I shook my head. ‘They might in a London alehouse. Not here.’
His pale eyes narrowed. ‘Is that so?’
‘Most are not interested in politics, Sir Lewis. All they want is to be paid what they’re owed, go home to their families, work and no longer be a burden to the countryside.’
‘They are pagans,’ Stalker said. ‘They declare themselves preachers. Spread false doctrine.’
‘They only pray here, Mr Stalker, because you will not allow them in your church.’
‘Because they are rabble, sir.’
‘They preach because they have no minister available. Is it not better that they try to reach God, than not try at all?’
Sir Lewis pursed his lips. ‘Dangerous, sir, dangerous.’ But he was mollified by the sight of Scogman in chains being bundled into a cart by Sergeant Potter. Stalker rode off towards them, and Sir Lewis thawed even further, to the extent he said he could see why Lord Stonehouse put such an extraordinary amount of trust in so young a man. He gave me a prodigious wink and began to rhapsodise about the beauty of the countryside around us. It was neglected, but the soil was rich and it was well watered. He gave me another wink, a slap on the back and said perhaps we could meet again to talk about country affairs. I was somewhat bemused by this abrupt change of heart, but put it down to the wine at lunch and – perhaps a little – to my diplomacy.
‘My regards to Lord Stonehouse,’ he said, and made as if to leave.
I turned away, expecting Sir Lewis and Stalker to ride off immediately, escorting the cart and its prisoner down the lane to avoid the soldiers. But I heard Scogman give a yell of pain.
I ran back to see the cart had come to a stop at the beginning of the lane. Scogman was being manhandled from it by Stalker and Sergeant Potter. They were threading a rope through his chains with the intention of tying it to Stalker’s saddle. I hurried back to them.
‘Sir Lewis, for pity’s sake take him in the cart! You will rouse my soldiers!’
He put on a puzzled look, belied by his quivering jowls. ‘The New Model Army? It is a model of discipline, Major, is it not?’
Scogman pulled away, tripping and falling. His britches were torn and his legs bleeding where the chains had cut into them.
‘Release him. Take him in the cart, or you do not take him at all.’ I struggled to keep my voice even.
Stalker hesitated. Sir Lewis lifted his head. I could see why they called him a hanging magistrate as he gave me a look of unflinching hostility. But he kept his voice friendly, even jovial, taking out the letter I had sent him.
‘This is your signature, sir? Your seal, is it not? You have released him to me and I will have him as I will. Good day to you, sir. Get on with it, Stalker! What are you waiting for, man?’
Stalker yanked Scogman towards his horse and tied him to his saddle. I stood impotently. What a stupid, naive fool I was to think a man like Challoner would ever be in a mood for compromise. He wanted to drag his prisoner through the town to demonstrate his power. Stones, rotting vegetables and shit would be hurled at him. He would be lucky to enter prison alive.
Diplomacy? Far from helping to heal the wounds between town and soldiers, releasing Scogman would inflame them.
At least if God had made me eternally hopeful – or hopelessly naive – he had given me the quick wit to get out of the mire I found myself in. Or perhaps, as some had held, ever since I was born, it was the Devil.
And mire it was. Crows rose and flapped as soldiers, aroused by Scogman’s screaming, streamed from the farm. Will was keeping them half-heartedly under control, but I saw the barrel of a musket poking through the hedge. Stalker was riding slowly, Scogman stumbling after, almost under the hooves of Challoner’s following horse. As they saw the soldiers, Stalker urged his horse into a trot. Scogman stumbled and fell. He made no sound as he was dragged from the ditch into the lane and back again. Perhaps he would not cry out in front of his fellow soldiers. More likely he was barely conscious.
I pushed through the hedge but could not see the musketeer. It must be Bennet. If it was, Sir Lewis was as good as dead. We would no longer just have a problem of unrest but a major crisis that the Presbyterian majority in Parliament would seize on against Cromwell. I heard the click of the dog lock, releasing the musket’s trigger.
‘Wait!’ I shouted to Sir Lewis. ‘You have forgot the evidence!’
I pulled the spoon from my pocket. The ridiculous-looking spoon, slightly bent. A man’s life. Sir Lewis, a stickler for correctness in his court, checked his horse.
