Scogman appeared, beckoning urgently. I followed him through the thinning bushes and trees to the edge of the parkland, where Jan was standing with my father. They were staring towards the distant palace.
In spite of the weather, the King was taking his morning ride, a column of Cromwell’s soldiers round him. They were about a mile or so away, far enough to seem scarcely to be moving. The rain, if anything, had increased, softening the riders to a blur. The path they were on led across open parkland to King Henry’s Ride which, my father pointed out, skirted the beginnings of a forest, stretching almost down to the river.
‘We must stop them,’ I said.
‘He’ll get his shot in before you reach them,’ Jan said, matter-of-factly.
‘Or Cromwell’s soldiers will shoot you,’ my father said. He got out his glass and scanned the forest. There was mile after mile of it.
‘Proverbial needle in a haystack,’ Scogman said.
Rain dripped steadily from the end of the spyglass, from our hats and the tree we sheltered under. It pockmarked pools in the muddy path going back to the river and drove even the deer to huddle under copses where they gazed warily at the slowly approaching column of riders. I could just distinguish the King’s cloaked figure on a black horse. My father muttered that the marksman could not be too far from the boat. Jan argued we should circle round into the forest.
‘Blunder about?’ my father snapped. ‘We’ll see nothing from there.’
It was true. Jan and Scogman took up positions so that at least when the first shot was fired they could retaliate, in the hope that the first shot missed. It was a forlorn hope. I took the glass. All but a few tattered brown leaves had fallen, though the mass of thickly intertwined branches might well have been a wall for all I could see through it. In my mind’s eye I could see clearly Bennet’s cold gaze, his absolute calm as he stared at the riders through that tubular sight. He knew he had one shot. For him it was all he needed. I wasn’t the only one who would be implicated in the murder. Cromwell would be, too. No one would believe he had not instigated it. One shot, and England would be plunged into chaos again, even bloodier than before.
I wiped the glass and swung it round to the column. Through the smeared lens I could see the King’s spade-like beard. He was gesturing at the rain-soaked landscape, smiling and chatting to the man riding next to him. From his insignia, the man was a colonel. He dipped his helmeted head deferentially. The column was going at a leisurely trot. It would take them about ten minutes to reach King Henry’s Ride, bringing them within range of a marksman.
As I gave the glass back to my father he saw the slash in my coat. It was completely trivial in the light of what was about to happen, but his tetchy snarl betrayed how near the edge he was.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Waterman.’
Waterman. Without another word, I scrambled down the path towards the river. The waterman had almost got one hand free. I put the knife to his throat and swore I would kill him if he did not tell me where they had gone. Either I did not have Gloomy George’s enjoyment of cruelty, or the taste for it Nehemiah found when he made the mercenary talk, or the waterman did not know.
I drew the knife back in despair. It was the gleam in the waterman’s eyes: contempt at my weakness, perhaps, or triumph that he had read me right that made me do it. I let the blackness in, that violent, uncontrollable rage that, after lashing Scogman, I swore I would never succumb to again, pulling him down the bank, dragging him through the mud until the water was lapping over his face.
‘Tell me!’
His splutter that he did not know where they were was cut off by a mouthful of mud. The incoming tide washed over his head, his legs flailing wildly as I held him down. I yanked him back on to the bank. He gasped, retched water, spat and screamed he was just a waterman. He knew nothing. I glimpsed my father watching from the top of the path.
I dragged him down again, the mud almost sucking off my boots, and immersed him, this time holding his head down until the thrashing of his legs grew weaker and his body went limp. The tide was growing stronger and when I began hauling him out I lost my grip and he was almost swept away. When I finally got him out he was quite still. One of my boots came off as I shook the waterman, slapping his cheeks and hammering at his back. There was no movement. My father gave me a futile gesture of despair and began walking up the path.
