Jamie straightened, resting the hammer on the anvil. Behind the innkeeper stood a party of grim-faced men in the buff-coats and pot-helmets of the New Model’s cavalry. ‘And who might you be?’ their officer demanded belligerently.
‘James Hudson.’ Jamie loosened the pin in his thumb-piece so he could let go of the hammer. ‘I was with Lieutenant Barker yesterday. He rode off on my horse.’
The officer shook his head in amazement. ‘Praise be to God! He reported you dead.’
‘I’ve no doubt he expected me to be. As it happened, the malignants were content to beat and rob me.’
‘You should thank God for your deliverance, fellow! Those were bloody-handed men.’
‘It was Colonel Farre that led them,’ said the innkeeper. ‘I recognized him at once.’
The officer gave him a savage look, and the innkeeper fell silent. Jamie tried to remember why the name Farre was familiar. Chelmsford, that was it. Farre was the militia commander who’d gone over to the Royalists and taken his men with him. All the supplicants at the guildhall had been denying that they’d ever liked him.
‘They killed a dozen of our people, night before last,’ said the officer, ‘and slipped out of Colchester. Barker said he only ’scaped because they paused to butcher you.’
Jamie swallowed a surge of rage. Perhaps he dared not desert, but at least he could revenge himself on Isaiah Barker! ‘That they did not is no thanks to him! Barker turned on me and flung me into their path, to delay them so he could make his own escape.’
All the men stared in surprise. The officer looked uneasy. ‘Be that as it may, I am glad you are safe and well. We have need of blacksmiths. You should have reported in at once.’
Jamie stared a moment, then turned aside and carefully replaced the hammer on its hook on the wall. ‘Whence come you?’
‘From General Ireton, in Colchester.’
‘Which is – what, some twelve miles hence? And you say that last night I should have set out to walk it in the dark? Bruised as I was, and weary from a long day in the saddle?’
The officer had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘You might have set out this morning!’
‘Aye, but I needed to pay for my night’s lodging.’ Jamie indicated the bolt-plate on the anvil. ‘Even if I’d had the right to demand free quarter, I’d’ve had no stomach for it, with the innkeeper there lamenting his losses and crying out that he had not the means to replace what the malignants had stolen.’
The officer shot a glance at the innkeeper, who looked gratified and nodded emphatically. ‘They emptied the storehouse and the larder!’ he said. ‘And they rode off with a score of my best dishes! What I am to do to replace my goods, I know not, for trade there is none, nor has been this . . .’
‘Very well!’ interrupted the officer impatiently. ‘You were robbed – as many another has been, these six years. Complain to the malignants, not to me!’ He dismissed the innkeeper with a wave, then glowered at Jamie. ‘You must to Colchester now. I’ll lend you a horse, and send a man with you. For myself, I must follow after the malignants, if I can.’
The Army’s headquarters were at a small village called Lexden, on the road about a mile west of Colchester itself. As they approached it along the road, Jamie grimly noted the signs of a siege. Trees were being cut down, for timber and firewood; the fields had been stripped of livestock; farmyards were deserted. He and his escort had glimpses of the city as they drew nearer: high stone walls, strengthened with bastions to absorb cannonfire. ‘How strong are the malignants?’ Jamie asked his escort unhappily.
The man grimaced. ‘Perhaps four thousand men, perhaps more.’ He shook his head. ‘Near enough our own numbers, if you discount the Suffolk militia – which we must, because they’d as soon join the malignants against us, if it would keep the war out of Suffolk. It will be a long siege.’
His escort brought him to a fine brick building – local lordling’s house or civic hall, he didn’t know – on the north side of the village. There were sentries posted at the door; the escort stated their business, then accepted a dismissal and went off with the horses. Jamie himself was admitted to the house and instructed to wait.
The entrance hall was flagged with stone, and dark; an iron candle-holder was fixed to the wall, but the candles on it were unlit. A portrait of a man wearing the stiff ruff of two generations before smirked down on the mud tracked over the floor. The murmur of voices sounded from behind a door at the top of a flight of stairs. Jamie stood for a while, wondering if he should announce himself. If that murmur meant the general staff was in conference, it seemed better not to. He sat down gingerly at the bottom of the stairs.
