by Ian Mortimer
‘It is not only a military question,’ adds Mister Parlebone. ‘God does not restrict His judgement to battlefields. He sends it in the form of the plague as well. Leeds has been sorely affected this year. So have Worcester, Winchester and Bristol.’
‘Exeter has been hit hard too,’ says Mister Perkins. ‘They’ve banned pigs from roaming the streets in the hope of limiting the disease.’
I finish the carrots on my platter, and leave the cauliflower, the taste of which is disagreeable to me. I sip my wine, and reflect that here I am eating exotic vegetables while people are still dying from the plague.
My uneaten cauliflower catches the attention of young Thomas opposite me, who is kicking his legs to and fro under the table. He has a pleasant demeanour and an impish smile. ‘You should eat your cauliflower, Goodman Drayman. It nourishes the blood.’
His elder sister nods in agreement. ‘Alone of all the coleworts it is good and nourishing when boiled in vinegar.’ She looks across at the younger man. ‘Uncle Edward used to tell us, everything else that is green is of small nourishment and agitating to the melancholy humours.’
‘Is that so?’ says William. ‘In that case I’ll have more venison pie, if I may.’
‘Have you visited the Americas?’ asks Thomas. ‘Have you shot any Indians?’
‘The Americas?’ I ask, still feeling anxious on account of the food. ‘No, we’ve not ventured there. Have you?’
‘No, silly,’ answers his sister. ‘It is too far. And I would get sea-sick.’
‘But we do have turkey fowl,’ adds Thomas.
‘From the sight of your turkey fowl, the Americas are strange islands indeed.’
‘They are not islands,’ says Sarah. ‘They are one great country, a hundred times larger than England.’
‘There are so many Indians there,’ says Thomas. ‘They hide in the forests and have bows and arrows, spears and clubs, and they attack all the Christians in the night, and cut the top of your head off. So you have to shoot them.’
‘Thomas, that’s enough,’ says his mother.
Mister Perkins speaks. ‘If I may return to Mistress Parlebone’s statement about the two opposing viewpoints, that is to say Man’s will against God’s will, I would suggest that in the graciousness of her words she gives both sides more credit than they deserve. Against the king you could hold up the case of Giles Mompesson.’ There is a nodding of agreement by Mister Parlebone and the younger man at the mention of this name. ‘Mompesson is living proof that when kings appoint ministers, it is not with God’s guidance. The people should choose their ministers – and by “people” I mean the prosperous landowners and employers of the nation – the stalwart backbone of England, from the Justice of the Peace to the tax-paying householder.’
‘I like carrots,’ says Thomas. ‘Master John Gerard says that they give you wind in the gut, like turnips do.’ Saying this he grins guiltily and looks at his mother.
‘That is enough,’ she says sternly.
‘Who is this Giles Mompesson?’ I ask.
Mister Perkins explains. ‘A rogue. He took control of the king’s forests and sold all the wood for his own profit. He forced innholders throughout England to buy licences for their inns from him, at five or ten pounds a time. On one notorious occasion he sheltered from the rain at an alehouse. It did not stop raining all night. In the morning he paid his host a token for his trouble, and when the money was accepted, he accused his host of running an unlicensed inn and had the poor man clapped in irons until he purchased a licence. Mompesson was found guilty of more than three thousand cases of extortion against innholders.’
‘There were dozens of others like him,’ says the younger man. ‘Royal appointees who lined their own pockets at the expense of others. I would that I could meet him and his ilk on the road to Exeter. It would be a good deed that I’d do with my sword.’
‘There are bad men under Fairfax’s command too,’ says Mistress Parlebone. ‘Those who took our horses were none of the kindest. To teach them a lesson would be also a good deed.’
‘I myself wish for nothing more than to spend the rest of my days engaged in good deeds,’ I say. ‘But how can I tell what a good deed is in this day and age? What is “good” and “bad” if God’s law is constantly changing? How can we do good if the meaning of “good” and “bad” are dependent on who wins the war? How can a man go through this world in sure knowledge that he is doing the right and proper thing?’
