London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “Your Majesty has no need to ask,” he replied, much moved. “You have my word.”

  “And I have no subject,” the king replied, “whose word is worth more. Thank you, Sir Julius.”

  Julius was not able to slip through to Oxford again; the London approaches were too closely watched. But from that day, he felt he had gained an inner strength. If his life in London was drab, he was there for a purpose, and he would quietly remind his family: “I have given the king my word.”

  Even so, in the years that followed, it was not always easy to keep up his spirits. Early in 1645, the Roundheads had executed Archbishop Laud. It was a sign of how far they meant to go. When Cromwell and his army won the war and King Charles was held captive, he had still hoped that a settlement might be reached. Once, when secret messengers from the king had called at his house he had advised them: “If the king would give up bishops, Parliament and the Londoners will surely compromise.” But when King Charles failed to give way, he was not really surprised, remembering his words: “I have a sacred duty.” As the negotiations dragged on interminably, Julius had wondered how they could ever come to a conclusion.

  But he could still scarcely believe the events of the last two months. Only after Pride’s purge of Parliament had the full naked power of the army been clearly seen. Having asserted their power, the army men moved ruthlessly. By January the scene was set. The king was brought to Westminster Hall for a trial. “Or a mockery of a trial,” as Julius described it. Certainly many of those summoned to sit in judgment upon the king, including several London aldermen, refused to take part. King Charles, true to form, refused to recognize the court’s authority, but as he also pointed out, this was not even a court of the Parliament, since the army had thrown out most of its members. The answer of the army’s court was to remove him, on both the first and the second day. “He was tried, in effect, in his absence,” Julius noted. On the third day the army’s henchmen, who insisted on referring to him as “Charles Stuart, that man of blood,” arbitrarily sentenced their monarch to death. “We killed the archbishop,” they could announce. “Now with the king, our work is complete.”

  And so it had come to this. In the morning, after this night under the cold stars, they were going to kill their king. Such a thing had never been done before. But if they thought they would change the world thereby, Sir Julius Ducket at least, as he kept his vigil, swore to himself: “They shall not.”

  It was already the fourth night that the fellow had been staying at the George. He was a gnarled old sea-dog, but he gave no trouble, kept himself to himself. Each day he went out in the morning and did not return until dusk. No one knew what his business might be, though he had confessed to the innkeeper that he had never been to London before; but it evidently kept him busy. When the innkeeper had asked him if he was going to watch the king’s execution the following morning, he had shaken his head and replied: “No time.” He had only three days left before he sailed.

  Twenty years had passed since the first mate had received his commission from Black Barnikel; for twenty years he had carried the pirate’s will. But the passage of time meant little to him. He had been asked to deliver it and, if he could, he would keep his word. It had been three years before he could make detailed enquiries after Jane in Virginia, and even then his first search had failed to find any record of her. A year later, however, he had had the chance to spend another ten days in Jamestown, and this time he had more luck. Someone remembered the woman he described, told him she had married Wheeler; and before he left he was fairly sure that Jane and the widow Wheeler were one and the same. They told him she had returned to England. “Said she came from London,” one farmer remembered. Ten years back he had been to Plymouth and looked there; five years ago to Southampton, now London.

  His method of enquiry was simple and logical. He went from parish to parish and enquired of the clergyman if he had ever heard of a Widow Wheeler. So far he had drawn a blank. But tomorrow, perhaps, he would have better luck. He was going along Cheapside: to St Mary-le-Bow, and to little St Lawrence Silversleeves.

  The crowd in Whitehall had begun to gather early that icy morning, but several hours had passed and still the business had not begun. In front of Inigo Jones’s beautiful Banqueting Hall, gleaming white even in the pale January morning light, they had erected a wooden platform. The Roundhead troops in their heavy leather tunics and sturdy boots had formed a guard round the platform, and twice now fresh contingents armed with pikes had arrived, forcing the crowd to edge back even further.

  What was the mood of the crowd, Julius wondered. Were they stern Puritans like Gideon? Some were, but the majority seemed to be a motley crew – all kinds of folk from gentlemen and lawyers to fishwives and apprentices. Were they indifferent? Had they come just to be entertained? As they waited in the bitter cold, they seemed strangely subdued. He thought of the Banqueting Hall with its magnificent Rubens ceiling. It depicted the king’s father James being taken up to heaven – not the first time that a great work of art had been created from a faintly absurd subject; and he thought of what it really meant. It meant the court, the civilized, European world of the king and his friends, the splendid houses, the great picture collection – all to be destroyed by these rude, obstinate Puritan fellows with their brutal God. Was the king waiting in there now? Was he being allowed a last look at the beauty he had created before they cut him down? The crowd had swelled still further; the whole of Whitehall was full of folk. Now mounted troopers were coming and forming up round the execution platform. There was a roll of drums. An upper window of the Banqueting Hall was thrown open; and a moment later, simply but elegantly dressed in cloak and doublet, King Charles I of England quietly stepped out.

  How strange. Julius had expected a roar, or even hoots from the crowd; but it remained strangely silent. A clergyman in a long robe followed, then several secretaries and other members of the execution party. Finally, bringing up the rear, with a black mask over his face and carrying an axe, came the executioner.

