Cromwell's Blessing

by Peter Ransley

  ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

  He glared at me angrily, but my suit, if old, was of the finest silk, and I spoke with such concern, in my best Stonehouse, that he stopped short of accusing me. Someone else drew him away, telling him they had a motion to draw up. I recognised the sharp, vinegary tones immediately. I had tripped up Denzil Holles’s bag carrier.

  It was stupid, but I could not resist it. I was longing for action, and if I could not debate Holles in the House, this was second best.

  I bowed. ‘Lord Holles.’

  He spoke through me, to the bag carrier. ‘Stonehouse. Comes from the same filth as that pamphleteer.’

  I bowed again. ‘The same filth, my lord, who won the war, and whom you are calling enemies of the state.’

  He whirled round. He was about fifty, and had eyes as sharp and vinegary as his voice. ‘Are you one of the men behind this wretched petition?’

  I was about to answer when a hand clamped over my shoulder and I found myself staring into Cromwell’s eyes. He always seemed to look not at you, but into your very soul with his piercing eyes, somewhere between grey and green. His face was almost the colour of his buff uniform: he had not bothered to change before coming into the House. A wart above his left eyebrow quivered as he steered me away.

  ‘Don’t make it worse,’ he said. ‘We are losing the debate.’

  ‘Keep your puppies away from me, Cromwell!’ Holles shouted.

  Cromwell did not respond, going towards the corridor that led to his office with another MP, Ireton. Mortified, I plunged after him, asking to see him, bumping into various people as I tried to catch his attention. Either Cromwell did not hear me, or he chose not to.

  ‘Make an appointment,’ Ireton said curtly.

  I hated Ireton at that moment. In fact I hated Ireton at any moment. I hated him because he was thirty-six against my twenty-two, because with his sunken, hollow eyes he was broodingly serious and never laughed, because he was cold and rational where I was impulsive and, most of all, because he was Cromwell’s son-in-law and always at his elbow.

  I stood dejected, watching them walk away. Then Cromwell turned and beckoned. If you had ridden with Cromwell in close combat you were one of his soldiers. Whatever your rank he knew your name. Whatever your weaknesses, if you struggled to overcome them he would stand by you. He never bragged, putting his victories down to God’s grace. When he talked to a regiment every single soldier felt he was talking to him. However tired he was, and I could see how drained he was after his illness, he had time, however little, for one of his soldiers. I shot over the lobby as if I was still a runner, then managed to control myself.

  ‘You’ll have to wait.’ Ireton scowled. ‘In there.’

  I walked where he had pointed, into an anteroom so stuffed with drafts of speeches and yellowing parliamentary papers the door would not close properly. I sat squashed between a pile of ordinances and some old papers about the draining of the East Anglian fens, while Cromwell had meeting after meeting.

  Boots clattered, voices droned. Cromwell was making arrangements to ride to Essex next day to hear the soldiers’ demands. In that stuffy, cramped space I nodded off. It was Ireton’s words that woke me with a start.

  ‘… French boat. They captured one of the sailors, but the man they were landing got away.’

  Over a pile of papers, through the partly open door, I could see Cromwell reacting sharply. ‘When was this?’

  ‘A month ago.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I think you can guess. He was an excellent swordsman. He killed two of the customs men. He’s somewhere in the City – he’s been spotted at the Exchange. I have men out looking for him.’

  A month ago. The dates fitted with Richard’s letter. So did the swordsmanship. I felt again the prick of the sword he held at my throat after Edgehill, touched the scar on my cheek where it had been cut open by one of his men. A surge of excitement ran through me. At one stroke I could have everything. It was my ticket to working with Cromwell, to becoming an MP. But it would have to be done so Lord Stonehouse did not know I was involved

  Clever, clever Anne, who had put this idea into my mind. But she was wrong in one thing. She thought I had swallowed Lord Stonehouse speaking of me as his heir. I was a fool, but not that much of a fool. I had gloried in the possibility, but in my heart of hearts I knew it would never happen. A bastard and a printer’s daughter? That was why I kept my feet in Thomas Neave’s boots, while wearing Thomas Stonehouse’s plumed hat. Because I was determined to be my own man. But this changed everything.