‘Those are difficult questions,’ replies Mister Parlebone. ‘And my chief answer is that you must search within your own heart for what you yourself know to be right. And take direction from the Good Book, of course. Especially the Ten Commandments.’
‘But therein lies my point. One of the Commandments tells us not to make any graven images – and yet I am a sculptor. I’ve made many such images over the years. The Ten Commandments also say that we should not commit adultery – but did not the kings of the Old Testament have many wives, and so commit adultery many times over?’
‘Goodman Drayman, your heart is earnest but your theology wrong. It is not a sin for a sculptor to carve a design or even the figure of a man for a secular purpose. And if a king in days long past took many wives, it was not a sin. You must balance the law as you know it with the law that applied then, the law of Deuteronomy. A king who was victorious in battle could take the women and cattle of his enemies as his spoil. That of course is no longer God’s will and has become sinful. When our side have won this war, our Parliament will reinforce the morality of the common wealth by making it a statute law that women who are found to have fornicated outside wedlock will be hanged.’
William chokes on his pie. When he has recovered, he looks at Mister Parlebone. ‘Women who fornicate? Mister Parlebone, I don’t know how much you know about fornication but I cannot help but think men are at least partly responsible. If not, I’m the Pope’s pardoner.’
‘Not in front of the children,’ says Mistress Parlebone, looking severely at William. ‘We do not tolerate that word in this house.’
‘What word?’ I ask.
‘Pope,’ Sarah says, with a barely suppressed smile.
‘Hear, hear,’ answers the younger of the two other guests. ‘No one should refer to the Antichrist in the presence of minors.’
‘Master Christopher!’ exclaims Mistress Parlebone, ‘that’s enough. You two children, it is time to leave.’
‘So much for keeping your names secret,’ mutters Mister Parlebone as his wife ushers the children from the hall. ‘It’s a good thing we are here at the far-flung corner of England and not in Oxford or Exeter. Or – God forbid – London. All those eavesdroppers, I’d never have a night’s sleep.’
Mister Perkins looks at me straight across the table. ‘So what good works are you intending to perform after leaving this house?’
‘I do not know,’ I reply. ‘But I worry that I might do something that I believe is good only to find that the law has changed, with the result that I find that I’ve sinned.’
‘Maybe your role is not to do the good act yourself but to let others do it for you,’ says Mistress Parlebone, returning to her seat and laying her napkin across her lap. ‘Maybe it is because I am merely a woman but I do believe that sometimes there is merit in holding back and letting others take the glory.’
I shake my head. ‘Mistress Parlebone, I know that my soul is in need of redemption. And that cannot be a matter of standing back. I must do the good act myself. I was a sculptor of stone once. Now it’s my destiny that I need to shape.’
I think back across the centuries. I remember the babe, Lazarus, and the cold night outside the walls of Exeter listening to a whole city lamenting its dead. I recall my own terrible deed in taking the infected child into the house of the blacksmith, and repaying his and his daughter’s kindness with cruel death. And I reflect on how little I have been able to do since. I remember my family, who died without me. Perhaps they died cursing my memory.
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br /> ‘It is a small thing we can offer you but a good deed,’ says Mistress Parlebone. ‘If successful, you would save a man’s life.’ Her face is most solemn. She places her hands on the table.
‘No one would recognise them,’ says Mister Perkins, looking at Mister Parlebone.
Mister Parlebone nods. He thinks for a moment, and then speaks to us. ‘Do you know Fulford, in Dunsford parish?’
‘We know it,’ I reply.
‘Major Fulford, who first defended it, has long since been driven from the place but a desperate group of Royalists still hold out there, headed by Captain Edward Trevelyan. From there he and his men mount damaging attacks on the Parliamentary army, stationed near Crediton. They stand in the way of a protracted siege of Exeter. The two colonels for Parliament, Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, have already set the plans. These two gentlemen on my left inform me that before the attack on Exeter is set in motion, Colonel Fairfax will deal with the king’s men at Fulford. In the meantime, Cromwell will prevent any relief of the place by Lord Wentworth’s Royalists, who are currently stationed in Bovey Tracey. In short, Fairfax intends to attack Fulford in two days’ time, and to burn the house, and to execute every last man therein as an example to others.’