‘Get down from your horse unless you want to be shot,’ I said.
‘Go to hell.’
‘Get down, man, or I cannot guarantee your life!’
He saw the barrel of the musket. He had courage, I’ll grant him that. He tried to ride forward, his horse’s hooves an inch from Scogman’s face, but at that same moment I made a grab for his horse’s reins and Stalker, catching sight of the musket, slid from his saddle. Sir Lewis lurched and fell clumsily to the ground. A cheer rose from the watching soldiers before Will quietened them.
I tried to help Sir Lewis up, but he shoved me away, lips, jowls shaking in a face so puce with rage I thought he had had a stroke. I apologised to him and said I thought a mistake had been made.
For a moment he could not trust himself to speak. Then his face gradually resumed its normal dull red colour and he found his chilling, courtroom voice. ‘A mistake! Sir, you have made the mistake of your life! I will have you in the same cell as him,’ and he pointed at Scogman, who was coming round, staring up at us in bewilderment.
‘He may not have committed a felony.’
‘May not …? May not …? He stole silver, sir!’
‘Blake!’ I shouted across the field. ‘Where is Trooper Blake?’
Blake pushed his way through the soldiers, who had by now spilled into the lane ahead of us. He was an odd man, prematurely bald, slightly hunchbacked, but the soldiers respected him because he could fix almost anything, from a leaking pot to a broken flintlock.
‘Trade?’ I said.
‘Journeyman silversmith, sir,’ Blake said with a salute. ‘City of London, Goldsmiths’ Guild.’
He straightened, losing some of his stoop, and his eyes gleamed with pride, a pride that began to be reflected in many of the sullen, punch-drunk faces around him. These were men who had almost forgotten they had trades, and another life, and were beginning to wonder, in this purgatory of waiting, whether they would ever return to them. They began to grin as I handed the spoon to Blake.
‘What do you think this is, Blake?’
‘A – it’s a spoon, sir.’
There was a volley of laughter from the men until Sergeant Potter shouted them into some kind of order.
‘No, man! I mean, is it silver?’
Challoner snarled at me for what he called my equivocation but then, in spite of himself, watched as Blake bit the spoon, polished it and bent it. Finally he peered short-sightedly at the leopard’s head on the back of the handle. There was complete silence, except for the rattle of chains as Scogman stumbled to his feet. Blake seemed wholly concerned with making as honest and accurate a judgement as he could, no matter that a man’s life was at stake.
‘Mmm. It’s difficult to say, sir.’
‘Your opinion, man!’
Blake caught the sharpness of my tone and slowly it dawned on him that I wanted him to perjure his craftsman’s judgement. ‘Well … the leopard’s head mark is very crude … I would say it’s a fake.’
Someone held Scogman up as he almost collapsed. Challoner tried to grab the silver spoon before it disappeared into my pocket again. ‘Give it to me! I’ll have it assayed!’
‘Lieutenant Gage!’ I shouted.
Gage cottoned on much more quickly than Blake. Stepping forward into my makeshift court, he declared himself to be from Gray’s Inn, giving the impression of a lawyer, rather than the clerk he was. Blake valued the spoon at a few pence. Thefts abov
e a shilling were a hanging offence. Whether a soldier might be punished by the army or the civil courts for a lesser offence was a grey area. I told Challoner I would punish Scogman myself. By this time he was almost incoherent with rage.
‘Justice? You call this New Model Justice? I’ll give you justice!’
On one side I had Challoner threatening me. On the other, the grinning soldiers and Will whispering in my ear that I had the judgement of Solomon. I could not stand either of them. I could not stand myself. I had fondly imagined I would bring both sides closer with my diplomacy. Now they were so far apart there would be open warfare between town and soldiers. I was filled with a cold ferocious anger which I could scarcely keep under control. Stalker was helping Challoner back on his horse when I stopped him.
‘Justice? I will show you justice!’
I snatched the whip from Stalker’s saddle and told Sergeant Potter to unchain Scogman.
‘Strip him.’
