‘The committees are as bad as the king.’
‘Exactly. Arbitrary taxes and levies – just the same, but in a new guise. Yet he cannot dismantle the committees without dismantling the army they service.’
‘But we must be paid first,’ says Shelby. ‘If they won’t pay us with swords in our hands, why should they pay us when we have laid them down?’
Ned nods. ‘But there is no money,’ he says.
‘Lord, Ned, are you on their side?’
He protests not. Protests his loyalty to the army. But he is in a muddle. And there is only one point of clarity in his thinking: the king. Everyone talks of the liberty of the English people; the king, the army grandees, the MPs, the Levellers, the radical sectaries, the prophets, the Anglicans – each defines it differently. Ned sees the tangle of thoughts and ideas like a Gordian knot, smothering the chance of a settlement, strangling peace. One sword could cut through it. What if, Ned whispers to himself, that sword took the king’s head? Because unless the king disappears, they will be beating each other about the heads with blunt edges until the Second Coming. But who can kill a king but God?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
November 1647
ON A CHILL NOVEMBER DAY, NED STANDS BY SIR PHILLIP Skippon as the army grandees lose patience with the levelling soldiers.
The king has escaped from Hampton Court. No one knows where he is. The army is mutinous, grumbling. But the officers, by and large, have forsaken the men. The king first, grievances second. Fairfax has called for seven regiments to assemble at Corkbush Field. Two more arrive, against clear orders and without officers, waving a copy of their latest demands: ‘An Agreement of the People’. The soldiers have copies of the agreement in their hats. Close up, the black type can be seen clearly: ‘England’s freedoms, soldiers rights’.
The mutinous regiments know they have crossed a line. The men are defiant, but clearly nervous. For a moment, they contemplate each other, men and officers. Silence hangs over the field. Next to Ned, Skippon’s horse blows through its nose, and its impatient hooves rake the frosty turf.
It is Cromwell who breaks them. Cromwell, filled with a spluttering fury, who charges in among them, sword drawn, grabbing copies of the agreement and trampling it underfoot. He is puce with anger, his ugly face transformed. Such is his righteousness, his reputation and his air of carrying Providence in his palm, they crumble a little before him. He is a one-man forlorn hope, carving a path for his allies to come in behind him and round up the Leveller ringleaders, swords drawn. Without their leaders, the men lose heart and sink a little lower to the ground.
Fairfax and Cromwell are implacable. They work together, those two – the fox and the toad. The Leveller ringleaders are told to draw lots in front of the army for the one who will be scapegoated.
Watching the lot-drawing is as good as a play. The first man steps up, trembling and white, reeling backwards in exaggerated relief as his lot comes out long and thin. The second pulls himself forward, will trumping fear. Long. The third looks younger than the others. He’s a private too. He pulls. Short. His face crumples with disbelief. That his life could be pierced by so slender, so tiny a stick, makes no sense to him.
Cromwell himself strides forward and grabs him by the wrist, forcing him against a post his troopers have driven into the ground. The private looks wildly about him, as if there has been some terrible mistake. He sees only the solemn faces of his comrades, silently watching. To give him credit, he straightens his back and looks straight ahead.
‘England’s freedoms—’ he starts to shout, but Cromwell nods and the muskets fire a ragged volley that cuts him short mid-word.
He falls to the floor, and Cromwell turns to face the rebel regiments. Bullish, pugnacious, he stands there in an unspoken challenge. They turn away.
By the end of the year, Hen is reconciled to the life inside her. She talks to it, on quiet evenings, singing sometimes and beating out time on her belly. Will laughs at her, calling her cracked. She sings and thrums, and lies listlessly through short winter days, waiting for her fate. She has resolved to meet it firmly, to walk towards her own gibbet with her head high.
Hattie visits often, pulling a tottering baby Anne up the stairs to Hen’s rooms, where she climbs where she shouldn’t and pokes fingers into every crevice. They talk about childbirth obsessively. Hattie says that fear makes the pain worse. Hen smiles, but wonders, then what is she to do? She is afraid, so the pain will be worse, so she is more afraid.
