A Corruptible Crown

by Gillian Bradshaw

  It was still dark, and very cold; the setting moon was nearly at the full. There was frost on the grass, and his breath steamed. The bells were deafening, but he could still make out the shouting in the broken intervals between them. He pulled his coat closer and followed the noise, past the church, past the inn on the marketplace that was Rainsborough’s headquarters. Half a block further on towards the bridge the street was blocked by a crowd of soldiers, their red coats unnaturally vivid in the torchlight. Jamie caught the shoulder of the nearest, and the man turned a frightened face toward him. ‘What’s passed?’ Jamie asked anxiously.

  The bells were still clamouring. ‘The colonel,’ the soldier began breathlessly, then stopped, drowned out, and tried again, ‘The colonel . . .’

  Someone further towards the centre of the crowd gave a long shriek of grief and anger, and suddenly men were pressing into one another to form an aisle, recoiling from some as-yet-invisible horror. A small group of officers appeared, their faces grim and wet with tears. They were carrying something on a stretcher. Jamie, with his injured arm, was among the last to make way for them, and so he found himself in the front rank looking down at Rainsborough’s body.

  The colonel was dressed exactly as he had been when he spoke to Jamie the afternoon before, but his lively, changeable face was still, his eyes glazed. His head was thrown back, and there was a gaping wound in his throat. There was blood at the corner of his mouth, and more blood all over the breast of his coat. Jamie froze in horror; around him several men cried out. The pall-bearers paced on steadily, looking neither left nor right.

  They marched back to Rainsborough’s headquarters. The crowd broke behind them and followed. At the inn, the officers carried the body inside, but the crowd stopped at the door. It had grown since Jamie joined it; it now numbered two or three hundred, almost all of them Rainsborough’s soldiers. More men were running up every minute, wanting to know what had happened. The bells kept ringing, making it impossible to speak normally, but phrases swept back and forth in a clamouring counterpoint: ‘The garrison let them in’; ‘They said they had a message from Cromwell’; ‘The sentries weren’t at their posts’; ‘Cromwell sent them’.

  There were a few garrison soldiers in the crowd, and suddenly the rest were snarling at them. They began protesting innocence and ignorance; Rainsborough’s men jostled them, pushing them away. They retreated hastily, struggling out of the crowd; Jamie thought for a moment that some of Rainsborough’s men would go after them, but then somebody shouted, ‘Rainsborough!’ A moment later, everyone was chanting it, drowning even the bells: ‘Rainsborough! Rainsborough!’

  One of Rainsborough’s captains came to the door and held up his hands for silence. The crowd obeyed, but the bells rang on. The captain said something to one of his fellows, who elbowed his way through the press towards the church. Everyone stood packed together, like cattle in a market, their breath making one great fog. Jamie cradled his sore arm against the jostling. At last the bells stopped.

  ‘Friends!’ shouted the captain. ‘I beg your patience! It is true – I would God it were not! – it is true that Colonel Rainsborough’s been murdered . . .’

  A groan, huge and angry; the captain held up his hands again. ‘His noble spirit is now with God, who best can cherish it! Who murdered him we know not. Four men were admitted to Doncaster by the garrison. They claimed to be messengers from Cromwell. God forbid it should be true! It will be looked into, I swear to you all, without fear or favouritism . . .’

  ‘Did they give the password?’ somebody shouted; and somebody else shouted, ‘Where are they?’ provoking a vengeful clamour.

  Again the captain raised his hands. ‘They fled! It may be they have been captured by now, I know not – but if they have, they must be questioned. Those who would silence them are no friends to the colonel! As to the password, it will be looked into, I promise it. Those that are required now will receive orders; for the rest of you, there is nothing to be done by you this night. We have lost the truest and best commander in all England, and we all rue it, and shall do so more in future, I’ve no doubt. But there is nothing to be done. Go back to your beds. To work injustice upon anyone whatsoever tonight were no memorial for such a gentleman, who ever loved justice better even than his life. Go to your beds! There’s nothing to be done.’

  The captain went back inside the inn, closing the door behind him. Outside in the street, the crowd shuffled its feet, then began to disperse.

