Still, there may be a duel soon, and that will liven up the day. Rupert’s followers have humped themselves sore and drunk themselves sober since they withdrew here from their bit part in the French war with Spain. Sam is getting a bit bored, especially now the best girls have worked out that none of them have a clipped coin between them.
Prince Rupert himself, still recovering from his head wound earned in someone else’s war, grumbles and bursts into rages, so that even Sam has to remind himself that he loves his chief. They say that he’s quarrelled with his old enemy Lord Digby again, and there may be a fight. Sam has no fears for Rupert in that encounter.
But all the politicking and the grubbing for favours is making him feel shabby. And there’s not even any hunting to slough off the boredom, with the snow keeping them hemmed in this demi-England on the outskirts of Paris.
Lord, what he’d give to be in action again.
Dear Hen. She sounds so happy in her letter. The girl turns and eyes him from under her tangle of hair. She mistakes his grin for something else, sliding a leg across him. Oh well. He lays down the letter. Why not?
First they hear the tramp of boots. Hattie runs to the window at the back, which looks across the rooftops to the street behind. A troop of men, swords drawn and purposeful, surround the Overtons’ house.
‘Mary,’ she says. ‘They’ve come for her.’
Hen, there visiting, scoops baby Anne onto her lap, ignoring her wriggling. She presses her nose into Anne’s hot neck and kisses her shoulder. She is tired. All the delights of the marriage bed keep them awake late into the night. Some four weeks into their marriage and she’s still snatching at sleep during the day. Nights are for kissing and talking, for sex and the long, sated aftermath of tangled limbs and lazy conversation.
They can hear shouting, and the sound of someone crying.
‘We should see if we can help,’ says Hattie.
Hen nods, reluctant. She is selfish; she knows that. But she is so stupidly happy, she is in no hurry to tarnish her mood, to wade into someone else’s fight. Already the sounds remind her of that day they came for her father.
They grab shawls, and Hattie pops baby Anne on her hip, wrapping them both against the cold. By the time they have run down the stairs, out into the street, and up the alley behind the house, a small crowd has collected. A soldier has hold of Mary’s arm and is dragging her towards his chief. Mary holds her little baby, and two older children cling on to her skirt.
Mary looks old, frantic. She is remonstrating with her captors. Printer’s ink stains her hands and there are smudges of black on the baby’s cheeks where she has pressed away tears with inky thumbs.
‘With himself in prison, how else am I to feed the little ones? Tell me? What would you have me do? What would you have me do?’ She screams the last question, her self-control deserting her in the face of her captor’s placid face. Someone in the crowd laughs, and Hen wants to find him and slap his face so hard his eyes pop.
‘Printing this filth. What did you think would happen? Whore,’ the officer spits at her. At a command, two of his men take her and tie her to two cudgels, even though she is still holding on to her baby.
‘Stop!’ shouts Hattie. ‘Stop, you rogues. Can’t you see she is with child?’ One soldier turns to look at Hattie and then, with a casual flick of his boot, kicks Mary in the stomach as she lies there on the cudgels, feet dangling in the mud.
Claire Barker, just arrived in time to the see the kick, looks stricken. She falls to her knees in the slush and mud, and starts to pray, looking intently at Mary.
‘Hattie,’ cries Mary, sobbing still. ‘You’ll look after Dick and Martha?’ The little boy and girl, neither much past five, cling on to each other, crying. The girl looks like her mother: square-faced and dark. Tears and snot make her face glisten wetly. Hattie hands Anne to Hen and gathers in the children, pressing their wet faces into her shawl.
The soldiers begin to move off, dragging Mary behind them so she bumps and grinds across the stones and through the muddy puddles. She holds the baby above her with straight, shaking arms, trying to keep it from the filth. All around her the soldiers swear and spit.
‘Strumpet.’
‘Whore.’
‘Is that the devil’s whelp in your belly?’
‘I’ll go with her,’ says Claire, and she walks off behind the miserable cavalcade, singing a psalm with tuneless persistency.
