The girl is pretty and vivacious. He owes the father much. And let us not forget her inheritances, Sam, he tells himself. He needs a wife. And yet.
What is stopping him?
He will not think of it now. Now, he will concentrate on small things. The smell of the sausage as it sizzles and spits. The beauty of the city as the fresh snow masks the sludge. The icicle dropping in infinitely slow motion from the milliner’s overhanging sill. That girl there, with her hands buried in a large fur muff. How she smiles! He thinks of how much his father loved the snow.
Well then. Tonight is his own. No later supper with his patron. No smarming up to useful merchants. No hanging around on the fringes of the court, watching dead-eyed girls being passed around bored and aimless soldiers.
Tonight, Captain Challoner dines with Captain Challoner. A sausage, a beer and the new book of poetry he has bought. A few years old it is; a collection by Lovelace.
A line comes to him: Fools dote on satin motions laced, the gods go naked in their bliss.
Not in bloody Germany in winter they don’t, he thinks, chuckling to himself. He watches the smoke from the fire pit curl to the frozen sky.
Patience peeks out of the window. The room is unlit, and outside, the late afternoon is dark. She sinks into the cloaking darkness as she watches Sam queuing for a sausage. His hair is a little longer than before. His cheeks have filled out and lost their tan. His eye catches a pretty girl walking past carrying an absurdly ostentatious muff. She sees the girl notice him without seeming to. She keeps her eyes forward and pretends to find her older companion amusing.
Poor Sam, he is defenceless against such wiles. He surely thinks he has not been noticed – that this girl always smiles so prettily and glides so elegantly. Patience thinks of all the girls who must be circling him. Drawn by his easy charm and good looks. His air of finding himself and the world ridiculous.
Lord, she is hungry. She pulls her thoughts back to her empty stomach, although her eyes still track Sam. Sidrach is in Paris. Meeting someone useful, apparently. He told her nothing much in a meaningful sort of a way, and she knew she was supposed to ask for details. She would not.
‘Damn him.’ She says it aloud into the hush of the empty room. Strangely, it makes her feel better, and she says it again. And again, louder. ‘Damn him and damn his eyes and damn his soul.’
Her stomach growls at her, calling for her attention.
Out of the window, she sees Sam smile suddenly. The street seems to glow with it and she does not understand why people do not stop and smile back at him.
A sausage, she thinks. That would stop my stomach growling.
Before she can stop herself, she grabs her shawl. She takes the stairs two at a time, clattering fast. As she pulls open the door to the street, the icy air hits her, punching the breath out of her stomach.
Quickly, before she can retreat back inside, she half slithers across the frozen street to where Sam stands waiting.
‘Captain Challoner?’
‘Mrs Simmonds!’
‘You are waiting for a sausage?’
‘Guilty, Mrs Simmonds.’
‘Patience, please,’ she says. ‘You are practically a brother-in-law.’
She blushes. Silence settles on them.
‘Well, Patience, then.’
‘Well.’
It is hopeless.
What else did I expect? I am a fool. I am being laughed at.
The queue shuffles forward. The smell of sausage hangs heavily, ridiculously, in the air between them.
‘Well,’ she says at last. ‘Enjoy your meal, Captain Challoner.’
She starts to move away. He reaches out his hand, grabbing hold of her arm.
‘Wait. Wait. Please, call me Sam.’
The tavern is dark, and gloriously warm.
At first, they are staccato strangers. Pleasantries falter back and forth. But the plates are cleared and the wine jug empties. It begins to be easier.
‘And there I was, in Africa. Thinking I had been abandoned by my prince. The great African sky above me, and all manner of calls and shrieks from the bush.’
‘Oh Sam. The fear.’
‘Here is the part of the anecdote where I affect a proper disdain for fear. I make an offhand remark about a lion.’
He leans forward, and drops his voice.
‘The truth. The truth, Patience. I was frightened. I thought I would never see home again. I have not much in the way of family left. The war saw to that. But Africa? No. Not for me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, it is beautiful. And some of the natives were fine, fine men. Captain Jacques, that I told you of? He saved my life, twice, thrice over. But the sun never stopped shining. I wanted an English fog. The fragrance of wet grass in the morning. The smell of a sausage.’
