In the bedroom, she leaves her skirt and bodice heaped on the floor. A small act of rebellion that pleases her hugely. In her shift and bare feet, she skips across to the bed and climbs in, pulling the musty blanket up to her nose. What joy there is in this big empty bed, she thinks. She feels the leaden weight of her tired limbs, luxuriating in not being pawed at.
She pulls the bed curtains closed and thinks to daydream a while, to float herself away to home, where the otters play in the river.
She might have been asleep – she is not sure – when she hears his tread. Beyond the curtain, the heavy footsteps seem maddeningly precise. He does everything with care, her husband. Places his feet just so. Closes doors just so. Walks up the stairs just so.
The door creaks open. In the gap in the curtain she can see the gleam of a single candle. She screws her eyes tight shut. Perhaps she is dreaming. Perhaps he is not here.
‘Patience. Patience.’ The curtain is pulled violently back. ‘I come home to a house in darkness. No food. No welcome.’
‘We were not expecting you. I will get up and—’
‘No. Stay where you are.’
She can’t see his face, in the darkness, and it is hard to read him without visual clues. His voice is as usual measured, calm. He reaches out and pulls down the blanket.
The cold air raises goosebumps on her skin. She presses her back limply against the mattress, trying to shrink away from him when there is nowhere to go. He reaches out an arm and his hand finds her face. He draws his palm across her cheek. In the darkness, she has no face to study, no eyes to read. Which Sidrach is it? She doesn’t know, she can’t tell. She is off balance. Falling.
‘Well now, my pretty wife.’
She wants to exhale, deeply, but she lets her breath out in tiny incremental heaves instead. Be motionless. Do not move. Try not to upset him.
He moves his hand slowly down her face, her neck; pushing a finger into the hollow at the base of her neck. Trailing his fingertips down the skin of her chest, pushing aside the collar of her shift, finding a breast. His breathing is becoming deeper, more defined. She can hear it clearly above her heart’s hammer.
‘Dearest,’ she says. Her voice sounds as loud as a cannon in the quiet room. ‘Dearest,’ she says again. ‘It is my monthly time.’
The hand is pulled away abruptly.
‘Again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have I not done my duty by your body?’
‘Yes, Sidrach.’
‘Have I not covered you, and cherished you? Am I not blessed by Him? Am I not His voice before His coming?’
‘Yes.’
He stands. She cannot bear the contained tone of his voice; its even cadence. Fury would be easier somehow, breaking over her. Cleansing, perhaps?
‘Patience. Barrenness is the Lord’s curse. Does it not say in Exodus that God has the power to open and close the wombs of women? Your closed, sour womb must therefore be a mark of your shame.’
She does not know whether a yes or a no is more dangerous, so she stays silent.
‘Stand.’
She stands. Her eyes are closed; her feet cold on the floor. She knows that he is there, breathing heavily. She can feel his breath hot against her cheek as he whispers in her ear.
‘Shame on you. Shame. Shame.’
When the punch comes, it is worse than the anticipation. He drives his fist hard into her stomach, and she crumples. Pain; pain like a cloudburst.
‘Up.’
She pushes herself upright. She will not cry out. She will not. She stands, biting her lip, waiting for the next blow.
PARIS
April 1653
SAM CROUCHES BENEATH A CUCKOLD’S WINDOW, HOLDING his chief’s long cloak and his sword. Above him, drifting out with the candlelight, are the pants and squeals of an enthusiastic woman.
His legs are stiff, but a strange lassitude is on him and he cannot find the will to stand. The brandy lurches in his stomach, threatening to somersault its way back up his throat. If he closes his eyes, the earth heaves. He fixes his eyes on the stars, trying to hold himself straight.
He can hear Rupert now, groaning away like a diseased goat. At least it’s a woman, not a duel. He has been impossible since the inglorious end to their privateering, limping back to the Continent with a handful of pathetic prizes and half the fleet lost. Rupert has recovered some of his strength, prostrated as he was by fever. Or so Sam judges, based on the noises coming from the window.
But here they are, back to this half-life of exiles in a court without a kingdom.