I retrieved my boot, preparing to follow him, when I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I had done. The waterman had been part of Putney, part of all those ideals. I heard again the words ringing round the church: the poorest he had rights as much as the richest he. The biggest right of all was the right to live and I had taken it. Why was this waterman’s life worth less than that of the King’s?
I fell down on my knees, clawing mud from his face, washing it with the lapping water, sucking it with my mouth from his mouth and nostrils. I put my ear to his nose, but in the driving rain could feel nothing. Then I saw it: a small, lead-coloured membrane quivering across one nostril. I knelt over him, pumping frantically at his chest. The membrane distended, lost colour, became a small balloon, burst. Another began to form. His body twitched, went into spasm, then water exploded from him. I held him as he coughed and gasped back into life. The tide washed round us. I lifted him to drag him up on to the bank. Did he realise what I had done? Or did he fear I was going to immerse him again?
‘Five –’ he spluttered.
‘Five?’
‘– Oaks.’
‘Five Oaks?’
He nodded and his head fell back on his chest. I scrambled up the bank. My father was on the edge of the forest with Scogman and Jan. When I told him, without a word he went down a path. I stopped Scogman from following him and told him what I wanted him to do.
‘But your father said –’
‘Never mind what my father said. There’s no time. Do what I tell you. Give me your pistol.’
He did so and I ran along the path after my father.
‘Where’s Scogman?’
‘His ankle went.’
The rain and the thick carpet of sodden leaves helped conceal the sound of our approach. Between the trees I could see, blurred like a charcoal sketch, the column of riders turning. The Five Oaks were enormous trees, their branches spreading into a huge interlacing network. The three of us scanned them, but could see nothing. The same thought must have occurred to all of us: the man was lying. He would say anything not to be thrown into the river again. My father whispered to Jan to fire across the line of riders. He raised his pistol as I saw it: a bootmark squashing an acorn into the loam.
Another and another. We followed the track formed by them, round the biggest of the trees, but could still see nothing. Wildly, we stared about us. I could hear the horses, their voices, the King laughing.
I gripped my father’s arm. We were looking in the wrong place. On the ground, not up. Even then I would not have picked out the russet brown of his jerkin against the tree, were it not for the vanity of the decorated plate, the glint of the polished barrel resting on a fork. We had perhaps a minute, which seemed an eternity – until the riders broke into a canter. The King’s face was flushed. He was ahead of the soldiers, laughing as if he was playing some kind of game with them, turning towards the forest. Breaking free from the column made him an even easier target.
After all his boasting, Jan seemed slow and clumsy. I took out my pistol to aim at Bennet. My father made a violent gesture to stop me. The King was almost at the oak trees. I turned my head away, unable to look – and found myself staring into the eyes of Nehemiah. He was emerging from one of the other trees, pointing a pistol at Jan. I fired. Half deafened by the explosion in that confined space, blinded by the smoke, for a moment I could see or hear nothing. Sound rushed back: the neighing of the horses, confused yelling of the soldiers.
‘The King! The King!’
Numbly, I stared upwards to see Bennet’s boot moving to descend from the tree. We h
ad failed. Then the boot slipped, branches snapping as it twisted round, hesitating before being followed by an elbow, the decorated stock of the musket and a face, half of which was like chopped meat on a butcher’s slab, half untouched, the milky blue eye arrested in the act of sighting the gun.
‘Where is the King?’
Through the trees, among the milling, shouting soldiers, I could see no sign of the King.
A soldier grabbed me. ‘Here he is!’
‘We shot him, you fool.’
‘We?’
‘And the other one.’
‘The –’
He gaped at the shattered face, the musket, then at Nehemiah sprawled against the next tree, his face as contentious as it had been in life, his mouth slightly open, as if he was about to start an argument. There was no sign of my father or Jan. Or of the King. More soldiers were crashing into the bushes. The soldier moved to seize me again. I lashed out, sending him spinning into two of his approaching companions.