  Jamie met up with Sam, Philibert, and the driver, just before he got back to the forge. They all went inside together. Sam lit a rushlight from the banked-down fire, then stood holding it while they looked at one another in silence. Jamie saw that the others were in tears, which was oddly comforting because he was in tears himself.

  ‘God give him rest,’ said Philibert, his voice thick. ‘We will never see his like again.’

  Fourteen

  Hundreds of people, thousands of people; and all were wearing sea-green ribbons. Most women had theirs pinned to the breast of their gown, but most men had them tied about their forearms, like the tokens soldiers wore into battle to distinguish friend from foe. Lucy supposed that many were, or had been, soldiers.

  It was the fourteenth of November, a cold blustery morning. Lucy and the entire Overton family had walked out of London as far as Islington: The Moderate had called for ‘all the well-affected in London and parts adjacent’ to meet the funeral procession of Colonel Rainsborough, ‘the never to be forgotten English Champion’ and accompany it to the interment. The green ribbons were in token of remembrance.

  The circumstances of Rainsborough’s death were still murky. It was claimed that the murderers were cavaliers who’d slipped out of besieged Pontefract, that they’d intended to take the colonel prisoner and exchange him for a prominent Royalist. Rainsborough had been killed, it was said, when he refused to come quietly. Questions however, abounded: how had the cavaliers managed to get out of Pontefract and into Doncaster unhindered? Why had the guard commander assigned to Rainsborough’s headquarters that night been missing from his place? Why had the murderers claimed that they had a message from Cromwell? How had they been able to escape so easily after the alarm was raised? Levellers inside and outside the Army were pointing the finger of blame at Sir Henry Cholmley, or Cromwell, or both, and the colonel was being acclaimed as a martyr for the Leveller cause. All over London the presses banged out elegies.

  Dick Overton had written the appeal in The Moderate, but confronted with fields full of green-ribboned citizens, he was as stunned as anyone. ‘How many do you suppose are here?’ he asked in amazement.

  Mary shook her head impatiently – it was impossible to count them – her eyes following her children as they dashed off toward a pond. ‘Johnnie!’ Mary called to her youngest, who had reached the pond and was leaning over it with a stick. ‘Don’t! You’ll fall in and catch your death!’

  Johnnie ignored her. Mary gathered up her skirts and ran after him, arriving just in time.

  ‘Forty thousand signed the petition,’ offered Lucy.

  There had been a great Leveller petition presented to Parliament on the eleventh of September, with much noise and commotion, but no violence. Parliament had refused to take any notice of it, so on the thirteenth the Levellers had presented a second petition, demanding that the House consider the first one; that time there’d been a riot. That had now been a month ago, though, and the bruises had faded – along with the burst of hope inspired by the House’s sullen agreement.

  ‘There’s not so many here as that,’ said Dick, scanning the fields. He wanted a number to put in The Moderate. ‘Nor would I hope for it! It’s a great deal easier to sign a name to a petition than it is to walk all the way hither on a cold morning. Besides that, we cast our net for signatures much wider than London. That field there.’ He pointed to the area to the left of the road, where Mary was now attempting to interest Johnnie in anything other than the pond. ‘You count from there to
that tree yonder; I’ll tell over the same distance on this side.’ He turned toward the field to the right of the road.

  They both counted. ‘Eighty-three,’ said Lucy.

  ‘A hundred, more or less,’ said Dick. ‘Call it ninety each.’ He proceeded to reckon up how many equivalent patches were covered by the green-ribboned crowd, then grinned. ‘Nigh on three thousand souls! Thanks be to God! This is beyond anything I hoped for. You’d think it a hanging, not a funeral!’

  Lucy made a face. Hangings regularly drew crowds numbering in the thousands, but she always hated them. Death, in her opinion, ought to be a solemn occasion – and she loathed rowdy lecherous drunks.

  Mary returned towing Johnnie, who was now wailing. ‘Has there been any word how long we must wait?’ she asked, with an anxious glance at the two girls, who were chasing one another across the field.

