Cromwell's Blessing

by Peter Ransley

  I winced. ‘And I thought his friendliness was because of my diplomacy.’

  ‘Diplomacy?’ He laughed. He patted the bundle of papers he had taken from the drawer. ‘This is the real diplomacy, Tom. Forget all this nonsense about being an MP. MPs are rhetorical froth. I want you to actually do something. You must apologise.’

  I did not think I was hearing him correctly. ‘Apologise?’

  ‘To Sir Lewis. You made him a laughing stock.’

  ‘You expect me to crawl to that man?’

  ‘It is a matter of honour to him.’

  ‘It is a matter of honour to me! Or do you think I have no honour because of where I come from?’

  He locked his hands together, rested his chin on them and gave me a long stare before opening the file. Whether he got it by money or extortion I had no idea. A creeping sense of unease began to fill me as he read some reports and showed me others, concealing names. There were greasy scraps of paper about secret meetings between Holles and the Governor of the Tower, details of armouries and the strength of soldiers guarding them, which, Lord Stonehouse claimed, had been seized from a spy of Holles. How much was true, how much fabrication, and how much distorted by his own fears, I did not know. But, in a voice growing hoarse with speaking, it was what he said next, in a dead, tired, matter-of-fact tone, that chilled me.

  ‘If there is a coup, Cromwell will be removed. I will be in the Tower. So will you. At the right time there will probably be trumped-up charges. We will be lucky to escape execution. What would happen to your little son, Luke, my grandson, I do not know.’

  His voice petered out. He looked as exhausted as he had been lively earlier, his eyes half-hooded. It was so quiet I could hear a distant hawker cry, and the crackling of the coals in the fireplace. He put the papers away, the keys rattling as he double-locked the drawer, a faint echo of the gloomy litany of sound in the corridors of the Tower where I had once visited a pamphleteer imprisoned for sedition. If there was any chance he was right, what did my honour matter? But then the rattle of those keys he always carried brought back Scogman, in chains, dragged by Stalker’s horse, stumbling, falling, dragged from lane to ditch and back again.

  ‘I will not apologise to that man.’

  ‘You will do as I say!’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Get out.’

  He began coughing again, knocking the glass of cordial over. I went to help him, but he reacted so violently and was so red in the face that, fearing I was doing more harm than good, I went for Mr Cole.

  6

  Anne’s reaction was almost as violent as Lord Stonehouse’s – I had promised to remain on good terms, what if Lord Stonehouse was right, what would happen to us? I told her about the miniature he had concealed, to divert her from fears about the coup, but it only added fresh ones. Who was this woman? This is a true likeness. Wasn’t that the sort of language people used when they were setting up a meeting with a view to marriage. What would happen to us if …

  I got no sleep that night. Lord Stonehouse was old, cantankerous, suspicious to the point of madness, but what if he was right about the coup?

  The fears gradually receded with daylight. I was reassured when I learned a week later that Cromwell had recovered and returned to the House. I wrote to him, in the hope that he might offer me some position. To prepare for an interview, I saw my tailor, Mr Pepys.

  It is humiliating to discover from your tailor you have no money. I was careful with my allowance from Lord Stonehouse, and realised he had stopped it. I could feel myself going a deep red. Mr Pepys was very delicate about it. No doubt Queen Street had made some error? He would happily have made me the new suit I craved for, but I knew he had a large family to support, including the expenses of his son Samuel at St Paul’s, and I would not go into debt with him.

  It was even worse telling Anne.

  ‘And what do we live on?’ she said.

  ‘My army pay.’

  ‘And when do we get that?’

  I did not know. Negotiations were dragging on in Parliament. I had read that Cromwell, still too busy to see me, said the New Model Army would lay down its arms when Parliament commanded it to do so. That did not sound like a political crisis.

