I feel it amiss that I had to read the privy correspondence of two gentlemen, and I hope you will excuse this in the sad circumstances, and yet through your words I inferred that you shared my high opinion of the excellent Beaumont. We met but a few times, and I confess that we did not always agree on politics or principle, yet in those few meetings I could only admire his clarity of intellect and sincerity of belief, and felt ever respected and on my mettle.
I understand from you that the work of the community of active minds of which he was a part goes on. I must confess that I am concerned at the idea of more causes for strife in these beggared islands, yet I am sympathetic with the desire of some men to remove so many false and vain degrees of difference between free Englishmen and their rulers. Do you think that this chatter of a combination between some of the King’s friends and the so-called Levellers is more than mere taproom muttering?
Sir, it would please me much to think that in these hard times there are yet men whose intellects may lift their gazes above those things which divide us, and who may accordingly maintain that kind of civilised relation between educated souls which, among many false and little ideals loose in these times, is surely something worth defending. If you would write to I. S. at the Angel in Doncaster, it will be passed to me. In any case, I hope that I have, by giving you the last sad news of an apparently mutual friend, rendered you some little service, though no more than that due to a true spirit.
[SS C/S/49/100]
By the first hours of August, Shay was through Cumbria and into the Scottish borderlands. He kept to the west, away from the centres of population and the concentrations of the Army. Here he was prey more to local scavengers than to Parliament’s militia. The peasants would cut a throat for a shilling, and the decade of war grinding back and forth had left them raw and brutalized.
Hamilton’s army had come south across these barrens the year before, with the usual indifferent excesses of troops on the march; it didn’t take a foraging soldier long to work through the Ten Commandments, and the seventh and the eighth were usually broken well before the sixth was forgotten in battle. Those who’d survived Preston and straggled back again towards Scotland a month or two later – those who’d avoided capture and a slit nose and the hell of transportation to the Americas – would have paid the price for their earlier boisterous sins. Shay in his light-shy journey north had come across two corpses, bone and scraps of leathered flesh, and many more no doubt rested in the gullies and ditches and marshes of the wild landscape.
The sad, twinkling residue of English monarchy had been easily hidden; hopefully it would form the heart of the new regalia of the new King soon enough. The exploit at the fortress of London had been an incidental, a necessary obligation. If the new King was ever to benefit from it, Shay must continue to test his ground, and to prepare it.
And that meant Scotland. Ireland might prove a handy way to distract Parliament’s Army, to swallow its men and its enthusiasm. But the political and military support for a restored Stuart King would come from Scotland. Probably not this year. It would take more than one winter to forget Preston, for the clans to recover their strength and their heart, and for the politics to resettle towards the young Prince Charles. But next year. . .
For now, Shay’s meetings and his observations were hidden things: lonely rendezvous with trusted men; distant scrutiny of fortifications and unobtrusive testing of roads; casual conversations with strangers; a chapel in a village near Glasgow; a doctor’s house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Shay needed to be momentarily remembered and then rapidly forgotten, to learn without asking, to impress without being felt, to happen and then to vanish.
Only once, eager for warmth and humanity and a glimpse of those whose wavering might become loyalty again, did he risk company. There was a supper and a dance at the house of a successful cloth-merchant outside Falkirk, a man who discreetly funded every cause that promised success, and Shay felt his way into it in the shadows and busyness. Head bowed under the harsh glare of the torches in the porch, he stepped into the front hall and disaster. A heavy figure suddenly looming in front of him – no time to move – the jarring of two large bodies clumsy together, the clutching, two faces inches apart and staring, and Shay knew that he knew the face and some surprise in the face suggested the feeling was mutual. Shay immediately in the skirmish, driving the man back into a dark corner of the hall, arm across the man’s throat and trying to remember who he was and his other hand reaching into his pocket.
A moment of hesitation, a risky second to try to remember who the man was. The big face grinned stupidly, and sagged, and an ineffectual hand brushed at Shay as if at a fly.
