Cromwell's Blessing

by Peter Ransley

  In spite of their turbulent relationship, and their violently opposed views, Richard seemed to genuinely care for his father. Like the aquiline Stonehouse nose, some of that ambiguity of feeling seemed to have been transmitted to Richard and me. We stared across the table at one another like two fighters who no longer have the energy to aim a blow, but are too apprehensive to turn their backs. Unless he was a very good actor, the effort he had made to write the letter struck me as true. I could not reject him. I could not. Apart from anything else, he had killed the soldier and, whether or not I had been identified, he could implicate me.

  He picked up his glass and put it down untasted. ‘Can we work together?’

  He read the suspicion that leapt into my face and spoke with a passion I had not suspected. He was seeing the King. Knew what was in the Queen’s mind. I knew what was in Cromwell’s. In however small a way we could influence what was put on the table, bring people closer together, just as his letter had brought us together. After all, we were both Stonehouses.

  I felt the scar that one of his men had left on my cheek. ‘You think I can trust you?’

  ‘As much as I trust you,’ he said.

  ‘Touché,’ I muttered.

  My heart suddenly began to pound. It was what was needed – talking, instead of endless fighting. What was there to lose? If he was sincere, I might have a hand, however small, in influencing the negotiations between the King and Cromwell. If he was not, it was a chance to get my hand on those letters.

  I began talking. Cautiously – not giving away the weaknesses of the New Model, but telling him about those regiments solid for Cromwell, so the King would not have any illusions about the forces against him. I never knew what he might have told me in exchange for, in a patch of light, I glimpsed an agitated face which disappeared into the shadows like the will ’o the wisps on the marsh in my childhood. Jane, my housekeeper? In an alehouse? I believed I had drunk too much, or she was a trick of the light, but then I saw her again, weaving in and out of the chattering, laughing drinkers, who cursed when their drinks were jostled. I called her and she ran towards me.

  ‘Master. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. It’s Liz, little Liz.’

  10

  Jane kept saying there was no time, no time. She had a Hackney outside and I scrambled into it with her, leaving Richard at The Pot. We travelled down Fleet Street, and were in Newgate before I pieced together what had happened. Jane told me Anne had called Dr Latchford when Liz’s breathing had become more and more laboured. What little milk Liz took from the wet-nurse, she vomited up. Before the doctor arrived the baby was in such distress that Anne put her on her breast even though she could not suckle. This seemed to revive her, but the doctor said he could do nothing more for her and advised Anne to send for the minister to baptise her.

  ‘Mr Tooley baptised her?’

  ‘No, no. Mr Tooley has gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Lost his living. George broke into a cupboard, found his old surplice, prayer books and pictures, and accused him of practising the old religion.’

  A chill ran through me. I was sure I had locked everything back in the cupboard. Then I thought of the old prayer book I had taken out to read. Had I put it back? I could not remember.

  ‘What is going to happen to her?’ Jane sobbed. ‘No one to baptise her. What will happen to her poor little soul?’

  ‘Where is she? Where are we going?’

  ‘Anne took her to your old church to find the new minister. I tried to tell her Liz was too ill, but she is half crazy. She got it in her head she must have Liz baptised, and in that church.’

  It was almost dark when we got to the church. No candles were lit. I could just pick out the figures of a small congregation in the gloom. I stumbled a few steps before I picked out Anne at the font. She was as still as the stone it was carved from. She neither acknowledged me nor spoke. Her whole being was concentrated on the baby, folded in swaddling clothes at her breast.

  ‘Is she …?’

  Anne did not answer. The only movement came from the rise and fall of her breast. The bundle stirred and the smallest, driest cough echoed round the dank church. Anne kissed her and rocked her gently. All the love she had never given Liz after the disappointment of her not being a boy was lavished on her now. Luke ran to me. I took him by the hand, motioned him to be quiet, and asked Jane what was happening.

  ‘The minister has been sent for,’ Jane whispered.

  ‘Mr Tooley?’

  ‘The new Presbyterian minister, Samuel Burke.’