  What upset me most was that Adams, our ostler, was taken back to Queen Street by Lord Stonehouse. Luke moped for the loss of his old friend. But he had a habit of inventing creatures of fancy, sometimes talking to Adams as if he was still there. One day Luke cried that he liked the new ostler, a handsome soldier who had let him ride and said he was a fine horseman. He told me after I discovered he had taken the horse from the stable on his own, which I had strictly forbidden. When I told him he must not invent stories to cover up the truth, it upset me even more when he refused to confess but cried: ‘It’s true. It’s true. There was a man!’

  Although it was May, there was frost at night with cold north winds driving sharp showers of rain. The emerging buds in the apple tree seemed to shrink back in themselves. We all got colds and Liz’s persisted, so we put off the baptism with Mr Tooley until the weather was better. Anne and I scarcely spoke to one another until the letter arrived.

  It was from Lord Stonehouse’s eldest son, Richard, in Paris. Despite my discovery that he was my real father, Richard had never acknowledged me as his son. I had not seen or heard from him since the battle of Edgehill five years ago, when we had fought on opposite sides and he had almost killed me. His hand, as he admitted, was as bad as ever:

  Dear Thomas,

  I am no better at this riting game and have throwne this away or its brothers more times than I can Rembere over the years. But nowe the war is over and Wee are at peace I must write to say I no you can never see me as your Father. Howe can you when I have done such Base & Bad things. But the Warre has changed me. I needed to be away from my Father to find myself, that at anye rate is what a Priest here says. We are on differant sides but I believe I have done mye Duty to mye King & from what I heare you are a Man of Honoure and a brave soldier who has done youre Duty to what you believe.

  I doe not deserve nor expect a replye but if you finde it in your hearte to forgive me a letter left with Jean de Monteuril, the French envoy in London will find your father,

  Richard Stonehouse

  His signature was unreadable. The letter was so totally unexpected and so difficult to decipher, with myriads of blots and crossings out, that the first time I read it I sat bemused, still, as shocked as if it was a letter from the dead.

  I read it again. If the first shock was that he had written at all, the second was that he had asked me to forgive him. Was he genuine, or was he dissembling?

  The third shock was to find I had feelings for the man I knew to be my father. He was dissolute and violent, but how much was that a reaction to his father and his perception of me as a usurper? Lord Stonehouse had brought me up in secret, but had once shown Richard my writing to shame him about his own hand. Was it any wonder that when he found out who I was, he had come to hate me? I knew what he had gone through at the hands of his father, for was I not having the same whip cracked at me? It was the effort Richard had clearly put into writing it himself which began to persuade me he was sincere. He despised writing: scrivener’s work as he put it. But I now felt his childish struggles had left him ashamed of his scrawl.

  I was in my study. It was but a poky little room, with no fire, but it was the place I would most miss if we were forced to leave Drury Lane. On the small table, which I had in lieu of a desk, I had written some ideas for my interview with Cromwell. I wrote a good Italian hand, in sharp contrast to my father’s chaotic script. The third time I read his letter, I read not the words, but the effort that had gone into making them. I felt the painful determination to form letters, the sudden bursts of irritation as words tumbled illegibly into one another, and the anger in slashed loops and crossed ‘t’s. Anger at me, or at himself? Whole sentences had been crossed out. Other men would have made a fair copy, but he was incapable of
that. Or they would have got a scrivener to do it. But he had wanted to write to me himself. He did not know, he could not imagine, that it was that effort, as much or more than the words themselves, that moved me.

  Perhaps he had changed. I was afraid of believing it, but could not help myself. I suppose it is always there, in an abandoned child, that hope for reconciliation. I told myself I was being stupid as I felt the onset of tears.

  Anne touched my shoulder. I had no idea how long she had been in the room. There was a sympathy in her touch which had been missing since I had refused to work with Lord Stonehouse. I blinked back the tears and handed her the letter.

  ‘What a hypocrite.’

  ‘You do not think he is sincere?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? He tried to kill you!’

  There was a knock at the door. I stared at the letter, half-hearing Jane tell Anne that Liz had had another bad night and been unable to keep her milk down. Anne began to follow Jane, but turned back.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Invite him to supper?’

