hen. Ned weighed Father’s liberty against his conscience. I must use my own measures. Tip the Church, altar rails, Parliament’s prerogatives, ship money and the king’s weaknesses in one side. Add anything else you like: Catholic plots, evil counsellors and meddling queens. Tip it all in, and place our father’s murdered body on the other side of the scales, and see which sinks fastest. No. To Oxford, Hen, to throw myself on the king’s side. And one day, I shall stand in Westminster and stick daggers in the bastards’ yellow bellies.’
Hen nods. ‘Will you not stay until after?’
‘After? No. I want to go now. Get stuck in. I want a sword, a pike, a musket. Anything. I want it, so wholly, so completely, that I’m sorry, Hen, but you cannot stop me. I ask only your blessing.’
‘That you have, of course, Sam.’
‘And you?’
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