‘Ride!’ I yelled at their stupefied faces. ‘The King is heading downstream!’
I ran through the forest, half jumping, half scrambling down the bank towards the river. The boatman had been further revived by Scogman and was at the oars. His head was bent. There was little strength in him, but the tide was running strongly for us. I clambered in after Scogman and the boatman pushed off.
‘You saw Jake leave?’
‘As soon as you went to Five Oaks,’ Scogman said.
‘He moored further downstream?’
‘I couldn’t see. He went out of sight round the bend.’ Scogman reloaded the pistol. ‘How did you know?’
‘I know my father. He might have been able to raise Jake at that time of night – after all, he was Lord Stonehouse’s waterman. But Jan? Then, through the glass, I saw the King hanging a pennant on the terrace …’
Richard must have had it all planned. Then the King received the letter warning him that agitators had resolved to kill him.
‘Why didn’t he call it off?’
‘It was the perfect opportunity. I caught him saying that to Jan at Milford Stairs, although I didn’t know what he meant at the time. The King will claim Cromwell tried to murder him – that’s why he had to escape. If the King gets away, the people will rise up for him.’
Stag Island was falling behind us. The rain was slackening, a pale sun flickering in patches on the river. There was no sign of another boat. I was convinced my father would ride with the King to pick up the boat further downstream. They could then make it to the other bank where Cromwell’s soldiers would be unable to reach them. That conviction began to ebb gradually away as we rounded another bend and there was no sign of the boat or Richard. I began to feel they must have completed the escape on this side. Perhaps Richard had men and horses waiting for them up river.
Spongy grey clouds shut out the sun. We were now approaching Teddington. The river widened, the boatman keeping close to the bank as we felt the drag of the weir. Apart from the steady, oily dip of the oars, it was eerily silent. We slipped under overhanging trees where drops of rain gathered and shivered before falling in large splashes.
Cows stared at us, still as the trees they stood under. Scogman gripped my arm. He pointed across a huddle of farm buildings. At first I could see nothing but, as the clouds parted, in a transient patch of light I saw a movement between some trees. Although the tide was pulling us strongly, I urged the boatman to go faster.
From a distance it looked a huge man on a horse. Only as we got closer did the gap between the two men riding on it become visible. My father looked towards us and leaned forward. The King had chosen his horse well. In spite of the load, it responded, galloping downhill towards the river.
We could now see the boat, moored in an inlet just beyond the farm buildings. Jake was standing ready to cast off. I could see the King’s flushed face. He had been painted endlessly as a man of action; for the first time, as he reined in his horse in the narrow bay, I saw him living it.
Richard twisted round on the horse. I saw too late the pistol in his hand. It echoed like a cannon in the confines of the inlet. The boatman fell, the boat lurching round. One oar slipped into the water but I managed to grab the other. We were close enough to the shore for me to touch bottom. I stood in the crazily rocking boat, struggling to control it like a punt, ramming the oar into the mud. The current swept us towards the inlet. My father and Jake were in their boat, helping the King to board. What happened next was due partly to the clumsy structure from which I had ripped the canopy, partly to Jake pointing at an approaching troop of Cromwell’s soldiers. The King slipped, floundered. Jake had cast off and was holding the boat to the mooring. He let go to grab the King, missed, and the boat drifted away.
The same current that had driven us into the inlet threatened to carry the King out. Scogman grabbed a branch to pull the boat in as I plunged out, losing my balance, half wading, half swimming towards the King. I got my arms under his, felt the tide pulling us out, kicked frantically until I found bottom and, painfully slowly, drew him to the shore. At first he could barely stand. I held him until he gave me a freezing look. I released him. He stood unsteadily, dripping, until he found his feet and his dignity.
‘Thank you,’ he said, as though I was his gentleman-of-chamber with his poached egg.
His change of expression made me whirl round. Scogman was bringing his pistol to bear on the boat. I brought my hand down on it.