Poor, irrelevant, fractious. They have only their swagger to maintain their status. Rupert swives and duels, Sam standing by his side. Priming pistols, placating husbands, plying the brandy. Staving off the great and wearying boredom. Dabbling with the prince’s discards.
Rupert is thick in intrigues against his old enemy Hyde, the adviser to Charles II. Charles, meanwhile, whores and gambles and plays them off against each other. Agrees with everyone to their face, sowing confusion and discord.
They need a war. Or a miracle.
Or something else.
The flowers that twist up the wall beneath the window smell strong, almost lemony. His father would have known their name, perhaps. He used to love his garden. There’s some Commonwealth man there now, no doubt, pissing on the roses.
Sam pulls off his glove and reaches out. He rubs a petal beneath his thumb and his forefinger, feeling the softness of it. He puts his hand to his face and breathes in its scent. The room above will smell of sex and candle wax, of the countess’s heavy, musky perfume, of Rupert’s mix of horse and sweat. Sam shudders.
Loyalty. He has been loyal to the prince for nearly ten years. He loves him like an older brother. More, perhaps, than the brother he lost. Disloyal thoughts, but how can a man weigh loyalty in the wake of the wars?
Somewhere a dog begins to bark. It might be the count coming back from the gaming rooms. He follows the king’s lead, surrounding himself with yapping dogs. Sam should stir himself, rouse the prince. Coitus interruptus.
He does not move. Could he return home? Ask his sister’s widower to help him petition for a pardon? Lord. Could he settle into a life back in London? He tries to conjure it up in his head. The sound of carts trundling on cobbles, of merchants shouting, of children shrieking. The smell of the sour Thames.
How can he go home? On what money? He has no trade but soldiering now. He would have been a merchant but for the wars. He feels his age. He is rising thirty, and what has he to show for it? A lost war. A string of women he has had to pay for. Loyalty to a prince as lost as he is, who is himself loyal to a king without a kingdom. So much for the past; what of the future? Indecision weighs on him. In battle, he can make quick decisions. He is prized for it by subordinates. Better a quick decision made in the heat and fury than a slow one, however good. But in this, the great question of his life’s purpose, he can make no decision.
He rocks back on his heels, and blocks his ears to his prince’s shuddering cry. A crow, frightened by the noise, breaks from the leaves above his head and caw-caws, flying into the night.
WHITEHALL, LONDON
April 1653
CROMWELL STANDS AT THE CENTRE OF THE COCKPIT. ON one side of him are the officers; on the other a band of influential MPs. Outside, darkness. In here, a riot of candlelight that catches and bounces between the gilt mirrors hung round the octagonal walls.
The lord general’s face catches the light. He looks tired, as if the dark-ridged circles under his eyes are sliding down his face. Someone is speaking in a loud nasal voice from the Parliamentary side of the room. The arguments are circular, and Will can no longer make the effort to listen. Cromwell, too, looks pained as the voice drones on, closing his eyes and moving his lips. Calling on the Lord, Will suspects. And does He answer?
They will talk themselves hoarse, round and round in a circle. At the centre of the circle is the parliamentary bill necessary to dissolve
the Rump Parliament and elect new MPs. All agree that such an outcome is necessary – few agree on how it can be achieved. What qualifications should be set on new members? What guards should be in place to ensure that only the godly are able to sit in the house?
Or as Nedham pithily says, who shall guard the guardians?
There is Major General Harrison, among the officers, leaning back in his seat. His eyes are large and intent under a blunt fringe of hair. He looks as if he is listening, but he is one of those men who listen only for the pause into which they can begin to lecture. A Fifth Monarchist – in thick with Patience’s husband and his fellow fanatics. He is popular in the army; the rank and file suckle at his promise of Christ’s return.
Will spies Major General Lambert, Cromwell’s second-in-command in the late Scottish wars. Lambert is young, Will’s age or thereabouts. His eyes are restless, appraising. A man, says Nedham, who has never knowingly underestimated his own abilities. Clever, though. And dangerous.
There are factions within factions here. The broad split may be between the army and Parliament, but within each contingent is a rainbow of views.