‘Hen, I’ll take them up. You go in and gather what you can.’ Hattie takes a grubby hand from each child and leads them off. Through the open doorway, past the broken door, Hen finds the press. It has clearly been dealt some vicious blows by the soldiers. There are sheets still hanging up to dry, and elsewhere there lies a small pile of finished newsbooks. It looks like Mary had been stitching the dry sheets when the soldiers came. Sheets are trampled on the floor, torn into pieces. A newsprint charnel house.
Hen finds the children’s clothes and empties out what little she can find in the larder. She reaches for one of the drying pamphlets. Footsteps. She crumples the paper and shoves it in with the children’s things. It’s only Charlie, Claire Barker’s husband.
‘Fix the door,’ he grunts, and she nods, stepping past him on the street.
Back at Hattie’s, the two children are diving into a bowl of broth.
‘Two more to feed, Hattie?’ Hen sits next to them, Anne twisting on her lap in an attempt to get to the interesting new faces.
‘What choice did I have?’
‘True. I’ll do what I can to help.’
‘Hush, Hen. You and Will are starting out. Come and help when your mother’s jewels are not laid up in lavender. Your company is all I need. Trade’s brisk, at least. People need to eat.’
She bustles off to get the children more to eat, and Hen watches her. She wonders what it was like for Hattie before the war. Alone with her sottish, bullying husband. And now, suddenly, a noisy riot of a house with children in it, and no one to tell her when to come or go.
As Hattie turns back towards her, Hen sees the flush in her cheeks. Little Anne reaches demanding hands up to her, squawking loudly. With mock exasperation, Hattie scoops her up.
‘Can I not have a moment’s peace, little otter?’ Anne giggles, delighted, and pulls her nose. ‘Ow!’ shouts Hattie, and the little Overton children look up from the broth to smile.
Later, Claire comes back. Hattie takes one look at her face and sends the children out to feed the pigs. Anne is asleep on a cushion in the corner, arms flung above her head in complete surrender.
‘She lost the baby,’ says Claire, sitting heavily at the table.
‘Poor Mary,’ says Hen.
‘God’s will,’ says Claire.
Hattie just grunts. She’s losing patience with God’s will, Hen thinks, though they don’t speak of it. There are some subjects even the best of friends can’t touch. They tried going to one of Claire’s meetings once. Hen was excited, beforehand. Tales of the famous woman preacher abounded, of her astonishing ability to fast and speak to the Holy Spirit. But the hours spent listening to the sermons left both of them cold, unmoved by the spirit and arses aching from sitting.
Hen went hoping to hear the pure voice of God, but left bewildered. One sermon, delivered with passion by a bearded tanner, insisted that learning was the mark of the devil and that books obscure the Word. God’s truth is in the mouths of the simple and the honest, he said.
Hen shifted uncomfortably all through his long harangue. How can God despise learning? Did He not give us minds?
Afterwards, walking back with Claire, Hattie and Hen watched her bouncing joyousness with envy. Claire was so utterly filled with the glory of God, with the Holy Spirit, and with love, that she almost glowed in the dim light. But after they had dropped her off, sitting by the fire in Hattie’s hall with a cup of hot spiced wine, Hattie had turned to Hen and said in a conspiratorial whisper: ‘Is it just me, Hen, love, or was that just plain unmuzzled boring?’
Hen smiles to think of it. Outside they can hear the children laughing and the squeal of a pig being teased.
‘Blood everywhere, there was, and they wouldn’t let me clean her up,’ says Claire, and she is crying now, with a weary compassion at the misery of it all.
‘Bless your kind heart, Claire,’ says Hattie, and pats her hand.
‘I’m not surprised that they arrested her,’ says Hen. ‘The stuff she was printing! Oh my word. Levelling, no doubt. The pamphlet’s title alone: “A Regal Tyranny Uncovered”.’
She pulls out the rescued sheet and smooths it down. The ink is smudged but still legible.
‘Listen to this,’ she says.
For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and propriety – as it were writ in the table of every man’s heart, never to be obliterated – even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege; even all whereof God by nature has made him free.