The man was blind drunk, clearly incapable of thought or recollection, and it saved his life. Shay stepped aside and replaced his knife, and stalked onward down the corridor. The main hall was a chatter and a bustle, faces and clothes that had survived the upheavals serenely enough. The centre of the space glittered under the light of tall candelabra, but the edges were gloom and Shay eased into it comfortably.
A woman’s face across the room – older, surely, and handsome still. And eyes that seemed suddenly to catch his, to frown, to widen in surprise, and then look away and around in confusion.
Immediately Shay was back against the wall, watching the room, and then slipping along the panels to the door and out.
In the passage, comfortable in the gloom, time to re-focus.
‘No man ever liked the darkness so much.’ A low female murmur, then a soft chuckle.
He heard himself breathing, felt the crowding years around his shoulders.
‘Hello, Con.’
There was gentle wonder in the voice. ‘Mighty Shay. You came back to us.’ And a little mockery.
‘Don’t say it. You thought me dead. Everyone seems to.’
‘Not you. You never really lived in our world; how could you die?’
He turned.
‘Constance Blythe. Great God, it must be—’
‘No! It mustn’t.’ Her murmur lightened. ‘Why must everyone talk about time?’
He took her two hands in his and kissed them once, hard, searching her face. Caught in the faint light slipping through a window, its every crease and flaw was shadow. The flesh was thicker on the bones and tired, but he knew it as beauty.
‘Are you hunted, or hunting?’ She pulled her hands away. ‘Ah, what mightn’t be possible, now you’re here?’ She moved to stand beside him, and they stood in the gloom as if watching the sound coming through the closed door. She remembered a decorum, like a piece of the catechism. ‘How is Margaret?’
‘Well enough. I don’t—’
‘Of course you don’t. That poor girl.’
‘Meg’s hardly lucky in me, I grant. You of all people—’
‘Your embraces were marvellous, Mortimer. Thrilling. Rather terrifying. But we knew they were the things of an idle hour for you. For you, as pleasant an exercise as a morning’s hunt.’ He had started to protest, and then frowned, and then was silent. ‘But to be the woman whom Mortimer Shay committed himself to, swore to protect for ever.’ She shook her head. ‘A hundred female souls died a little when it happened. And in that moment, darling lucky Meg became a kind of queen; we never looked at her so casually again.’
‘Little old Meg? Surely—’
‘Mortimer.’ It was spat. ‘Even you are not so much of a fool.’
He shifted uncomfortably, grunted. ‘You were married too, I think.’
‘I was married. And then I was widowed. In the end it was just another affair. Not as short and not as sweet. When a wife I was expected to make as much effort as when a mistress, for none of the little fondnesses or pretty offerings in return. Do you men know how boring it is to have to flatter, Mortimer? Especially when you know there are no pearls in it.’
Shay chuckled, deep in his throat, and glanced down at her.
She lifted a hand and ran the fingers intently down his sleeve, feeling the old muscle ins
ide. ‘But that was never your insecurity, was it?’ Her hand clutched around his arm, and then released it. ‘Sometimes, when I touched you, I was surprised to find you any softer than stone. And sometimes I was surprised to find you had any physical presence at all.’
‘You flatter well enough still.’ He said it indifferent. ‘You always did.’
‘No.’ She was colder, firmer. ‘You did not care enough for flattery. You would not trust enough.’
A voice suddenly in the hall, a clattering approach that disappeared up a flight of stairs.
Shay had pulled back into the shadows. Constance Blythe saw the movement, and laughed quietly.
He scowled. ‘Have you children?’
She shook her head, without looking at him. ‘Not any more.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I did not love them enough, and so the Lord took them back to him.’ The sentiment was empty, and he said nothing. ‘Not meant for a family, perhaps. Neither of us.’
Shay considered this. ‘And what shall remain, then?’ There was silence. He stirred himself with a grunt. ‘I must—’
‘Of course. And once again we shall wonder if you ever truly were, or whether we just dreamed you.’ He laughed quietly. ‘Shay, the world seems to move a little faster now you’re back. I hope you’ve life enough for all of us.’