  Anne shivered, it seemed as much from the name as from the cold seeping into her from the damp stones. Her shawl had slipped from her shoulders and I wrapped it round her, alarmed at her ghost-like pallor.

  ‘Is there nowhere warmer you can wait?’ I asked. She did not answer me. ‘Anne?’

  ‘She will not leave the font,’ Jane said.

  I begged Anne to let me take her somewhere warm. She turned to me for the first time, as if she was she was staring at a stranger. Luke seemed to appear from nowhere and went to tug at his mother’s skirts. I snatched him up in my arms. He struggled for a moment, protesting, then twisted round to gaze down at his sister with black, darting eyes, deep-set aside the sharp aquiline crescent of the Stonehouse nose. He rammed a thumb in his mouth. He had sensed from the moment he was born he was special, with the undivided love from Anne and the visits and presents from Lord Stonehouse. His manner suggested he could not understand why this insignificant scrap, who had been nothing but a nuisance from the moment she arrived, was getting all the attention.

  ‘She will go to hell if she is not baptised,’ he said, with a mixture of awe and satisfaction.

  Anne rounded on him furiously. ‘Go to your place!’

  Luke burst into tears at the unexpected ferocity of her attack. I struggled to comfort him but he wriggled and jumped away. My eyes were more accustomed to the dimness now and I saw Mr Black, holding out his arms to Luke. Before Luke reached them, he turned, his voice ringing with injustice.

  ‘He said so. He said she would go to hell.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘He did.’

  Luke pointed to a figure crouched in a pew, before flinging himself into his grandfather’s arms in a fresh burst of sobs.

  ‘Who?’ I repeated, reluctant to approach the man, who was deep in prayers.

  ‘Who does tha’ think?’ Sarah’s voice came from the shadows of a pillar, cast by moonlight beginning to filter through the windows. ‘George won’t waste a candle until he’s sure minister will do a service.’

  I walked up the aisle where George was on his knees. His mumbled prayers became louder as I approached. ‘God deliver this evil back into the pit from whence it came.’

  I touched his shoulder. ‘Light the candles.’

  He drew away with a shudder, his face bowed into his clasped hands. ‘Protect us, and protect us even now from this evil he has sired –’

  His bones seemed to grind together as I dragged him up from the pew. He was as grey and pallid as the moonlight, except for his eyes. They had a strange, greenish hue, glittering at me with a mixture of fear and hatred.

  ‘Would you strike me even here?’ he said, shaking his head with a kind of resigned sadness.

  I had tried. I could never make peace with him. It may have started from jealousy, when Mr Black took me, a strange, unlikely child, as an apprentice, but it had become an obsession, a belief that I was evil. He believed I was evil as much, perhaps more, than he believed in God. Perhaps he was right. I no longer cared. All I cared about was the tiny choked-off cough behind me, the murmur of Anne comforting Liz, the desperate need for God’s blessing before – no, I could not, would not, think of that.

  I released George. ‘For pity’s sake, George! Where is the minister?’

  ‘I have sent for him. I can do no more.’

  At the same time I heard an approaching horse, and glimpsed a light in the vestry. A sin
gle candle was burning. I lit others as a tall man entered. Drops of rain gleamed on his riding cloak and in his bushy eyebrows as he gazed round with eyes as black and small as currants. He had either lunched late or dined early, for his stomach rumbled and I smelt food on his breath as he was introduced to me by George, with a stream of obsequious apologies for disturbing him, as the Reverend Samuel Burke.

  I pleaded with him to carry out the ceremony straightaway, but he said with a belch that there were certain formalities that could not be dispensed with, whatever the urgency. He had to be sure who we were, and whether we were married, whether we had been properly instructed.

  ‘Please! Please. She is very ill! Can you not understand?’

  Anne’s voice, ringing round the church, would have moved a stone pillar. Burke moved towards Anne, saying with a small bow to me as he did so, ‘You are Lord Stonehouse’s grandson?’

  From his manner, I judged that was the only reason he had allowed himself to be disturbed from his meal. I did not care. ‘Yes. Yes. We wish her to be baptised Elizabeth –’ The Stonehouse name stuck in my throat. I said the name I had always whispered to her. ‘Elizabeth Neave.’