‘You’ll be there, Hattie?’ she asks, endlessly and urgently.
‘Of course, Hen. Of course.’
When the day comes, and her pains start, they come on slowly. She finds herself unexpectedly giggling at the ebb of each contraction when she registers Will’s face set in exaggerated concern. Hattie arrives at last. Baby Anne has been deposited on Mary Overton, freed from prison for now, and eager to repay the moral debts accumulated last time.
Hattie bustles into the room, kisses Will and sends him away. She kneels in front of Hen, who finds that leaning over the back of a great chair gives some relief. Hattie holds on to her hands, looking at her anxiously.
‘Well now, how is it?’
‘Smarts a bit,’ says Hen.
Hattie laughs. Hen snorts with laughter too, just as another wave takes her down. Somehow, though, the pain is a relief after all the waiting. As the night moves on, the room fills with the gossips. They chivvy her and try to make her laugh. Lucy is there, and Frances Cooke, and Will’s sister Beatrice, newly married to another London lawyer and wide-eyed at Hen’s pain. Two or three of her new neighbours come by, bearing sweets and biscuits, spiced wines and hot possets.
Hen walks around the room – she finds that moving helps. The groaning stool sits in the corner, but she’s not ready for it yet.
‘Taking its time, this one,’ says Frances towards dawn.
‘What size is your brother’s head, Beatrice?’
‘It’s not his head she’ll worry about after this one.’
‘Easy, honey, easy,’ says Hattie as Hen crumples under a fresh wave of pain. They are closer together now, and strong, so strong. The midwife, fresh from another birth, arrives.
‘Just in time,’ says Hattie.
‘Well. Full moon. They pop like spawn this time of month. She’s lucky I didn’t just go home to bed, that tired I am.’
Hen stifles a scream. She hops from foot to foot. It’s a terrible burning now. She lies on her back, and the midwife brings a candle between her legs. It’s worse lying down, and Hen is racked with pain.
‘I can’t. I can’t. Make it stop.’
‘They always say that when it’s near.’
‘It’s not. It wants to kill me. Hattie. Make it stop.’
‘Hush, now. Hush. I can see the head. The head, girl.’
Hattie and the midwife lift her by the elbows and take her to the stool, where she squats and howls. She is a beast, an animal. She watches them cajole her with feral, detached eyes.
‘Now, girl,’ says the midwife.
‘Now, Hen. Go on, my darling. Push it out.’
Hen feels as if her body is pushing itself inside out, as if a sharp blaze of light, star-like, is burning its way down her back and through her groin. The star turns inside her; she can feel it. A sudden new pain, sharper than the rest, splits her between the thighs. She screams for her God, calling His name, begging Him for His mercy.
‘There! There!’ Hattie is near weeping with excitement, and the gossips crowd round, urging her on, a shrill chorus.
A slithering, a wetness, and it is done. Here comes a surge of joy as strong as the pain. The midwife lifts it up, and she sees its face as if she’s always known it, scrunching up for a scream.
‘A boy!’ the cry goes up. ‘A boy!’
Later, towards noon, they all file out, flush with the joy of watching this tiny miracle. They kiss her, one by one, Hattie last. He’s swaddled in Hen’s arms, and she can barely raise her eye
s from his face long enough to say goodbye. He snuffles and sniffs the unfamiliar air.
‘Shall I send him in?’ Hattie asks.
‘Who?’
‘Will, you looby!’
Will! He rushes in, unshaven, red-eyed, and pauses suddenly on seeing them. He looks ridiculously young, and she finds herself laughing at his face, at its peculiar mix of awe and excitement. She looks down to their baby’s sleeping face and traces his father in his oddly malleable features. Hen looks from one to the other and feels a surge of love so powerful it can only escape her exhausted body in silent sobs. And then there were three, she thinks.
Will takes a hesitant step forward. He is so male, he must feel out of step in this room, steeped as it is in all the mysteries of birth and pain.
