A Corruptible Crown

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Robert stared in confusion.

  ‘God have mercy, Rob!’ Jamie said, his voice cracking. ‘What will become of England? They were women and children, and not even Royalists, but our own, poor starveling wretches that begged us to let them go to the parish poorhouse! The order came: no, they must not pass, lest their passage give ease and comfort to the enemy, and so they were sent back to die of hunger. Rainsborough had a woman that railed at the order stripped naked, to shame her and the others into silence. Rainsborough did that! A man that I’d esteemed above any other in all this Army, a man I know to be as fair and just as any man in England! What have we become? What has this everlasting war done to us? I say “God have mercy”, but why should He? We had none!’

  Rob was silent. There was a sound of feet in the upstairs corridor above their heads.

  ‘I’d heard none of this,’ Rob said at last. He frowned at his brother. ‘Jamie, you should quit this Army. It’s no place for any man of conscience.’

  ‘Would God I could!’ Jamie cried.

  One of Rainsborough’s staff officers appeared from the stairs at the end of the room, his face flushed. ‘What’s this talk?’ he demanded angrily.

  Realizing that they’d been overheard, Jamie got to his feet. ‘Ensign Stanley,’ he said levelly. ‘I spoke to my brother, not to you.’

  ‘Spoke mutinously against your commander!’ replied Stanley, glaring. ‘What would you have had the colonel do? Disobey the generals’ orders? You may grieve for the suffering of Colchester, but those that caused that suffering, and have power to end it are within yonder walls!’ He swept an angry hand in the direction of Colchester – a direction that all in the camps were aware of, night and day, however many walls stood in between. ‘’Twas they who seized the city, and they who’ve prolonged the siege past all conscience and reason! If the citizens are truly opposed to them, let them open the gates to us – and if they won’t, why should we feed them? ’Twould be the same as giving aid to the enemy!’ He turned the glare on Robert. ‘Did I rightly hear you counselling your brother to desert?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Jamie quickly. If the Army believed Robert had been recommending desertion, it would feel free to requisition his horse and send him back to Lincolnshire on foot. ‘My brother spoke only of what I should do when this war is ended. And, sir, I spoke no mutiny – unless it be mutiny to pity the wretched.’

  Ensign Stanley glared a moment longer, then demanded, ‘What do you here at headquarters?’

  ‘My brother, who is visiting, wants a pass.’

  Stanley snorted. ‘That I can give you.’ He went to the box of paper at the end of the table, wrote out a note, signed it, then stamped it with an official seal. ‘Take it and be gone!’ he ordered, handing it to Robert. ‘I’ll not have you spread this discontent through the camp.’

  Walking back to the stables, Robert asked quietly, ‘Have I made trouble for you?’

  ‘No,’ said Jamie. ‘Rainsborough is not one to punish a man for speaking his mind – and I’ve no doubt he himself hated what he did yesterday. The orders came from the Generals – that is, from Ireton. Fairfax would never be so ruthless, and in any case, he’s ill with the gout. The ensign will hesitate even to mention this to the colonel, in case it draws a rebuke.’

  Rob gave a grunt of relief. They trudged on a few steps, and then he said, lowering his voice still further, ‘You truly cannot desert, can you? They’re sending me off in haste lest I make you discontented. You’re of sufficient value to them that if you quit them they would send after you. It would make trouble for your friends.’

  Jamie nodded soberly. Rob put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. ‘I am most heartily sorry.’

  Jamie caught the hand and pressed it, comforted. ‘The war will be over before long,’ he said, to reassure Rob and himself. ‘Even if we abandoned the siege today and marched north, we’d still be too late to join up with Cromwell before he fights the Scots – indeed, he may have met them already. If he gets the victory, then the war will be over, bar a few strongholds, and I can hope for a discharge.’

  ‘But if the Scots get the victory?’ Rob asked doubtfully.

  ‘I doubt they do,’ said Jamie.

  Rob raised his eyebrows. ‘They say Cromwell’s ill-provisioned and heavily outnumbered.’