  ‘Please don’t joke. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I have no idea, Anne.’ I picked up a quill, drew my fingers down the feather and felt the point. I did not intend to write a letter. It was an automatic reaction, to help me think. I was still dazed by the father I had all but forgotten, suddenly taking on human shape.

  ‘You’re not going to answer it, are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m going to answer it.’

  ‘What are you going to say?’

  I was conscious of Jane hovering on the stairs. ‘That is my affair,’ I said coldly.

  She told Jane she would be up shortly, then closed the door. She was trembling, and her cold had left her voice raw and hoarse. ‘It is as much my affair as yours, sir.’

  ‘This is the world upside down, is it? When a woman tells a man what to do?’

  ‘Has her say, sir, has her say. While you have been fighting I have built this place up. I have flattered Lord Stonehouse, sympathised with his illnesses, suffered his moods, his suspicions, his rages, his belches, his farts, smiling while I wanted to scream. When Luke was born I felt as if I was being torn apart. I thought I would not live.’

  I got up and wanted to hold her but she pushed me away, telling me with a concentrated fury what she had been through while I was away. Things I never realised. I knew Lord Stonehouse had acknowledged me as his heir only out of expediency, when Parliament suspected his loyalty, but did I have any idea how shallow that acknowledgement was? He wrote secretly to Richard. She knew that from Mr Cole. Oh, she flattered him too. Promised him preferment when I inherited. Did I not know that? Did I really think it was a world upside down? It was the same old world, greased and oiled by favours – or the promise of favours when the King came back. Everyone was jostling for position except me, she said, who believed the world was changing into a different, a better, place.

  Surely I realised, she went on, I was still a whim as far as Lord Stonehouse was concerned. It rarely happened that a bastard inherited such a great estate. It was almost unheard of that his wife was a commoner – a commoner with no dowry, no lands to bring to the estate. If Lord Stonehouse was planning to marry again, it was not for love, as I saw it, but for another Stonehouse. Another male. We were a fall-back, a second string, if there was no other Stonehouse blood left to inherit. When she said this, I felt I had known it all the time, but never put it into words. What I really cared about was the attainable – becoming an MP. Even that he had brushed to one side.

  My anger mounted as she told me how she was treated, rebuffed when she did not conceive at first. Lord Stonehouse was not at home. Or he was in meetings. There was no coal. Only straw on the floor. Why on earth did she not tell me all this? Because I would not have grovelled. I would have ruined everything. Only men had the luxury of pride, she said bitterly.

  In my brief, snatched visits during the war, what for me had been love, for her had been desperation, followed by the continual, gnawing fear of being barren, and of further rejection from Lord Stonehouse’s favour. Had I not seen the straw on the floor, or realised they were burning chopped-up furniture for me?

  She had tried to find out if the entail on Lord Stonehouse’s will had been removed. The entail was the contract by which the landed classes double-locked and bolted the estate to the eldest son. Mr Cole knew most things, but that was a secret only Lord Stonehouse and his lawyer knew.

  Her voice grew hoarser. I could not stop her. I did not want to. It was like a boil being lanced. She had not slept much because of Liz. She wore no paint. Lines I had barely noticed before cracked her beautiful skin. Her hair hung lifeless. She was so thin she looked as though she would break. Only her blue eyes crackled with furious, burning energy.

  ‘Luke furnished this place. When Lord Stonehouse thought Liz was going to be another boy the stables were built. Those fine horses arrived. Stallions.’ She put some of her old mockery into the word. ‘I do not want to go through having another child, but I will go on and on until we have what we want. I have done all that and I am not allowed my say?’

  Her voice had shredded to a croaking echo. I held her tightly, stroking her, feeling her bones protruding from her skin.

  ‘What we want? That’s what matters. I want you, I want you,’ I whispered.

  ‘Do you?’

  I kissed her. ‘Nothing else matters. We don’t have to have another child. Not yet. I will stay away.’

  ‘But I want – I want you near me.’ She kissed me passionately.