‘A boy!’ he says in a hushed voice.
‘Did you expect a cat?’ asks Hen, smiling as the tears stream down. He sits down next to her on the bed and folds his arms round both of them.
When war breaks out again in the spring, Hen is furious. She takes it personally, as if the machinations of kings and grandees and the movements of armies are all designed to compromise the safety of baby Richard. She is pleased that there is no money, so she has to nurse him herself. Wrapped in a bed with him feeding, his limbs limp with pleasure, she curses everyone involved.
Across London there is a weariness and sadness. When will things be ever be normal again?
Burying her nose in his neck, wallowing in the smell of him, she whispers: ‘How can you smell sweet and sharp all at the same time, hey, baby? Like a blackberry. My blackberry baby. Hey, hey, I will keep you safe, my blackberry.’ And there it is. She kisses him guiltily. Her first lie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Summer 1648
SAM’S FAVOURITE SPOT IS THE BOWSPRIT. HE STANDS EASILY now, practised in riding the waves. He is halfway along, the sprit narrow under his feet, and the white-flecked water rushing underneath. His hand grips on to a rope, or a sheet, or a stay, or whatever it is these absurd sailors call it. He flexes his knees and spreads his toes inside his boots, finding his balance without thinking, laughing as the spray rains down on his bare head.
‘Huzzah!’ he shouts at the sea. ‘Huzzah!’ His voice is whipped away by the wind, which pulls and tugs at his shirt, and buffets his face. Lord, how he loves it. The ship, gallant thing, rises to meet a fearsome wave, trembling at the top of it, before crashing down the other side, threatening a dunking. Air whooshes in his stomach, putting him in mind of the swifts that danced over Marston Moor.
It’s like riding a charger over a fence that’s too high. These are choppy seas in the channel. The sailors tell tales of waves the size of palaces, which toss the boat like a child’s top. I’d like to see that, thinks Sam. The sailors think he’s cracked, standing out here in rough weather. The ones whose job it is to furl the heavy sails along the sprit grumble about him. They call the sprit the widow-maker, and curse him for his joy in their penance. But the devil take them. He relishes this heady rush of wind and sea and fear.
He leaves aside the thoughts that plague him; that plague them all. This ragtag navy, which mutinied against its parliament, and now carries the Prince of Wales across the sea, is scarcely fit for the job. There is bad blood already between the mariners who sail the ships and the gentlemen who will fight them – largely those loyal to Rupert.
Behind him, the sailors go about their unfathomable and endless tasks, knotting things and cleaning things and climbing things. Out here, there is only the rushing of water and air. It is the nearest place to heaven that Sam can imagine. I wonder, thinks Sam, if this is what Ned is seeking from his God. This joy! He realizes that he is crying – the wind is pulling the tears from his eyes. He throws his head back and laughs at the sky.
Ned grunts with a kind of pleasure as his sword finds flesh and pierces through it. Each kill, each stricken royalist, each gutted Scot, each spitted Kentish traitor is proof. The Lord is smiling upon us again. We are His saints marching to His wars. His angels are at our wings; His breath is in our hearts. And we will prevail, again and again.
Afterwards, as the battle heat grows tepid, they talk. There is only one explanation for their tumult and bickering last year, and for this glorious winning certainty now. Last year they were talking to the man of blood, Charles, and God had turned his face from them. This year they are fighting, and God is with them again. Hugh Peter, Cromwell’s own chaplain, says that kingship is craved only by the weak and the fallible. What man would set himself up in opposition to God and call himself a king? The state itself is sinful. Did Gideon not say to the Israelites: ‘I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you.’
At Putney last year, even Cromwell had warned against imagining fancies and calling them God’s will. But this summer he has no misgivings.