There was not much to strip. His britches were in shreds from being dragged along the lane and his jerkin came off in two pieces. His fair hair was dark with matted blood and weals stood out on his ankles and wrists. He stumbled groggily as Sergeant Potter spreadeagled him against a fence. Still he grinned at his mates and, when he saw Daisy peering from the edge of the crowd, waggled his sex at her. Cheers rose when she fled into the farmhouse.
Challoner watched from his horse, his curled lip indicating he believed this to be as much a masquerade as the spoon.
I tossed the whip to Bennet, the man I believed had held the musket, which had disappeared. ‘Twenty lashes.’
In spite of his bravado, Scogman would scarcely have been able to stand without the ropes that tied his hands to the fence. His knees buckled. Blood ran from a fresh head wound and trickled slowly down his back. Ben, the surgeon, took a step towards me, but turned away when he saw my expression. He knew this mood of mine.
Bennet smoothed the lash between his fingers. He measured his stance. The crowd fell silent. The whip cracked. Scogman winced and his eyes jerked shut, although the tip of the whip barely touched his flesh. Bennet’s natural love of violence was held in check by the feeling of his watching colleagues. Perhaps, instead, he gained a perverse pleasure from taunting Stalker and Challoner by not drawing blood. The whip cracked harmlessly again, and this time there was no doubt about it, Scogman joined in the masquerade, jerking and writhing theatrically.
Challoner turned his horse away in contempt and disgust.
I wrenched the whip from Bennet’s hand and lashed out clumsily at Scogman’s back. He gave one startled cry and then fell silent. I wanted him to cry out, to scream, but where he had performed for Bennet, he would not perform for me. After the first line of blood the watching faces disappeared and I saw nothing and heard nothing, until my arm was gripped and Ben pulled me away. I stared at him blankly, then at the whip, then at what I at first took to be a piece of raw meat in front of me. It was all I could do to swallow back the vomit that rose in my throat.
I flung the whip back at Challoner.
‘Satisfied?’
3
Over the next few days Challoner continued hounding me to hand Scogman over, but I refused. Ben told me he was not expected to live. The least I could do was let him die under Daisy’s care for, while there was a shred of life left in him, Challoner would certainly hang him.
Ben wanted to purge me, saying my humours were severely out of balance, but I would have none of it. I had a curt letter from Lord Stonehouse in Newcastle, ordering me to go home. Colonel Greaves had recovered, and was returning to the regiment.
I rode alone from Essex to London. The countryside was bare, many fields overgrown with weeds, while all the troop movements had left the roads looking as though a giant plough had been taken to them. In a world upside down, even the seasons had not escaped. Spring was not merely late; it looked as if it would never appear. Most of the trees had been chopped down for firewood, during the Royalist blockade of Newcastle that had stopped coal ships coming to London.
All I could see was Scogman’s raw, bleeding back and the sullen resentful faces of my men. No – no longer my men. I had lost them. Lost myself. By the time I arrived in London, those memories had left me in total darkness. My wife Anne knew the mood, the strange blackness that came over me, and saw it in my face when I half-fell from my horse into her arms. Her embrace was more soothing than any physic, blotting out the memory of that bleeding back.
For days I slept or wandered in the garden of our house in Drury Lane, where Anne’s green fingers had planted an apple tree. The one in Half Moon Court where we had played as children, then snatched our first kisses, had been chopped down in the last bitter winter of the war. I felt the first, tight swelling of the buds on the young tree, still black, waiting for the warmth of the sun. There would be spring in this little garden; perhaps the tree would bear its first fruit.
Cromwell lived in the same lane and I screwed up my courage to go and see him, but was told he was ill, with an abscess in the head which would not clear. The news made me even more disconsolate.
‘You are not yourself, sir,’ said Jane, the housekeeper.
I tried to laugh it off. ‘Exactly, Jane! I am not myself. I must find myself! Where am I?’
Was I with the sullen resentful men, or was I, could I ever be, with people like Challoner?
‘Where am I?’ I said to my son Luke, who, when I had arrived, had stared in wonder at this strange man tumbling from a horse into his mother’s arms. ‘Am I under the chair, Luke? No! The table?’