‘Edward Trevelyan is my brother,’ explains Mistress Parlebone. ‘He is a good man. At the start of the war he was commissioned to serve in the king’s army. But his cause is not the king’s but his own sense of duty and loyalty to his fellow men.’
‘What do you want us to do?’ asks William.
Mister Parlebone answers. ‘Captain Trevelyan will not give up Fulford House at our say-so. But it is certain death that he faces now, and we feel we must tell him. The time has come for him to surrender his sword, with honour undiminished.’
‘But that means informing the enemy, a Royalist captain, of Colonel Fairfax’s plans in advance,’ adds Master Christopher.
‘So none of us can be seen to do it,’ says Mister Perkins. ‘It would be treason.’
‘We have been considering how to send him a message,’ says Mistress Parlebone. ‘Your arrival is most propitious. You could go to my brother at Fulford to tell him about the colonels’ plans. We believe the attack will begin in two days’ time – early in the morning of Friday the nineteenth.’
‘We have stabled a good riding horse in the barn of the mill at Clifford,’ says Master Christopher. ‘Captain Trevelyan is to flee from the house to Clifford on foot. He is then to ride here, under cover of darkness, if he can get through the snow.’
‘Why will he trust us?’ I ask.
‘Because you will know the signal,’ Mistress Parlebone replies, ‘which is to wave a black cape above your head three times within sight of the front gate of the house. In addition we will give you a letter of safe passage in case you are stopped by the Parliamentarian troops.’
‘And what if he refuses to leave?’ William asks.
‘That is not your worry,’ says Mistress Parlebone. ‘As long as he knows, that is all.’
I turn to William. ‘It cannot be a bad thing to save a man’s life. We should deliver this news.’
‘Even in war,’ says Mister Parlebone, ‘we must find it in our hearts to do the acts of common decency and respect that our fellow men and women expect of us. But you’ll need less conspicuous clothing than those reds.’
‘No, husband,’ says Mistress Parlebone. ‘Who would suspect men wearing such garments? A black cape for William will be sufficient; John, you can wear that old cloak you were wearing on your arrival. But be discreet. Take the lane from this house to the bridge over Blackaton Brook, then proceed through Rushford Woods to Sandy Park, and then take the paths through the woods on the north side of the river. Do not go by the south side, through Cranbrook, for there are many Parliamentarian troops billeted in and around Moretonhampstead.’
‘Well,’ I say, with a deep breath, ‘I am ready.’
‘As am I,’ adds William.
‘In that case,’ says Mister Parlebone, ‘my good Arthurian knights, you have a quest.’
The next hour is spent preparing to set out for Fulford. Mistress Parlebone gives us instructions as to what to say to her brother. Master Christopher and Mister Perkins both tell us how to avoid the Parliamentarian forces, and what to do if accosted by armed men of either side. In the chamber upstairs I repack my sack of things, and fasten my old eating knife on my belt. Then I hold up my old tunic. It is filthy and torn.
‘It will be extra weight,’ says William, knowing my mind.
‘Like so much of the past,’ I respond.
‘No, brother. We’d be nothing if we did not carry the past with us. We’d be ignorant of good and evil, of changing circumstances and unchanging virtues.’
‘Unchanging virtues? There’s no such thing.’
‘Without the past, there’d be no understanding of virtue at all. We’d be no more than cattle.’
I look at my chisels. With them to hand, I am a sculptor. I can draw on a lifetime of experience. Without them, I would be – what? A pilgrim without a shrine. A man leaping from the cliff of time. I put them too in my travelling sack, though I leave the tunic.