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  She half-smiled. ‘You never are.’ She stroked the scar on my cheek with a sudden tenderness. ‘Scar-face.’

  ‘Bag of bones.’

  She buried her head in my chest and we held each other close, until the rasping of her breath slowed and I could feel our hearts beating together. ‘We don’t need all this,’ I said, gesturing the house away.

  She said – ferocious again – she couldn’t bear to lose it. Not now. It would be like showing a child a magnificent meal, then snatching it from her. ‘And you need it. To be an MP. Change the world.’ If that was half-mocking, half-serious, her next words were in earnest. ‘And you need Lord Stonehouse.’

  ‘No. I won’t crawl to him. Particularly after what he did to you.’

  She clenched her fists in frustration. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you all this!’

  I unpeeled her fingers and smoothed them between my hands. ‘Better we do things our own way.’ I remembered Nehemiah’s words. ‘Be beholden to no one.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Cromwell will help me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure?’ I laughed. ‘He’s the most powerful man in Britain.’

  I told her I must go to the House and see him, and got my papers together. Still she lingered, staring at Richard’s letter. ‘You know why he’s written to you, don’t you?’

  I smiled at her expression of absolute certainty. Sometimes she had the air of an astrologer predicting the future. ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Because he knows about your quarrel with Lord Stonehouse.’

  Since the Royalists were based in Paris, where Queen Henrietta held court, letters were censored and delayed, if they arrived at all. ‘Unlikely. That was over a fortnight ago. The news would hardly have reached him in Paris.’

  ‘It would reach him here.’

  I laughed. ‘He’d never come here! It’s too dangerous.’ Unlike many Royalists, Richard had never surrendered. He was close to Queen Henrietta, a Catholic, and Cromwell had intercepted papers that proved his involvement in the present Irish rebellion. ‘If he was caught here, he’d be in the Tower. Not even Lord Stonehouse could save him.’

  The French envoy’s address had suggested Paris. But there were no French markings. It was not dated or sealed. The only mark was a posthorn, such as might have been
used in any London alehouse. ‘It’s a coincidence. The letter and the quarrel.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘No.’

  I shivered suddenly, violently. The thick, smeared scrawl, with the savage sword-like crossing of every ‘t’, brought memories flooding back of when he had hired people to kill me, when I used to check every alehouse before I entered, jump at every sound in the street. I crumpled it up.

  ‘I’ll burn it,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Take it to Cromwell.’

  7

  You could hear the noise in Whitehall, sense the tension in the shops and stalls of Westminster Hall. Cromwell was back. There were rumours that he and the Presbyterian leader, Denzil Holles, had come to blows. That the army was in revolt.

  A coin to the Sergeant got me into the lobby. I waited for an opportunity to see Cromwell, my father’s letter burning a hole in my pocket. The debate grew in intensity. I could hear Cromwell’s voice, rising over shouts of derision. There is no more thrilling place than the House when you are part of it, and no worse, confusing place when you are out of it. I was even jealous of the printers’ runners. Reporting was forbidden and they smuggled out speeches, as I did years before.

  When the debate was adjourned I saw one runner, illegal copy stuffed in his britches, wriggling his way through a crowd of arguing MPs. He was as snot-nosed and eel-slippery as I used to be, but a coin from my pocket stopped him. I deciphered the scrivener’s scrawl. The debate was about the army petition I had seen in Nehemiah’s room, for pay and indemnities. ‘H,’ I read. That must be Holles. I could not believe what he was quoted as saying: ‘The soldiers who have signed this petition are enemies of the state …’

  Enemies of the state? The army that won the war? And was simply asking for its pay?

  There was a shout. The boy snatched the papers and ran.

  ‘Seize him.’

  The MP who gave chase was young and would have the legs on the boy. I felt responsible for having stopping him. And I was a runner at heart. It was instinctive. I stuck out my foot. The MP went flying, arms flailing. I just managed to catch him to break the worst of his fall and help him up.