  It was the custom that the condemned man might address the crowd. This had been allowed to Charles Stuart also. Holding a few notes on a scrap of paper in his hand, the king began to speak. How gracefully he did so. The day when he had met him at Greenwich came back into Julius’s mind. There was the same calm manner, the careful politeness. He even seemed to be addressing this rabble who had come to gawp at his death as though they were so many ambassadors.

  But what was he saying? Julius could see that the secretaries on the platform were making notes, but from where he was standing in the crowd it was hard to hear. Certain phrases he caught. Parliament, he declared had been the first to begin the conflict over privilege, not he. Monarchs, he reminded them, are there to keep the ancient constitutions, which are the people’s freedom. Now, instead, they had only the arbitrary power of the sword in his place. Whatever his own sins might be, “I am a martyr of the people,” he cried. “And a Christian of the Church of England,” he reminded them, “as I found it left by my father.”

  Then he was done. They removed his cloak and jerkin so that he stood only in a white shirt over his breeches. They tucked his hair under a cap, so it should not impede the axe and they led him to the block. And it was just then, in the awful silence before he knelt down to the block, that, surveying the faces in the crowd, King Charles caught sight of Sir Julius Ducket, and their eyes met.

  How sad those eyes looked, in that noble, kingly face, yet as they held Julius’s for a moment, they seemed to contain a question. How could he forget his vow at Oxford, and the king’s words – “if anything should befall me” – how solemnly, how tragically prophetic? Looking King Charles straight in the eye, he made a quick bow of his head. There could be no mistaking its meaning. It said: “I have promised.” In the moment of his death, King Charles should know that Ducket at least, of all the men in that crowd, would keep faith with his sons. It seemed to Julius that he saw a look of gratitude in reply.

 
Not even his most bitter enemies could deny that King Charles I of England went to his death with the most remarkable grace. As the axeman struck a single, clean blow, the whole crowd let out a great groan, as if suddenly they understood their awful deed. And as the executioner held up the king’s severed head, perhaps Sir Julius Ducket was not alone as he murmured to himself: “The king is dead. Long live the king.”

  Two days afterwards Sir Julius Ducket received a visit from Jane Wheeler. The document she showed him was perfectly clear. It stated plainly that a certain sea captain by the name of Orlando Barnikel had left her his treasure chest which resided in the safe keeping of his father Alderman Ducket. It also exactly described the chest. There could be no mistaking it. And what in heaven’s name, Julius wondered, as he gazed at Jane in stupefaction, was he to do?

  Was the old chest with its padlocks burst still lying down there in the cellar? He could not remember. What about the treasure itself? About half was left, but who knew what he might need in the uncertain years to come? What if he were to give her some of it and tell her he had removed it from the chest to hide it more easily? Would she believe him? He suspected not. And that, he thought, would invite people to investigate his own affairs. Those old coins – people would start saying they were the sea captain’s instead of his father’s. They’d call him a thief.

  A sea captain! He knew perfectly well what kind of man had left this treasure to this apparently respectable widow. A blackamoor. A pirate. Stolen money anyway. But of course, if he said that, he would be admitting he knew about the matter. And why, why should this woman, friend of Dogget and the cursed Carpenters, take money which such people in no way deserved and which might yet be needed in the Royalist cause? It could not be right. It couldn’t be God’s purpose. Hadn’t he known since his childhood that it was the Duckets who were chosen by God to do His will, and that these other folk were cursed? Surely the heavenly Father had not altered his priorities? It would be too unjust. Gravely therefore he shook his head.

  “I fear, Mistress Wheeler, that this document may be a forgery. I will look through my father’s records. If I can find this chest, of course it will be yours. But I must tell you, I have never seen it. Unless,” he added, with a flash of inspiration, “it is at Bocton. But then you must ask the Roundheads for it.”

  Jane stared at him; then she remarked very calmly: “You’re lying.”

  Outraged, Sir Julius asked her to leave. “No one,” he declared, “has ever said such a thing to me.” But late that night, when all the household was asleep, he went down to the cellar, and found the old chest, and broke it up and burned it in the fireplace, and took the metal remains from the cinders, and buried them before dawn. And hoped, thereafter, to put the business from him.

  He could not. A week later, Jane returned.

  “Gideon has had Bocton searched,” she told him. “The chest was never there. What have you done with it?” His assurance that he knew nothing more about it drew only an angry snort. “You will hear more,” she promised.

  She was as good as her word. She challenged him again and again. She had a lawyer write to him. She demanded to search the house, which he indignantly refused. A year passed. And another. And still she was not satisfied.

  1652

  Yes, Martha reflected, she had been blessed with a joyous homecoming. How sweet it was to be reunited with Gideon and his family, with dear Mrs Wheeler, and with her husband too, of course. She wished indeed that she had paid heed to Gideon’s urgent letters, and come sooner. But most important of all, it was clear to her now, just as Gideon had told her, that in old England after all – perhaps even more than in Massachusetts – there was a chance to realize her lifelong dream.