We say farewell to our hosts in the hall. William gallantly kisses the hand of Mistress Parlebone. She gives him a letter of safe conduct, signed by her husband, who is a Justice of the Peace, and he places that also in my travelling sack. Mister Perkins hands William his black cape, and the men wish us well, and take our hands in theirs and shake them, which seems to be the common way of expressing goodwill among these people. I don my travelling cloak and shoulder my sack, and the two of us set out into the bright air.
The snow crunches under our feet as we walk away from the house.
‘You have got what you wanted – a quest,’ says William, his breath billowing about his beard.
‘And you, you’ve had what you wanted – a meal.’
‘But you did not grant my last request.’
‘What? To aid your seduction of Mistress Parlebone? Forget her, William. You did a good thing by not trying your luck.’
He says nothing but looks at the snow-covered branches of the trees and kicks the ice in the road. And thus we trudge on through the snow in silence, sometimes in the wheel ruts of a wagon that has passed this way, and then over the bridge and through the woods, where the snow is not so deep.
‘It still confuses me,’ I say, thinking aloud, ‘that, with all the luxuries of this age, men are fighting among themselves.’
‘I am sure that not everyone is as comfortable as Mister Parlebone.’
‘But even that churl who approached us with a pitchfork, Caleb, lived in a stone-built house with a fireplace.’
William says nothing.
‘Perhaps that’s why there’s fighting now between the king and Parliament. The ordinary folk, now that they live like lords, want to command like lords too. They no longer accept the rule of a king.’
Still William says nothing.
‘In fact, that’s not the half of it. This king they’re fighting now must be a true tyrant if his liege subjects want to do away with kings altogether.’
William stops. ‘It’s not our war, John.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘We know nothing of current times. We know only the rule of a good king, Edward the Third, of blessed memory. Even his father, Edward the Second, was not all so bad, by my reckoning. He was pious, and true to his friends.’
‘It sounds to me that this present king has been more than just true to his friends. He has enriched them at the expense of others.’
‘Maybe so. But you do not kill the goose for the laying of a bad egg, still less do you do away with geese altogether. Should we help do away with kingship itself when we know kings can be good as well as bad? What justice would we be doing to the memory of good King Edward if we were to help depose his lawful heir?’
‘The last king of which we heard, King Henry the Eighth – who destroyed all the monast
eries – sounded no better. Maybe the people are just sick and tired of bad kings. If you’ve had too many bad eggs, one after the other, you’d surely kill the goose and eat her,’ I say.
‘And what if a sculptor was to produce a bad carving? Then would you abolish all sculpture?’
‘But back at Mister Parlebone’s house you said that you would help with this mission.’
‘I said what I said because I’d had enough. I wanted to leave.’
We walk on, striding over the sticks and smattering of snow under the canopy of the trees.
‘William, tell me. Why are you so melancholy? We’ve got our quest.’
‘We’ve got nothing, John. They were kind to us – but without good reason. They trusted us – again, without any reason. They gave us a quest – but do you believe in it?’
‘They gave us a letter of safe conduct.’
‘It is probably worth nothing.’
We say little for the next hour. After that we come to the edge of the wood. Before us there is the way along the north bank of the river through the thickly wooded steep valley. To our right is a mill, and the bridge over the River Teign. William stops and I do too.
‘It is time to decide,’ he says.
‘Decide what?’
‘Whether you wish to follow that path along the north of the river, to Fulford, as Mistress Parlebone instructed us, or come with me along the south side.’
‘You mean, back to Moreton? But she said there were many Parliament men stationed that way. And if we return to Moreton . . . Well, we were none too welcome last time.’
‘I mean to Cranbrook, John. I want to see Cranbrook again. I want to see where we grew up, the old fort where we played together as boys, the old house where our father and mother lived and died. I want to see what I still think of as home, just one last time.’
‘Why? Why now?’
‘We were told a pack of lies back there. And you, who used to be so perceptive, you can’t see it.’
‘William, what do you mean?’
He throws his hands in the air. ‘Nothing can change fate.’ He puts his hands on his forehead.