Again the laugh, soft and harsh in the throat. ‘Plenty.’ The echo of the laugh hung as whispers in the air, but the man was gone, and Lady Constance Blythe was left alone in the darkened hallway.
It had been the frustration at the Tower that had finally prompted Thurloe to contrive the letter in reply to the Reverend Beaumont’s friend – the sense that he was nowhere in understanding his enemies, that they were somehow laughing at him. It only compounded his frustration with Thomas Scot, the conspiratorial old crow deliberately blocking him; Scot and Tarrant, the insecure bully. He was surely a cleverer man than them. The world – and in particular the tricks of his enemies – could teach him ways to prove himself.
Writing the letter had been a tussle between the instinct that he was doing wrong – wrong by a man and wrong by the interests he himself was supposed to uphold – and the intellectual satisfaction.
How did one write such a letter? How would one capture the spirit of the poet when translating his Greek? He’d not been at all sure how to refer to the Reverend’s hanging, and it didn’t help that he didn’t really know what the reader would think. He’d started with strong interest and hearty support for Beaumont and the Royalists, but it looked ludicrous under his pen and he realized – who am I myself supposed to be in this performance? – that prudent doubt might be more credible. It might also provoke more discussion. He hoped the interest in the possibility of a Royalist-Leveller combination wasn’t overdone. Likewise the flattery at the end – he rather warmed to his idea of a network of intelligent men corresponding regardless of the little differences of politics – but perhaps he’d been too strong in presuming the character of his reader.
And Doncaster sounded right. Better than London. In any case, it had to be plausible that he was being given Beaumont’s letters. He knew the Angel Inn for a reliable place, and could easily arrange the forwarding. Strange to think of these deceptions moving between the inns of England.
TO THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE
Sir, the renegade Ormonde, perhaps contrary to expectation, contrives to continue to hold together his mongrel army in Ireland. The Confederacy can have no love for the Marquis or his cause, but they will take advantage of Royal gold, and the chance of this further support in their effort to rid Ireland entirely of the Godly. This ill-born Royalist-Catholic force is in the field and marching upon Dublin. Should Dublin fall – and sheer numbers may overmaster the stoutest hearts – we would have no garrison but Derry in this whole island, and no easy port for our traffic.
[NALSON COLLECTION 24, BODLEIAN LIBRARY]
The 2nd of August opened slow over Dublin, turgid with summer. The Royalist soldiers grew more lethargic with each hour of its heat. Dublin Castle, Parliament-held, was only a mile away, but through the bright haze it seemed distant and insubstantial.
The world was a heavy light, and buzzing insects, and the thick head that follows a disrupted night.
They’d been sent on a march through the darkness, fully one thousand of them, to secure an outpost near the city. But the guides had been half-asleep, or incompetent, or more likely treacherous, and the swift operation had collapsed into a weary weird dream of confused comings and goings in the lanes, stoppings and startings, cursing and drowsing and the stamp and the clank of uniforms and weapons. Only an hour before dawn they’d reached their objective, the little castle that would form another anchor point for their implacable march on Dublin, last but one of Parliament’s strongholds in Ireland.
But the little castle that had seemed so solid, on the map and on the horizon at dusk, was found in the first dusty glow of morning to be a crumbling ruin. The Marquess himself had ridden up – after a good night’s sleep, no doubt, and a like breakfast – to sneer and frown at their progress in fortifying the ruin. His horse had pranced him around it, as if trying to find an angle from which it might look impressive, and instead only finding fault. They’d stood sweating in their shirts, passing rocks man to man, indifferent and slow under their commander’s scrutiny. Eventually, cross and impotent, he’d cantered away with curses and promises, back to camp. A comfortable camp, the Marquis of Ormonde’s; comfortable and lively.
