‘I cannot account for the sins of my forebears,’ Robert replies carefully, his voice even against my taunt. ‘Though I would remind you, my lady, as the keen student of history you are, that your great-great-great uncle’s fall from King Henry’s favour was hardly the fault of my great-great-great-grandfather.’ He counts the ‘greats’ with elaborate nods of his head, emphasising the passing years.
‘That may be.’ I incline my head. ‘But doesn’t patronage in turn deserve loyalty? Thomas Cromwell did not abandon his sponsor Cardinal Wolsey on his debasement. And he could perhaps have expected the same loyalty meted out to him from his protégé Richard Rich.’
I see Robert take in a breath before turning away from me, his eyes now the ones focusing on the middle distance as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. ‘It is a long time ago now, my lady. And besides,’ he continues, speaking softly, his voice smooth as if to calm a restless horse, ‘the lesson I draw from our families’ tangled past is that, under propitious circumstances, an alliance between a Rich and a Cromwell is a formidable partnership indeed.’
His words stop all noise from the room for me and I am flattened by the wall of silence. I hear my breath loud beneath my stays, feel my breasts swell over the lace-edged top of my corset. I am struck by a sudden desire to reach out and touch his face, to run my finger along his jaw and turn his noble profile to face me. The urge unbalances me and I bury it in anger. I cannot let him see the effect his words have had on me. Who is he to sneer at me or make love to me? I cannot tell which this is but either is astonishingly presumptuous.
I paste a smile onto my powdered face. ‘I believe my father will be considering our family’s alliances even more carefully now that there is the possibility of his becoming king,’ I say quickly. ‘Were I to become a princess, indeed, I may find that the noblemen of England – perhaps even the princes of Europe – pay suit to me, enabling me to dispense with your most generous match-making services.’ I glance at him, hoping to see evidence that his supercilious attitude to me and my family is for once bested.
Robert, still gazing over the crowd, stiffens and stills; his veneer, buffed always to the brightest shine, dulls. ‘To become a princess may be your girlish heart’s desire, Lady Frances,’ he says sideways to me, his voice hard and quiet as a sword’s blade cutting through the air, ‘but I would not be heard boasting of such a happening. The army will never let your father accept the crown: the generals would resign, the men rebel. You may mark my words.’
Robert turns towards me then, sweeping into a low bow of farewell. As he rises out of the gesture, he concludes his rebuke, blue eyes piercing mine:
‘Your Highness would do well to remember God’s warning that pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’
And with that solemn invocation of Scripture, so strange to hear on his honeyed lips, he is gone.
Robert’s words haunt me at night and hound me into silence in the day. I toy with confessing them to Mary, or perhaps to Katherine, but I am too uncertain of the rightness of my own behaviour; aware more and more with each passing day that my own imagined fears of Robert’s disdain caused me to stain myself red with false pride, just as he had said. Kneeling beside Mary night after night, I pray silently for God’s guidance and wonder if this is the first time I have offered Him an unspoken prayer, directly from my thoughts to His and hidden from Mary.
I have never felt so confused and so exposed, have never before argued with anyone outside my own siblings, and hardly ever with them. Without Mother to arbitrate, wiping cool tears and pressing hot brows, I am at a loss how to proceed. I am chastened further when I learn from Bridget – paying her weekly, private visit to us at Whitehall – that Charles and ninety-nine other army officers had gone in force to Father to persuade him not to take the crown. Father, she tells us, did not react well to such an intervention, hotly demanding what right the generals had to interfere in politics.
Robert had been right.
We are all, thus, in a fractious mood as we travel down to Hampton Court – this week by road in our heavily guarded coaches – glad to leave the tense atmosphere at Whitehall and Westminster behind us for a few days. While Parliament is locked in its debates on kingship and the army leaders fume at Somerset House, we close members of the family and court will escape to read and sew, sing, sup, hunt and hawk. In our midst, Father and his Council of State grind on with the daily business of government: considering charity endowments, grants for schools and universities, pensions for soldiers and their widows, the renewal of leases on government property, knotty problems brought from Ireland and Scotland, requests from our overseas territories. A stream of traffic passes across Father’s great desk: notes and letters, tax tariffs and schedules, government accounts and balance sheets, contracts, maps, building plans, petitions … His work is endless.
I look for Robert as soon as we are settled and unpacked, but he is not in the Great Hall for dinner, nor in the chapel for prayers the next morning. Kneeling in front of my pew I squeeze my eyes shut as I seek God’s forgiveness once more for the hot pride I have shown; a vanity and care for worldly status that He would abhor and that would appal my parents. As the service meanders on, I glance up to where Father sits in the royal box floating under a midnight ceiling speckled with stars: if he can remain humble at his great height, I should not struggle to do the same.