  ‘No!’ Anne cried.

  Burke gave a rich, fruity laugh and declared he had had many a dispute over given names, but never over the surname.

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said to Anne. ‘What you wish.’

  During this, George had taken Burke by the elbow and drawn him to one side. I heard him mention Edwards and the bookshop in Cornhill, whispering, ‘He declared he has no soul.’ Burke’s manner changed. He gave me a long, cold stare. But a burst of coughing from inside the swaddled bundle cut through all arguments.

  It was a cough of stops and starts, beginning with a wheezing and ending in a strangulated whoop before beginning again. We went through every stop, every start; all her strength seemed to be in that cough; we willed her with every gasping breath to fight on. I put out my little finger and she grasped it with her hand. I felt as if I was fighting for my own life as I must have done when, after just being born, I was left out on a cold wet field to die. I even fancied I saw, in the dim shadows of the church, Kate Beaumann who had put me there and Matthew, who after flinging me in the plague cart, rescued me after I cried and kicked and struggled my way back to life.

  The cough, the struggling, even broke through the barrier of Burke’s stony formalities. He beckoned Anne forward into the church. She did not understand until he rapped out that he would baptise the child, but not at the font as that was not part of the Presbyterian Directory of Worship.

  She went forward falteringly, the shawl slipping from her. I followed her, keeping it round her shivering shoulders. She hesitated, her teeth chattering as she spoke. ‘Will you give her the sign of the cross?’

  George shook his head sadly. ‘Ah, Mr Burke, there you have it – how Mr Tooley tainted his flock with Romish heresies.’

  ‘I will not perform such papist ceremonies,’ Burke said. ‘I feared this. No signing, no font and no godparents.’

  ‘No godparents?’ Anne said falteringly.

  I saw then that Matthew and Kate were not fantasies, but part of the small congregation.

  ‘Do you wish the child to be baptised or not?’

  ‘I want Mr Tooley to baptise her,’ Anne cried.

  ‘Mr Tooley has been dismissed,’ Burke snapped.

  My voice shook, however much I tried to keep it level. ‘I am sorry we disturbed you. We no longer need your services. Please go.’

  His eyebrows knotted together. ‘It is you who must leave my church.’

  I wanted to tell him it was not his church, it belonged to the people, but Liz began to cough again. That stuttering, feeble cough was the end of diplomacy for me. What was the use of diplomacy when people would not listen?

  I went up to him. ‘Get out.’

  He looked as though he might stand his ground, but George said, ‘Have a care, Reverend. He tried to kill me once.’

  All the violence that had built up in me when George had the tender care of my soul returned. But it was now hardened and tempered with the discipline of a soldier.

  ‘The next time I will make a better job of it, George.’

  George was in such a hurry to get down the aisle that he knocked over a pile of newly delivered copies of the Presbyterian Directory of Worship.

  Burke retreated more slowly. ‘Your connections will not protect you from God or Justice, sir, I promise you that.’ A fanatical light shone in those small, currant-like eyes. He had seen the enemy and would not rest until he was destroyed. He stared round the congregation, his voice stern and inflexible. ‘Evidently, it is God’s will to take this child from such a family.’

  I went for him then, but a hand stopped me. Matthew was old, but he still had the grip of the shipyard worker he once was. He did not release his grip until the porch door banged. ‘Kill him outside,’ he said. ‘When God’s not looking.’

  I pulled away. ‘I must find Mr Tooley.’

  ‘Mr Black’s gone for him.’

  Mr Tooley was hiding at the pewterer’s in Half Moon Court. Hiding! It had come to this. He entered wearing a surplice, holding the old prayer book. Liz coughed at intervals but more quietly, as if the peace that had entered the church had entered her. More candles were lit, brought in by the candle-maker, Mr Fellowes; not tallow, but his best candles. Mr Tooley stood before the font in the old way.