After perhaps twenty minutes, the voices rose, and there was a scraping of chairs. Jamie got to his feet.
‘. . . nothing regarding the cavaliers!’ said a nervous voice, as the door at the top of the stairs opened, admitting light from the room beyond. ‘What I said, sir, was on behalf of the town. It is a loyal city, Your Excellency; it has always been steadfast in its adherance to Parliament, and . . .’
‘It is occupied by a cruel and insolent enemy!’ another voice interrupted. ‘Oh, Christ!’ This last was an exclamation of pain.
‘Your foot?’ asked a familiar voice sympathetically.
There was a grunt of agreement. ‘I take for truth all that you say about the townsfolk,’ the pained voice continued. ‘But to spare them we would be obliged to spare the enemy. That were no mercy to the kingdom.’
‘But Your Excellency . . .’
‘Enough! I have offered terms, generous terms. We must hope that our enemies decide to accept them!’
A civilian Jamie didn’t know came out on to the landing, so he stepped back, out of the way. The civilian started down, but stopped halfway and looked back to where Lord General Fairfax had emerged on to the landing. Jamie recognized him at once. He had often seen the general when he reviewed the troops – though the Lord General on the landing was not much like the armoured Olympian on a white horse. He was dressed in an old coat and breeches, with no boots; his right foot was swathed in bandages, his hair was dishevelled and his face was flushed and sweaty. Gout: he was known to suffer from it, though he was still under forty and the dark hair that had given him the nickname ‘Black Tom’ was without a trace of grey. His authority was unmistakable, however, even in his stockinged feet. Commissary-General Ireton, who stood supporting him, seemed shadowy beside him. Ireton’s, though, had been the voice Jamie recognized. It was painfully familiar from the time of his arrest. Henry Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law, the Machiavelli of the Army.
‘I beg Your Excellency to remember the parable of the tares!’ pleaded the civilian. ‘If our Lord God spares the wicked to preserve the innocent, then surely we should . . .’
Fairfax gave an impatient hiss and struck the banister; the civilian hastily ducked his head and clattered on down the stairs and away. Fairfax took a deep breath, then, slowly and heavily, began to descend the stairs, leaning on Ireton’s arm and hopping to spare his gouty foot. He was almost at the bottom before he noticed Jamie standing in the darkness at the side.
He recoiled. ‘Christ!’ he exclaimed, staring.
Ireton also looked at Jamie. ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed in amazement. ‘It’s a blacksmith I sent for. I was told he was slain on the road.’
Fairfax gave Jamie a look of alarm, as though he might have come from beyond the grave. Jamie bowed. ‘Your Excellency, General Ireton. I was set upon, but escaped.’
The Lord General’s eyebrows rose. ‘Praise be to God for his merciful dispensation! By your looks it is not your first narrow escape, neither. Where got you that scar on your face?’
‘Naseby, Your Excellency.’
The memory of that famous victory cheered the general. He smiled a little and leaned forward to clap Jamie on the shoulder. ‘An honourable wound, then. Happier times than these!’
‘You go on to your dinner, Excellency,’ Ireton broke in impatiently. ‘I’ll sp
eak with him.’ He helped Fairfax on to the bottom of the stairs, then beckoned Jamie to follow him back up again.
The room behind the door was lit by large windows and smelled of tobacco. Ireton sat down in one of the carved wooden chairs and leaned an elbow on the table. He was a short, neat, slight man in his late thirties, so unremarkable in looks that people coming away could not even remember the colour of his hair, and described him as dark or fairish, depending on the light. ‘Mr . . . Hudson, is it not? Lieutenant Barker told me you had been murdered.’
‘We stopped at an inn,’ Jamie said formally, glad of the opportunity to tell the whole story. ‘The ostler tried to warn us that we should not go in, but Barker brushed him aside. Inside the inn we discovered a troop of malignants, who were robbing the place. The innkeeper said he recognized their commander as Colonel Farre, of Chelmsford.’