  Dick shrugged. ‘Soon. Ten o’clock, I was told, and we were slow on the road—’ He stopped abruptly, looking at a stirring on the hill beyond them. ‘There!’

  ‘I wanna catcha fishie!’ wailed Johnnie.

  His father scooped the little boy up and deposited him on his shoulders. ‘I’ll show you nobler game than fish, my darling! When you are a man grown you can tell them of the day you caught the burial of a hero with your own eyes. Yonder they come!’

  Over the hill the procession came, marching steadily along the Great North Road towards London. First came a man in black half-armour – the dead man’s brother – riding a black charger and carrying a drawn sword, the point reversed; behind him was the carriage with the coffin. Its black draperies were covered with wreaths of rosemary and bay: rosemary for remembrance, bay for victory. Behind it a groom led a riderless horse.

  Coaches followed, carrying mainly the wealthier women and children who were following the body to its interment. Dick counted them as they passed; there were fifty-four. Behind the coaches came the men, first the horsemen, then the foot. The procession stretched along the road out of sight.

  Lucy couldn’t help searching the marchers for one familiar slouching figure, though she knew he would not be there. Rainsborough’s regiment was still in the north, its fate undecided – and Jamie’s fate seemed to be even more undecided than that of his fellows. Jamie had written to her, and she’d received the letter only two days before.

  I have my Discharge from the Rgmt, but I am Commanded to a Court Marshall. I met Lieutenant Barker upon Doncaster Bridg, I spake no Worde to him, for he rid off in Haste, but he went to the Captaine of the Garrissoune and begged him to Arrest mee, the whych he did. Col Rainsborowe complayned of this, for it was the daye before his Murther, and soe there must be a Court Marshall to Judge of the Captaine’s Right, besides that the Investigation into the Colonel’s Murther wishes alsoe to Enquyre into this; for this same Captaine Rokeby allowed the Murtherers into the Towne and did Nought to hinder their Escape. And soe I know nott when I shall have Leave to Come to You, butt I beg you Beleeve I think of you Nighte and Daye, and long onlie to be on the Road to Lundun.

  Most of the letter had been about Rainsborough’s murder, and said things she’d heard from Leveller sources already. She wished Jamie had said less about that and more about his own situation: she was very worried about him. It sounded as though he were under arrest, and she kept imagining him shivering in some freezing prison. True, it also sounded as though the court martial was to try this captain, Rokeby, not Jamie, but if it acquitted the captain, didn’t that mean Jamie would be condemned? She wanted to ask Wildman about it – as a law-trained ex-Army officer he was sure to know – but he was involved in the Leveller discussions with the Army, which were taking place at St Albans.

  Perhaps, she thought hopefully, Wildman had come back to London for the funeral. The last of the men who’d followed the coaches was marching past, and the crowd began to fall in behind them. She joined them.

  They entered the City at Smithfield, an endless river of sea-green badges, then followed the main roads as far as St Paul’s. Citizens came out of shops and houses and lined the streets to see them pass, whispering to one another. Some joined them, and the procession grew longer and longer.

  At St Paul’s the Overton children began to droop, their teeth chattering from the cold. Mary took them off home, but Dick and Lucy followed the coffin on, through the City, then out along the Thames to Wapping. Rainsborough had been born there, and there in the parish church he was buried. The preacher gave a sermon on the text ‘Believers shall at last appear glorious’. Most of the congregation, shivering outside the church in the cold, couldn’t hear a word he said, but when he declared ‘Amen to the righteous sentence Christ shall pass upon all treacherous and bloody murderers!’ the phrase was passed through the crowd in a ripple of whispers, and a sudden thunder of ‘Amen!’ broke out. The Tower of London – which was in the keeping of men from the Army – fired a salute, as though the dead man had been a prince.

  It was dusk by the time Lucy returned to the house on Coleman Street. She was alone. Dick had met some other prominent Levellers at the church and gone off with them. The Leveller leaders had all been exhilarated. Forty thousand names on a petition might be impressive, but it was abstract, and many scoffed at it; that river of sea-green ribbons had made Leveller strength visible to all London. Lucy, too, felt profoundly thrilled, partly from hope and partly just because she had set the type that summoned many of those people. She was used to printing presses now, but sometimes they still seemed magical.