  ‘Dearly beloved, I beseech you to call on God … to grant this child that thing which by nature she cannot have; that she may be baptised with water and the Holy Ghost …’

  During the service other people crept in. There was Mr Reynolds, the pewterer, Mr Fellowes and his wife, a bookbinder I could not put a name to, and Gibson, the butcher, who was so frail he clutched at each pew as he went along. They were mostly old, and had all been married here by Mr Tooley and had their children baptised by him.

  By the time Mr Tooley had sprinkled water and made the sign of the cross, christening the baby Elizabeth Neave Stonehouse, she was not coughing or moving, but Anne swore she could feel Liz’s heart beating and Mr Tooley said he felt her breath on his hand.

  Sarah built up the fire at Half Moon Court, which revived Anne, who was chilled to the bone, but nothing could revive little Liz. When Anne’s eyes jerked closed I took the baby and whispered to her as I used to do, chafing her limbs and kissing her, feeling sure that I saw a finger unclench, or the tiny eyelids tremble, until I felt overcome and Anne took her. I scarcely noticed people passing or heard what they said, but I did see that Kate had brought the simnel cake that she used to make for my birthday. She had made it for a happier baptism and tried to conceal it. But Mr Tooley told her to cut it and divide it with a piece for everyone, for it was a resurrection cake.

  It was still dark when Matthew stirred us. From one of the parishioners he had found the wood to make a small coffin. Mr Tooley roused the gravediggers early to prepare a grave on the patch of ground that Mr Black had bought for his family. The tears came then and I kept feeling Liz was alive, and would not let them have her until, as the first glimmers of light appeared in the sky, Mr Tooley warned me the Presbyterians would not let him carry out the ceremony if we left it too late.

  More like grave robbers than mourners, we hurried to the churchyard. A thin, mean wind whipped around us. It was still more night than day and we could scarcely see to pick up soil to throw. It took only a few handfuls to cover the coffin.

  But, as the earth rattled on the lid, grief was followed by lacerating guilt. I could never forgive myself for my delay in returning home with the syrup. It might have made a difference. I might have found Mr Tooley, might have prevented Anne in her distraught state from taking Liz into that cold, damp church. Might, might, might.

  Guilt was overcome by anger. If Mr Tooley had never been driven from the church in the first place, Liz might have lived. At least she would have had a more peaceful end and we could have mourned her loss. I had too
much anger to mourn. More than Liz was buried that cold morning. For me, peace was buried with her.

  What peace could there be with intolerant men like George, Sir Lewis Challoner and Burke? As we left the churchyard, Mr Tooley was being taken by the pewterer to a safe house in another parish. Did it never occur to the Presbyterians that the rising discord and unrest among Baptists and other sects came, not so much from them, as from the Presbyterians’ intolerance to them?

  What if Lord Stonehouse was right and the Presbyterians took control? If they put Charles back on the throne without safeguards or a strong man like Cromwell to keep him in check? Lord Stonehouse’s bleak words rang in my head.

  ‘I would be executed. So would you. What would happen to Luke, I do not know.’

  I stopped at the lych gate, turning to see Luke struggling to keep up as he held on to his mother’s hand. I held out my arms to him and he ran towards me, hurling himself into them. Anne gave me an eloquent look, a mixture of approval and surprise that he had run to me so readily, and I realised that, as much as anything, it was my aloofness that had kept him away.

  He wriggled, pulling at a lock of my red hair as if he did not believe it was real. He had black hair, like a proper Stonehouse. ‘Is Liz in heaven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why did the man say she was going to hell?’

  ‘Because he’s a bad man.’

  ‘Are you going to kill him?’

  I hushed him, pulling him close as he snuggled against me, wrapping my cloak round him against the biting wind.

  PART TWO

  Cromwell’s Blessing

  Summer 1647

  11

  Lord Stonehouse was as unpredictable as the weather which, cruelly, two days after the funeral, became not just spring but summer, so warm that the front doors of the house in Queen Street were wide open. I thought I had missed him, for his carriage shot out of the yard as I approached, but he was not in it. The sole occupant was a lady. Her face was veiled so I could see none of her features, except the greenish glitter of her eyes.