Hattie whistles. ‘No wonder they came for her.’
‘It’s what the moderates like my father always feared,’ says Hen. ‘That you tip the lid off the pie and don’t like what’s inside.’
The women stand and look at the parchment. It’s terrifying – intoxicating, even – having it there. All the power punched into those words.
‘Poor, brave Mary,’ says Claire. ‘What was she thinking?’
Hattie nods. ‘Brave all right. What a thing. Read it again, Hen.’
She does, and the words’ majesty seems only to grow. Hen looks up at Hattie, the butcher’s wife, and feels the truth of it all. She shies away, frightened.
‘No mention of women,’ says Hattie.
‘It’s implied,’ says Hen. ‘Besides, who knows best about tyranny than us? The innate freedom writ in your heart, Hattie. You can think on that when your husband’s home.’
‘You think it will help when he’s got the belt out?’ She smiles, thinking it through. ‘Aye, perhaps it will help.’
Claire turns her back on the paper and walks away from it.
‘What about Mary? She was spitting fury at the prison governor,’ says Claire. ‘Accused him of “enslaving the common people of England in vassalage and bondage”. Told him he was a tyrant, a usurper. Told him he was trampling on her “laws and rights”.’
Knowing Mary, they can all imagine the scene.
‘I do admire her so,’ says Hen.
She tries to imagine what her father would make of her friendship with a levelling agitator. He is much in her mind of late. And this morning’s scenes remind her of that dreadful day four years ago when they came for him.
London, used to divisions, is more fractious than ever in the first months of Hen’s marriage. It’s a time of dissent and grand ideas. Parliament’s ongoing tussle with the army is the backdrop. Unpaid and mutinous, the army squats beyond the city walls, and those inside begin to fear that it may soon bite the hand that’s too slow to feed it.
The ‘reformadoes’ set the tone too – wandering veterans, mostly royalists, drawn to London by poverty and desperation. Alongside the usual tussle of living, there is a plague of dissent and arguing, all inflated and fed by the voracious presses. The godly, who were once themselves the dangerous thinkers, are now the moderates. It is not enough to despise the bishops and altar rails. To be dangerous means despising the very bricks of a church. It means the Holy Spirit working through the poor and the dispossessed. It means a harkening back to the rights and liberties of the English peoples, now trampled by Parliament as well as the king. And, increasingly, it can mean thoughts too dangerous to be spoken louder than a whisper. The word is there, though, floating on the currents of news and opinion that bubble around the city: Republic.
Late into the night, Will and Hen try to make sense of it all. He is sympathetic to the political independents with their insistence on finishing the war and remaking the state with limited reference to the king. He is less sympathetic to the religious independents, believing that one uniform state church, godly or otherwise, is the best route to healing the nation’s deep and festering wounds. But then, Hen counters, the call of the Holy Spirit has never meant much to him. He hurries through his prayers to reach for his star charts.
Hen’s views are more inchoate. She agrees with much of the radical thought, but shies from the consequences of the logic. It is one thing to agree with the theory that men are equal under God, but what does that mean in practice? She remembers her father’s fear of anarchy. To work out where you stand is no easy matter, especially when the ground keeps shifting.
And then, suddenly, Hen’s ground disappears from under her feet.
Hattie and Goodwife Simmonds confirm it. She is pregnant.
She hasn’t seen Goody Simmonds since their eyes met over Anne’s broken body. When the confirmation comes, Hen stands and shrugs off their concern. She is not acting how she should, she knows. She runs home to wait for Will.
Their new rooms, where he comes when not sleeping in his Temple lodgings, are in a quiet street not far from Fetter Lane. They have little stuff. One chest of linen and pewter – mostly wedding presents from his side. A bed and a table. But she loves it here, not for itself, but because it reminds her of him. He is in the air here, even when he is somewhere else. And sometimes, at night, Will sneaks out, even when he should be keeping his hours in the Temple.
She waits for him as evening approaches, not bothering to light the candles. When at last he comes in, he finds her in the dark, sitting hunched in the corner. She runs to him, burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing so violently that he has to coax it out of her.