She smiles. ‘The sausages here smell different. Have you noticed?’
‘Is Cromwell warty?’
‘Sam!’ She reaches out and taps his shoulder. As you would an errant brother.
‘Do you miss England, Sam?’
She pulls her hand back – fixes it into place with the other. Pulls it under the table to make it behave.
‘I do miss England. But there is nothing for me there. Here, I am making a life.’
‘And you are close to home, at least.’
‘I am. Perhaps I will go home when I have made some money. Get my father’s house back. Be a proper uncle to Blackberry. Perhaps even marry.’
The word ricochets. In the corner, a group of apprentices heckle each other. Their laughter is loud and distracting.
‘Well,’ says Patience, brightly. ‘At least the wars are over. Fear is at an end.’
‘It is,’ says Sam, looking down at the table.
‘No,’ he says suddenly, ‘it is not.’
‘How so?’
‘I have a new fear, Patience. One so stupid, so inconsequential, I am ashamed to admit to it.’
She waits. She has a quietness, a way of listening that he finds immeasurably soothing. It is not a passivity. Always, underneath, there is this flicker of energy, this promise of passions and joys untapped.
‘It is hard to describe. When I was in the wars, or privateering, I knew fear. But with it came such joy. Such delight in being alive. Such rushes of blood to the head. Sometimes, the fear and the joy were indistinguishable from each other.’
She nods.
He looks past her, his eyes fixed on some point behind her head. She watches the candlelight catching his eyes below the serious crease of his forehead.
‘The vividness of war, Patience. I fear its absence. I fear making a mistake, throwing myself from the horse, from the bowsprit, from the roof. Just to feel something powerful again.’
‘You fear boredom.’
‘Yes. Yes. But that’s not quite it. I fear my reaction to boredom. I fear the cavalry officer who is hiding behind the merchant. Because I like the merchant’s life, I do. I want a normal life; a safe life. But. But.’
‘But,’ she echoes. ‘But. Sam, you fear the absence of fear. And that is ridiculous.’
He smiles at her, looking fully into her face.
‘Ain’t it though?’ he says.
She imagines, just for a minute, how Sidrach would react if she called him ridiculous. He is ridiculous. But he is her husband. Before God.
‘Sam, I must go,’ she says.
‘So soon? Not yet.’
‘Her name is Blossom.’
Patience strokes the grey mare’s nose. She whispers her greetings, listening to the horse’s whicker.
‘She is beautiful, Sam. I can really ride her?’
‘She is yours for the afternoon.’
He gestures to the stable boy to saddle her up. A second lad rounds the corner leading Sam’s horse, Grace. She recognizes him already. She throws her head up, pulling at the leading rein, trying to get closer.
‘Hey there, Grace, my Grace,’ he says, running over to take hold of her. He pus
hes his hand into her mane, and rests his forehead lightly on her graceful neck. She was not cheap. He has nothing substantial left. But the prince is stabling her for him, so he is saving money really. And she is the beauty of the world. A horse to swell a man’s heart with pride and love.
He looks over at Patience, embarrassed suddenly at his naked affection for the horse. She smiles back at him, artless and joyous.
‘I am impatient to be off, Sam. It is an age since I rode. An age. And never on such a fine horse as this.’
‘She belongs to Prince Rupert’s mis . . . friend.’ How ridiculous to stumble over the word. She is not a child. But how lovely she looks when she blushes, he thinks. How edible.
Patience feels herself blushing and curses inwardly
As adjusts the stirrups, she thinks about Sam’s words in the tavern last week. A fear indistinguishable from joy.
She is afraid. Afraid of the liquid melt of her limbs when she touches him or even looks at him. Afraid of the dark hours of the night when she thinks about him with a ferocity that sears. Afraid of the possibility of sin; not just her sin – his. Does it not say in the Bible that he who commits adultery, even in his heart, destroyeth his own soul ?