  With Richard out of the way, I would be the sole male heir. From that moment, hemmed in by a cage of musty papers, I could afford the luxury of belief. All this ran through my mind as Cromwell closed the door on Ireton and returned to his desk, eyes half-lidded in weariness.

  Reflecting this sudden expansion of my inner world, I tilted my chair backwards, knocking over a pile of ordinances.

  Cromwell pushed the door fully open. ‘Why, Tom! I forgot you were there.’

  I scrambled up in confusion, picking up the papers.

  ‘Leave them, leave them. That is the Blasphemy Ordinance. Hanging people for denying the Trinity? The Presbyterians will never get that through.’

  He unearthed the letter I had sent, asking to work with him. ‘Work with me, Tom?’ he laughed. ‘I hope not. We are at peace. Disbanding.’

  ‘I mean here.’

  ‘Here? In this Tower of Babel? Trying to bring all these contentious voices together? You would be bored to death.’

  ‘Not working with you.’

  I meant it. As soon as I sat opposite him I realised how much I missed working with him. He made men not only believe in what they were doing, but believe in themselves. His brooding self-criticism, constantly questioning his own ability and his own frailty, led people to be much more open to his criticism of them. And so everyone worked with a common purpose, knowing that he drove no one more relentlessly than he drove himself.

  I drew out Richard’s letter and opened it, glimpsing the words ‘forgive me … your father.’ Once again, the effort of that laboured scrawl brought a rush of feeling that caught me unawares. My eyes pricked and I was unable to speak. Suppose Richard was genuine? What if he had changed? I dismissed it. A man like that, who sent people to kill me?

  ‘What have you got there, Tom?’

  ‘I …’

  It was not so much that I believed Richard was genuine; more that I knew I would never forgive myself if I did not at least try to find out before giving him away.

  ‘What is it, Tom?’ Cromwell said, more sharply, reaching out for the letter.

  I pulled it away. ‘It – it is from a gentleman supporting me to be an MP.’

  ‘Lord Stonehouse will support you.’

  ‘He has refused to.’

  ‘And you expect me to?’

  His refusal was implicit in the question. His manner became brusque. I had seen him reject people asking for favours many times before in this abrupt way, but it was humiliating when it happened to me. I stuffed my father’s letter in my bag and went to the door.

  ‘Wait. You have quarrelled with Lord Stonehouse? He has cut your allowance?’

  He knew everything. Probably, I thought bitterly, Lord Stonehouse had told him, blocking any chance of him putting me forward as an MP. What happened next was even more humiliating, although he did it with the best of intentions, in the manner of a helping hand for an old army colleague down on his luck. He took me down the corridor to an office where a clerk was transcribing his last speech. A warrant made out to Thomas Stonehouse for army pay had the amount already filled in. Cromwell signed an army warrant in his large, rolling script, clapped me on the shoulders, and went.

  The clerk checked the amount of pay I was owed in a ledger and completed the army warrant. He wore a fine linen shirt, rolled back at the wrists to protect it from ink splashes. It was the splashes, rather than the man, that I recognised.r />
  ‘Mr Ink,’ I cried, flinging my arms round the man whom I had known as a humble scrivener at Westminster, when he had smuggled out Mr Pym’s speeches for me to run with them to the printer, speeches which had begun the great rebellion against the King.

  ‘I am Mr Clarke,’ he said. ‘William.’ There was a hint of reproof in his bow. His dark grey doublet was severe, but fashionably unbuttoned at the waist to show the quality of his linen.

  ‘You have a new name and fine new clothes,’ I said.

  He told me Clarke had always been his name. It was I, as a child, who had christened him Mr Ink, but now he had risen in the world he would appreciate being called William Clarke, Esq. It was said with a wink to show that somewhere inside those new clothes was my old friend Mr Ink, but it added to my feeling that everyone was rising in the world but me.

  When I left that feeling stayed with me, and the army warrant in my pocket only reminded me of my humiliation. I walked slowly but reached Drury Lane all too soon. As I went through the passage, I thought of my father, wanting to answer his letter.