  Jamie shrugged. He did not know how to explain that thrill that ran through the Army when Cromwell was there, the way ten thousand minds shifted under the impact of one man’s fierce, exultant confidence. He hated the man, but he found it impossible to believe that Cromwell would lose. ‘If the Scots do get the victory, I think Parliament will make terms,’ he said, conceding the possibility. ‘The King will have his own again, and . . . God knows what this Army will do.’ Lord General Fairfax, he thought, would submit to orders from King and Parliament, but Cromwell and Ireton would not.

  Nor would the Levellers. To fight so long, to suffer so much, only to have Charles Stuart – the man most responsible for all the horrors! – restored to the throne on the same terms as before?

  Oppression, injustice and cruelty are the turning stairs by which he ascends to his absolute stately majesty and greatness, John Wildman had written before his arrest. Jamie contemplated the possibility with anguish. Monstrous as it was, he still couldn’t find in himself the slightest wish to fight another war to prevent it.

  ‘This foul war will be over before winter,’ he told Rob, hoping desperately that he was telling the truth. ‘I can endure till then. You’ve brought me much comfort with Lucy’s letter.’

  When Robert had ridden off, though, he sat in the stables for a long time, holding Lucy’s letter, trying to imagine a future with her in London and instead seeing only the starving women and children of Colchester.

  Cromwell met the enemy at Preston on the seventeenth of August – met the English Royalist rearguard first and smashed it before the Scots even managed to respond. Most of the Scots soldiers were conscripts, and had never been eager to fight for a King who was widely expected to renege on his promises. They had no appetite for a match with Cromwell and the New Model Army, and they fled south in a retreat that quickly became a rout. ‘They are the miserablest party that ever was,’ wrote Cromwell, reporting it. ‘I durst engage myself with 500 fresh horse and 500 nimble foot to destroy them all.’

  News of the victory arrived in Colchester on the twenty-fourth and was greeted in the camp with delirious uproar. Lord General Fairfax promptly sent the news to the Royalist commanders; eager soldiers attached copies of the dispatches to kites and flew them over the walls, so that the enemy’s common soldiers could not be misled. The city shuddered, and at last the Royalist commanders asked for terms.

  Early in the siege, the terms of surrender had been generous. Now they were harsh. Common soldiers would be granted quarter – a bare assurance of their lives. Officers weren’t promised even that. They must surrender ‘at mercy’, to live or die at the will of the victors. The Royalist commanders deliberated unhappily, sending repeatedly to Fairfax for assurances which he refused to give. Their men grew increasingly angry and mistrustful. There had been a trickle of desertions throughout the siege, with desperate men letting themselves down from the walls by night and surrendering: these grew into a stream, then a torrent. The besieged found it far easier to slip away than it had been, for the besiegers had already begun to celebrate their victory.

  Jamie had been as relieved as any man in the camp at the news of victory, but he could not share the vindictive glee of his fellows: he kept thinking that Nick would certainly have been in Colchester among the defeated, if he hadn’t died at Maidstone. He had no stomach for the celebrations. In consequence he was alone at the forge and stone cold sober when Rainsborough sent for his blacksmiths.

  It was the twenty-seventh of August, a cold wet evening. When Jamie answered the summons, he found the colonel in the general heardquarters in Lexden, in the upstairs meeting room, along with Colonel Whalley, another senior officer. Rainsborough’s ex
pressive face was, for once, grave and reserved.

  ‘Mr Hudson,’ said Rainsborough, when an ensign showed him in. ‘You are most welcome. Where is Mr Towlend?’

  At one of the riotous victory parties, was the honest answer, and by now thoroughly drunk. ‘Sir, I know not,’ Jamie said, straight-faced.

  ‘This is your blacksmith?’ asked Colonel Whalley. ‘Christ! Don’t you have one with two hands?’

  ‘He is a very skilled, steady and sober man,’ said Rainsborough reprovingly. ‘Mr Hudson, we’ve had some intelligence which suggests that the enemy may try to break out of the city to the east. Colonel Whalley has ordered measures to prevent them, but he needs smiths, and his man is missing. Pray go with him, and hold yourself under his orders.’