‘But Hen, that’s wonderful!’ he says, and draws away so she can see his smile in the gloom.
She is furious, raging at his blindness. ‘Wonderful! Do you know the last thing Anne said to me? “I’m frightened,” she said. And my mother – I killed her, Will. Wonderful? You looby!’
He is aghast at her fury, visibly at a loss for what to do.
‘Inside here!’ She strikes her stomach. ‘It’s growing, do you understand? Growing. And it wants to kill me. It will try to. And then I’ll have to leave you, Will, and Hattie, and Anne. And the baby.’
‘You’re being unreasonable,’ he says, and she finds herself at a new pitch of fury. How dare he! He should carry it. Already it’s making her weak. She understands now why she feels so sick, why every day she sinks into a bone-deep weariness that no amount of sleep can relieve.
That night, they sleep at opposite corners of the big bed, both horribly aware of the cold, dark space between them.
Outside St Mary’s, knots of soldiers talk, agitated and passionate. Ned wants to be alone and so walks down to the shore. The water this far upstream, at Putney, is somewhat clear. It is yet to reach the sewage and stink of London. There’s a metaphor there, but Ned can’t quite grasp it. His head is all raddled with claim and counter-claim. Arguments spin, befuddling him.
Suddenly, a voice behind him. ‘Well, Ned. I don’t know about you, but I feel as though my head is doused in sack.’
It is Captain Shelby, from Whalley’s regiment. They became friendly in Bristol after the siege two years past.
Ned shakes his hand, glad to see him. ‘Well, John. And where do you stand?’
‘Lord alone knows. When the levelling officers speak, I am all fired up. Did you hear Colonel Rainsborough? “I think the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.” I hear that and the fire in my belly shouts, yes! This is what we have fought for. This is God’s providence. A vote for each man, justice for all, freedom of conscience. And then I hear Ireton railing that such thoughts will lead to anarchy, that property rights and political franchise must go hand in hand, and my head convinces me he is right, and I pull back.’
Ned nods. He feels this sway too. Three days of debates – called by F
airfax and Cromwell – to hear the growing swell of dissent within the army, men and officers both. The arguments pull back and forth in an orgy of passionate rhetoric. No man here can doubt that they are arguing for England’s future. A strange triumvirate is at play in the search for peace: King, Parliament and Army. The king, now held by the army, is obstinate yet slippery. He is backed into a corner, alone, and yet seems bent on engineering a stalemate. He agrees terms with one face and scoffs them with another. Parliament is crippled by factionalism, exasperated by the king and frightened of the army it created. Its attempt in the summer to disband the army brought the soldiers down on London. And though they showed their customary restraint, the tramp of their boots down the Strand echoed from the Tower to Westminster. And now, on this brisk autumn day in the year of our Lord 1647, here is the army, camped not six miles from Westminster, debating its very soul and the terms on which it will look to peace.
‘My father,’ says Ned, ‘used to say that no matter how much you love both sides of the coin, when it is spinning, you have to call it.’
‘He called it wrong, as I recall.’
‘Yes, but his thinking was sound. The coin is spinning, John. We have to choose.’
‘Well, Ned, I choose to fight for my arrears of pay, and my men’s, and leave the politicking to others. I want to go home, Ned.’
‘But if all the good men leave the politicking to others, we are left with fools and knaves.’
Shelby nods his agreement. They watch Colonel Rainsborough walk past. The highest ranking of the Leveller officers is passionate, battle-hard and fierce. The men love him. ‘He is neither fool nor knave,’ says Ned.
‘You served with Holles?’ Shelby asks.
He nods. Denzil Holles, who stood beside him at Edgehill, is now the prime mover in the MPs’ bid to disband the army. If a man like Holles, who Ned admires, wants them broken up, there must be something to his side of the argument.
‘He’s a good man, John. He argues that all the apparatus set up to fight the war – the parliamentary committees and the local committees – are contrary to the spirit of liberty and hatred of arbitrary power that led us to war in the first place.’
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