They win battle after battle. They crush all before them. His glory shines on them. His will is clear. At prayer meetings, Ned watches grizzled veterans cry. He watches them raise their hands to the sky, thanking the Lord for His benevolence, for His choice of them as His saints. They decry the king as a false idol, a usurper of the Lord’s rightful authority. The Lord has chosen them to bring him low. They sing psalms of joy with the blood still crusted on their swords. Ned too cries without shame when the Spirit comes to them, standing shoulder to shoulder with his brothers.
Hen props Blackberry up with some cushions, watching for his easy, familiar smile. Rewarded, she turns back to Hattie and Mary Overton. They have created a prison for baby Anne and Mary’s youngest, trapping them behind a table against a wall with some spoons and pots to bash. They talk over the noise.
‘Now,’ says Hen. ‘Let me look.’
She reads the sheet they have given her.
‘Perfect,’ she says. She suggests one or two changes and then reads it out.
‘Since we are assured of our creation in the image of God, and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportionable share in the freedoms of this Commonwealth, we cannot but wonder and grieve that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to petition or represent our grievances to this honourable House.’
She pauses, looking at Hattie and Mary. They return her gaze. This is powerful stuff. She feels giddy suddenly, as if the ground ahead of her has fallen away unexpectedly. The phrase spins. Equal unto men. Equal.
She looks down and the words scramble across the page. She takes a deep breath and continues reading: ‘Have we not an equal interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and the other good laws of the land?’
She lays down the document and the three of them lean back. It sits between them, and they all stare at it.
‘They will not listen,’ says Hattie.
‘And does that mean we should not speak?’ Mary’s frustration can sometimes spill into aggression, and Hen lays a placatory hand on her arm.
‘Of course not.’
She makes a decision. She does not look over at Blackberry, but she knows exactly where he is.
‘I will help you,’ she says. ‘But I will not sign it.’
Hattie looks shocked, and Mary is cross.
‘It is Will,’ she says. ‘I will not harm his prospects just when he is starting to gain a name.’
They cajole and entreat her, but she sticks to the story. They all know it is a lie, but they are fond enough of her not to bring it into the open. At last they leave, and she gathers up Blackberry, crying into his back so he cannot see her tears.
‘I will not leave you,’ she tells him. Shame and fear rack her. She has been tested, called to stand up for her beliefs. And she has failed.
On the day of the army’s purge of Parliament, Hen huddles inside, curtains drawn, lying on the floor and playing with Blackberry. Ned warned them it was coming. The soldiers are lining the streets of Westminster, turning away MPs who still want to talk to the man Charle
s. His new war is dead, his navy sent scuttling back to Holland. And still they want to talk to him. England’s rivers flow red, its fields are soggy with blood, and still he lives and plots and schemes.
She agrees with Ned. The king must be held to account. Will thinks so too. She wishes that they would find their bollocks, these men, and just assassinate the king. Play the Brutus and strike him until his own blood runs in atonement. But they say now that there must be a trial, that the king must be openly accused of his crimes, so all the world knows that tyranny will not go unpunished. The glory of Parliament is at stake, they say.
She shivers, imagining how London will be if the trial happens. She imagines the violence on the streets, the threats gathering in shadows as the men play their daft legal games.
When did she become so frightened? She watches the blue veins scribbled under Blackberry’s translucent scalp. She did not understand before how love can incapacitate you. She starts at shadows; she reaches for Blackberry in the night just to hear his breathing.
Is that the soldiers’ boots she can hear? She fancies she can see the walls trembling. Blackberry starts crying and fussing, pulling at his ear. She settles him onto her breast for a feed, listening for sounds of danger. He gives her a half-smile, still feeding. She smiles back, but it doesn’t reach much further than her lips.
How can there not be a reckoning? How can the three Challoner children be unscathed when so many are dead? How can Blackberry be alive and thriving when so many others wither as soon as the cord is clamped? She has started to believe that God must be saving something for them, some terrible retribution for their luck. How did Job stand upright? How did he not just curl into a ball and whimper?
Blackberry rolls off her breast and sighs, contented and entirely secure. She wraps him up and climbs out of the bed, leaving him swaddled on the blanket. Automatically she checks for the rise and fall of his chest.
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