Oh, she would not want Sam’s dear soul destroyed. That merry, bright beacon of a soul.
They are friends, nothing more. He is her brother’s brother. And she is alone in a strange land. He pities her, that is all.
They mount their horses and walk them through the yard, out into the street. He takes the lead, and she follows him, through the press of hawkers and strollers and touters. Through the gate the people thin, and there they are at last, outside the town, riding through the new snow. The world is monochrome, beautiful. The trees are bare black against the white winter sky. The river coils in frozen loops. The snow is so cleanly empty it makes Patience want to weep, absurdly, for all the crisp-snowed childhood days she didn’t think to bless, to gather up in her memory and keep.
Sam makes her laugh. He tells her stories of the court, of Rupert’s needling of the king’s latest mistress. Of the misadventures of the king’s dogs and the disapproval of his mother. When she laughs, her breath-clouds bloom; when she pauses, breathing in, the cold air sucks icily into her body.
Always in the background is the fear. Of what they are doing here. Of where they are going. But this is fear that is indistinguishable from joy. She has known sufficient fear in her life with Sidrach, she thinks. By God, she will have some joy. Just a small portion of happiness, to make the rest of it more bearable.
She wakes, heart racing. The room is too dark for shadows. She pulls the blankets up to her chin, forces her eyes shut.
The dream she has been having about Sam lingers on. She will not think of it, but she remembers it in the tremble of her skin, the unfamiliar looseness of her body. She will not think of it.
They brand a singeing B on the forehead of bawds in Cromwell’s London. In England, the Rump brought in the death penalty for adultery, to Sidrach’s righteous approval. She thinks of the hangman’s noose. Or do adulterers burn? She does not know. Burning would be apt, she thinks, lying in the darkness and fighting her desire.
What is the law here in Cologne?
What does the law matter? She has not touched Sam. Oh, but she would. How she would touch him and touch him and kiss him, if. If.
And does God not know that? There is no hiding place from His stare.
She thinks of a play she was told of by Will, in which a nun is ordered by a corrupt judge to sleep with him to save her fornicating brother from the noose. What was the girl’s name? Isabella.
Isabella turned to this Angelo, this old and venal man, and told him no. Her brother would not want her to lose her virtue, to lose her place with the angels. She will not do it. Patience remembers hanging on the story as Will told it. She was mesmerized by the horror of Isabella’s dilemma; transfixed by her bravery in opting to sacrifice her brother’s life to save both their souls.
Would you save me? Will had teased. You would not want saving at such a price, she had retorted.
And now she is the Angelo. Patience Johnson is the base creature wrestling with forbidden desire. The damner of souls and tempter of flesh. For the Bible makes no distinction between acting on desire and feeling it. Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s brother.
How can she be elect if she feels this passion? How can she take her place in the kingdom, at His son’s side?
Sidrach will be coming home soon. She longs for his return. He will save her. The crunch of his fist is now no less than she deserves. Sidrach’s spite is not the fathomless, pointless thing she once believed it to be. It is her penance.
WHITEHALL, LONDON
January 1655
CROMWELL’S PATIENCE WITH HIS FIRST PARLIAMENT AS LORD Protector snaps.
‘It is Heselrige, confound the man,’ he shouts, pacing the room. He pounds his fist against his palm. His rage is so heavily worn, he is like a third-rate character actor. The one who plays the cuckold. Turning to Will and Thurloe, he cries: ‘Does he believe he is doing right? Does he listen for His command? Does he kneel as I do, and beg, beg for the Lord’s guidance? I tell you, Thurloe, he does not. He simply asks himself what policy he could pursue that would most injure me. And then he is off, worrying at it like a blasted spaniel with a bird.’
Will thinks – but does not say – that Heselrige is a distraction. The deep issues at stake would have felt wearily familiar to King Charles: religion, and the power over and financing of England’s armies. The Presbyterian-heavy Parliament wants to break the independent churches. There is a proposal, too, to make Parliament alone responsible for raising a militia. This is a direct attack on the New Model Army. The army that raised Cromwell and is the only body that could destroy him.