  Fort Whalley lay to the east of Colchester, and commanded a bridge over the Colne, which bent southward at that point. Whalley’s regiment had been celebrating as enthusiastically as Rainsborough’s; the colonel had ordered a halt to the festivities, but many of the men had gone off to the neighbouring villages, where there were taverns and brothels. Because of this, the colonel wanted chains put up along the riverbank, to prevent cavalry from rushing across in the dark. A pile of chains had already been collected, but they were mostly short ones, from wagons and gun mountings, and needed to be joined together. Whalley’s blacksmith was nowhere to be found, but the fire had been lit, and there were men to work the bellows. Jamie set to work.

  It was about midnight, and he’d come out of the forge to rest a little, when two of Whalley’s men turned up with another man held prisoner between them. ‘Where’s Jones the Smith?’ asked one, staring at Jamie doubtfully.

  ‘I know not,’ Jamie replied. ‘Nor does your colonel, who’s borrowed me off Colonel Rainsborough to take his place tonight.’

  At this the soldier sniggered. ‘I’ll wager he’s in Molly Standish’s house at Elmstead, a-drinking and a-whoring. Well, then, blacksmith, this fellow here wants clapping in irons. He was spotted letting himself down from the wall. He’s from the enemy, and we think he may be an officer.’ He raised his lantern and shone it over the prisoner, and Jamie saw that it was Greencoat – Colonel Farre, who’d once spared his life.

  Farre recognized Jamie in the same instant: he raised his eyebrows and gave a twisted smile. We think he may be an officer. They didn’t know. Jamie could tell them – or not. He felt a curious numbness, as though this were something that had already happened, to someone else. He nodded, went into the forge, and found a box by the wall that held leg irons.

  ‘You!’ the first guard ordered, giving the prisoner a shove. ‘Take off your boots!’

  Farre gave him a cold look, but started to obey, standing on one leg to do so. At once the guard gave him another shove, so that he fell sprawling to the ground. Both soldiers laughed. Jamie said nothing. After such a bitter siege, this was the least that could be expected. Farre, white-faced with rage, sat and pulled the boots off, one after the other. One of the guards picked them up. ‘Very good boots!’ he remarked appreciatively. ‘You are an officer, are you not?’

  Farre said nothing. The other guard, grinning, said, ‘He must be. The common soldiers ate their boots last week!’

  Jamie slipped the irons over Farre’s legs and checked where the rivets should go. Whalley’s men were cheerfully discussing whether there would or would not be an attempt by the cavalry to break out of Colchester that night; they thought not, on the grounds that all the horses must have been eaten by now. Jamie looked into the prisoner’s face, then deliberately raised a finger to his lips. Farre’s eyes brightened with sudden hope. Jamie showed him where the rivets ought to go, then moved each one to the next hole along. Farre began to grin – then bowed his head to conceal his expression from the guards.

  Jamie went back to the forge, fetched the medium hammer, and secured the irons at the too-loose setting. Farre kept his head down, saying nothing and meeting no-one’s eyes. Jamie finished, then offered the enemy colonel his hand and helped him up. Farre pressed the hand once before letting go, then looked at the guard who had his boots.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said the guard, understanding the look. ‘These are mine now.’

  ‘Ours!’ said his friend indignantly.

  ‘They’re too fine to sell,’ said the first man. ‘You may have his coat all to yourself. You! Take your coat off!’

  Farre hesitated – then, without a word, took off his coat, and, with a small bow, handed it over. The guard took it with a snort of laughter, and the two men swaggered off with their prisoner shuffling between them.

  Jamie went back to the forge. He knew that he ought to feel guilty. Farre was undoubtedly an evildoer who had harmed hundreds of innocents. He’d betrayed his trust in Chelmsford, bringing trouble down on all his friends; he’d led the men of his militia into the horror of Colchester, and likely ruined every one of them; he’d been party to decisions that had caused enormous suffering to the wretched civilians of the town. He ought, by rights, be held to account – but Jamie had set him free, quite possibly to work more mischief. The rash act might well come back to haunt Jamie, too. He could defend himself to some extent by blaming faulty leg irons and an unfamiliar forge – but what if Farre entertained friends with the story? If the tale reached as far as the Army while Jamie was still in it, there’d be a heavy penalty to pay.

  Yet Jamie couldn’t regret what he’d just done; instead, he felt at peace.