Ireton let out his breath in a very small snort of recognition and nodded for Jamie to continue.
‘I was behind Barker going into the inn, and before him coming out, but he caught hold of me and flung me into their hands as they followed us. He took my horse and rode off, leaving me at their mercy. If he reported me dead, it was because he hoped there would be no one to report his own cowardice and malice.’
Ireton sat silent a moment, regarding Jamie with eyes that did not match the rest of his unremarkable appearance: intense eyes, cold and dark. ‘Why did they spare you?’ he asked at last.
Jamie’s face flushed, but he met the gaze unflinchingly. ‘Because I begged for mercy. I have faced death before, as you know. In a good cause I would accept it willingly – but I do not see why I should die for Isaiah Barker.’
Ireton sighed. ‘Lieutenant Barker was carrying dispatches, Mr Hudson. His duty was to keep them out of the hands of the enemy at all costs.’
Jamie set his teeth. ‘An honourable man would have found some other way to fulfil that duty!’
‘You are not friends, I perceive.’
‘No. He thinks that I ought to be content to serve my masters humbly – and he reserves to himself the right to decide who those masters should be.’ He did not add, He thinks they should be you and Cromwell. Ireton undoubtedly knew that already. ‘You are in agreement with him, are you not?’
Ireton grimaced. ‘In the name of God, why this enmity? Do we not have trouble enough, with malignants rising against us to the west and to the east, Scots in the north preparing to flood across our borders – and Parliament unable to decide whether they or its own Army are the greater foe?’
‘Perhaps,’ Jamie said bitterly, ‘this “enmity” I feel has to do with being unjustly cast into prison, then obliged to swear to serve you before I could get out again.’
Ireton let out his breath in a long sigh of exasperation. ‘Should we have tolerated mutiny?’
‘It was no mutiny! The Council of the Army had agreed . . .’
‘The Council of the Army was party to the mutiny! Do you truly believe your Agreement of the People would have been tolerated by anyone outside the Army? Your precious People want the King back; to them you Levellers are rabid dogs! You stubborn fools! Your best hope was my own Heads of the Proposals. It would have given you most of what you wanted!’
‘We were not the ones who rejected it,’ Jamie pointed out.
Ireton frowned at him a moment, then, surprisingly, inclined his head. ‘A just rebuke. And, truly, God has punished us for making an idol of the King. Because so many clamoured for his restoration we believed there could be no peace without him – but we should have perceived that God had declared against him. It is lack of faith which has brought us this bitter trial, to fight the war again.’ His cold gaze again sought and held Jamie’s. ‘We have much common ground, you and I. I believe, as do you, that England must have a settlement based upon common right; that there must be new elections on a more equitable basis; that there must be religious toleration. We are beset by enemies who oppose all these things. Can we not fight as allies?’
To answer ‘aye’ would be foolish. Ireton and Cromwell had allied themselves with the Levellers before, only to betray them at Ware. On the other hand, to answer ‘nay’ would be equally stupid. Ireton was right to say that he and his supported most of the Leveller programme, while the royalists and the Scots were opposed to everything about it.
‘Why do you ask?’ Jamie demanded. ‘I am under your orders. Do you ask a servant to be your “ally”?’
‘In the days ahead we will need willing hands, not forced labour.’
‘Then you should have taken pains to recruit the one rather than the other!’
‘Well,’ sighed Ireton, after a long silence, ‘Colonel Rainsborough is not so stiff-necked. I will assign you to his regiment. Perhaps you will obey him more readily than you do me.’
Jamie straightened in astonishment. Rainsborough was a Leveller, the highest ranking officer to hold such sympathies. He had been appointed Vice-Admiral of the Navy the previous winter, but had been expelled from the position by a mutiny in the fleet. Jamie hadn’t known he was at Colchester.