Apparently the Parliamentarians were moving near Dublin Castle. Someone had heard someone discussing it with the Marquis. Parliamentarians must be wondering how to hold out, with the whole country against them. The Marquis was going to bring up some reinforcements, and put some guns on the high ground just over there. That sounded like warm work, too – pushing cannon up a slope. Just to scare off some people who if they’d any sense would be staying inside their own walls.
The soldiers continued to swing the heavy stones man to man, a loping sweating rhythm and gasps of breath in the heat. They were fortifying the little ruined castle, that was the theory. But all they were really doing was moving stones from one pile to another.
Then, from some strange, half-grasped place in the back of their hearing, a foggy place in their heads that might be behind them in space or behind them in time, a drumming.
The drumming was a collective frowning of uncertainty, stones swinging to a stop in tired arms. The drumming was shouts of concern, and then alarm. At last the drumming was hooves, exploding from behind the little hill and thundering over the ground at them, first nothing, then dust, then a shadow of horses that grew and loomed and rushed towards the futile ruin, death coming unstoppable with swords outstretched, and the soldiers tired and slow and armed with heavy stones. The stones thumped dull to the ground, and there was a scrambling for coats and muskets, stumbling and snatching and swearing at each other, and the treacly lethargic dream became a frenzy of violence and flight, scrabbling and screaming across the suddenly sharp day.
VERITAS BRITANNICA
Liberty under God in a Kingdom under God
HE ALMIGHTY hath bleſſed the arms of the Godly with new TRIUMPH, even in the very heart of the pit of the BEAST. As is well-known, the thrice-forſaken Land of IRELAND is the moſt abject, the moſt pitiable, the moſt deſart place on this earth, a domain where the LIGHTS of learning and reaſon and mercy do not ſhine. In this dark waſte Satan himſelf do walk, and he hath the baſe and Godleſs natives to do his bidding, they being nothing but brute and vicious animals.
We ſhould not expect any grain of hope in ſuch a vile wilderneſs, and ſure the cauſe of the true RELIGION has ſuffered ſorely in that place, through defeats and diſaſters and trials, and with much barbarity and cruelty practiſed upon CHRISTIAN women and children, yet the LORD GOD doth ever ſhow his greatness even in the uttermoſt extremity. There be but few outpoſts of GODLY men and brave in Ireland, yet DUBLIN CASTLE is one
ſuch, and from this place a band of theſe men, though ſore beſet by a rampaging hoſte of the murderous Catholick adherents of the late CHARLES STUART and his cauſe, finding the horde diſtracted by their idolatries and vices did ſally forth and rout them quite, at the place called RATHMINES. The treacherous ORMONDE has paid the price of his many twiſts of loyalty theſe years paſt, and is now hunted through Ireland, and his rabble were purſued ten miles with the ſword and all deſtroyed, and ſo doth ALMIGHTY GOD ſhine his light in the darkneſs.
Sir,
as you will have heard, Colonel Jones out of Dublin routed Ormonde’s army as it approached the city. The army is quite scatterd. Idle preparation and ill-disciplind flight reflected the licence of Ormonde’s camp and ill-quality of subordinate commanders. Jones was less than us in number, but much the greater in command and dareing. Our fugitive rabbel cut down or captured by hundreds. The Marquiss was bruised by a musquet-ball that struck his armour, but in truth is worse hurt in his pride, having lost artilery and amunition and plate all, and too the hope of takeing Dublin. For Cromwell is landed at that place the 15. August, with ten or twenty thousands, and so the city is saved for Parliament. He will now hunt the Royal caus town by town, there being no army in the field to hold him.
T. M.
[SS C/S/49/131]
Sir Mortimer Shay in the shade of a tree, at a roadside somewhere in England, chewing on an apple and the words in front of him. Thank you, Teach. He saw the map of Ireland in his head. Parliament shall have it easier than we might have hoped. He placed the main fortified towns on the map. But Oliver Cromwell is in the snare now, and the more he wriggles the bloodier he shall be.
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