  Truth to tell, Martha had grown a little disappointed in Massachusetts. She had hardly liked to admit it even to herself while she was there; but as she confided to her friend Mrs Wheeler: “There has been some backsliding in New England.” In Boston and Plymouth, even. And when Mrs Wheeler gently enquired what it was that had tempted some of the colony from the path of righteousness, Martha did not hesitate. “Cod. It’s fish that have taken men from the Lord.”

  The catch off the New England coast had been phenomenal, past all the settlers’ wildest dreams. “There are so many fish,” they declared, “you can almost walk on the waters.” Every year the Massachusetts fishermen were sending between a third and half a million barrels of fish across the ocean to England. “God has granted them such abundance they do not think they need Him,” Martha complained. “They are laying up treasure on earth instead of in heaven.” Indeed, the growing riches of the men by the coast, and the promise of wealth for the farmers and for trappers who were staking out great land claims in the interior, had so insidiously worked upon men’s hearts that there was hardly a church in the colony that had not been affected. “They speak of God, but they think of money,” Martha admitted sadly. And some of the fishermen did not even trouble to do that; Martha could never forget, or quite forgive, the terrible occasion when the eldest Dogget son, now a sea captain of some wealth, had turned on her and shouted: “Damn it, woman, I came here to fish, not to pray.”

  It was not Governor Winthrop’s fault, it was not the fault of the good men and women of the congregations, but subtly the character of the Massachusetts colony was taking on the duality it was never to lose: Protestantism and money would walk together henceforth, hand in hand, in New England’s promised land.

  It was therefore in an uncertain frame of mind that Martha had received Gideon’s urgent summons three years before. With the death of the king, he promised her, Cromwell’s saints would build a new order, worthy of her. “We need you here,” his letter declared. “And your husband too,” he had continued, “is greatly in need of your moral guidance.” For a year and a half, all the same, she had hesitated before finally, and after much prayer, deciding to return. With her she brought Dogget’s younger son, who had failed to achieve citizenship in Massachusetts and thought to try his luck in London, and her own daughter, who Martha feared might be in danger of receiving a tempting offer of marriage from a man who, though godly, was not, she assured her daughter, godly enough.

  The England that awaited her was an unfamiliar country. With the execution of the king, the constitution had abruptly changed. The House of Lords was abolished. England was no longer called a kingdom, but the Commonwealth of England, governed by the House of Commons. Nor did anything seem likely to shake the new order. Cromwell, the new state’s great general, grew mightier every year. When the eldest son of the executed king, who proclaimed himself Charles II, had tried to enter his English kingdom with an army of Scots, he and the Scots had been utterly crushed. He was living uselessly abroad now. Cromwell had crushed the troublesome Irish too and completely subdued them. It was said he had shed much Irish blood. “But they are papists,” Martha said, “so perhaps it was necessary.” Even the Levellers in his own army had been brought to heel. The Commonwealth of England was in good order, ready to receive God’s law.

  Of course, there was much to do. The shining city would not be built in a day. Thanks to Cromwell’s one weakness, his religious tolerance, Martha was sad to see that the churches of London remained in some confusion. “Many of these would probably be just as content whether they served a bishop, a Presbyterian assembly or any other form of authority,” she shrewdly judged. Nor were the people all as well-behaved as she would have wished. It was hard to promote perfect order in so large a city as London. What mattered was whether a society was striving to improve its morals, whether things were getting gradually better, or worse.

  And the rule of the saints astonished her. Never before, in its entire history, had the old city seen anything like it. Even if, as usually happens, the changes were pushed through by an active minority, this godly few had broad support. The Londoners in the street were for the most part so soberly dressed that she might have been in Boston. The Sabbath was strictly observed: no sports were allowed; even going
for a walk, unless to church, was frowned upon. No maypoles were permitted. The moral code was strictly enforced by the courts, too, with severe penalties for acts of gross immorality and fines for minor infringements. Her own husband had been fined a shilling, just before her arrival, for swearing a blasphemous oath. “You were rightly reproved, husband,” she told him with satisfaction. But best of all, for Martha, was the fact that the playhouses, closed at the opening of the Civil War, had now been boarded up and ordered never to open again. “Not a single play in all London,” she smiled. “The Lord be praised.”

  How blessed she was too, she thought humbly, that her own family should be in such a healthy and godly condition. All Gideon’s were safely married now – for even Perseverance had been found a worthy, if silent husband. As for young O Be Joyful, his serious but loving nature was an inspiration to her. “You will be a fine carver of wood,” she told him, “because you will carve for the Lord.”

  The one matter that puzzled her a little was the welfare of her husband. Gideon had been so insistent when he wrote that Dogget needed her moral guidance that, the day after her return, she had taken him aside and asked him what he meant. Whatever it was, Gideon had seemed embarrassed, reluctant to be explicit. “Is it drink?” she asked, “or swearing?” She knew that Dogget was not as strong a soul as she, but he was not a bad fellow and she reminded Gideon: “We must show compassion and forgiveness to our weaker brother, nephew Gideon. All will be well.”