Mary and I pass a pleasant day, singing with Master Hingston in the morning and practising our languages with Master Marvell in the afternoon, pleased in my case at the distraction. I am conscious, as ever, of our rare fortune among our sex to be so educated and determined that my training will not be wasted in a strangling marriage to an unenlightened husband. It is not until late the next evening that I come across Robert, playing billiards with my brother Richard and our brother-in-law John Claypole in one of the long galleries that stretches between Father and Mother’s private apartments and my and my sisters’ lodgings. I can tell that the men have been drinking heavily, their cheeks pink in the candlelight, shirts a little open at the neck. No doubt they are playing for money too, for all Father’s disapproval of gambling, particularly on a Sunday: Dick is always short of funds.
Robert sees me coming along the gallery, in spite of the concentration he is evidently expending on his shot. He shoots quickly, missing the ball he aims for, and straightens up at once. Before I have had a chance to greet him, Robert is shaking hands with my brother and brother-in-law over the table and coins are passing between them. He takes his leave, a nod of his head in my direction as he passes through a gilt door his only acknowledgement of me. I am pricked by disappointment and forced to admit that I am missing his maddening company.
Over the next few days, rumours swirl around the palace with the blustery March wind that Robert and his cohort have left court to drink and whore around the locality: Hampton Wick, Kingston, Richmond. I know that Father will be displeased when he hears of it, disapproving as he does of such excesses on the part of his courtiers. I too find the notion of their behaviour distasteful and feel my mood sink whenever I picture him and imagine the things he may be doing. Sometimes I allow myself to wallow in these feelings. At others, I convince myself that, after the uncomfortable guilt I have been feeling towards Robert, this is a welcome return to my usual disapproval of him which has quite cheered me up.
My brother Richard is cheerful too, having won a tidy sum in the billiards game with Robert and John. Yet his cheerfulness is short-lived when he finds himself the centre of attention at Whitehall the following week. In its debates on the newly proposed constitution, Parliament has resolved another change: that Father rather than Parliament will be able to name his successor – something he was not empowered to do before. It is hoped that this will provide another safeguard against our enemies who, it is said, believe that while there is no person named to succeed Father in the government, they have only to assassinate Father to plunge the nation into anarchy and civil war. All eyes
have, of course, swivelled to his eldest surviving son, though I sense that Dick himself finds the idea rather frightening as he wanders around the palace like a stag awaiting the hunt.
We discuss it at supper in our private dining room, overlooking the privy gardens. Father is not with us, his Council meeting having run over, and neither is Dick, who is chairing a late meeting of the charity committee to raise funds for the Protestant Piedmontese following their massacre by the Duke of Savoy; a project which Dick had resented when Father first assigned it to him but which is now a great passion of his.
This at least frees the rest of us to talk about them.
‘I assume Father will name Dick,’ I say, looking to Mother for confirmation.
‘I would hope so, dearest,’ she replies.
‘Hope so?’ I repeat. ‘But as the eldest, surely it would be Richard.’
‘It does not have to pass down our family line though, Frances,’ John Claypole says, dropping a piece of his cutlet to Badger waiting patiently beneath the table. ‘This is a new system of government and not necessarily modelled after a hereditary monarchy. Your father was chosen to rule; he could choose another who is best suited to it in his turn.’
I had not thought of this. ‘Such as?’
‘One of the army leaders – many are speaking of John Lambert. He is the next most powerful and popular officer after Oliver. Though it could be Charles, even.’
‘Charles?’ Betty’s voices bursts with his name and I am reminded that there is no great love lost between them.
‘Why not?’ John counters his wife. ‘Either of them would be a popular choice with the army and have plenty of direct experience of government as Major-Generals and members of the Council of State. And Oliver loves them both dearly.’
‘As he does you, John,’ Elizabeth says sweetly, placing her fingertips on her husband’s sleeve.
‘I know, my dear, of course, but I am not in the same position.’ John smiles reassuringly at her, though we all know that relations between him and Charles Fleetwood are not always the easiest. They are as different as wine from water and it is an unfortunate consequence of the loyalty and friendship Father inspires among men of all shades – and now the power he wields too – that those closest to him fall into competition for his affection.
‘There is another candidate, of course,’ John continues, again stooping to feed Badger and avoiding our eyes. ‘Though I don’t know how Dick would take it.’
We wait for the name, though I sense it before he says it.
‘Harry.’
Harry – my dear, dear brother away from us so long now as the governor of Ireland. The man most like Father in looks and spirit of any living. I feel a pang for his strong arms and good humour; the way he calls Mary and me ‘his little wenches’, just as Father did when we were young.
‘Father couldn’t choose a younger son over an older, surely.’ Mary speaks, voicing our collective surprise.
‘But if the younger son has more experience of government than the older?’ John counters. ‘And is better suited to the role?’
‘Richard has a fine grasp of affairs of state,’ Mother interjects, her maternal feathers ruffled. ‘Both the boys do. Harry is perhaps the more outgoing, the more commanding by nature, the more experienced in the army, but Dick has done well in Parliament lately and has chaired all his committees with skill and diplomacy. It is not his fault that we raised him to be only a country gentleman before all of this.’ She gestures vaguely around the opulent room, the words dying from her lips.