My father stood, holding on to the canopy structure, an easy target, the very model of aristocratic honour. It was as if, having failed, he wished to die. It was both absurd, and curiously moving. He raised his hand and, as he disappeared from sight, I raised mine.
‘Your father is a fine man,’ the King said. ‘I wish you had his loyalty.’
The soldiers encircled us. The Colonel dismounted and, as if nothing had happened, gave the usual deferential bow to his soaked and shivering sovereign. But neither he, nor anyone else, was getting any more deference from me.
‘Your Majesty,’ I said, ‘a man can be loyal only to someone he trusts.’
PART FOUR
The Signature
1649–1659
37
Who could trust Charles Stuart? He escaped again later that year, this time getting as far as the Isle of Wight before being recaptured. In captivity, he made a secret deal with the Scots, plunging the country into another year of war before being defeated a second time and brought to trial.
By then, January 1649, I no longer cared what happened to Charles Stuart. Or the country. I returned from the last battle, in Preston, to find Anne fighting for her life.
She was still in Lucy Hay’s house, although the Countess was no longer there. Cromwell had arrested her for her part with Holles in the Presbyterian uprising. Jane told me Anne’s illness began the day after she had visited Lucy in the Tower. Dr Latchford said Anne had caught gaol fever there. She ate little and could scarcely keep that down. Jane whispered that Anne had brought back more than fever from the Tower – she had carried with her the conviction I was dead.
It was a common symptom among women in London. During the fighting they did not hear from their men for months, sometimes years. Astrologers were more likely to pronounce the men alive or dead than the army. But not only did my presence not cure the disease; my being there seemed to exacerbate it.
Anne did not recognise me, pushing me away, crying, ‘No more doctors!’
‘Is she going to die, sir?’ whispered Luke.
It was a house of whispers, of drawn curtains, and of fires built up, even though the fever was burning her. At least her illness seemed to drive Luke’s fear away and he no longer hid his scarred face. He kept Anne alive, not me. She rallied when he came into the room. He read to her, not from the Bible that Mr Tooley had placed at her bedside, but from the only thing that gained her fragmentary attention – old chap books, of knights and love, and wrongs being righted. In one tale there was a knight called Tho
mas. She rose with an unexpected burst of energy.
‘Not that one. Thomas is dead.’
Luke broke down and protested that I was alive. I tried to hold her but she pushed me away. I fell on my knees, weeping, trying to bring back her memory, recalling the days we first met when I had walked bare-footed into Half Moon Court.
‘Monkey,’ she said.
I had a great burst of hope then, but she remembered Tom even less than Thomas. If Thomas was dead, Tom had barely existed. All she remembered was the sight of bare feet, picking up a quill or a piece of type between the toes, and that I had been some kind of messenger. Once I mentioned kissing her under the apple tree. She became so agitated and her fever ran so high that Dr Latchford sent me from the room.
I sat outside her room so at least I could hear her voice, her cries, or open the door to listen to her troubled sleep. Dr Latchford thought her mad and wanted to send for a doctor from Bedlam, but I refused. Anne’s state of mind made perfect sense to me. It was my fault, for I should never have left her. I had killed myself in her mind. She was my life, and I could not live without her. The real madness had been my own, leaving her for a world of hopeless dreams, and for Ellie.
It was at the height of this, when I scarcely knew whether I was asleep or awake, that Ireton came. If I had been thinking with any kind of clarity I would not have seen him. He and Cromwell had destroyed the last of my dreams. They had suppressed a Leveller demonstration by trapping the group in a church. Three were sentenced and shot on the spot. Cromwell’s men broke Joshua’s flute, and broke the Levellers, although the movement continued underground, in a desultory way. Jane, however, had showed Ireton in, and I had no option but to see him, half-expecting, as I always had, ever since coming up river from Poplar with Mr Black and Gloomy George, that I would be sentenced to death myself.
Cromwell's Blessing Page 31