Nedham is next to him, his nib scratching furiously, until at last he stops and leans in, whispering: ‘All this hot air, Will. I believe I may faint from lack of breath.’
Will grins. He whispers back: ‘“As long as earth supports the sea and air the earth, so long will loyalty be impossible between sharers in tyranny; and power will resent a partner.”’
Lucan. Will has read and reread his Civil War. To think of all the hundreds of years that have passed since the poet wrote those words, he reflects, and still we wrestle with the same problems. How should one man exercise power over another? What price should be placed on freedom, and what price on peace?
Everyone here believes – or hopes – that these are questions that can be resolved for ever, rather than renegotiated endlessly with each successive crisis. They are wrong, thinks Will. Lucan, poor Lucan, knew that failure was inevitable as he opened his wrists and watched the shock of his own blood clouding into the warm water.
Here in the Cockpit, the officers face the MPs, with Cromwell straddling the divide – for once in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense. But his presence is diluted in this room full of men who count themselves rooks, at the very least, in this affair. There are ghosts here, too. Of the cockfights and the plays; simulacra of the present real drama in which lives and souls are wrestled for.
The MPs sit side by side, none daring to wear his hair too short or too long. All in coats that vary from dark brown to black. Will has lost track of the currents of hatred, ambition and rivalry that flow beneath this uniform surface. Vane is there, watching Cromwell. Both believe the other is playing Caesar; each believes himself a noble Antony. At stake is the republic.
The door to the Cockpit flies open, interrupting the speaker mid-flow, much to everyone’s relief. There in the doorway is Arthur Heselrige. He is dramatically breathless and travel-smeared. He waves as if to say carry on. He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his forehead. Don’t mind me, he shouts without words. He looks expensive. His fingers sparkle with jewels and a servant follows him in dressed in ostentatious velvet. The silver buckles on his shoes catch and glisten in the candlelight.
‘And here is Cato,’ whispers Nedham.
Heselrige is the self-appointed guardian of England’s fresh- minted republic, the leader of the Rump and the very large thorn in Cromwell’s very large backside. Dealer in Royalist estates, whose confiscated treasures stick a little to his hands as they run through them. Each age gets the Cato it deserves, thinks Will. And ours is a venal embarrassment.
‘We were discussing,’ says Cromwell, looking pointedly towards Heselrige, ‘the bill.’
No need to ask which bill. The bill that will dissolve the Rump and allow for elections. But what elections, administered by whom and when? And how, God help them, will these elections return men committed to reform when the electorate want no such thing?
Heselrige is the guardian of the bill as it stands, steering it through the committee stage.
‘The bill,’ says Heselrige, affably. He adjusts his cuffs and, with deliberate slowness, takes his place. Members shift and move for him, and the muttering ripples around the room.
‘We have proposed an interim body; an appointed godly council to oversee these elections,’ says Cromwell.
‘And that is necessary? Why?’ says Heselrige.
‘We all fear,’ says Vane, ‘that unfettered elections will return Presbyterians and neutrals and even, the Lord save us, those who support the man over the sea who calls himself our king.’
There are nods.
‘We need time,’ says Cromwell. ‘Time to bring God to the hearts of the unconvinced. Time to heal the scars. The people of this land will choose the godly path, of this I am sure.’
‘But while we wait,’ bellows an officer, ‘these men of Parliament do nothing, nothing. No reform, no godliness, no attempt to win souls.’
There are roars of assent at this from the officers; clucks and tuts from the MPs.
‘A temporary assembly,’ shouts Cromwell into the hubbub. ‘To draw up the terms of the elections. Otherwise—’
‘Otherwise they will find a way to prolong their own power,’ says another officer, sitting next to Harrison. His face is purple, the veins popping red in his spreading nose. He points at the MPs, and his rage seems to transmit to the finger, which shakes and quivers.
‘Shame. Shame,’ come the cries, and Will, whose eyes are closed and stinging with tiredness, cannot tell which side calls shame on the other.