Will catches Thurloe’s eye as Cromwell rages. The spymaster’s eyebrow rises and he shakes his head fractionally. Do not react. Do not fuel it. Let the great soul thrash it out until it becomes quieter. Cromwell paces the office, gesticulating wildly. This mood is dangerous, in so far as it can lead to the white fury that prompts Cromwell to act fiercely, and hang the consequences.
‘Heselrige. Heselrige. And if I am so great a tyrant as they say, Johnson, men like your brother-in-law Simmonds . . . if I am so great a villain, remind me why I do not simply arrest this Heselrige. Have him placed on the Spanish Chair. Have him taught some manners. Some respect.’
Are these rhetorical questions? Will moves to speak, but Thurloe catches him with another eyebrow.
Thurloe clears his throat, and Cromwell spins round on him. His bully-boy soldier’s stance now. But unexpectedly, he softens. ‘Yes, Thurloe. You are in the right of it as ever. I cannot play the tyrant. But to be always accused of playing the tyrant, while not having a tyrant’s tools . . . while being bound to Parliament and the Council. Three legs on a stool, not one. Three. And yet I am hounded by suspicion. It is cruel and unjust, gentlemen.’
He is working himself back down from the tempest. Thurloe nods, and cocks his head with an expression of sympathy. Cromwell claps him on the back. ‘Yes. Yes, Thurloe. You are right. I must be patient. But Lord, it is trying.’
‘You promised the Parliament five months, Your Highness. There are some weeks to run. You must indeed be patient. It would not do to dismiss your first Parliament lightly.’
‘Yes. But how I would like to send them running. Then we can begin the great work that must be done. Legal reform. Religious reform. We have this God-blessed opportunity to make His land, and we must wait until this parcel of old women has talked itself out.’
Will finds himself speaking. ‘Lunar months, Your Highness.’
‘Eh? What?’
‘Lunar months. The Instrument of Government promised the Parliament five months. Nowhere did it specify whether you meant lunar or calendar months. By my reckoning, five lunar months are up in two days.’
Cromwell is looking at him with an unreadable expression. Suddenly, he walks
over, holds Will by the shoulders. ‘Brilliant,’ he says. ‘Brilliant. Thurloe, make it so. I will go now and think of what I will say to the parcel of rascals as I dismiss them. Good work, Will Johnson. Good work.’
It is a measured, scornful Cromwell who stands in front of the House. It is a Cromwell dripping with contempt. You call me tyrant, he says, and yet you want to enslave others in your vision of the Lord’s church. By whose authority?
He asks a sonorous question: ‘Is it ingenuous to ask for liberty and not give it?’
Nedham nods by Will’s side. This is clever Cromwell, turning their claims against them. He is the disingenuous one, according to Heselrige’s story.
Attack them, my general. Lead the charge.
It is a regretful, sad-faced Cromwell who tells the MPs that they are compelling him to act against them. A kind father forced to wield the belt. ‘Instead of peace and settlement, instead of mercy and truth being brought together, righteousness and peace kissing each other, by reconciling the honest people of these nations and settling the woeful distempers that are among us . . .’
As he talks, the room shrinks to fit his rhetoric. The MPs wither. Heselrige’s neighbours shuffle a little away from him.
‘. . . weeds and nettles, briars and thorns have thriven under your shadow. Dissettlement and division, discontent and dissatisfaction, together with real dangers to the whole.’
Yet there is a sullen mood among the MPs. Cromwell may be right about their failures, but it is becoming increasingly impossible for him to cling to his high ground. They may have forced him into it. Fate may be working among men. Providence may be at play. God may be moving in mysterious ways. But there is no wriggling away from the fact that King Noll lacks checks to his power now.
The gaols are full of dissenters – Fifth Monarchists and Levellers and Baptists and Royalists and ragtag others. Cromwell has told Will that to try them would mean disproportionate sentences, according to the law of this land. He says he is protecting them from the consequences of their dissent. Perhaps so. But his protection can feel like a tyranny. These are Englishmen gaoled without trial.
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