  Anne looked at me expectantly as I was going into my study.

  ‘I did not tell Cromwell,’ I said. ‘Whatever he’s done, Richard is my father. I’ll write to him. See if he is sincere.’

  I went to close the door but still she stood there. ‘Is that all?’

  Silently I gave her the army warrant. She stared at Mr Ink’s elegant hand, and the rolling loops of Cromwell’s signature. For four months’ back pay I had been awarded eleven pounds, six shillings and threepence.

  ‘You fool,’ she said.

  I thought she was going to tear it up. I snatched it from her so it did tear. There was a rush of blood to my head. A roaring in my ears. I gripped her by the shoulders and God knows what I would have done to her if I had not seen Luke staring from the hall.

  Anne turned away and, without a word, took Luke by the hand and led him upstairs.

  8

  My power with words deserted me when it came to answering Richard’s letter. I balked at the first hurdle. Dear Richard? Dear Father? Dear Sir Richard? The coldly formal Sir?

  In the end, I opted for the last. I wrote:

  Sir,

  I do not know what to write (true). After what you have done to me in the past you will forgive me for feeling suspicious (to put it mildly). I believe you are in London. I should report you to the authorities. I have not given you away (at the moment) because I would like to meet to find if you are writing ab imo pectore (the Stonehouse motto: from the heart). I shall be at the Exchange, at the sign of the Bull, tomorrow, Thursday and the following day, at noon.

  I remain, Sir, yr humble servant,

  Thomas Stonehouse

  I waited at the Exchange on those two days with a strange, growing eagerness which gradually turned into disappointment and disillusion. When mail came my heart beat a little faster; but there was no reply. Perhaps Richard had returned to France. Or feared a trap. On one of the visits to the Exchange, being near London Bridge, I remembered my promise to take money to Scogman’s wife and children. My prayers for his survival had been answered and he had become a kind of folk hero to me. I crossed the river to Bankside and went to the address from the regiment list. It was a brothel.

  When I was woken that night by Liz’s coughing I could still see the whores wiping their eyes as they laughed.

  ‘Scogman? Married? Give the money to me, dear. I’ll see she gets it! Kids? He scarpers too quickly to give his name to any kids. Scoggy? Give him my undying love, darling.’

  I winced as I remembered how, previously, I had lent him an angel, which he still owed me, to send to this starving family.

  I tried to forget my humiliation by helping Jane to nurse Liz and, since Dr Latchford seemed at a loss, the next morning rode to Spitall Fields to get a herbal syrup from Matthew, the cunning man who had brought me up. Late in life he had had a stroke of good fortune. Unwilling to disappoint anyone, he had always promised a cure for everything, from the plague to a broken heart. Too erratic to be trusted, his business was on the point of failure when he met an apothecary, Nicholas Culpepper, who separated those remedies of Matthew’s which worked, from those which didn’t. And he put his finger on Matthew’s unique ability. While his remedies were unreliable, his knowledge and collection of herbs, from aloe to vervain, were unrivalled.

  Together they produced simple herbal remedies for the poor. Culpepper infuriated doctors like Latchford by setting himself up as a doctor in Spitall Fields, outside the City, where the College of Physicians had no jurisdiction. Matthew had a room in the apothecary’s house, which, on a gloomy day, was like walking into summer, the air smelling of rosemary, lavender and sage.

  When I arrived, Matthew was chopping herbs on a bench. One of his eyes was milky blue, and he stooped like a goblin, but he was as lively as ever, and his optimism unquenched.

  ‘Little Liz! The poor mite! I know exactly what will cure her. It drew three infants back from the grave last week.’ He caught Culpepper’s eyes staring sternly over his spectacles, swallowed and toned down his promises. ‘It will soothe the cough so she can eat more easily and sleep.’

  I put the jar of syrup in my saddle pouch and rode back through the City. Crowds were building up, and it was increasingly difficult to get through. They were thickest round the bookstalls and hawkers: there were more pamphlets sold that day than hot pies.