  The cold day, though, was growing even colder as night fell, and a day walking about London in the wind had left her chilled through and very hungry. She opened the street door hurriedly – then froze. There were men’s voices sounding from the kitchen.

  She’d had no conscious anxiety that the Leveller show of strength would draw reprisals, but the awareness of that possibility suddenly showed itself as something that had underlain her thoughts all day. She stood motionless in the hall, hand still on the latch of the open door. What was her best course? To turn and run before anyone noticed her, so as to find Dick and warn him? Or to go on in, and give poor Mary all the help and support she could?

  ‘Lucy?’ came Mary’s voice from the kitchen. There was no strain in it. She sounded serene and cheerful, and Lucy drew a deep shuddering breath of relief. Whoever the visitors were, they weren’t enemies. She closed the door behind her. ‘Aye,’ she said, and went on in.

  The men in the kitchen were Robert Hudson and his servant Jenkin. Rob got to his feet and welcomed Lucy with a broad smile. ‘Sister Lucy!’

  The smile she returned was flustered and a trifle forced. Her heart was still pounding from the moment of terror in the doorway. ‘You are very welcome, sir!’ she said, trying to make up for it. ‘I hope you have not been waiting long?’

  Rob waved that off. ‘We settled ourselves at the inn, and came hither perhaps an hour gone. Mrs Overton tells me you have been at the burial of Colonel Rainsborough, that was Jamie’s commander.’

  Lucy nodded. Mary glanced at the closed door behind Lucy and asked, ‘Did Dick meet with friends?’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Lucy. ‘With Honest John, and Will Walwyn and Max Petty. I think they were off to The Nag’s Head.’

  Mary smiled at Rob. ‘I feared it would be thus, sir. My husband’s defence must be that he did not know you would be here.’

  Rob ducked his head. ‘Indeed, mistress, I’ve arrived unheralded and uninvited, for which I can only apologize again. I pray you, let me make amends by buying supper for the household.’

  ‘That’s kind,’ said Mary, with a warm smile. ‘I’ve been busy all the day, and had no opportunity to cook anything suitable for a gentleman such as yourself. Faith! Show Mr Hudson’s servant round to Tom Grady’s cookshop.’

  ‘I’d thought to take you to my inn,’ said Rob, taken aback.

  ‘But you’re at The Whalebone again, are you not? They’ll be run off their feet there tonight just to keep the beer flowing. I doubt they serve supper at
all!’

  ‘Indeed? What’s the occasion?’

  ‘Why, Colonel Rainsborough’s funeral!’ Mary’s face lit, and she went on eagerly, ‘But you must have arrived too late for that. It was a glorious sight. There were thousands to mourn him, and more than fifty coaches! Every well-affected person in London will want to meet together to talk of it – and many of them will be at The Whalebone.’

  Rob looked confused.

  ‘Did you not know that The Whalebone is one of our meeting places?’ Lucy asked him.

  ‘Our?’ Rob repeated; then, frowning, ‘Do you mean Leveller?’

  The eagerness on Mary’s face went back to surprise. ‘That is what others call us. I thought, sir, that you knew. Did my husband never speak of it?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Rob. He hesitated. ‘And was Colonel Rainsborough a Leveller, too?’

  Mary and Lucy stared; even Faith stared, astonished by such ignorance.

  ‘I see,’ Rob said grimly. ‘I knew that my brother was long of this faction, but he said he would give up his adherence to it.’

  Lucy gazed at him in shock, not knowing what to make of this. ‘Jamie promised you that he’d abandon us?’ she asked at last.

  Rob grimaced. ‘Abandon is a harsh word, and beyond question he has no intention of abandoning you, Sister Lucy. As for your faction, he made it plain he still believes in the justice of this cause, but he agreed to give over pressing it, so as to have peace with his kin.’

  ‘He said nought of this to me!’ Lucy protested. How could Jamie make such a promise? How could he make such a promise on her behalf? If he gave up fighting for the Leveller cause, his family would certainly expect her to do the same.