‘I would be happy to serve under Colonel Rainsborough,’ he said. Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure that it was true. Some part of his mind was disappointed because now he had lost his excuse for deserting. It disconcerted him: he hadn’t been consciously aware of making up his mind to leave.
Ireton nodded. ‘I will give you a note for him.’ He took paper and pen from the table, wrote quickly, then folded the paper and handed it to Jamie.
Jamie took it and bowed. Ireton got to his feet.
‘There is one other matter, sir,’ Jamie said quickly. Ireton gave him a look of impatience.
‘Lieutenant Barker rode off on my horse, with my saddlebags,’ Jamie said. ‘I want them back.’ He had letters from Lucy in the bags, and the thought of Barker reading them was intolerable.
Ireton gave a small huff of irritation. ‘Go report to Rainsborough. I will send someone to retrieve your baggage and bring it to you. I think it better if you and Lieutenant Barker do not meet.’
Four
At the beginning of July, Lucy returned from work to find Parliament Joan waiting for her.
She didn’t register the visitor, at first. It was pouring with rain, and when she entered the house in Coleman Street, she was busy trying to wipe water out of her eyes with a sopping shawl. ‘Here she is!’ said Faith, who was nine and the eldest of the three Overton children.
Lucy wiped her face again and finally made out Parliament Joan standing by the kitchen fire. She froze; a part of her mind frantically calculated whether she ought to brazen it out or run off into the rain.
Joan made a tch noise. Mary Overton, mistress of the house, gave Lucy a reassuring smile – she was at the kitchen table, chopping onions on the few inches of tabletop not covered by newsbook pages. ‘Mistress Alkin heard you were looking to buy a press,’ she said.
Brazen it out, then: this was probably a fishing expedition. Lucy gave the visitor an uneasy look, but went back to the door and wrung out her dripping shawl over the doorstep. ‘Mistress Alkin?’ she repeated.
The stout woman responded with a good-natured smile. ‘Aye, and christened Elizabeth! By your look, Mistress Hudson, you know of me by another name!’
‘A mercury-woman pointed you out to me,’ Lucy admitted warily, ‘and said that you were Parliament Joan.’
Elizabeth Alkin sighed. ‘That malignant rogue Pragmaticus has caused me no end of trouble! Never fear. I’m an enemy only to the King and his friends. If the Licensor’s content to wink at what you print, so am I. As your friend said, I’ve come because I’ve heard you named as one that wants to buy a press.’
‘Aye,’ Lucy agreed readily. She’d made enquiries enough that she couldn’t deny it, and anyway there seemed no danger in the admission. ‘Have you one you mean to sell?’
Mrs Alkin hesitated. ‘I know of one. Myself, though, I’m in need of a printer – and, I confess plainly, I’d much prefer another than the lech
erous old rogue employed by my partner.’
Lucy regarded the spy with a frown, trying to spot the trap. ‘And who told you I was a printer?’
‘Oh, several people, but the one I took most note of was Mr Mabbot the Licensor. He said he had employed you himself for a time, upon The Moderate; he says he found you honest and hardworking, and that he only let you go when your family called on you to care for a sick uncle.’
That was one way of putting it; another was that he’d hired somebody else without telling her, at a time when she’d desperately needed money. Still, if he was willing to give her a good reference, she was willing to go along with his version of events. ‘That’s so,’ she agreed. ‘My poor uncle died, but he left me a small legacy, which I hope to spend upon a press of my own.’
‘My partner is all of a sweat to sell me a press, if I will not use his printer,’ Mrs Alkin replied. ‘He says going to a strange printer would be fatal, that my business would continually take second place to whatever else the printer was engaged in – but I’ve no wish to plunge all my savings into printing until I’ve seen how well it pays. This will be a new venture for me, Mrs Hudson. My hope is to find a printer who wants a press, who’ll buy the machine in the knowledge that there’ll be work waiting for it. Those I asked said you might be such a one – and, I confess, I’d be pleased to employ a woman, not some man who’d puff himself up and think he knows better than me just on account of his sex.’
A Corruptible Crown Page 6