  From one pamphlet I learned how badly Cromwell had lost the debate. Half the army was to be disbanded, receiving a miserable six weeks’ money in lieu of their long arrears of pay. Another gave an ominous response from the soldiers: not a petition this time, but a set of demands. One called for an apology from Holles for the soldiers being called enemies of the state they had fought for. Another was for full pay. It was signed not by the soldiers, but by men who called themselves agents, or agitators. Levellers. One of the signatories was Nehemiah.

  Going down Cornhill, there was such a press of people I found it difficult to control my horse and was forced to dismount. The trouble came from a bookshop displaying the sign of the Bible. More people came to it to argue than to buy books. A Presbyterian minister called Edwards was haranguing the crowd. He had written a series of books called Gangraena, the latest an attack on the sins of Cromwell’s army. The gangrene lay in the heresies the army was supposed to spread.

  Edwards, a tall cadaverous man who wore his hair long, was railing against ‘sectaries’ who broke away from the true Presbyterian Church. A severe-looking Puritan holding a copy of Gangraena, a tome as thick as the Bible, stared directly at me, his expression saying he knew I was one of the heretics.

  ‘Such people believe in liberty of conscience!’ Edwards cried, as if liberty was worse than the plague. ‘I tell you this. Liberty of conscience leads to thought, thought to error and error to hell.’

  I could not stand there silent. ‘So we are not to think for ourselves?’

  ‘Not in religion, sir.’ People stood aside as he pushed towards me. ‘A farmer does not expect a weaver to plant his corn, nor a weaver allow a farmer to weave his cloth.’

  ‘But if the farmer, or his corn, is bad – what is a man to do? Starve? Can he not plant his own corn?’

  ‘Plant his own corn! You heard him. Here is another of your damned sectaries.’ He pushed his face into mine. ‘Because, sir, your corn would come up as tares and weeds – heresies and blasphemies.’

  Once I had started I would not give way. The Puritan holding Gangraena with all the reverence of the Bible shook his head despairingly at me. From angry mutterings, the crowd began to jostle and abuse me. It was an astonishing reversal of the mood of the crowds before the war, who had all been for liberty and their rights, whether for religion, a patch of ground or a loaf of bread. Perhaps they now linked liberty to the pillaging soldiers in five years of chaos and war. There was such an aching desire for normality, for order at any price, that people were willing to give away their very thoughts to this nar
row-minded churchman. Another voice came from the back of the crowd.

  ‘I know him! He is a bastard, a devil who pretends to be a lord!’

  George’s manner suggested he knew about my rift with Lord Stonehouse. His voice chilled me even more than it had as a child, for at least then I could believe he was the only one who was mad. Now that madness seemed to have infected half London. George pushed his way through the crowd, his face flushed with religious zeal. He had shaken my hand only a few weeks before, but now he levelled a finger at me.

  ‘I accuse him. He denies he has a soul,’ he cried.

  There was an abrupt silence. People near me drew away. Others craned forward, breaths stilled, eyes staring. A gob of food slipped unnoticed from the mouth of a man eating a pie. The shop sign creaked as a kite perching on it swooped to snatch the pie the man was holding. Almost nobody laughed, all of them giving way to the minister, his long hair drifting round his face in the wind, his voice soft with disbelief.

  ‘Do you deny the immortality of the soul, my son?’

  In a sense, George’s accusation was true. Every time he beat me he said it was for the good of my soul, until one day I told him that, as I did not have one, he could stop wasting his time. That same perversity brought the words from my mouth.

  ‘I did when he beat me.’

  The Puritan holding Edwards’s book looked at me in horror. Moses when he saw the golden calf could not have acted with more anger than the outraged minister after I uttered those words. ‘He has condemned himself out of his own mouth!’

  ‘Blasphemy.’

  ‘Heresy.’

  ‘Arrest him!’

  A stone hit me. I ducked another and tried to draw my sword, but hands seized me. Two cutpurses, under the guise of holding my horse and quietening it, were gradually edging it away. They called it the penny horse lay: if the cutpurses were caught, they demanded a penny for holding it. If they got away, they sold the horse at a farrier outside the walls. I drew my sword, scattering people in front of me, but my sword arm was caught from behind.