A hush falls, and he opens his eyes. Heselrige is standing, a half-smile on his face. Oh, but he is a wily one. He was one of the five members the dead king tried to arrest in the crisis that sparked the late wars. He was not cowed by the man Stuart and he is not cowed by Cromwell, who can reduce lesser men to a sloppy pottage. His refusal to be intimidated is in itself powerfully intimidating.
‘I was seventy miles away, gentlemen. Strange, is it not, that no word of this assembly reached me? And yet, at last, a little bird told me of it, and I have ridden my poor horse into the ground to be here. To tell you this. The work you are set upon is accursed. Accursed,’ he shouts over the jeers. ‘What did we fight for, gentlemen? Your plan has no legitimacy. No legality. We do not represent the will of the people as it is. We are a purged Parliament. You talk of purging still further. To what end? We did not fight for this.’
‘We did not fight,’ shouts Harrison, ‘so that we could sink back into ungodly ways. The Lord is coming, gentlemen. With your quibbles, Heselrige, you are blocking His path. Spitting on His designs.’
‘Do you lecture me, sir, on His designs? And are the rights and liberties of the English people “quibbles” now?’
‘Can you ask that of me, sir?’ says Lambert. ‘To whom is your Parliament accountable? Where are the checks on your power, which you choose to wield in the pursuit of fripperies?’
Cromwell, still standing in the middle, raises his hands as if he can push the dissent to one side. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says. His voice is pitched low and sad. Both sides crane in to hear him talk. ‘Are we to throw away the mercies we have been shown? Are we, by our jarring and fighting with one another, to cast all aside?’
He leaves the questions hanging. His great leonine head sinks towards his chest, and he sighs.
‘A break, gentlemen, and can I suggest we use it to ask for His light.’
The room breaks into cliques and groups, with men manoeuvring their way between factions or sticking doggedly with their neighbours. Like a country barn dance, with a malevolent caller and the only music the clicking of heels on the theatre’s dusty floor.
Nedham leans back in his seat. ‘Well, Will. What do you make of it all?’
‘All passion, no sense. I do not see how they will agree with each other, or sell that agreement to the people.’
‘The sell to the peop
le will be my job. As for the rest – what else is politics but the grinding of men’s convictions into something universally palatable?’
Will nods and then nudges Nedham. ‘Look,’ he says, nodding towards the centre of the Cockpit, where Cromwell, Vane, Heselrige and Lambert have formed a tight knot. Harrison has spied it now, from among his cronies at the far side. He is bustling forward to break into the charmed circle when it dissolves of its own accord. He is tight-lipped, furious.
‘Gentlemen, we have reached an accord,’ shouts Cromwell, and the chatter ceases. ‘Progress on the bill will be halted.’ He looks towards Vane, who nods. ‘We will discuss further this question of an interim government.’
‘More talk,’ whispers Nedham to Will, as the assembly lets out a strange collective sigh of relief and disquiet. No decision is better than the wrong one, perhaps. But the frustration and irritation is visible on every face, and as they file out into the cold spring air, each man looks as if he has been forcibly fed an unripe plum. A squinting, sour line of men disperse to their homes or to their lodgings.
Cromwell is alone in the empty theatre. He droops a little; his eyes are unfocused. He has turned inwards, communing with himself.
‘Do you need me, Lord General?’ Will’s voice is absurdly loud. This place is designed to amplify, to make sound more intense. Cromwell looks at him as if across a great divide.
‘What? No. Yes. I . . .’
He pauses. Will moves towards him, talking softly as if to a somnolent Blackberry. ‘I will come with you to your chambers, Lord General. If you need me, I will be there. I will have Jem douse the lights in here. We do not need them, for the night is done.’
Cromwell nods, and allows himself to be chivvied towards the back door of the Cockpit, one of the many that lead into his private rooms. They pass the rusting machinery used to propel fairies and sprites through the air. A weight tied to the end of a scenery rope swings, creaking, as Will brushes past it.
They make for the chamber where Elizabeth Cromwell waits, drowsing by the fire. She starts as they enter, looks at her husband’s face and immediately stands, ushering him into a chair.
The Tyrant’s Shadow Page 9