I can see the truth in Mother’s words, whatever her attempts at fairness and, considering my two dear brothers, think of another obstacle to John’s idea. ‘Besides, Harry adores Dick,’ I add. ‘He would never step over him to power.’ And Charles would never have it I choose not to say out loud. We all know the prickly relationship between Harry and Charles that comes from their uneasy time working together on the settlement of Ireland after its harrowing conquest by Father’s expeditionary force.
Certainly Father does not like to speak of his time there and I do not ask; he does not recall the glories of it around the fireside as he does Marston Moor or Naseby. I do know that a new ruthlessness entered the war after the king’s execution, when the conflict flared up for a third and most bitter stage. Ireland was the most devastated and divided of all the nations and the Commonwealth government sent Father to bring the Irish royalist rebels to heel. This he did, though I believe a great many innocents died in the process. Father was gone a long time first fighting in Ireland, then in Scotland, while Mother, Mary and I waited at home for news from far-off places like Tipperary, Cork and Lothian.
When my brother-in-law Henry Ireton who governed the newly conquered country died, Charles Fleetwood was dispatched to take his place and Bridget swapped one husband for another. Charles was a ruthless ruler in his own way, I believe; my brother Harry has told me of the reprisals Charles would order against communities that shielded rebel leaders. And so Father, by then Lord Protector, sent Harry to be a moderating influence: first to command the English forces and join the Irish Council, working under Charles; then, when Charles returned to London to take his seat on Father’s Council, effectively governing in his stead. Things are, I believe, a little better now.
But Father, conscious of Charles’s bitterness at what he saw as his replacement by Harry, has not confirmed Harry’s powers and he is left having to defer to the absent Charles. Charles, in turn, takes every opportunity to tread on Harry’s toes and make trouble for him: dispatching quarrelsome letters instructing him in his business and always weighing in against him when Ireland is discussed by the Council. Harry complains of this in his letters to me, venting his frustration that Father’s government does not give him enough support, speaking bitterly of the mopping up of misery he is left to do. It is a mess and I cannot help but think Father does not manage it well. Surely he can see that it is his approval above all that his son and son-in-law do battle over?
‘Harry would step over Richard quickly enough if Father wished him to,’ Elizabeth says, her eyes sparkling in the firelight over her glass of wine as her words bring my wandering attention back to the conversation. It is always Father’s wishes that count with her.
‘Well, I am glad Bridget is not here to hear such talk,’ Mother says, drawing an invisible line under the conversation. ‘How she will react to all this I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps that depends on whether her husband becomes Father’s nominated heir,’ I cannot help saying, though I know my words are unfair to Bridget, if not to Charles; no one has less worldly ambition in her bones than Biddy.
Mother looks at me sternly and I hang my head at her unspoken reprimand.
We move into the withdrawing room and Mary plays the harpsichord for us, the notes tinkling around the candlesticks. Afterwards, I decide to use the time to write to Harry and settle at the writing desk in the corner of the room with pen and paper before me. I do not repeat exactly what was said of him over supper, of course, but I find a way to fish for his thoughts. Parliament is now proposing Father choose his own successor, I write, though none is quite sure who this would be. I imagine there are some he could choose who would be less welcomed by you than others, but let us hope Father is too wise for that. If it were my choice I would nominate you, dearest Harry, so that you would have to come home …
I feel a hand upon my shoulder. It is Father, passing through the room on the way to his study, a sheaf of papers under one arm, two guards trailing behind. Pausing by my chair, he leans down and whispers for me to come and see him when I have finished my letter.
A few minutes later, smoothing the silver yards of my skirts, I slip from the room in the direction of Father’s study. I pass along the privy gallery, the formal square hedges of the gardens looming through the windows towards me, until I reach the guards at Father’s door. Pausing before I knock, I am caught suddenly by an old but vivid memory of waiting, just like this, to enter Fa
ther’s room of business at my childhood home in Ely. Then, of course, Father’s office had been the beamed tithe room at the back of the house, bursting with the town’s tax payments: its floor piled high with musty sacks of flour and grain, tables loaded with baskets of firewood, layers of fleeces and animal hides and bowls of eggs, purses of coins counted and stacked, the air itself powdered.
There, just as here, I had known that the opened door would reveal Father hunched over a paper-strewn table, pen in one hand, the other snaked through his hair. But this is not the shabby back office of a town tithe collector, but the privy study of the ruler of England deep in the heart of the royal palace. The power of the memory knocks the breath from my body and I grip the door frame at the contrast. Sometimes our rise to power frightens me in the scale of its sheer ascent, especially when I pause to look down from the summit onto the death drop below. If the great Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and right-hand man to the king, feared how far he could fall, how much further could King Oliver Cromwell and his children?
I knock.
‘Enter,’ my father’s voice says.
I do and, seeing the same ruddy, rustic father of my childhood before me, his lace cuffs sweeping with his pen over the ebony desk, I am aware more acutely than ever before of the strange, almost fantastical fortune of his life. The room is dark, light falling only around the two candles on the desk and one on the deep stone window ledge. It is a simple space, almost sparse: nothing but the desk and armchair and a couple of cheap spindled chairs at the edge of the room beneath the only decoration: a rich allegorical tapestry with maidens dancing in a forest.
The Puritan Princess Page 9