Luke ran to Jane, covering his face in her skirts. ‘Come, sir!’ she laughed. ‘Tom is your father!’
‘Fath-er?’
It grieved me that I had spent half my life finding out who my father was, and now Luke did not know his. He had dark curls, in which I fancied there was a trace of red, and the Stonehouse nose; what in my plebeian days I called hooked, but Lord Stonehouse called aquiline. Although Luke’s grandfather doted on him, he treated the boy very sternly. Perhaps because of that, Luke often ran to him, as he did to the ostler, Adams, who would level a bitten fingernail at him and order him to keep clear of his horses, or he would not answer for the consequences. Luke would run away yelling, then creep quietly back for another levelled nail before at last Adams would snatch him up screaming and plonk him in the saddle. I felt a stab of petty resentment he would not play these games with me, and went upstairs to the nursery to find my daughter Elizabeth.
She was a few months old. Anne had been bitterly disappointed she was not a boy. It was a rare week which did not see at least one child buried in our old church of St Mark’s and Anne wanted as many male heirs as possible to reinforce Lord Stonehouse’s promise I should inherit.
Lord Stonehouse’s first son, Richard, had gone over to the Royalists, and when Lord Stonehouse had declared I would inherit I had fondly imagined it was because of my own merit. In part, perhaps it was. But it was also because he had been discovered helping Richard escape to France. Declaring me as his heir not only saved Lord Stonehouse’s skin. It enabled him to back both horses: whoever ruled, it was the estate that mattered, keeping and expanding the magnificent seat at Highpoint and preserving the Stonehouse name at the centre of power.
Elizabeth, little Liz, did not look a Stonehouse. In my present, rebellious mood, she was my secret companion. Or was it weapon?
‘Liz Neave,’ I whispered to her, giving her the name I had grown up with when I was a bastard in Poplar, and knew nothing of the Stonehouses. She had scraps of hair, still black, but I fancied I could see a reddish tinge. Her nose was not aquiline, or hooked, but a delicious little snub. Anne called her fractious, but her crying reminded me of my own wildness.
When I held out my finger she stopped crying, gripping it with her hand so tightly, I could not stop laughing. Her lips, blowing little bubbles of spit, formed their first laugh. I swept her up, and hugged her and kissed her. Fractious? She was not fractious! I rocked
her in my arms until she fell asleep.
I went to our old church, St Mark’s, to see the minister, Mr Tooley, about Liz’s baptism. Anne wanted it done in the old way, with water from the font in which she had been baptised, and godparents. Mr Tooley still did it, although the Presbyterians, who were tightening their grip on the Church, frowned on both.
The church was empty, apart from an old man in a front pew, his clasped hands trembling in some private grief. The familiar pew drew out of me my first prayer for a long time. I feared Scogman was dead. I prayed for forgiveness for my evil temper. For Scogman’s soul. He was a thief, but he stole for others, as much, if not more than for himself. There was much good in him, he was kind and cheered others – by the time I had finished he was near sainthood and I was the devil incarnate. One thing came to me. I determined to find Scogman’s wife and children and do what I could for them. I swore I would never again let my black temper gain control of me.
The man rose at the same time as I did. It was my old master, Mr Black, Anne’s father. I had never before seen tears on his face. He drew his sleeve over his face when he saw me.
‘Tom … my lord …’
I wore a black velvet cloak edged with silver. My short sword had a silver pommel and my favourite plumed hat was set at a rakish angle.
‘No, no, master … not lord yet … and always Tom to thee.’
I embraced him and asked him what was the matter. He told me he might be suspended from the Lord’s Table.
‘Thrown out of the Church? Why?’
He told me the Presbyterians were setting up a council of lay elders. The most virulent of the elders, who morosely policed moral discipline in the parish, was none other than Mr Black’s previous journeyman printer, my old enemy Gloomy George.
I could not believe it. We had fought a long, bloody war for freedom and tolerance, and what we had at the end of it was Gloomy George. I began to laugh at the absurdity of it, but stopped when I saw what distress Mr Black was in. The Mr Black I knew would have laughed too, but this one trembled in bewilderment so much that I sat him down.
Cromwell's Blessing Page 2