  About half an hour later one of Whalley’s captains turned up. Jamie set down his hammer, expecting a sharp question about the prisoner’s fetters. Instead, the man said cheerfully, ‘You can stop that, blacksmith, and go to bed.’

  ‘Sir?’ said Jamie in surprise.

  The officer grinned. ‘It seems the enemy have had a change of plan. Their foot understood that those few who still had horses meant to gallop off, leaving them to suffer our wrath alone. One of them had passed word of the plan to us, and now, it seems, all the rest have lined up by the gates and are refusing to let the horsemen pass. The commanders have given in and sent to accept the terms of surrender. In the morning they will open the gates.’

  The gates of Colchester were flung open at eight o’clock on the morning of the twenty-eighth of August, nearly eleven weeks after the siege began. The New Model Army marched in, Lord Fairfax and Henry Ireton at its head, and took possession of Colchester castle.

  Jamie wasn’t with them. He’d gone to bed on the floor of Whalley’s forge rather than walk back to Fort Rainsborough in the dark. He woke up when Whalley’s men did, but rolled over and went back to sleep. Nobody disturbed him.

  In the morning, he set out back to Fort Rainsborough. With extraordinary and absurd aptness, it was a sunny morning. The sentry posts had all been abandoned, and the sound of gunfire had been replaced by the singing of birds. Jamie walked slowly, savouring the light, the green of wet grass and the clean-washed blue of the sky. The siege was over – and he had returned an act of mercy, across the chasm of war. There was still hope.

  Twelve

  The evening after Robert Hudson left, Lucy was sitting sewing by the kitchen fire with Mary when someone knocked at the door. She heard Dick Overton greeting him: ‘Why, Johnnie! You’re welcome; come in, come in!’ The guest responded in a murmur; Lucy couldn’t make out the words, but recognized the voice as John Wildman’s. She thrust her needle angrily into the stocking she’d been darning and got to her feet. She did not want to speak to him.

  She was too late. Wildman came into the kitchen behind Richard, holding his hat in his hands and looking sheepish. He ducked his head, first to Mary, then to Lucy. ‘Mrs Hudson,’ he said unhappily, ‘I’ve come to beg your pardon.’

  A large part of Lucy wanted to shout at him to get out. She couldn’t, of course: it wasn’t her house. Wildman was a friend of the Overtons, and had spent many hours sitting in this same kitchen, planning Leveller projects with Dick and with John Lilburne. She couldn’t possibly keep up a quarrel with him while she was living here; a
nd, for that matter, he was one of Jamie’s most trusted friends. Wildman had cared for Jamie after he was wounded, written his family to ask for money for his support, helped him get work again. She ducked her own head tensely. ‘You need not beg, Major. Of course I forgive a man who has been so good and true a friend to my husband.’

  Her resentment obviously leaked through. Wildman smiled nervously. ‘I see you are still offended. In truth, you are right to be, for I wronged you. I fear that the sudden release from prison corrupted my judgement. All I could think was that now I was free to do all those things I had wished to do while I was confined – and one of those things was to keep my promise to protect a friend’s wife. I was so eager that I blundered foolishly, like a man that runs to snatch a teetering wineglass, and oversets the whole table.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Lucy, frowning. ‘Jamie asked you to protect me?’

  ‘When he went to the war,’ Wildman agreed. ‘Knowing the hazards he faced, and the uncertain situation in which he was obliged to leave you, he asked me to watch out for you and to help you at need. I promised it gladly – but instead of keeping my promise, I soon found myself reliant upon you. I was ashamed, that’s the truth of it – bitterly ashamed of my own helplessness. I suppose that I leapt upon the first opportunity to prove myself honourable, little caring that in doing so I imputed dishonour to you. I am most heartily sorry for it; I truly do think that the foul air of that miserable place addled my wits, so that I was unable to think clearly.’

  Lucy hesitated, still angry, but sympathetic despite herself. The Fleet was a horrible place, and to be locked up as Wildman had been, without charge and without any way to fight his sentence, would abrade any mind, let alone one as proud and energetic as his. She’d known that he was growing desperate; she could understand how, in the sudden delirious surprise of his release, he might rush into a stupid action out of sheer relief at being able to act at all. ‘I forgive you then,’ she said. ‘Let’s speak no more of it.’